scraps
September 19, 2016 § 4 Comments
As the rhythm of my days adjust to accommodate new routines, I’m noting unfinished scraps of scribbles. To keep them safe for another day and to honor an authenticity in the timelines of my reflections, I’ve decided to publish fragmented musings. The notes to myself you might find hurriedly scrawled on napkin corners or store receipts tucked haphazardly in the messy nooks of my distraction.
Sometimes they are notes of gratitude in a moment of sentiment:
There are people we carry with us our entire life, those who hold us to a place we never fully leave and allow us to be a little more ourselves. Keepsakes of self too often shuffled beneath the responsibilities of the day, the frenzied busyness that interrupts our mindfulness. Fragmented memories scattered to the far corners of our attention, but held present in trust by guardians of the past.
Other times they are an observation on the obvious:
In change so much of what we know is reconfigured into another image of familiarity. It is a yawning accommodation that pulls our thoughts beyond our expectations to allow for something unknown. It is an invitation to make space for discomfort, to clear the energy that surrounds uncertainty of invisible limitations.
Then, there are the longer ramblings of partial truths and play. A piece of a story out of order:
Sometimes I want to say your name out loud, just to hear the sound. So much of our truth is lost in old lines of misplaced time, stolen moments from years past that linger in distracted memories. You are ever here, even in your absence. A ghost of something I cannot speak even as I fight to forget. How is it that two people can know so little and be certain of so much? To be eternally connected and forever apart. To choose, consciously another path, without ever wandering.
Mismatched and messy, I’ve lost the threads of thought that bound them to my words. Here, however unfinished, they are part of a larger whole.
to my son
April 20, 2016 § 4 Comments
I’ve been trying to decide if there’s room in this space for me to introduce your identity as a writer. It’s a gift I’ve kept close to my heart, a secret that I treasured as an exclusive audience to your developing skill.
In much the same way a parent might take pride in sharing an athletic ability or musical talent, it has been my greatest joy to share my love of writing with you.
Until now most of your writing has been forced and shaped by academic restrictions. It’s only in your private writings and personal letters that one can see the contradiction of your internal awareness for your experiences in contrast to your outward mannerisms; it is in these works that your voice and style, confidence and curiosity shape a prose that is enviable.
This brings us to an exciting development. You are writing a book. A witty science-fiction work with a strong storyline and endearing characters, cliff hangers and comical one liners.
I’ve been reading your thread since your first paragraph, but you’ve begun to broaden your efforts to accommodate the work of editing and constructive feedback from a trusted teacher. Something that you once played at has become a passion and your definition of self is becoming broader.
You so often categorize yourself by interest over talent without allowing for a depth of character that invites a life rich with multifaceted experiences. Scientist, inventor, gamer, writer.
None of us are one or the other, we are fragments of everything we know and cannot fathom.
Maybe you will work in a lab or write code, maybe you’ll stay at home and raise a family or craft a novel that inspires new dreamers. The future is still unwritten, but this story that you’ve started is worth finishing.
I wake up wanting to turn the page, to see this next chapter unfold.
Love, Mom
inherent illness
March 8, 2016 § 2 Comments
It seems only natural that the seeds of such unhappiness might produce a child of discontent. Embarrassment permeating each failure until resentment threaded itself into a vocabulary of disdain. It was a weaning of contempt that fed thoughts of malice between mother and child.
Such deficit was only exacerbated by the easy affability of another child, one that demanded little and gave freely. Such dichotomy between a single home might have balanced the inequality of love, but instead it informed a greed of blame and a luxury of defiance.
Home was little more than the hollow places of broken expectations, all sharp corners and empty manners.
Thank you to those who have afforded me the luxury of sounding out the shape of something new in complicated characters and fragmented storylines. Pieces of personal truth and creative license make for a colorful exercise in a well-loved pastime.
misery’s company
March 8, 2016 § 4 Comments
Of the two he was most certainly less concerned by the passage of years. He had traded the youthful effervescence of his happiness for a burden of guilt decades previously. Marriage was meant to be a service of silence, a condition he would endure; it was a sacrifice of joy that he labored over with sloppy devotion. Trapped inside aches he could not escape, he was left to the nightmare of his days.
There was a time he might have chosen differently. A stretch of summer that played against the winter of his spirit, when he might have walked another truth; where for the briefest of occasions he was more father than husband. Clumsy in the novelty of his permission to play at a simpler experience of parenting without the demands of a more calculated performance of marriage. He would never be a good man, but he might have been a better father.
It was a tarnished sense of duty that bound him to his penance; a visceral need to numb himself for the sin of a private wish.
–
There were pictures that hinted at another woman, perhaps once beautiful, cloaked deeply beneath the leathered skin of so many summers under a lazy sky. She liked to parade these photographs in defiance of age with the same postured sentiment she framed images of family she did not know.
Underneath the performance of exuberant cheer, there was a bitterness that chewed the words she spat from angry lips. Even in noisy demonstrations of generosity, you had only to look to the fleshy folds of exposed skin for the weight of extravagance hoarded to ward of the poverty of her spirit. It is the worst kind of prison that is built around greed. Lavish walls of solitude, fortified by false ideals.
–
Bound together by their secrets, they lumbered through the discomfort of old age leaning heavily on a crutch of self-righteous indignation. Blame and misery permeating whatever joy they might have once shared.
stranger than fiction
March 7, 2016 § 6 Comments
Intricate manipulations spun into a nonsense of fiction;
a dense narrative of false accusations and complete fabrications.
It is the remarkable my children know as normal;
the sensational that we experienced as unexceptional.
A practice of deception that demands
silence and breeds fear with a terrifying performance of harm.
Only, I’m not afraid – your threats no longer scare me.
I’m becoming more intentional in my reckless disregard for secrets
I am no longer bound by obligation to keep.
A web more unbelievable for its truth;
slowly unraveling into words.
For better for worse,
remember
I never promised not to tell.
Black widow on the wall,
I wonder if you’re scared at all.
dear charles
February 27, 2016 § 5 Comments
When you left this space, you did not linger in goodbye. You shared your decision with the same warmth you unraveled memories and left us to honor your choice. It was an inarguable fact, an abrupt impossibility and a reminder of the relationship between writer and reader.
In your absence old stories remain, your easy humor and generous sentiment; this is the magic of the written word. Still, I envy those who stumble upon your work the newness of their discovery in your legacy.
Near the end, you shared a revelation; you offered us a complicated understanding of someone we presumed to know then tore the pages from the ending – leaving us to wonder what comes of second chances and happily ever after.
In the time since your goodbye you have become a grandfather, an experience you had only just introduced to us, your audience of readers. I like to wonder what stories you whisper to ward off silence and welcome sleep in this new experience of life. What mischief and magic await these new tellings.
Mostly, I wish you joy in new adventures and hope that one day I will see a familiar face peeking from a bookstore shelf.
Sincerely, Marie
courage, dear heart
January 12, 2016 § 4 Comments
It is a terrifying experience, to offer others the most vulnerable pieces of intimate uncertainty then walk nakedly among the mundane routine of our day. To move passionately through doubt, genuine in our fear and bold in our wants.
Exquisitely average in our exceptional individuality.
Writing does this, it invites me to dare greatly in the presence of strangers and friends. It centers my consciousness in an act of joy that allows me to unravel my thoughts and emotions around my words. Something greater than I and inseparable from self.
It begs me to be honest in my experiences despite the discomfort of complicated emotions and imperfect wisdom. Among my words I try to be vigilant in my truth and accountable in error so that my footprints align with my words. Sincerity in broken wanderings.
I have no lessons to teach, no neatly ordered steps for success or merchandise to market. My site is unembellished and I have not yet mastered the art of social media. Most days I have only the most humble curiosities and unfinished words. A small audience of family and friends in a larger company of strangers.
Courage, dear heart. – C.S. Lewis
Brené Brown says that courage is “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” This month I am re-reading her book Daring Greatly and taking careful notes on lessons in Living Brave. Challenging myself to embrace wholehearted living with greater consciousness and courage.
At the moment I am granting myself permission to claim my writing as a valuable part of my identity; to stop hiding my joy in an ambivalent anonymity that guards against criticism.
sentence fragments
December 16, 2015 § 6 Comments
It is a strange mischief that distracts me when my intentions are most earnest. Every sentence breaks under the weight of silence until there are only fragments.
“no matter the seasons of responsibilities that pull at my attention, I have carved this small sanctuary for joy”
“one-dimensional pieces of paper began to evolve into wheels with intricate spokes suffocated in layers of scotch tape”
“as the horn assaulted the quiet, I moved toward you as if through water; there was no air between us”
“little promises etched against the day”
fear
December 12, 2015 § 5 Comments
Fear is a strange motivator, it tempts us on tiptoe to the very brink of possibility then dares us to leap. It is the friend to whom we whisper our most intimate dreams and who we enlist to guard our joy from harm. It is a tireless soldier of our worst imagination, but only by assignment.
Fear whispers, What will you do?
It challenges us to name our dreams with heartbeats that speak in uncomplicated truth, passion in a language of morse code. It is the internal knowing that drums a persistent noise in the quiet of our own hesitation so that we can hear the reverberation of truth above the din of doubt.
What would yo do if you were not afraid to succeed?
I think of this when my son drafts complicated blue prints for unlikely inventions or my daughter conjures lines into a tapestry of make-believe. More often, Fear is my companion in the space between necessity, when I am still just long enough to remember my own dreams and tiptoe closer to possibility.
failing forward
November 24, 2015 § 4 Comments
The past week has been a whirlwind of emotions. An unhappy argument that lead to an honest unraveling. Tiny earthquakes of the spirit.
Sad and angry, I pulled away from the places I normally find comfort and looked inward more closely for strength. My vision obscured by a new foothold, I saw myself in choices that reflected places of need that demanded change.
For all my many blessings and joy, there was room for more. A word I previously chose to name the year.
How far had I fallen in my distraction that this word was lost in my daily attention? Suddenly alert and eager, this word was like manna to an achy spirit.
I drew myself closely to the table and began demanding more, of and for, myself.
I had become stagnant in my self-care. Deferring choices to a status quo and squandering the preciousness of each moment with hesitation. Fully awake in this reality I dared to engage chance.
It was this day that I hurriedly scribbled a resume and cover letter into reality, tempting fate to challenge my intentions. A change that I had come to fear became a lifeline to a forgotten self.
I immediately reached out for necessary references and let loved one’s stand beside me in my action, honoring the fragility of this new possibility with transparency of intention.
Then, just when the busyness of my normal weekday routines dared me to sweep momentum beneath distractions, I bought an interview outfit and challenged fate to call me.
I started looking at those around me less as dependents of my attention and more as capable caretakers. I began conversations with my children that outlined places where they might mature into acts of greater support.
I even embraced small gestures of whimsy, signing up for a frivolous message from an uncertain Universe so that I would have a happy message to begin my day. A playful plan for the mornings I would need encouragement.
It was in this same mindset that I acted on an idea a friend shared; a link to network with other writers. Here, again, I enlisted chance with determination; recognizing that if I could leap into change to be of service to others, then I could also demand a space of passion for myself.
For the past week, each day has begun with yes. I have moved toward every affirmation with a stubborn, blind love.
Then, today, rejection came. A polite form letter informing me that another candidate was awarded the opportunity I sought for myself. I could tell you that this moment undermined my confidence, that I doubted my ability and curled inward. It is what I might have felt only a week ago, but no is not so painful when the work is not intimately tied to self.
More importantly, failure is intricately linked to success; we cannot learn, grow, evolve without uncomfortable risk. I failed in this early endeavor, but I succeeded in moving past anxiety, fear, and doubt to make that first uncertain step towards change.
I don’t know what comes next, I only know I’m tired of standing still. I want to dance the little girl open-armed twirls of my heart song.
scribblechic 