Pick Up Sticks

When I was a kid we played a game called "pick up sticks". The game pieces were made up of a number of long, slender sticks resembling long, thick toothpicks. Each player would have a turn picking up all the sticks at one time, holding them in their hand and then letting them drop to the floor. Then the player would use their hand or a pick up stick to try to pick up each stick without making the other sticks move or fall. The one picking up the most sticks before disaster struck was the winner. We argued and teased our way through the game as decisions were made about sticks moving and we tried to unnerve the player picking up the sticks. Eventually one of us would get tired of the whole thing and drop the sticks from a foot or two off of the floor scattering them every which way but Sunday. We would vow that we would not play again, forever! The game rarely finished without a minor brawl unless parents were present. If they were present we resorted to making faces at each other, whining to our parents about one of us cheating and scoring the occasional pinch without getting caught.

When I was a kid we lived in Ghana, West Africa. We only had electricity from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. It was supplied by a generator that provided light for the entire campus of the boarding high school where we lived. We did not have t.v. or even radio. We did have an electric phonograph. My mom played records in the evening. It was the late 50's and early 60's. We were homeschooled part of the day and left to our own devices for entertainment the remainder of the day. I skipped rope counting up to 1,000 skips, resting and starting again. I read books, climbing into the small trees near our house with a book and an apple in hand. I bought the apple with my allowance. Apples were expensive in the nearby town so I had to buy my own if I wanted one. I learned to ride a bicycle in Africa. The bike was a boy's bike and too high for me. I had to jump from a cinder block onto the bike seat, balance myself and take off. My feet would not touch the ground when my legs were extended. I cannot remember how I got off without half killing myself but I know I did because I rode the bike frequently. Snakes were a constant danger. One young missionary boy died from snake bite while we lived in Ghana. My mother was terrified that we would encounter a snake. The snake that bit the young boy was a tiny and highly poisonous snake. It was difficult to find the bite mark when the doctor was determining the cause of death. There were pythons and ants that ate small animals and, we were told, small babies if they were left alone. I don't remember any of this frightening me. I was afraid of the dark and things that did not exist but seemed to show up in my room and stand in a corner to terrify me until the sun came up. There were small monkeys in the surrounding jungle who had a cry that sounded exactly like a baby crying out. They were called "bush babies" for good reason.

It was while we lived in Africa that I found out about "pick up sticks". My clearest memory of playing them is while we were on vacation at the coast of Ghana in a town called Accra. We rented a house that seemed huge to me. I was around 7 years old. I remember the pick up sticks scattering over the tile floor. I remember the African man coming round with his sack full of goods for sale. I thought he and his sack of goods were just about the most exotic thing I had ever encountered.

Enough of memories for this evening. Before too much more time passes it will have been 60 years since I was a child in Africa. Time has a way of slipping by.

Cool Sunday

Reasons This Sunday is Cool:

Today the weather is cool and clear. Beautiful.

My grandson oftens spends Saturday afternoon and night with me. We sleep in my "cozy little bed" together. Waking up with his arms thrown around me or briefly cuddling until we are fully awake is the best cool ever.

My son and his family go to the same church I attend.  SUPER COOL!

We are having a pot-luck lunch after church today.  My mom is coming plus my son and his family AND my husband. COOL TO THE MAX.

I greet people at the door of our church building. I get hugs. I give hugs. Cool

I know I will hear the Word of God today from a man of God who walks his talk.More cool than you can know.

Kim is trimming my hair today. She is a cool chick.

Book study at church tonight. Challenging! Humbling! COOL!

My Sunday is so cool  I'll call it ICE SUNDAY!!!!

Keeping it Short

My son inferred that my posts are too long at times. I agree with him for the most part.

My reason for having this blog at all is to provide me a forum to write. It is a practice place for my writing. I finally got it that becoming a writer or developing skills as a writer come through writing and writing and writing. Voila! This blog is my way of committing to writing. I love that people may read what I write and I welcome comments. However, I may go on and on at times because that is what one does when practicing. My challenge is to push through writer lethargy and writer laziness and write here regularly come rain or shine.

Tonight will be short. I have already trespassed my other goal. Be in bed by eleven p.m.

love to each of you who do read this blog and love to those of you who may find it a bit much!! I have no focus of topic or frame of reference other than writing for the sake of it. Add that to my imagination and things get interesting. Not necessarily but interesting.

Ciao! (better not say "ciao" too loud. my cats may think I want to feed them again. they are greedy little felines) LITTLE?? HA!!

Mr. Owl and A Falling Star

Before I begin...if you want to comment on any of these blogs the best way I know to do it is to click on the "no comments" link and you will be brought to a comment screen. A friend of mine asked if I was seeing her comments and I have not been seeing them. I tested out the "no comments" link and it brought me to the comments screen. A little counter-intuitive to go through the "no" to get to the "yes" but these are the days when all my assumptions seem to be under suspicion.

Mr. Owl is sitting on the top of the water tower tonight. It has been a bit of time since I saw him. Imagine my relief to see him perched on the tippy-top of the tiniest bit of rod on the top of the water tank. I began my greetings to him as I stared into the night sky just as a falling star shot across the sky in a long arc. Signs and wonders meant for me on an evening when I need them so deeply.  I made a wish on the star which is a secret wish I anticipate with joy.

I work my first hour at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. My brother is visiting with my mom. We had a great time tonight as my son came over with his little family. My brother looks so much like my father now. Vivid resemblances are difficult to navigate. One moment I saw my father move in my brother's face. The next moment I saw my brother. A tug at my spirit brought memories of dad. My brother brought my father to life for seconds at a time. But my brother's laughter, which I have not heard in a long, long time, belongs solely to him. His laughter is impossible to resist. His laughter demands a laugh from all present even when they have no clue what is funny. Joy! Joy! My brother laughing and sitting in my dad's loungechair. We seldom have time with him. This evening was short, precious, healing and will be a tasty morsel of memory as we tell stories of our family.

It was on my mind to write a poem or the lyrics of a song tonight. There was one rumbling round in my head until I sat down to write. If you read this blog you know full well that I wander around inside my head spinning thoughts together one after the other. A mental spider weaving a complex web stringing from place to place; a gossamer spider web caught with the dew and the young morning sun reflecting off of the strands revealing for a brief moment the home of an artist. A spider with an artist's spirit and a strong purpose ignoring all around to weave a web of finest splendor. A web that will ensnare an intruder leaving no way to escape,  stuck firmly to the binding strands, glistening now with the spider web glue. At this point I have no clue what this has to do with my writing but maybe one of you clever readers can find the thread and follow it. I? I have lost the thread, the path and the desire to find it. All in a few minutes from poem to song to a bug stuck in a spidere web. My! Oh, my! What shall I do? What shall I do?

Adieu!

Before 10 p.m. or How Can I Think At Such An Early Hour?

Boston Marathon bombs kinda took the air out of me today. Mom and I were at the local Bible Book Store when we heard the news. I have looked for a song on youtube to express what I am feeling. I ended up listening to bits and pieces of Leonard Cohen songs. This is a straight ticket to a place that makes me want to smoke cigarettes, be in the rain, drink whiskey straight over ice and move on down the line. Feels like the perfect mood as I reflect on all the incidents of violence in our country, not to mention around the world, but there is something especially insidious and horrific about violence that appears from nowhere on a beautiful day when children are in school or runners are running a race rejoicing in the day and the supporters are cheering and encouraging from the sidelines. There is no good time for violence. Violence comes in many forms. Violence bends and shapes us into confused and angry people. It is only the grace of God that allows us to move forward and drop the ugliness to embrace His grace.

But I wonder at times if I am becoming callous. There is so much suffering. I see it on the macro level (big view, for my friends who are thinging, "say what?") and the micro level (close at hand for purposes of this blog). Better be careful or I will be using words like "paradigm". Paradigm is overused to the point that it makes me giggle when I hear it. Retirement has taken me out of the world of management and classes on the technique du jour (not a soup, silly! That is "soup du jour") I am saying it has taken me away from the most current technique of these days for being positive, creative, productive, leading others, buzz words, brain-washing, mind numbing techniques for doing what we were going to do anyway without the (ahem) b.s. which was get the job done with fewer people, more work and shortened deadlines. Lord, where was I when this paragraph started. Think! Think! Think! Oh yeah!! I was saying I am afraid I am becoming callous or even indifferent to the pain and suffering in this world. T.V. dramatizes every incident down to the smallest detail. I have precious little time to process my shock and despair at all before the news announcers drain the  reality out of what happened and I am left with details that mean nothing to me and multiple pictures of the same person being taken to an ambulace. It is macabre. (I like that word) The poor lady on the stretcher is shown over and over again while the voice of the announcer works a magical spell into the incident stating the facts in a hundred different ways, interviewing just about anyone that will talk to them and asking questions like, "Were you in shock that this happened today?" GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK! I was in shock and I was nowhere near Boston. Just give me one chance at a question like that in a tragedy situation and I promise to anyone reading this that I will break into maniacal laughter screaming "No! No! Of course I was not shocked! Moi? What a stupid question!" Then I will foam a little bit at the mouth, pull my hair with both my hands and run off into the distance.

Maybe I should not write before 1 a.m. Maybe I need to be close to asleep with my ears beginning to hear that little buzzing sound that means I am sleep deprived. Which makes me wonder why I stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. when I am exhausted. Why? I mean to go to bed. Let me rephrase that...I know I should go to bed earlier. It would do wonders for my health and I could lose weight and my thoughts would be coherent and life would be a dream but best to refer back to my first paragraph of this blog to see who the real me is when left to my own devices. I have never really been about doing all the right things for myself. There is that dark side. Yep, Leonard Cohen sings and I drift into my daydream of wandering and lostness with cigarette smoke curling out of my mouth, pulling it into my nose and out again through my mouth as I ponder and ponder. To quote Simon and Garfunkel, "Hello darkness my old friend!"

I bid you adieu! It is 10 p.m. Freaky! Absolutely Freaky!

Brief Stream of Consciousness (as in no concerns with punctuation, capitalization, etc.) STREAM!

spent part of the morning with the therapist of my son's family. trying to learn how to keep from being the monkey in the middle. trying to learn how to be valuable in their lives without getting my own self twisted up in chaos and drama. great visit. came home and went to work on work from home job. voices coming over the phone to me from places near and far. often overseas. often difficult to understand. those darn romance languages and the rolled r's are tough to understand on the phone. please spell your first and last name i say in what i am sure is a southern drawl to any ear listening on the other end of the line. then i ask them to repeat because i have gotten lost in their accent and the odd to me rolling of letters as if there is some automatic guttural mechanism in their throats that is not in my throat. same with people with accents from India. i mean no harm. this is not profiling. it is just how small our world has become through technology. california, georgia, illinois, hawaii, hong kong, argentina, south korea, london,,,all fly by in brief telephone calls of less than 45 seconds. fascinating to someone like me who loves people and a bit disconcerting as visualization is another one of my traits or maybe imagination plus visualization so when i hear a voice i often associate with that voice and my mind wanders as i key in their information and send them on to their next digital destinaton. babies crying in the background, radio music, whispers of office staff, frustration with the process on my end of the line, mad scrambles to find passwords or id numbers and often the sound of traffic as someone i will never meet careens down the highway talking to me on the phone and fumbling to find their information. i am constantly listening for the crash of metal and indeed had one phone call in which the person calling basically did not speak a word other than "OH-H-H! in a startled voice that gave me the shivers and the line went dead. somewhere out in this land or another land someone had a moment which was shared with me in about 1 second or less that made the hair on my arms rise up and freaked me out a bit. professional women who are in a hurry with little patience for talking to me at all. they are often haughty or as haughty as one can be in a brief interlude on the way to a conference on-line or by telephone or who knows what part our system plays into with their system or what they will discuss because we do not listen at all if possible...once in awhile hear brief phrases that are almost always part of a greeting or something about sales...like the sounds coming from a car as it passes at a rapid speed, windows rolled down and the radio blaring...click...i am off of the call in a nano-second and often immediately talking to someone else. did i say this was going to be brief? i could discuss my two cats who are completely off the hook for part of the evening. hissing, running, leaping, rolling around on the floor being primal in an aluminum condominium as the woman on the computer types quickly, thoughts flying through her head, choreographing scenes and dialogue in her head as she writes. flashes of thoughts had during the day. a rush of emotion that drags her down for a moment, distracted by the darn cats, the flow of the air conditioning and the realization that it is late. too late to be going on and on about whatever and this and that..too late to discuss any impressions that pop-up such as the awesome chihuahua puppy at the neighbor's this afternoon or the absence of Mr. Owl for the past week. men cleaned the water tower. I imagine Mr. Owl is watching the tower to decide if the coast is clear now. I imagine so much that my mind should burst but instead makes more room for imagining. sign of brilliance or insanity. either could be true. does it really matter? soon will be 62 years old. who knew? i never planned to come this far. that is the problem in a nut-shell. i did not "plan". in some ways my youth and middle adult years were truly lived one day at a time though i confess i was stoned part of those years meaning i don't remember things the way they really happened unless prompted and then i often have to trust the one telling me how things were back then. i'm not proud of it. what is...is! today, sober for a long, long time and working on sanity of a sort i find recall to be a challenge. is it stress or a society filled with stimuli or distraction as i wander around in my head creating and listening to that still small voice and ruminating on the nature of things and how did i end up on the coast living in an aluminum condominium (trailer...o.k.?) wasn't i destined for something a wee bit more colorful. sister, the colorful is in your head. let it flow out. colorful is as colorful does...writing opens a can of worms or a bouquet of flowers or a doorway into another realm or soothes the savage beast. writing is painting without brushes. loving people as they move and breathe and have their being around me in this world is painful, exquisite, wonderful, heartbreaking, what i was born for to my way of thinking. hello, may i have your conference id number. brief interaction with a voice. identification. click. gone. next up please. jeez, look at the time. i gotta get in that bed. no excuses. pardon me invisible audience whom i love. time for lights out.

Writing to Write Because I said I Want to Write

After my post yesterday I felt drained and more than a little vulnerable. I spent several hours last night going through mail I have avoided, assessing the damages and tossing out enough paper to construct a small tree. I love our paperless society.

As is frequently the case I  found I was in less of a mess than my imagination had constructed and in enough of a mess to still call it a mess. I don't really like the word "mess". There are southern connotations that come to mind and give me the shivers. But, I digress, again!

Today has been a better day for having taken the bull by the horns after busting myself in front of, well, maybe not in front of that many people. One would be enough for my post to have been a confession. But today is easier and I am working on stomping out the thought that I am not that bad off so why pay any attention to it. I'm looney that way. It's like, "Oh, I'm not dead! Yay! Let's do it again." Typical of me to see a loophole in the mood I had last night and go for the easy escape only to sweat the consequences in the months to come.

But I took a step or two and I can see the handwriting on the wall. I may be totally nuts but I am not stupid. I can manage the chaos I have allowed to grow at this point. A little bit more of my reckless and self-destructive decisions and the cat will not be so easily put back into the bag. Keep me honest! The fact that I believe someone is reading my posts holds me to a challenge. I want to succeed in this endeavor and experience the self-respect and freedom. It is like catching a whiff of the ocean on the air while your heart leaps in your chest and craves the sand, the waves, the salt and the sun. Just a whiff excites the imagination. I want a whiff of self-respect won by moving forward towards freedom. I will say it again...no... I will shout it...FREEDOM!

I 'm tired. Wanna take a nap. Think I will....Ta! Ta!