Jabberwocky

One of my father’s faves… he would have liked this.

Happy Dad’s Day!

No Off Switch

I create best in silence and it’s easy enough to turn off the sound on all my devices. OK, maybe not the meowful one, but at least he goes into snooze mode frequently. ^..^ When I’m feeling especially creative, sometimes I even drive without music on. Weird, I know! But I absorb so much inspiration from my surroundings that even a bit more data can overwhelm me and paradoxically cause a creativity halt. I’m constantly bombarded with new ideas, almost all of which will turn out to be meh-sauce, but still… ya never know until you explore one a little.

 

The one noise I can’t turn off though is the ringing in my head. Twenty/four/seven my left ear vibrates with tinnitus and there’s nothing I can do about it. Incurable. Occasionally both ears are affected. I’m used to this, since it’s been going on for years, but the sound does interfere with writing now. Some days I simply can’t do much creative writing at all and have to be content with reading and/or watching movies. Not that this is so terrible. Love reading! Love movies!

If I get super excited by a new writing idea and think it’s the best thing ever, which hasn’t occurred in quite a while, the tinnitus volume appears to automagically dip by itself and I can focus 100%. Part of the problem may be that I remember getting excited by writing ideas in the past, and they mostly turned out to be nothing, so it’s difficult to summon up that kind of enthusiasm again.

~*~

The Daily Post: Volume

On Being Wrong

I recently experienced a revelation: the relief of being wrong.

How so, you ask?

Sometimes it’s a burden to continually reestablish a position I’ve staked out. I like to believe I’m a unique snowflake (no, not *that* kind of snowflake) and come up with my very own unique ideas. Naturally I will have supporting arguments, however oddball. Since I present my case logically, I will get supporters; or perhaps peeps were already inclined to agree. In any case, as time passes, doubt creeps in… what if the majority had it right all along? Oh drat. Boring!

At that point, holding on to my position becomes stressful, since it becomes a game of cognitive dissonance. I’m telling myself I’m right because I’ve invested in the idea; yet my current data is coming in opposite to that, which I must ignore. Suddenly, boom! I decide not to ignore the new data and abandon the position instead.

What follows? Relief! A feeling of peacefulness.

Nope, it doesn’t matter what the idea was, though you are free to guess. You’ll probably be wrong however. 🙂

(This in no way concedes that all my weird ideas are wrong, just one. Or possibly two.)

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Revelation

Housekeeping Notes

A friend said that he had put new blog entries up recently, but I hadn’t seen them in my WordPress feed. I went back to look and this list happened.

1. I found new blog poasts by other favorite bloggers that I had missed even though I go through my feed daily. Apparently what happens is that poasts are not always appearing as they are timestamped. You can’t assume that just because you read your feed new entries won’t pop in earlier in the line later. This is really annoying!
2. But what you can do instead of reading your feed the usual way is click to the “manage” tab and sort your bloggers alphabetically. Then under each one it will say the last time they updated, which will give you a clue whether you read that entry or not (unless a blogger updates multiple times daily, eek). If there is no update statement, it’s fair to assume that someone hasn’t blogged in a while and you’re OK. This is sort of like the days of olde when we had the whozit list on the side.
3. Of course you might not care enough to do that, in which case ignore item 2 above.
4. If you are considering the switch to the “Managed Tab Feed Read” (MTFR), another positive benefit is that your feed won’t be cluttered with pictures and suggestions, so you get a nice, neat list of blogs instead of a huge pile of crapadoo.
5. Blogs that are still on Blogger have a different kind of feed source and back in the day I C&P’d that into my WP reader. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I don’t know why! Apparently the friend whose poasts I was looking for (remember him? this is a song about him) was one of those bloggers and his poasts were not feeding right. That’s the best I can do for a hi-tech explanation here. (Need lizard halps.) Anyway, none of that matters now because WP has learned that most of us are idiots and has figured out how to grab the feed code itself. So, I searched for friend’s blog in the WP feed searchy bar; WP found it and added it, viola. I didn’t have to go poking around for XML or whatever the eff.
6. I caught up with friend’s poasts and all is good.
7. MY DAUGHTER IS GETTING MARRIED IN TWO MONTHS OMG OMG OMG.
8. I highly recommend using the MTFR instead of the normal WP feed so as not to miss any bloggity goodness, especially if you have a lot of blogs in your feed (I have 279 at the mo). I needed to add this item because (a) I like to have 8 things, and (b) I had already defined MTFR and once you do that you have to use it.

That’s all.

Happy Birthday Mommy

The Opposite of Bird

What’s the opposite of bird, she says. What color is five?

She radiates light and energy, and her questions loop about my head like an undulating jump-rope. I revel in her discoveries; she numbs my pain with a fistful of coffee-paper butterflies.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Radiate

Seattle 2012

I survived my fear of heights to visit the Space Needle with my daughter in 2012. That was pretty awesome.

But the best part of the day was our visit to Chihuly’s glass garden nearby. I had never seen his work in person before. Incredible.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Survive

Syzygy

It might be a thousand years
Before the stars
Line up again like this;
One last incandescent kiss
As the light diminishes
And five million miles of dark
Ribbon out
In a long slow
Deathless march.

Eons pass;
A glacier cracks;
Again the moon
Hangs low and blue.
Did she count the waves
While I waited for you?
The tide pulls us into alignment:
Two frozen souls
Circling
Space and time.

I’ve lain with a hundred men
And felt nothing;
Yet your gaze burns my skin
From across an ocean.
Tectonic plates shake
When we touch
At last—
Mountains collapse;
The earth splits in half.

We retreat,
Our cosmology incomplete;
Resigned to the separation,
The endless analysis and division,
The rebalance and reposition,
Until equilibrium settles over the seas.
We drift once again
To opposite ends
Of this lonely galaxy.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Incomplete

4AM

I watch from my window
While your tail lights vanish in the rain.
The streets smearstain
Into a red and green fingerpainting,
Flickering with the traffic signals,
As fickle as your interest in me.
Blurred and tearstreaked,
The wet masterpiece
Stays illuminated
By a cold lemondrop moon.

I know I’ll never see you again.

All the frothy promises
And cottoncandy plans
Dissolve in the morning mist.
My lips still hum from your kiss,
But I feel your vague disappointment,
Your perpetual darkness
Guarded by barbedwire.

I wander outside to feed the ferals—
Two slinky shadows, silhouettes cut from coal;
Crunchy nuggets clink into the cats’ dish.
How I wish I could make a wish,
But there are no do-overs here.
I always fail with a complicated man;
I don’t respond well to the tortured genius soul
Who needs the perfect femme fatale,
A Marilyn to his Al.

I fail with the uncomplicated too.

You told me I was nothing like her,
The ex who depressed you—
I thought that was a good thing;
But now I imagine you search
For her likeness,
In hopes of recreating some sick
Woody Allen type lobster scene,
To find catharsis
And absolution.
And though I sneer and snark,
I want to play a part
In this execution.

I gaze up at that judgy stone face,
Unflinchingly—
In my disordered state:
Jammie pants, damp coat,
Tangled mass of bedhead.
“Is it something I said?”
Yes.
I ponder this relationship chess;
I might just be on the precipice
Of finally understanding
Something,
Anything,
A small piece of this
Jagged, glassy, bloody puzzle.

“Is it something I didn’t say?”
Also yes.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Precipice

Like a Reprieve

Like a reprieve
Comes soft morning breeze;
Unwrinkled sheet between
Bisecting yet connecting
Blazing dreams
And cold quotidian chores.
A chance one more
To drift weightlessly
Aimlessly
In apricot-tinged hope—
An undemanding tightrope
Thin glimmer
Love’s gold shimmer
A carousel of birdsong
Rose-petaled dawn.
Almost here
Almost there
Hearts tossed in the air—
Suspended
Unrepentant.
One last shuddering streak
Violet periwinkle pink
Soon to dissipate
In the bright eye of day.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Pink