The Right Word (from my Mom's blog)

One of my fondest memories of Mom and I's relationship when I was little revolved around words. I can remember being so small that my hand was swallowed up in hers when she held it and I had to look up and up and up to see and speak with her. I love words and have for as far back as I can remember. I often would hear a word I didn't know and ask Mom,
“What does that mean?”
She never hesitated to help me say it right if I had the pronunciation wrong, then would sweetly tell me what it meant and then use it in a sentence so I could hear not just a definition but how it was used. It was just something that happened all through out my growing up years. Long before I picked up my first book for fun, I was hungry for language and loved using it in new and interesting ways.
I recall vividly one night when I was quite young, and something unusual happened, Mom and I had an evening alone. Don on his mission or in college, Heather too and the teenagers had school things to see to, Sam had a sleep over and remarkably so did David. It was JUST me and Mom. It is I think one of the only times I ever had an uninterrupted evening with Mom until I was a teenager.
I remember we went through the drive through at Taco Bell (an almost unheard of indulgence at that time). At some point in the evening we walked over to the Magyars house (three doors down when we lived on Aberdeen Way in Boulder). It was Spring I think and the evening air was soft and warm. A breeze came up and it felt as if I was wrapped the softest of blankets. I stopped walking, holding mom's hand forced her to stop too. I'm sure my eyes were wide when I asked her,
“Mom do you feel that? What IS that?” She explained it was a Chitaqua, a warm soft wind that swept through the area, it is a native American term and the name of a beautiful park in the foothills. I don't know why but something about that night, and that word, even that amazing sensation is branded indelibly in my memory.
It wasn't until I was in the third or fourth grade when I found a book to read for quiet time in school that I fell in love with reading for its own sake. Like was mentioned before, once we kids found that first book, we became avid and ardent bookworms from then on out. Thanks to Mom's example and encouragement I not only read, but write. Its what I want to do with my life, and she has been a staunch (and even pushy) supporter of my writing habit from the very beginning. I love words and stories and that is I think almost entirely thanks to Mom.

new friends online

been YEARS since I posted here, but thought, what the hell? I've recently been published online and have now got 'fans' and even fan mail which is hysterical! So funny and so flattering. I actually wrote this poem for a new friend I've made online.

How could I have known
a few kind words would lead to this?
I'd never have imagined a virtual stranger
could give me bliss.
Paths that lead to unexpected places,
Voices issue from unexpected faces.
Wonder and awe in a cloud around me,
Joy battles for victory over glee.
A warm smile or laugh brings out the same,
a presence poised there on the edge of fame.
Music and stories, communion long distance;
Fun and frivolity, and giggles in an instance.
How can I thank you for this given for free?
There's this treasure unlocked and you're the key.
You a very dear friend I haven't yet met,
Years of closeness that've not happened yet.
Thrilled at the adventure only just begun.
Thank you dear soul for all you've done

Love and Friends and stuff...

I had someone leave me a comment on my blog earlier and I followed the link and discovered a new blog I hadn't read before, ( http://fitnessfollies.blogspot.com/ ) . If she hadn't commented I most likely wouldn't have found hers. I'm glad I did, seems like a great gal and she had a posting about friendship. I felt inclined to comment and what follows is what I wrote. Seemed almost pithy so I thought I'd post it here to share.

I have a very clear definition of friendship, that is quite close to the one you're alluding to, but let me start by telling you my definition for "Love" (a sad sad statement on the nature of the english language when one word is supposed to cover the whole range of emotions tied to it, but I digress...)

Love-(espeically the unconditional kind we all crave) is not a noun but a verb. Love is selflessly giving to another with no thought of reward. If you REALLY love someone you will do everything in your power to help them be the very best person they can be. Help them with out judgement, or your own agenda getting in the way, serve them with kindness, longsuffering and a complete lack of ego. Be there for them and then care enough to step back and let them make their own choices (even if, and perhaps especially if, you don't agree).

THAT my dear is love and isn't friendship, even the lets-just-hang-out-cause-I-Have-some-time-to-kill-and-I enjoy-your-company kind of friendship just a less intense way of loving a person? Isn't a friend someone who meets some or all of the above definition of love? That is my thought anyhow.

I also wanted to thank you for commenting on my blog, I can't think if I know you in person, cause you look a little familiar, but wehter I do or not, just based on the this one entry I think you would be the kind of person of high integrity I would very much enjoy knowing. So here's to you, have one bite of really quality chocolate (strictly for the anticarcinogenic health benefits of course ;-) and then hit the gym and know that some people admire others who set goals and work hard to achieve them.

Hope this finds everyone who reads it well, and if not, I sincerely hope you can rememdy whatever it is that ails you (better diet and more excersize anyone? ;-)

more soon, I'm sure.

another witty forwarded message from my friend Vonzae, this actually made me laugh, and right this moment I REALLY needed a good chuckle. So despite this NOT being at all original, I decided to share--

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2006 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Lament

I wrote this like two years ago, I'm pretty sure it's been posted somewhere online before, but with my return to LCC Spring semester some of my little dylexia anxieties are attempting to rear thier ugly little heads again, and therefore this bore repeating, hope you enjoy!



Lament


My eyes blur when I look at the page
against these scratched lines before me I rage.
I wish desperately I could just shrink away,
as I fight back a sob, struggling to obey.
Cool commands couched in emotionless words.
I prod my skull when no answers stirred.
Carefully crafted they demand a solution.
I begged and pleaded, prayed for absolution.
Still nothing came but fresh frustration,
as I fervently longed for one more demonstration.
Why do these things just make no sense to me?
Why when I do this cannot I simply see?
Whats the use? I wonder in dismal despair.
Everyone knows the world’s terribly unfair.
I can’t seem to get it no matter how hard I try.
I breakdown and flee the room, finally to cry.
I sob into my pillow a hollow ache in my chest.
Why am I so lost even when doing my best?
It wounds me so to look failure full in the face.
I feel miles behind at the very start of the race.
I believe wholly that two plus two is four.
I can do long division, but think it a bore.
I really do know fourteen times two is twenty eight.
Simple math I can see has a use, and appreciate.
Still for someone most consider reasonably bright.
With X’s, fractions and negative numbers I fight.
For all things mathmatic I’m utterly disdainful
‘cause doing math homework is particularly painful.
I’ll wring Archemdes neck if we meet in the next life
and argue advanced math’s worth for a life time of strife.
I’ll have fighting words for Pathagorous you can bet.
And soon as the terms over all math I’ll try to forget!

Bueller, Bueller...

Saw this quiz and was amused, apparently I am much cooler than I thought I was...

You are Ferris Bueller Bueller... Bueller... You are the coolest kid in high school and you have all the connections. You are able to lie your way into anything and get away with it… although people are very jealous of your gifts. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

dark fog

Here's a little scene I wrote a few months back. It may or may not end up in the final draft of "Touch of Fog" I was trying to get a grip on a character I had in my head but was struggling to write about. Good scene, hope I can use it somewhere.

Dark Fog

The window was new, a triple paned, aluminum and wood affair with a snowy white blind trapped within. Those blinds were pulled high, letting the diaphanous silver light pool into the small walnut lined study. Clouds of fog drifted past, swirling and ghosting between the birch and alder trees beyond. Their green leaves just starting to shift to gold and red, the colors muted and barely discernible in the early morning light. There was a small green shaded brass lamp on the heavy mahogany desk behind, but that was just a dim golden spot, nearly swallowed by pale cool illumination from the window. All was still and hushed, the only motion that of the gentle whorls and drifts of cottony mist.
A black leather chair sat facing the window and on it's arm rested a hand, broad and strong looking, with a few dark hairs curling on the back. Tendons and veins stood in gentle relief beneath the beginning pattern of age spots. A capable hand, one well acquainted with work with a pale gold band on the ring finger, it too looking worn but strong, a long time reminder of promises made. There was no sound, it was exquisitely quiet now, the perfect moment for contemplation. Cool and almost reverent with the pale shapeless mist hanging just out of reach.
The faintest breath of air touched his neck. So soft, he questioned he even felt it at all. Then again, only this time, it was no breath, but a presence. Cool, rapidly turning to cold, air briefly caressed the side of his neck. He raised that hand that had rested in repose, but before he could even bring it to chest level, the air turned icy, ridged and as dense and sharp as any blade. That blade pressed deep, the edge of compact air finer than any surgeons scalpel. It pressed hard against the yielding skin and before another breath could be drawn it cut. Skin and tissue and vessels parted easily, spreading open in a second smile, freeing hot, bright crimson blood to first trickle then pulse down a pristine shirt and the raised ringed hand.

Thanks Aaron!

from my friend Aaron Jamison's Blog I found this test and here are the results

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know.You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems.Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green.Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test

You Are KermitHi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know.You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems.Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green.Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

"The Spanish Prisioner"...

I was just sorting through my junk email account on yahoo, when I came across an email from a name I didn't recognize. It said from "Brother..." So I though maybe it was someone from church, so I went ahead and read it. This is the letter that greeted me,

"BROTHER MIKE EZE." wrote:

Good day to you,
please forgive my indignation for contacting you via this media.But i have no option but to write you this mail.I know that my letter may seem strange and might cause you to feel aprrehensive about the whole situation,but i pray God that you give it a fair hearing and render your help. My name is Mike Eze ,i just graduated from the African Calvary school of Theology where i went for my Pastoral Training and degree program.Please I'm in a kind of situation here and i need your urgent help.You see i lost my mother while i was just six years old and later on my father remarried another lady making her my step-mother.So i grew up under the supervision of my step mother and i tell you she made life quite misreable and unbearable for me.My father was the former Chairman of the Oil and Mineral Producing Development Committte(OMPADEC) of the Niger Delta States in Nigeria,and also my father was a business man who happens to own some filling/gas Stations in Lagos.

He also owned some properties in real estate.So most times he was never really around to witness the maltreatment i was going through the hands of my step-mother.Even when i did complain to him ,she always told my father that i was telling a fib and that would make her resent me the more so i had to leave my faith in the hands of the lord.All these factors added together made me to seek the face of the lord and then i joined the seminary to be useful to the lord and mankind in general.My father died on January 27th 2002 in a bomb blast/explosion in Ikeja cantonment in Lagos while on an official assignment.You can verify my claims by visiting the following web-page, www.guardian.co.uk/international/ story/0,3604,641317,00.html .

I am the only surviving heir to my father and sometime before the incident occured, he deposited a huge sum of money in my account worth $16million US dollars.My immediate problem right now is that of safety of my life,because of my wicked Stepmother.My stepmother did not have any issue for my dad before he passed away,and right now she has collected all of my father's property including the filling/gas stations that he left for me because she was the Manager before he died.She recently found out of the money my father lodged in my name in trust for me and right now she want's me dead so she can have the money also.This is the only legacy of my father left for me and she also want's it.

This is the reason i'm writing you to help me to secure a foreign account where i can lodge this money without delay.My training in Bible school has made me to understand that all things worketh together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.On your reply indicate your telephone and fax numbers for oral discussion.
If you will do it for me 30% of this fund will be yours. 5% percent will be set aside to re-emburse you for any expenses that you might incure during the time of this transaction and phone bills . While the remaining 65% will be left for me.

I will be coming over to your country as soon as this money gets into your account,i wish to come to your country to invest my money and i also seek your advise as regards investment plans that would be very beneficial to me over there.
I will send an attached copy of my international passport as soon as you reply me.I confidently await your urgent response. God Bless you and your family.Please contact me via my confidential email i.d: ezzemmike@myway.com,
Regards.
Mike Eze

Below is the letter I sent back, I was outraged at the audacity of this person, and felt strongly enough about it to put of valuable sleep at three in the morning to respond to it, and thought you, my valued readers might appreicate it.

Dear Brother Eze,

I'm not sure how you came upon my email address, for I'm quite certain I would remember someone with an amazing story like yours. So tragic that you lost your mother young and that your step mother didn't treat you with the caring, respect and tender regard all women should treat all children.
I'm a mother as well, and feel great and sweet regard for all of Gods children, all my brothers and sisters on this wide earth, but most especially the little ones. Your story of loss and heart ache, of maltreatment and indebtedness, your tale of woe and anguish and financial desperation was impressive and touchingly rendered, intelligent, but somewhat broken English, not withstanding...
The saddest thing of all though, the thing that I find most tragic and wretched about that poignant tales is the fact that I don't believe it.
I wish I did, it was so carefully crafted, and has such genuine bits of truth or at least truth-iness mixed in that its almost impossible to NOT believe, to NOT want to help this tragic soul so ardently in need of assistance.
Unfortunately I have seen the movie "The Spanish Prisoner" I've known other folk of less than Sterling repute and I have gotten countless numbers of emails with this same tragic tale, begging for assistance in the form of a forgien account and cash, with 'guaranteed' returns and seemingly little to no risk.
It is TRULY tragic that individuals like yourself could take such skill as I saw displayed in that carefully constructed story and use it for dark ends. Shame on you Brother, shame for twisting tales of true tragedy from the hungry and impoverished land that is Africa, into the chance of profit for yourself. There are hungry kids, dying kids all over that war torn and AIDS ravaged continent, and to think that someone like yourself would play on peoples emotions regarding that, to imagine that an individual of any ilk could use a person's well intentioned desire to help others to further your own agenda is in a single word, evil. The worst sort of it too, the evil that thinks only of itself, the kind of ill that is all about the doer with absolutely no thought to the other guy. I sincerely hope that if this is the scam I believe it to be, I hope you make not a sou, not a penny or Euro or drakka from it.
If by some miracle I am mistaken, please take the humble apology of God Fearing woman.
Sincerely
Knitewynd @ yahoo.com

Glimpsed...

In Summer of 04' I saw a woman on the bus, and her expression inspired this poem. Its one of the better ones I've written of late. I plan to submit it for publication somewhere sometime in the near future.



Glimpsed but Not Seen

I saw it there,
like a flash.
A vision
fixed in the flicker of a lightning strike.
The healing wound,
the deathlike stillness
of the features.
Masking a pain
both
fresh and ancient.
I experienced in an instant
Insight
disolving into
Recognition
giving way to
Resignation.
In a moment of
displaced time.
I felt a shock
of familiar, icy, horror.
Fresh fear
that melted into
acknowlegement.
And quiet,
compassionate,
perhaps- cowardly
denial.
I did not see it,
I no longer wear
that face.

Drugs and God on a Sabbath Bus Ride

A little thing I wrote a few years back. I'm still carless, so the bus IS my main mode of transportation, but thankfully, due to the kindness of Brother Scott and others like him, my little family now at least has consistant rides to and from church. Tax returns are right around the bend and I have decided that with not just one but two little ones, the time has come to bite the bullet and get a car even if its a clunker... I mean I keep saying I want to learn to repair cars--What better way to learn that on my own? ;-)

Hope you like the poem.

Drugs and God on a Sabbath Bus Ride

Arthur- “I found myself calling on God
to help me
make it through the weekend;
Which I don’t really like doing,
cause I don’t really believe.”
Joffery- “So did you make it?”
Arthur- “Yea I did!”
Joffery- “So did you say thank you?”

Fwd: fw: f-------

A sweet friend of mine just forwarded me 'An Interesting Story', a bit about getting into heaven with your friend in this case a dog, something remarkably like a classic Twilight Zone episode. The message was simply, people forward you joke and what not, because they love you and were thinking of you, not for other nefarious reason. I wrote my friend back this response

"...As for the whole forwarded things... I have very strong feelings for all things forwarded. Ordinarily I avoid them like the plague, however, I did myself have an epiphany of sorts some time back about the nature of said messages. I DID realize that when I get something forwarded its because someone loved me, but did not take (or didn't feel that had), the time to actually write me a letter. I understand the thought, and the impulse and the warm fuzzy intentions behind it. I really and sincerely do. I ended up writing my beloved sister Lisa a three page letter, saying just that. That I knew it was because she loved me, not because she was too lazy...That being said, forwarded things do make me a little sad, because it means to me ..."I love you and was thinking of you, but not enough to actually spend just twenty seconds longer to type in eight little letters and THEN hit send..." Some of my best letters are simple, totally honest and heartfelt statements of fact that can at times be only a few words. Things like "I thought of you today-..." or "I miss you, will write later" or best of all "I love you."I understand that everyone today feels the time crunch, with our global economy and new fangled things like electric lights and the ability to communicate with millions of people all over the globe at any time of the day or night, from just about anywhere imaginable, its no wonder we don't feel like we have enough time to get all that we want, or all that we should done. I get that, I've got a nusing infant and a husband, and six year old whose struggling, an ex-husband whos comeing unglued and a family and church, and I'm tring to get back to school in a few weeks, and friends, and my hobbies and my writing and and ad infiniteum... Still, time because of the natuer of our lives and craziness, is the most precious gift anyone can give anyone else. Hesitate when you see the fwd: button, think about instead of JUST sending the message, just typing three words above so I know WHY you sent it, WHAT it meant to you, whatever, just be honest and risk your self emotionally, just a little. Take literally one half minute to show me you REALLY love me by writing me. In the end, although I GET forwards, I regret that I'm only a half way priority in someones life. Important enough to hit one button, but just not quite important enough to hit fifteen or twenty.