raven ambition's BLOG

Category: life stuff

  • Marge Piercy Poem

    I had a fb memory flashback arise and I’d totally forgotten posting it in 2011. So I screenshotted it as I couldn’t get cut and paste to work on the flashback. Who knows why… Anyhow the poem is worth sharing. It’s timeless. Marge Piercy: Image from a salvaged vintage 1890s paper booklet on ladies’ interests,…

  • Balancing Funny with Not-So-Funny (mourning a tree like the over sensitive person I am)

    Balancing Funny with Not-So-Funny (mourning a tree like the over sensitive person I am)

    I shared these 1st two stories on my Facebook author page but I’m going to share ’em here for those who haven’t liked that page and read those stories. Walking The Dog I was traveling home from the Boston Post Road last week when I saw a young girl of 7 or 8 y/o walking…

  • CHIN UP: Comfort and Faith In a Hospital Room

    CHIN UP: Comfort and Faith In a Hospital Room

    This is a confessional story. It has an air of “what just happened here?” and “kind words make a difference” and “sheer dumb luck.” It’s about forgiving one’s self, too. It was 1982. I was a mother at 17. Most everyone in my peer group was. I had recently lost my beloved Grandma to “old…

  • Hangry For Peaceful Moments

    Hangry For Peaceful Moments

    There is a phenomenon in nature known as ‘crown shyness.’ Some trees have gaps in the canopy. Those reluctances to touch are intentional. When I think of trees, -when I depict them in paint or ink or graphite, I am most apt to ensure they intertwine, ‘holding hands in the sky’ (so to speak) much…

  • Striking a Balance Between Despair and Hope

    Striking a Balance Between Despair and Hope

    My interest lies in part with fascination for hidden worlds, and mysterious and different creatures.) New octopus related things having been purchased, walls painted, I decided to put up some mini blinds in the newly painted bathroom. There is a narrow working space what with the disability rail and toilet. I rested my foot on…

  • Disconnecting Through Connection

    Disconnecting Through Connection

    In a book I read a few weeks ago (author Jim Sterba’s ‘Frankie’s Place’), Jim refers to reading material that one brings into the bathroom to read as “toi lit.” This term stayed with me-I found it way too amusing. It can be seen as a reflection of times that have changed. Think about it. I’ve…

  • Back Off Pigweed OR: Just Enough On The Plate

    Back Off Pigweed OR: Just Enough On The Plate

    Deserted houses, forgotten outbuildings, abandoned vehicles, long vacant parking lots, and sunken ships. They’ve all got something in common. Nature gobbles them up. Underground roots (rhizomes) undermine the integrity of foundations. Ivy creeps stealthily into cracks. Temperature extremes, dampness, insects and various wild animals- all play a role in reclaiming structures. In the sea, artificial reefs…

  • Having A Walmart Brain

    Having A Walmart Brain

    Above: This is an example of a 25 hundred dollar mirror with superb “psyche” tilt. That’s an actual term. Below: a French Budoir mirror (Etsy). And Below: WalMart mirror. Functional simplicity.  There are some grand sounding words associated with mirrors. For instance:  gadrooning (leaves, flowers, birds, etc. carved on the frame),  psyche (the mechanism that…

  • The Mustard Seed Story and also my latest Shenanigans

    The Mustard Seed Story and also my latest Shenanigans

      I found this in one of my little drawers: (not my grandson’s fingers; I mean I found this trinket) It’s a mustard seed. I’m a border/hoarder… My mother; she was a full out hoarder (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but I’m just borderline hoarder (thus the term border/hoarder.) As such, I often…

  • Untangling a Humdingerdoozer of a Holiday

    Untangling a Humdingerdoozer of a Holiday

    (Yeah that’s me. I love my photoshop.) This is my father, seen below- in his prime. (he’s 83 now) My aunt used to think he looked like Robert Mitchum, and in some pictures he really does.  My father was a great mechanic. (Still is. He owns a race car now and takes great pleasure sitting…

  • BETWEEN THE GREYS

    BETWEEN THE GREYS

    Somewhere on the planet as I type this; gurgling, burbling geothermic hotspots spurt predictably (like certain presidential candidates) and just like Old Faithful, Pixar presents us with another animated film. Inside Out is about feelings; so I was putting this one off. Eventually I did give it a watch. Turns out it’s literal, it runs…

  • Fostering Healthy Wariness 

    Fostering Healthy Wariness 

    Zsolt with Kerry/Silis; my youngest child at her art show. The carved figure between them is hers. I knew a guy (Zsolt) who (camera in hand) used to approach strangers going about their lives… on the sidewalks of New Haven and photograph them. He had a contagious engaging charm and genuine interest, a curiosity- for all…

  • I’m Going Outside

    I’m Going Outside

    I’m not saying climate change doesn’t loom like a specter in the closet; shadowing out by degrees in a slow scare. It is there. It is real. That said, haven’t we turned into a nation of worriers? ‘They’ say if you’re thinking too much in the past- That’s depression. If you’re worried too much about the…

  • Distorted Reality

    My first reading material was my set of World Book Encyclopedias. I would buy paperbacks at tag sales. Books like The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe, Elvis’s Autobiography and Chariots of The Gods. I read voraciously. I liked comics too… Richie Rich, Casper, Little Lotta and the scary ones were my favorites- the ones where…

  • Cats and That’s That

    Cats and That’s That

    Mister Po as a baby:      Mister Po now.  Resident cats.  I remember yearly trips to “the caves” in upstate New York. I don’t mean Howe’s -although I’ve been there numerous times with the kids and spouse (before his illness of course). I’m talking about a cave system accessed by an elevator located at the…

  • Musings of a Vivid Dreamer

    Musings of a Vivid Dreamer

    I was trying to arrange an enormous pile of gladiolus, lilies and various wild flowers (Black-eyed Susans and daisies) into a makeshift vase -made from a repurposed pig trough- onto which I had mosaiced broken shards from actual Wedgewood dinner plates…when suddenly my silky black puppy wiggled and squeezed her way through the mail slot…

  • Delphinapterus Leucas in a Small Town

    Delphinapterus Leucas in a Small Town

     “A tree is best measured when it is down—and so it is with people.”                   —from a documentary on creative process, Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars, which was released in 1987. Lincoln: The War Years… Bob Wilson is right. It is true of people too. When society…

  • Collecting New Associations

    Collecting New Associations

    I’ve always liked to collect. My middle son shares this trait. Some things he is currently collecting, or has collected:  pepper shakers (not salt), traffic cones, ID/name tags, dice… I’ve collected or are currently collecting: wooden sailors, cat figurines, Buddhas, rocks, salt and pepper shakers, pens, cacti, African American figurines, crane/claw game prizes… I love…

  • Faux Shopping and Toilet Fishing: Free and Inexpensive Ways To Have Fun

    Faux Shopping and Toilet Fishing: Free and Inexpensive Ways To Have Fun

    Have you ever fake-shopped? I enjoy shopping, the whole process: selection of color, comparison of prices, etc. That is to say I enjoy almost the entire shopping process: I don’t much enjoy the “checking out” part of it unless it is something I’ve saved for. That’s where fake shopping fills the void —the void that…

  • On Roadside Ruminations

    On Roadside Ruminations

    A poem by James Richardson—   ESSAY ON WOOD At dawn when rowboats drum the dock and every door in the breathing house bumps softly as if someone were leaving quietly, I wonder if something in us is made of wood, maybe not quite the heart, knocking softly, or maybe not made of it, but…

  • CAN WE TALK? (about pet peeves)

    CAN WE TALK? (about pet peeves)

    You know that book: “Eats Shoots and Leaves” (by Lynne Truss)? I used to think it was about some kind of mammal, maybe a panda, that eats shoots and leaves. Then I put on my glasses and noticed the comma: “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.” Now that implies that someone eats, then shoots, then leaves… Entirely…

  • on refrigerators, trees and dust

              When the refrigerator door swings closed, it flattens a button located somewhere in the refrigerator’s interior. Once said button is depressed, a small light bulb winks out and the inside of the refrigerator is cast into darkness. Now that’s an indisputable fact. Some people cross-examine it nonetheless: “Fact or not,…

  • Interpretting White Roses

    Interpretting White Roses

    salus in ardunis sancte et sapienter Alice In Wonderland Syndrome…(or as it’s also called: Todd’s Syndrome or Lillipution Hallucinations) sounds made-up but it’s a very real condition.  People seem fine optically, but they have weird visual perceptions. They have what’s termed a “rare form of migraine” (migrainous ischemia?). All of their senses are strangely distorted. The…

  • URNS Dilemma

    URNS Dilemma

    URNS Check this out: These are on display in the corner of my cellar. The four of them, (two pets, two people) have been on display for some time now. I know it’s a bit of a macabre theme but go with it. Think of this as a pre-Halloween blog or something. It’s become a dilemma,…

  • Between hell and hopelessness: Works In Progress

    Between hell and hopelessness: Works In Progress

    I don’t understand it. Am I taking the weight of the woeful world’s troubles on and internalizing it? Lately I’ve had trouble seeing the positive side of things. I won’t mention the bullying, cruelty and atrocious acts I’m referring to here, but you have access to media; you know what I mean. Even if I…

  • IF

    IF

    If it weren’t for the moon, to slow Earth’s spin, we’d have 6 hour days instead of 24. If Teddy Roosevelt hadn’t been carrying his speech in a metal eyeglasses container that October night in 1912 when John Schrank shot him, the bullet would’ve killed him. If Al Capone hadn’t compulsively carried his trademark mirror…

  • Reflections On a Life, Ghoti equals FISH, ALS challenge

    “Poopsy. Come back,” It was my father’s voice on the CB radio. “Come back” meant something like “Do you copy me? Do you here me? Please reply.” My husband was driving. We were on the way to New Hampshire for a vacation; my only child at the time was 5 or 6 and asleep in…

  • I will always see W’s on Bulldogs now

        “She has double-u’s all over her,” said my two and a 1/2 year old granddaughter. “What? Minnie the dog has ‘W’s” all over her? Really?” I replied to her, laughing. At first I thought that this was a form of Onomatopeia (which is Greek for making up words to explain noise; but in…

  • Is It Profound or Is It Poop?

    Is It Profound or Is It Poop?

    Have you heard about the tiny skeletons appearing on the streets of Mexico? Urban artist Isaac Cordal can tell you about them. He created them. The following quote is from his website, which has a link following this blog: “These small sculptures contemplate the demolition and reconstruction of everything around us. They catch the attention…

  • Bait Shop Sexism

    Bait Shop Sexism

    I’ve been meaning to vent about something. A few months ago, I was determined to resume fishing as a Spring/Summer ‘hobby.’ Mind you, my father took me all the time when I was growing up. “Gender-specific activities” were not imposed upon my child self. It was the same to everyone if I wanted to squat…

  • Thou Art Inspiring

    Thou Art Inspiring

    My grandson said recently: “Grandma enjoys stress. It gives her something to do.” This is my bathroom shower curtain. The curtain was purchased at Walmart.As you can see, it’s an oceanic world, an underwater scene of fish and coral. Every week I buy stickers and when my grandson sleeps over, he puts them into the scene.…

  • Emotions With No Name

    Where can you find the remains of a giraffe, an upright dining table, a claw hand and silver bars worth millions (all in the same place)? Underwater, in NYC, that’s where. Weird finds in New York’s waterways are the inspiration for fictional stories on a “digital journal” called Underwater New York. But I’m more interested…

  • BRAIN PLUMAGE

    BRAIN PLUMAGE

      “You see yourself descending From the building to the ground And you watch the sky receding And you spin to see the traffic Rising up and it’s so quiet Then you wake”–Adam Duritz I went to an IMax theater in Boston last week and saw a docu-film in 3-D about South Pacific sea life.…

  • Sharp Little Pencil Addresses My Faux Pas and Makes Me Smile

    Sharp Little Pencil Addresses My Faux Pas and Makes Me Smile

    I need to get something out of my system: “Fizzling Fireboxes!” “Well…  Flatten my funnel!” “Oh! Trembly tracks!”   There, that’s better. I’ve been watching CPTV’s Thomas The Tank Engine with a 2 year old. Thomas gets into mischief on that program. He’s called the “cheeky” engine for a reason. He’s also an example for…

  • Rantings of a logophile

    Rantings of a logophile

      I’m into obscure things. If you’ve read this blog you already know that. This forum, for me, is kind of an information purge of sorts. It’s like a safe place where I can say things like moon pigeons and alphabet juice and electric ketchup. Oddball conundrums keep my brain cells happy. Let me explain the…

  • It Rains Diamonds on Uranus; Happy Mother’s Day Carol

    …I was thinking that sometimes inspiration isn’t so bold that it’s wearing a velour jumpsuit. Sometimes it’s as simple as a cartwheeling spider or a rainbow tree. Noticing (and seeking out) beautiful eccentricities enhance my life. But I’m getting ahead of myself… So, picture this: A young black man is scheduled as keynote speaker to…

  • Passions Pursued, HONY, Pandora and Unicorns

    “They were expecting it to be nothing but unicorns shitting rainbows…” Ever browse Humans Of New York (HONY)? Think this: a photographer named Brandon who admits to, at some point being obsessed with things like aquariums, piano, baritone, New York City, etc. His current passion brings us pictures of New Yorkers, taken in a purposely…

  • Work ethic, Dr. Suess and if I was a Tree

            I ‘met’ someone recently who used to work in retail and I did my share of that too so I was reminiscing about my years ‘working with the public.’ I told him that I did my best. That’s all anyone can do. I found lots of expired merchandise in my “Health…

  • Interview With a Fellow Aspergian

                 This blog is in honor of both “National Library Week” (April 13th to 19th) and “Asperger Awareness Month” (April); although designated weeks and months are hardly reasons to blog about e-mails received quite “out of the blue” from interesting people who’ve actually read ALL of my blogs. I assure you readers,…

  • it’s that month again, here’s what I’ve been up to, in part

    the infamous puzzle piece? Yeah I know, it’s very cliche   Here’s what I’ve been up to: (Keep in mind there are several links on this blog. Don’t forget to come back and read the rest…Or click them when you finish reading…) http://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/current-issue/ The above link is from a “neurodivergent” sister site on wordpress who…

  • Queen Anne’s Lace and violent outbursts of energy

    Queen Anne’s Lace and violent outbursts of energy

    I love this so-called weed. Don’t go there. This blog is not about that kind of weed. I mean an actual weed. It’s roots smell like carrots. It’s leaves smell like parsley. When seeds form, the flower is a balled up nest. Its white cluster of flowers  form an umbrella. It’s the white Queen Anne’s…

  • Young Women making a difference: Amy Gravino, Dani Bowman, Erin Clemens

    Young Women making a difference: Amy Gravino, Dani Bowman, Erin Clemens

                   Living in the eastern part of the U.S. in this cold winter of ’14 (if you are anything like me) has made me somewhat of a bibliobibuli; that is to say; lost in books and not too involved in nature or in ‘the world.’ My standard book consumption…

  • Cypress Knees. Because.

    Cypress trees grow in marshlands and swamps. They make the most amazing pieces of furniture… Furniture I will never own; will never afford. take this table for example: http://www.thomsonrusticfurnishings.com sells this lovely functional piece of cypress tree art:   Below I’ve put a picture of cypress ‘knees’ as they appear in a swamp… (What are…

  • Peeves, Yeats, Hurdles, Goldilocks, importance of full stops

    Peeves, Yeats, Hurdles, Goldilocks, importance of full stops

    I function “best” when I’m in the Goldilocks zone. That is to say, when it’s not ‘too’ this, and it’s not ‘too’ that. When everything is going along just right in the world in a nice practiced routine. But who doesn’t function best like that, right? But take for instance a family member I once…

  • Loss of A Dear Friend, Zsolt Megai

               Please don’t be put off by the length of this. I’m not sure how long it will roll on; but I’ve lost a dear friend so here goes.             It was October of 2007 when I first met Zsolt Megai. My husband had died in 2005 and The Ct…

  • weather patterns, Donna Williams, fruit salad, Buddha

    Donna Williams says (in a brilliant analogy) that autism is a fruit salad, which I infer to mean, that everyone’s fruit bowl looks a bit different. Mine has Aspergers bananas in it, with selective mutism lemons, sensory processing dysfunction prickly pears, and dysthymic mangos. There are other fruits in there too. Like anxious horned melon…

  • Go ahead and make my day

    Go ahead and make my day

    You always think it’ll be an “ordinary” day, but as soon as you begin to forget to remember that everything is extraordinary, that’s when you get reminders to pay attention. Routines, beloved routines! Embrace them; for one never knows when they may be put on hold. (“The Spirit filters through what I want and shows…

  • 10 Genius Minds With Surprising Habits and Pasttimes

    10 Genius Minds With Surprising Habits and Pasttimes

    EINSTEIN: The lake was as smooth as a sheet of glass. Not a breeze stirred. Who would take their sailboat out with nary a breeze to stir a nostril hair? Einstein. He said, “I like the challenge.” I would suppose that’s how new solutions unveil themselves to attentive minds. An attentive mind he surely had.…

  • A repost

    A repost

    Here is a post I had published on another site, called SQUAG   https://www.squag.com/3473/

  • Augusten Burroughs and me and also Egyptians and Stuff

    “Guess I have to kill you now”, I joked during our ‘bathroom time’. He rolled his eyes and had this stern face which was his mask, the ‘mask of ALS’ (Lou Gehirgs) as it was called in the newsletter we got delivered to the house. His facial muscles were so weak that he had a…

  • Here Be Dragons…When Pipes Are Not Pipes

    Here Be Dragons…When Pipes Are Not Pipes

    Stephen King once wrote a short story about the heyday of youth with all it’s freshness and trials. He called youth: Pony days. We all have a brief time as ponies. There were two times during my pony years that I was given horses and both times my father said no, absolutely not, she can…

  • Christmas is… and isn’t

    Christmas is… and isn’t

    Do you get a little sick of all the warm-fuzzy hoo-ha this time of year? I’m not embarrassed to admit that I buy into all the good cheer to an extent and then slowly I feel like…where’s the New Year? I want all this behind me now. I wasn’t even going to get a tree…

  • Digging In Boxes

    Digging In Boxes

    Digging In Boxes                 There are ‘noun friendly’ languages like English and then there are ‘verb friendly’ languages like Korean, Hindi, and Japanese. In the latter languages, nouns are frequently dropped and names for activities are emphasized in the earliest years of life when parents are teaching children to speak. On the other hand, parents…

  • Resistance to Change and Toilet Tissue and Birds and Stuff

    I was thinking about adaptations, about how “equipped”  living organisms are to survive within given environments. And also, I was thinking about how ill-equipped I often ‘feel.’           Some birds that are incapable of flight—– like Penguins and Ostriches (because they do not fly), have eggs that are round as opposed…

  • Neologism, weight loss, rebuilding Lost Identity

    I’ve become a shack again. My body is no longer my temple. Time to rebuild. I’ve done it before. I’ve done it many times in the course of this life. Redesigned my self… There’s a lot that goes into that: rational belief, toughness, emotional strength, endurance, resilience and the jump starter: desire. Example: I’ve been…

  • Peas roll, right? House Elves and such

    It never failed. My then 6 year old son would drop a pea on the yellowed linoleum floor during his favorite supper of meatloaf, peas and baked potato and a few seconds later it was gone. Peas roll, right? I can’t answer that because our fallen peas didn’t stay on the floor long enough for…

  • Acts Of Kindness and the HEART

    My grandmother died when I was about 13 years old. It’s the last thing I expected even though she was nearly 90. (Or was she in her 90s? Memory fades that detail…) To a child, death only happens to other people; not to people you know. It was a special relationship. I was mute most…

  • Animal Menagerie…Animal Rescuing

    I have always been a rescuer. When I was 13, I had this cat named Theresa (tree-sa) (named because I’d climbed a tree to rescue her while out for a bike ride on dirt back-roads). I had way too many animals and knew my mother would say no, so I hid Theresa, her black and…

  • Comparing Luigi to the Voynich find, a look at two of the weirdest outsider art books ever!

    Comparing Luigi to the Voynich find, a look at two of the weirdest outsider art books ever!

    Imagine writing and illustrating a book so bizarre (but intriguing) that decades later people are still drawn to it and NO ONE has been able to decode the secret language you made up, nor are they able to understand what your mind boggling illustrations mean?! Hey that’s a feat, eh? Look at one of the…

  • Feeling around in a flowery diction

    Have you ever felt you resided inside that place in a harmonica where moist breath and music meet? Have you ever felt like one of those perfectly imperfect pine trees that grow sideways on golf courses? Ok well have you ever felt like a collection of soft blue, pink, white grey lint, like the kind…

  • Stroll Through Vermont (in my head)

    Cloud collecting mountains surround. Unpaved roads ramble. Roadside produce stands are unmanned by vendors. A locked metal box with a slit in the top is seen amongst the piles of tomatoes, squash and ears of corn with a handwritten note beside it: HONOR SYSTEM- Set your price and leave money in box No views on…

  • Magic and Innovative Art in A Sisyphean World

    Magic and Innovative Art in A Sisyphean World

                                            This poster is an example of some unusual art I came across quite by happy accident some years ago. The Empty Set Project Space was active sporadically as a gallery between 2001 and 2008. It…

  • The Flourish of Names, Signatures from the Past and Present

                       Can you believe this signature of Jacob (Jack) Lew, treasury secretary? I love it. No one else did. After all it was destined for an appearance on U.S. currency for the duration of his tenure. You know those signatures on money?He was asked to submit a more legible signature to grace…

  • Believe In People and also Levi Brown, “Graffiti” and Photography/Art taken to New Lengths!

    Believe In People and also Levi Brown, “Graffiti” and Photography/Art taken to New Lengths!

    There is a mysterious local New Haven artist going only by the moniker: ‘Believe In People,’ often shortened to BIP. Watch out! A giant baby holding a briefcase-wielding businessman! This particular painting ‘sprung’ up “guerrilla style” on the side of a business along State Street. In this instance, the painter had the permission of the…

  • Fun fun fun Playing With Words

    A shot in the dark. —– A dot in the shark. A self constructed riddle or—– A self constricted ruddle? Hmmm, twisting words. A deliberate error of speech or sometimes simply the accidental play on words with corresponding vowels, consonants or morphemes ( smallest grammatical unit in language) are switched within a phrase. These fun…

  • Relating to Robots

    I was sitting in a chair facing the hallway corridor at the local hospital when I heard a voice. A female one. “Your delivery has arrived. ” … Who IS that? So I was in the waiting room of the cardiologist office, waiting for them to call me into a room and get a heart…

  • My kitty and my view: satisfied

    I am satisfied enough with my lot in life. In this particular grey house, I have lived for almost 22 years. I didn’t intend to stay this long. It was ‘temporary’; yet here I am, two children nudged from the nest to find living space elsewhere. One daughter remains. So for years I’ve had the…

  • 1886 to 1900: Four Accidents In the Ct News

    1886 to 1900: Four Accidents In the Ct News

    I share with you here some archived ‘accidents’ as they appeared in a local newspaper circa 1886-1900. I love the superfluous language used in the articles. I find them interesting, and hope you too will. The pictures I added are typical of the period but entirely random. They don’t depict the disaster victims. In some…

  • Contemplation on Dead Greyhounds and Women’s Rights; Ultimately Life Lessons

    Some people are surely meant to be in our lives, but not necessarily to be in them for a lifetime. I think of course of those people in my own life who came and went on in death before I would’ve liked. My spouse left three children whose ages were 23, 14 and 9. I…

  • My Personal Yellow Journey, from Plastic Cups to Coldplay

    My mother and I spent a few weeks each summer, and sometimes on school vacations, with her mother; a fragile sprite of a woman who was deaf and lived in a huge white house in Vermont sprawling with cats and houseplants. At bedtime I would take ‘my’ yellow plastic cup from the ‘cupboard’, which was…

  • Side by Side Poems, Edna’s and Mine: Spring and Autumn

                                            I came upon a prompt to write poetry, and I find that endeavor to be a fun thing, so I decided to read my favorite poet Edna St. Vincent Millay for inspiration. I will never…

  • Bacteria: Who’s in Charge?

    Bacteria: Who’s in Charge?

      “Happiness and bacteria have one thing in common; they multiply by dividing!” ― Rutvik Oza “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” ― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who! Does that apply to microbes, pray tell? 90% of the cells within us are not ours; they’re microbes.’ Demodex mites frolic amongst our eyelashes, peacefully eating dead…

  • The Elephant Keeper, a quick overview of a stunning book

    The Elephant Keeper, a quick overview of a stunning book

    I rarely write a book review but The Elephant Keeper screams to be understood, and to be read. If you do read it, you may come away from it stuck in your head but not able to really understand what just happened. Doesn’t that have the makings of a good read? One that makes you…

  • Resistance To Change

    Resistance To Change

    After our house was remodeled to handicap specifications, I had had it with workers in the house! My husband’s condition worsened, he died, and the last thing I wanted to do was keep up with repairs, because that meant having workers in the house again. So for years I let things go, no more visiting…

  • Inside My Head Again

    Soothing Places… Some places leave vivid etchings on our memories. When we close our eyes and drift…we’re almost there again.             I was about 8 years old. There were crayfish to trap and study in Grandma’s Brook. I never saw more than one claw of the crayfish I named ‘Crab With The Big Green Claw,’…

  • Unconditionally Loving Dogs and Cats

    Unconditionally Loving Dogs and Cats

    When I stop and really think, I’ve had an animal every single day of my life. The first one I recall is good old Pistol. He was a black but graying mixed breed who was bigger than me. My parents say he resented me coming into the house; he was there first. I recall dropping…

  • A Life Ends, A Life Goes On

    A Life Ends, A Life Goes On

    GRIEVING IS NEVER OVER. I wrote this right after the first group of holidays ended; 7 mths. after his death. A mundane task like doing dishes…Something I’ve done thousands of time. Going on without him. One Task, Revisited  Starlings and titlarks bob greetings to each other. Partake in barren spoils; Yammering at meager winter offerings…

  • Wisteria, Blue Roses, Murals, and Human Diversity

                Some years ago I was wondering whether or not I should be a tattoo artist. Sounds fulfilling and fun. But then I got to thinking, what about all the small talk involved and touching of other people? Not really my thing. I mean if it were possible to tell…

  • Hoarding, Shifting Perspectives or “New Use For a Light Bulb Box”

    This stock photo is one that reminds me of my childhood home. I remember when my pigtailed daughter was five, still in elementary school; the only time in her 18 years that she ever allowed long hair on her head… We would walk to the corner to wait for the bus and play ‘passing-the-time’ games…

  • Being a positive deviant who steps around the burning goat poop

    Being a positive deviant who steps around the burning goat poop

    We have always lived in a world where the possibility exists that goat manure piles (of poop) can spontaneously combust. It happens, spreading fire and amusement and stench. I bring this up because I don’t fully understand the scientific aspects of spontaneous combustion, suffice to say heat and methane probably play a part but I…

  • Chaos Spaghetti With A Side Dish of Despair

    That which is the source of the sun and of every power in the cosmos, beyond which there is neither going nor coming, Is the Self. This Self is supreme! – Katha Upanishad Him: The sun’s so hot today. Me: I believe it’s entirely made up of fire. That’s probably why.                 It all sounds…

  • Broken Peace(s) and Coping with Life When Vultures Are Circling Your House

    Something I owe to the soil that grew- More to the life that fed- But most to Allah, who gave me two Separate sides to my head. I would go without shirts or shoes, Friends, tobacco, or bread Sooner than for an instant lose Either side of my head. –Rudyard Kipling (Above: A picture I…

  • Despair and quoting from my favorite book of meditations

    Despair and quoting from my favorite book of meditations

    There’s a word for the sound of wind blowing through the trees, which incidentally happens to be one of my pet sounds: “psithurism.” (That’s the word.) I can’t however, attain any psithurism presently because I’m in the house. I hope to be outside later, even if it’s just to eat at my picnic table…That said,…

  • Dog Walking As an Exercise In Art Appreciation

    The sidewalk I stand on is most common: pitted, crumbling around the edges, cracked, with the common faced weeds of suburban blight sprouting between those cracks.  Between a “rock and a hard place,” yeah. Empty lots, exhaust-bathed roadsides and overpass embankments are breeding grounds for “weeds,” which are defined as undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially…

  • C’s Quest Toward Sophrosyne

    C’s Quest Toward Sophrosyne

         Let me tell you a story about someone seeking happiness. We’ll call him C. “C” felt suicidal and he even concocted plans. He would slash his wrists and lay down in the tub so as not to create too much mess for whomever found him. C thought maybe pills would be less messy. Yeah,…

  • A Dog smile, Eleanor, and Anxiety

          Today it’s like my recharge light is blinking. I need to plug in somewhere and re-energize. Today I’m weary emotionally. Ever get weary of the whole wide world? Perhaps I have been weary  a long time. It so happens we went to the airport to drop off a houseguest who stayed with…

  • I have 48 years, I will do much more

    I have 48 years, I will do much more

    A few years ago, my daughter came inside the house carrying something. She put the thing in my hand. It was grey, solid, an almost perfectly round rock, which fit in my palm. She’d found a keen rock-ball. Across the street from me are natural caves. There’s a mountain with a flag on top, and…

  • A Kinship; A Means of Communication

    A Kinship; A Means of Communication

              Growing up, I never bothered looking at people long enough to see them as anything other than blurry models out of Matisse paintings; jumbled but interesting. I especially hated pictures of relatives hanging on walls. You could never ever avoid their staring eyes. I’d have to dash past them. I…

  • Slipper Mopping and Negative Place Association

    I still do things outside my comfort zone and that’s got to be a healthy thing, right? Recently we went to Tweed to pick up a friend from the airport who’s staying with us this week. My good friend was driving (I don’t drive at 49 yrs. of age, more about that later!). Anyway he…

  • Oil Slick Harbingers and Colorblind Crooner

    Years ago, before my husband’s diagnosis of ALS, there were subtle signs; harbingers if you will, that times were going to be changing. We were at a grocery store. I live close to the eastern coastline and department store parking lots are often filled with seagulls that scavenge for french fries. They’re drawn in by…

  • Four legged love beast

  • A Geometric Memory From H’s Terminally Disabled Years

    There is a lady in a purple geometric block print pantsuit, so like one my mother would pick out for special occasions. But this lady has short cropped dark hair, so like the smartly coiffed styles seen on Liza Minelli. (My mother is blonde.) She walks briskly down the corridor and can see into our…

  • First Blog: The Thumb Malfunction Quandary

    It’s odd, this technology. Odder still this social media. If you can’t beat ’em join ’em? Yeah something like that. Why do I say ‘odd’? Well, listen to this… I’m an author/freelancer and an artist. So I have tried to embrace this stuff. In my own way of course. Sometimes I’ve got my feet up,…