The WINDS of Change

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”
~ Christine Feehan

Waving Hi, from the windy state of Nebraska. Sure Chicago can claim “the Windy City” but I am here to unofficially lay claim to the name Windy State of Nebraska! As weather forecasters will lie to you and say, it’s going to be breezy, I’m here to say, 25mph sustained WINDS with gusts to 45mph does not make it ‘breezy’; where I come from (Baltimore, Md.) that is downright WINDY!

The winds have been sustained for more than a week now, I’m sure of that, which hinders any time in the garden even though I’m loving the cool temps. Last week we had record-breaking heat with temps reaching 97 and in some places 100-104! A few days before that we had SNOWFALL and today it is struggling to reach 60!

These crazy weather shifts gives rise to tornadoes and some storm-wreaking havoc. It’s made me think of the winds of change sweeping over my life as well as this lovely state of Nebraska. Living out here in isolation – yes, a closed down turkey ranch with one other house is sheer isolation for me. While I love the beauty, solitude and quietness of the place, it sure can elicit a solid empty feeling of loneliness.

An overly friendly person I am, who sees the outside physical world maybe once every two or three weeks (that being a trip to the food store or church, twenty miles away from my house) can sometimes feel the isolation as smothering. This is where my writing garden comes into play. And to think ten years ago I never TOUCHED a computer, I have now taken up one of my beau’s famed addictions and that is, life on the computer!

In this windowed world, there is no wind! There is a collage of friendships to be had and thus I find myself clinging to the writing world and the sites that have anything to do with writing, and the daily dose of facebook, mind you.

THIS is why I chose to dive headfirst into f2k again. Even IT has taken on the winds of change. Once a free writing course, now a FEE writing course, which will enable serious writer’s to take the plunge into the writing frenzy that they so desire. F2K is the birth of a silent muse. That’s right folks, as your muse lay dormant, f2k can fire up the silence with seven weeks of active writing.

Whether it is making new friends, feedbacking and critiquing others, f2k is the place to put your money where your words are. You’ll suddenly feel the winds of change in everything from writing, confidence, all the way through to a finished short story.

You too will see why I find inspiration in a fallen tree (due to winds), sprouting seeds, flowers bursting forth, the aroma of newly fallen rain (when we get it) and the humming of tractors to the hissing of pivots making their rounds.

Isolation can bring about the winds of change, as well as a lost feeling of loneliness but that is why my only ties to the enormous outside world lay right here…at my fingertips.

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
~ Mervyn Peake

The Writing Garden

It’s been a while since I’ve had a post on writing. It’s because I haven’t watered my garden lately and feel since it is spring/summer, it is high time I get to watering.

Have you ever hit a writing slump, where you want to be writing but then nothing happens? You sit day after day tapping on the keys, then you realize nothing really makes sense of what you wrote? That could be considered writer’s block, but wait, no it can’t because you did write it just didn’t sound right or make any sense.

Here in Nebraska we get very little rain. That depresses me because I love the rain and cool weather. My whole body responds and I get a lot more writing done that makes perfect logical sense. When it’s dry and you go from winter and jump right into summer with ninety-degree days, my body shuts down. The sun is scorching the land and my body responds with aches and pains I didn’t feel in the cool crisp weather.

Here’s what I noticed: We recently got out and planted our garden. Seeds sprinkled here, plants positioned there and the garden now needs tending. Miss one day of watering and a droop falls over the plants as if hanging their head low wanting to be refreshed.

Writing is a lot like that; you’ve planted the seeds whether in your heart and soul, or on the blank page. You’re all set to sit down and tap away. Blank, you draw a blank. Water, you need water, you’re in the drooping phase of your writing garden, and you need nurturing.

Slap me upside the head with a wet rag, I’ve decided to spark my muse with a little watering from an f2k session again. F2K WAS a free course, but now it is offered at a ten dollar fee, a sixty day membership with WVU, and a book Pumping Your Muse, by Donna Sunblad, author and member of WVU.

It is free to members, which I am a lifetime member so it is free to me. It looks like a promising session since a lot of the people who signed up for the FREE course, really just came to see what it was all about and soon would leave when they knew there was work involved in writing. Yes people, writing involves work, just as tending a garden.

Writer’s Village University, WVU, is a writing school that I began studying at many years ago. It has helped me tend my garden of writing. Sure I’ve had ups and downs throughout the course of my stay but really there has been more ups than downs.

I am no longer a mentor which gives me hope in a promising course after being told I would be allowed full access to all the classrooms, not just sitting in a lone room, where visitors would pop in, and classmates would dwindle. This session when the class gets low, I can actually roam the halls and visit other rooms and comment and help writer’s as I’ve been known to do in years past.

There is always hope in the Garden of Writing. I’m sure I’ll keep you abreast of what is happening and how it’s all going, so stay tuned…the garden will soon be in full bloom soon.

Quotation Saturday

ISOLATION

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
~ Haruki Murakami

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
~ Stephen Fry

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Not Waving but Drowning”

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.”
~ Stevie Smith, Collected Poems

LONELY

“I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the *crap out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.”
~ Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?”
~ Christine Feehan, Dark Prince

“You're reaching out
And no one hears you cry
You're freaking out again
'Cause all your fears
Remind you another dream has come undone
You feel so small and lost like you're the only one
You wanna scream 'cause you're
Desperate
You want somebody, just anybody
To lay their hands on your soul tonight
You want a reason to keep believin'
That someday you're gonna see the light
You're in the dark
There's no one left to call
And sleep's your only friend
Well even sleep
Can't hide you from all those tears
And all the pain and all the days
You wasted pushin' them away
It's your life, it's time you face it ”
~ David Archuleta

“Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”
~ Jean Webster

ALONE

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”
~ Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. ”
~ Pearl S. Buck

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness”
~ Sylvia Plath

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
~ Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue.”
~ Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

Poetry Sunday ~ If

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If

if on scorched land i fall

will someone carry me through

will i find relief  through it all

parched lips will cease to be new.

if on the flaming fire

i search for seeping rain

will someone see the mire

and save me from the pain

if on knees I crawl

can you come to clear my mind

while all along i maul

i seek but cannot find

if all alone i fail

to the Lord i will confide.

on the seas i sail

He will be my guide.

Poetry Sunday ~ Soul Sisters

Soul Sisters

I know she’s there

across the sea from me

Where the wind ripples
through her hair

causing a stir in the waves.

I know she cares

as I sit drawing in

the emotional bond

that led me to her

as her spirit is lifted.

Isolated from the sand

that laps the shore

the current rides the tide

bringing me to a place

in her heart.

My soul sister thinks

an anchor holds me

in place so that I

can feel her thoughts.

We are kindred spirits.

I watch as the sun

drinks in her essence

filling her with light

a luminosity that is emitted

from the two of us.

Our bond is there

while no despair will

bring us to our knees

we’ll please the heavens

that call us.

We’re enmeshed

to the one beauty that

fills our spirits.

We cry, we sigh, we fly

into the night.

You are there

across the sea and

think of me as the wind

stirs my hair causing

a wave of emotion.

My soul sister is one

with the light and beauty

of the world.

I am here, she is there

together, we sweep the ocean floor.

Note: This also goes for my soul brothers who have connected with me. Whether across the pond or on the soil of America, you all have touched my soul, and prayerfully, I have touched yours! ~Joni

My Angel: A Poem

My Angel

4-26-13

In my mind I watch her grow

the little baby I’ll never know.

I held her nestled in my womb.

her ringlets of hair I’ll never groom.

I watch her in the grass to play,

I swing with her on a sunny day.

Her fancy purple Easter dress,

her softened skin I often caress.

She sinks into the books she’s reading

finds sheer joy in our yearly seeding.

I watch with her as the seedlings grow.

Dances around when they make a show.

Twirling and spinning I often see

some little part of a younger me.

I long to hold this small-framed girl,

My angel, my daughter, my pleasant pearl.

Some things in life are not meant to be

As with my baby, little Astri.

Motionless I held her in my arms

A lifetime of beauty and earthly charms.

But lo and behold He needed her more,

She took with her a piece of my core.

I find solace in her place above,

Knowing heaven is her garden of love!

The Miracle Pumpkin Story

Acts 4: 22 “For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.”

I’ve noticed that still sitting around my house, I have two pumpkins still healthy looking from last October. We just got rid of two last week and as my readers know, we had quite a display of our homegrown pumpkins around the house. There HAS to be a story in there somewhere, I thought. So now I give you, The Pumpkin story.

It was October 2011. Steven had gotten his cornea transplant in Omaha, where we stayed a couple of days. The first thing he saw that day the bandages were taken off was my beautiful face. He looked around the office, at the Doc who had been caring for him for months while he was blind, and I just sat there with tears in my eyes (and a few already wet Kleenex, if you must know.) We went back to the hotel and as you can imagine, people who saw us leave, Steven holding my arm, were quite puzzled when they seen him walk back in, not needing assistance, and no cane in hand!

We made a couple of trips out to the front of the hotel so he could look at the sky, the flowers, the cars and people. He was like a kid in the candy store trying to pick out just one thing to look at but as you can imagine, being totally blind for three years (wondering if you’d ever see again) there was a lot to look at and behold.

The next morning we left for home three and a half hours away. Steven just stared out the window with his heavily tinted glasses. On occasion he took them off for a better view. It was such a joy to bring him home to SEE the house he had lived in for almost three years, without ever SEEING the place.

Finally the moment came when we pulled up to the house. Right by the front steps were two pumpkins left by his mother who had taken care of our dog while we were away. His mom and sis live pretty close by, so they enjoyed helping in that way. I called them our miracle pumpkins because they were received during our time of a miracle happening in our life. We entered the house and there was balloons welcoming us home and a note from Sassie, our dog, saying she missed us.

It was a little overwhelming as Steven was now a sighted person again, and I was busy not being so busy. It wasn’t long before he began cleaning up things and making this home, his home. He was finally touching and feeling AND seeing everything for the first time in three years!

Months had passed by but one occasion as we arrived home from Church, we noticed the pumpkins getting soft and leaning to the side. It was quite a few months sitting in the cold brisk Nebraska air and it seemed like forever, but those pumpkins endured and looked as if they were never going to die!

We told Adam (my son) to scoop up the soggy miracle pumpkins and throw them in our garden, where they lay for months on end until spring, with a splash of miracle, took hold of them. That is when we noticed our miracle pumpkins had taken root and decided to flourish.

We separated all the plants into tidy rows, and as the summer months came and went, we had an abundant assortment of different sized pumpkins. Now keep in mind, we’ve never grown pumpkins in our life, but my newly sighted man took it as his project to see these pumpkins become something wondrous rooted in a miracle. He tended them daily and nurtured them to fully grown pumpkins.

Our miracle pumpkins had multiplied. At this time we were also experiencing a bountiful amount of blessings in our life. Steven had gotten his license back, a job, and all was going right in the world AND my garden.

Then came time to harvest the miracle pumpkins, one here and one there. We sat a few on our steps but knew the cold would sweep them away and a few, it did. But many were salvaged and saved and brought into the house in October 2012!

And here we are April 25, 2013 and I have two remaining very much-alive pumpkins! How’s THAT for miracle pumpkins?

Jer. 33: 6 “Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.”