Not Too Late

Cheryl woke thinking, “It’s not too late. I haven’t said I do yet. I can still change my mind.” Every morning it was the same nagging thought, the same silly dream rattling around in the back of her mind that Jason would burst through the church doors at the last minute like Dustin Hoffman and make the decision for her.

She pulled the covers over her head, hoping to make her mom believe she was still asleep. At the first hint that she was awake, her mom would bustle in with lists and plans and ideas for the wedding. Maybe she could catch pneumonia or get hit by a taxi while . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “Not Too Late.” Extra points to anyone who can guess why the topic today (Tuesday, Jan. 30) is “Not Too Late.”

The Waterfall

He stood on a platform on the other side of the river. The roaring water and mist made him impossible to alert. I ran away from him, toward the bridge. I pounded across the bridge with the taste of fear in my mouth. A woman and child were walking peacefully in the other direction. “Get help. Get police.” I shouted to her as I ran by. I didn’t know the Italian word for police but I hoped it sounded enough like police that she would understand me.

I stumbled up the dirt path on the other side of the raging torrent, moisture beading on my skin from the water, the running, the panic. Tree branches conspired to . . .

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Defending your neural pathways

A few days ago in the post Paradise I started a piece about how cultures and traditions are created. I hope everyone has seen the film What the Bleep Do We Know because it talks about how our perceptions create neural pathways in our brain that become “set in their ways.” Changing your thought patterns after you’ve accepted a certain way of thinking is very difficult. We become so entrenched in defending our neural pathways that we are willing to go to war, to reject those who disagree, to create camps and sects and schisms and political parties and labels and stereotypes.

The concept of a conflict between perception and reality is a false . . .

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Journal pages

I was telling ltw at First Million Words some stories about the old days when we used pen and paper rather than electrons to do our writing practice.

One of those tales was about a bunch of journal pages made into a bronze tower. Another artist I like uses bits of her journal pages in collages regularly, even today. She’s Helen Gwinn. If you study her work close up, you’ll find it’s all about communication, with bits of journal pages, music scores, and other hidden gifts worked into the collages.

Is all art is an effort at communication . . .

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Woodpecker

A rat-a-tat from the apartment above me rattled off a staccato beat like a determined woodpecker–again and again. I got out of bed and gave up the idea of sleeping. What could the people up there be doing at 3 a.m. that would create such a noise? Sometimes I could hear bumping from up there when they were, well, you know, but this wasn’t that kind of noise.

I thought of going online and seeing if the tapping was Morse code. This thought engendered a nervous paranoia that made be believe the tapping was a signal and I should respond somehow. What should . . .

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The Cat

The last time we pooh-poohed the cat for scratching among some picture frames stacked in the corner behind the couch we later found a scorpion among the frames. So we consider the cat’s interest in something that we dismiss with, “there’s nothing there,” as a interesting enough to warrant investigation.

Her latest fascination has been with the TV, or the armoire the TV sits in, or possible the two candles that are atop the TV. She has to leap through a tiny opening to get access to the back of the TV. Since she has no purchase on the armoire or the TV, she may slip and fall a few times in attempting to squeeze through this spot in order to conduct her search for whatever the mystery object is. But . . .

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I want to go . . .

I want to go absolutely everywhere. Not being Oprah, I’ll  have to restrict myself to a few places I can afford. The problem is, I can hardly afford to go anywhere. I recently priced a trip to Alaska that would include a boat ride up from Vancouver (which of course, requires several days stay) to catch a train for a few days in Denali National Park.  This brief introduction to both Vancouver and Alaska would cost nearly $5000. What’s wrong with that picture? Tell me how to do it for $1500 and . . .

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Interview at A Little Red Hen

Naomi Dagen Bloom, over at A Little Red Hen published an interview about me, me, me the other day. Thanks for being interested in my story, Naomi.

Laundry day

At one time in American life, laundry day was Monday. That’s because it was an all day effort with wringer washers and outdoor clothes lines. Now, laundry is something you do any time day or night, possibly while doing three other things at the same time.

What are you doing with all the time women previously spent doing laundry? Blogging? Maybe you’re thinking about the news that there are 8 Democrats who’ve announced they’ll run for Pres. Of those eight, we have a sort of Hispanic American (Bill Richardson), a sort of African American (Barak Obama), and a female American (Hillary Clinton). This is more fun than laundry any old time. . .

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The quality of light

Most of my days are spent either in New Mexico or Texas. New Mexico is famous for its artists, Texas for its music. It’s the quality of light that creates this artistic phenomena.

The Texas light is filtered, tentative, uncertain, and often hidden by moist and drooping layers of obscurity. New Mexico light is blazing, piercing as a spotlight. If you want to sit and brood with your guitar, go to Texas. If you want to examine every petal of a flower, go to New Mexico.

A couple of years ago I was in Italy and found the light, and even the plants and soil, very like New Mexico. No wonder Italy is such a hotbed of art . . .

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