Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Make Your Dwelling.

Occasions for sadness and grief are fleeting. All things are. Occasions for happiness and joy are fleeting.

Life itself is fleeting. We live between impacts. Blessings hit hard. Injuries hit hard as well. No matter how long you live, you will live only a very short time. Where do you choose to dwell?

It is your choice when you make your dwelling in the good, in the gifts and the gratitude, the lessons shared, the strength shared. It is your choice to dwell upon the things given.

It is your choice also when you dwell upon the things taken away, the injuries inflicted, the pain that lingers and can be fanned to flame, the disappointment and despair that grows so profusely, flowersome and weedful, with only just a little tending and attention. There's no doubt that life holds horrors. Horrible things come out of nowhere to crush, kill, destroy, to injure and flatten us. Let alone the fact that we all die.

Hopefully only children are not at peace with that fact - a given from the beginning? But where we survive, there are also things in life that strengthen us to cope with injury, and to thrive despite it. Your choice whether to dwell on and tend the things that grow and bring strength, that bring hope, is yours.

Hope doesn't found itself in dissatisfaction with what is. Our fervent wish that some specific thing must change, in order for us to call life good - this isn't hope. Hope flows from openness to all that is good in the world. Hope springs where we recognize how much good life has given. How much of it was unexpected! Good that came not based on any plan or demand of ours, but that nevertheless came. We all hold hard to certain desperate dreams, some expectation of specific change to come, some change bitterly wished for - and resented, the longer it takes. Yet what sort of hope flows from dissatisfaction with the world and with our inability to alter it? We hope desperately for some thing to change, but we hold out very little hope when we hold out desperate hope.

Hope's nature is not desperation, not dissatisfaction. It is openness to good. Hope is confidence in how much good life has to give - this is not vain confidence! It arises from all of the good we've seen, the good worked-for, the good given - the good that sprang from dumb luck and chance! Hope holds the heart open to any and all of it, ready to take it and make it flourish.

Life is short. If you wish to live in good, then dwell there.

Friday, June 14, 2013

OK, Upon Further Consideration I *Do* Want To Open A Taqueria

It would be called Tacos De Los Muertos, and the decor would feature a cast of happy characters - skeleton-people, mostly, such as you see in Day Of The Dead festivities, a lot of those sugar-skull characters with happy outfits and accessories, all eating tacos!

It would be kind of sort of "fast food," in the sense that they'd have it out to you in a snap, and you could easily say to yourself, "Wow, this is a well-run place and could easily be a chain." But the emphasis would be on fresh ingredients at a reasonable price, all on a menu that balances traditional classics with innovative takes.

Delicious.

I'M SORRY, FATHER!!

I tried

YES, I AM A SILLY GIRL

For not having seen sooner that you were nothing but a coward with a heart full of fear!

This Blog Has Been Writing Practice.



"This blog is writing practice."

How many times have I said that? Quite a few, quite a few.

You know what? I don't think it worked.

No, I'm kidding - it totally worked! I was just thinking back, looking at myself now versus when I started. Now, I'd like to think I could write pretty well to begin with! I'm not sure if my top-level quality has improved - in terms of how high is the highest mark I can reach. I'm as streaky and unevenly brilliant and stupid and groan-inducing as ever. My lows are certainly no lower than they ever were. But the highs still come pretty regularly, I think - and by "highs," I mean just when I can look back on a thing months later and say, "I'm really happy with this."

But what's the improvement, then? If the quality is about the same across the board, what has improved with practice? Well, the thing is: writing has gotten so much easier. Writing poetry in particular - and I defy anyone to claim my quality has declined with increased volume, poem-wise! But it isn't just poetry. Writing in general is so much easier. I believe it is from the conscious focus on the nuts, bolts, strategies and styles of writing that this blog has provided. The constant dumping of random ideas or cut/pastes from other sources into drafts for later elaboration. The constant going back through and honing, honing. The final selection and scheduling of finished posts to autopost on future dates. Like I said: quality hasn't measurably improved, but the constant working at working at it, over the past few years, has made writing easier for me.

I think in complete paragraphs now. It's like weird.

And then there are the unexpected bonuses. My psycho stalker, sure! But even above and beyond that, there have been a lot of real human beings coming out of nowhere, basically, out of the digital woodwork, to take the time to read - and sometimes, comment on a post. Sometimes with something goofy, playing off the goofiness of a post, other times with a thoughtful question. Sometimes with just a kind word of praise. I can't tell any of you how much it means to me, but it has meant a lot. And not one bit of it was something I expected. I never expected anyone to read or comment, really. Because my blog has always been pretty much about nothing. A self-indulgent enterprise.

So you have flattered me terribly with your interest, and I thank you for it. I have been more than just flattered, I've been touched - by so many of you who have looked past the seeming random array of nonesense I've thrown against this wall, and seen underneath it all to whatever corner of my heart or my mind or my soul I was speaking from. You've been kind enough to join me there, walk beside me in my silly walk, or call me on my bullshit, or dance with me in my dark and mysterious gropings with the ineffable, pretty much all in equal measure as time has gone by.

This Blog Was Writing Practice.

Thanks for making it more than just that.

Consider Your Ass Kicked.

Published Accidentally.

oop

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Capsule Treatment for a YA Novel/Film Adaptation In Progress: Dear Diarist,

Amona, a precocious 10-year old with overly twee emotional and intellectual tendencies, is given a very special Diary by her gram, a beloved but sarcastic and curmudgeonly figure whose past has more than a few elements of "tell you when you get older." Gram advises her to write in it every day, but Amona discards the book under a pile of shoes in the closet, until two years later, her gram dies on the eve of Amona's 8th-grade graduation.

In the weeks after her gram's funeral, Amona finds that old, discarded Diary, and in the first weeks of the summer before high school, she begins writing in it. Several weeks pass, in which she finds comfort and inspiration writing on the lined, illuminated side of each page - varicolored pages, each page with a different border of intertwined figures, or trees, or insects, or a who-knows-what-it-is design. She fills all the lines and then turns the page, to see what the next page will bring. One day, she goes back to read over what she has written, and recieves the shock of her life.

On the unlined side of each page, the diary has been writing her back.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

Ah, Saturday! How To Relax #5: The Impossible

To relax, I do the impossible. I don't mean like, amazing things. These aren't even useful things, really. More just things that make no sense in a "rational universe" setting. They're impossible, because they can't even possibly have happened. It's a subtle cause-effect, but I work it for what it's worth! And it can be very relaxing. That delicious frisson between what you just did and the fact that you couldn't even have!

For example, I go to the grocery store to buy blood. I pay in sweat, and they give me back piss change. I drop that in the salvation army tin bin outside, and climb into what appears to be a helicopter. But it isn't - it's a bicycle! I'm off in a whoosh, spinning over the rooftops hit by a hard-charging bus. Flung into and through the air. It is incredibly relaxing. As the impact caroms off my back, shingles fly in all directions, I'm arcing out soft and down hard from the roof to land comfortably across the raw, gravelly asphalt of my own sweet driveway.

Then I get up and I crane my spine-shocked neck to look down around and over myself. My left arm, ruined elbow; my shoulder and all down my back (largely visible now, through the gaping rents in my suddenly heavily-customized t-shirt). That's when I realize I never needed to go to the store to buy blood at all!

It was always there. Just waiting to come out.

Saturday, June 01, 2013

I have nothing left in this world, except what I am.

Thoroughly Exploring the "Friend Zone"

The "Friend Zone" is what some guys call it when you hang around waiting for the basis to change, long past the point where she already told you on the up and up all along: she doesn't want you, she's not into you.

Guys who use the term tend to exhibit certain traits:

1. They seem to think she is the one being dishonest!

Seriously. She's come flat out and said no dice. They're the ones who ACCEPT her offer of friendship, "friends only," all the while hanging on and harboring this secret infatuation and resentment. But she's the one dishonest?

2. They claim to feel like they're punished for being "nice guys," meanwhile jerks and bad boys get all the pussy.

You know what, this insults me, because I'm a nice guy. Not all nice guys are pussies. In fact, a guy hoping for sex who pretends to be your friend in the meantime is not a nice guy. And yes, it is definitely a pretense, a false friendship, when a guy claims he's OK with what you offer: with being just your friend, but really he is only hanging on to indulge his fantasy that you'll "see his worth," and fall in love. That's not a friend, not a nice guy - that's just a pussy, right there. And you already saw his worth, so no danger of any of that happening.

I don't get these guys. What is the attraction for them? Seriously! I'm not attracted to girls and women who don't want me. Not wanting me is a real turn-off, frankly. How can it not be for these guys? How can it not be for anyone?

But while the turn-off leaves be not wanting "more," I can still be a friend. An actual friend, not a pretend-friend, not some loser pretending to be okay with the sincere friendship on offer, but really not okay with it at all. Really holding on hoping for what you openly, honestly, do not offer.

I suspect this shit keeps happening to them because their dishonesty and contempt for simple friendship, their deception and self-delusion masking desperation and discontent, is something that people can pick up on when they are targeted by it. I imagine it comes across as subtly repulsive! These turds see no value in a real, no-strings gift of friendship. I'm sure that attitude shows.

So anyway! That's the "Friend Zone." Anyone have any perspectives of their own to share on this one? I await with an open mind, non-judgmental pretty much!