Paraphrased quote for the day - 6.29.05

More or less:

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten." Or paraphrased another way, I've seen "Don't expect to get different results if you don't change the process."

Something to think about.

Haiku for the day

Bits of this, pieces of that
Catch my fancy now --
What's to be done with them all?

Melancholia abounds;
Sadly but sweetly
Turns my long-lost hope to naught.

Writing in haiku
Forces one to be concise --
Darn the wordiness!

An amazingly short story

"Who wants to know?" I thought suspiciously.

There was no answer; but then, I didn't really expect one. I suspected that no one had actually asked the question, but couldn't be sure, so I answered out loud anyway.

"It's me, it's me, it's Ernest T.!" I yelled, hoping that maybe somehow this being had a sense of humor.

I was rewarded with a chuckle, a "That's OK, then," and a gentle shove out the door.

Happy (re)birth-day!

So long have I been away.

So long since I put pen to paper for the purpose of anything more than a scribbled note about electrical pricing or a quick note to a teacher. I worried that the art was gone, forever excised from me as a punishment for not utilizing its craft. That would have been fitting, and perhaps just; after all, with so many other skills, if you don't use them, you lose them, right? I cowered in fear of discovering that the truth was that I couldn't do it; I was a fraud; it was all a sham.

It makes me happy to write again. Not only have I started recovering my craft -- and learned I'm still pretty good at it!--, but I've re-embraced the wholehearted, enormous joy of translating an idea from brainwave to written word. I feel thrilled and humbled and right when I write: this is truly what I was born to do. In an ideal world, each person would discover the job they loved to do, and would be able to make a career of that decision. I think one's world becomes a much sadder, more hopeless place when careers are embarked upon only because one can make money from that endeavor, not from any real sense of being drawn to it.

The words pour out of my pen now; it's as if I never stopped. I'm hoping that the maturity gained in the last ten years or so that I've been away will temper my writing and season it with my life experiences. I wait to see if I can make a living at this, but it seems much more plausible an idea now than a month or two ago, when I began this quest to regain myself. For that really is what I'm doing; I've let myself become comfortable in roles others have set for me -- worker, mother, wife --, and gradually lost the sense of myself as writer, which has been the true me for 30 years. I trust the true me has grown up a bit, and learned a lot.

Welcome back, me.

Stray thoughts

Surge of infancy, terrible in its wrath,
Calls over the sea and sky with a mouth not of this life,
But of a voiceless, senseless urgency and need;
Voice strong without strength, bellowing without volume,
Insistent all the same of its awesome longing.




"True selflessness lies in not only acknowledging and acquiescing to another's wish, but in anticipating that wish and making its birth easier."

Ramblings - 6.13.05

It's Monday the 13th, y'all!


"Roar!" cried the baby tiger, all flashing teeth and fuzzy orange fur.



-- Yes, I realize the above is "slim pickings," as an English professor once wrote on a daily essay I dashed off five minutes before class. That kind of day today.

Unfinished - 6.10.05

Anger, pain, and frustration: these are the three emotions in constant evidence in my mind. Each is intertwined with the other, and cannot be separated or dealt with separately; a three-pronged attack is the only solution.

I'm living with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and a host of other disorders that not every physician believes in. Are they real problems, or only a catch-all for symptoms that can't be tied to anything else? I don't know the answer, but I know how these diagnoses physically feel. The extreme exhaustion is enough to deal with; throw in pain and stiffness in just about every joint, and life becomes quite arduous. Add to that the fact that there is no cure, and no real treatment; one can try exercise, massage, chiropractic, etc. for relief, but since the disorders are not taken that seriously by that many researchers, there's not much hope that a eureka! moment is coming.

I'm not putting this to paper (screen?) to depress anyone, or to obtain pity -- I'm not sure yet quite what the reasoning is, but I'll let you know when I find out.

Thoughts from NPR story

What is the difference between the rest of the world and the U.S.? I don't mean something obvious like culture; I'm talking about a mindset. The Sudanese have had 50 years of independence from their mother country; in that time, apparently they've done virtually nothing to help themselves. Their people depend on foreign aid for even the basics, such as food. Where is the pioneer spirit and push to better oneself that the American colonists had? Are our two peoples so completely dissimilar in such innumerable ways that the urge to make a better place for the generations to come is wholly absent? It seems the dearth in accepting personal responsibility for one's way of life is not limited only to the U.S.