May 13.24: Coping, but barely

Distance

 

Distance

is a common thing

I never stop

not noticing.

Ubiquitous,

yet rarely seen,

it’s near and far

and in between.

But in the dark

of middle night

the whistle of a train

just might

remind me of

how far away

my loves and dreams

and light of day.

Or maybe drunk in

nectar’d throes

a Swallowtail

flits past my nose.

Perception

unanticipated

makes distance

more appreciated.

Thus surprise

of distance sliced

in arc and circle

chopped and diced

makes eye aware

like ear to song

of what was there

all along.

 

 

With thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

submitted to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.

May 10.24: Coping, but barely

The key

 

One day a very young me walked into my grandma’s simple kitchen and stopped dead, transfixed and wide-eyed. There, on the other side of her rolling floor, was the marvel of my life.  It was a dollhouse made out of a tall cardboard box. A townhouse (not that I knew at the time what a townhouse was). I’d never seen the like.

Some of its contents were real honest-to-Woolworth’s store-bought dollhouse furniture, and maybe a plastic baby or two, but most of it was created out of scraps. Imagine custom curtains made from bits of the pink plastic ruffle thumb-tacked to the edge of pantry shelves (eat your heart out, Martha Stewart). Oh, it was wonderful, and I spent countless happy hours playing with that, living, of course, inside it. Pretending.

That is why it is Grandma’s fault that I look at homes like these and immediately start placing my furniture. Imagining living in rooms shaped like that. Imagining walking up those stairs and being elegant. Imagining curtains of vines and trees. Imagining such refuge from the wind-up world.

Pretending is the key that unlocks all doors, so I can go in and know just where the chocolate is.

 

With thanks to photographer Kerfe at methodtwomadness,

submitted to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge

 

 

May 9.24: Coping, but barely

The rickety door

 

The rickety door,

brave old thing,

ancient soldier

splintering.

Sentry faithful,

straight, alone,

pledge and promise

sealed in stone.

Arched and crowned

in Gothic grace,

no option but

to age in place.

Creaking, popping,

rust embossed,

rheumatic squeaks

in echo tossed.

Door-in-door,

casual plumb,

witness to herald,

hoof and drum.

And now, time-sanded,

gapped and grey,

in rasping crick

it seems to say,

“Admit it.

You would love to see

what’s on the

other side of me.

But I’m the keeper,

you can’t see more;

I have my secrets.

I’m the rickety door.”

 

 

With thanks to photographer Brian (“Bushboy”),

submitted to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.

May 7.24: Coping, but barely

I’ve been scratching my head for a while about this whole “Comments” thing. I used to be able to leave a comment just by leaving a comment. Then, for reasons mysterious, on some sites I had to log in before I could leave a comment. But I was already logged in. What sense did that make?

Now I find that on some sites I have to enter my name and email address before I’m allowed to leave a comment.

And Ginger, who has been a delightful source of commentary for a long time, is flagged as Not Approved. Who disapproved her?

Today I’m getting a message that something didn’t load. I read it. I know no more than I did before I read it.

So, dear reader, if you are kind enough to want to leave a comment on any of my posts and are asked for your name or a log-in or any other such thing, I can only apologize and assure you that I am not the one asking.

 

March 17.24: Coping, but barely

Burning bush

in fire of green

flames to faith

what was unseen.

 

For weeks now, dear reader, I have been in a woeful writer’s slump. It’s amazing how many words one can grind out and then trash. But the morning sun blazed through these baby leaves as if to say….well, something; I don’t know what. Maybe it will say something to you too.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t in everyone’s tradition, but it’s in mine, so a very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you from Maureen O’Hern! With green!

 

August 27.23: Coping, but barely

“I think I’m looking for something.” That’s what I said in my last post about writer’s slump and my splattered brain.

I have too slowly realized the parallel in my current read, “The White Mosque,” by Sofia Samatar.

Full disclosure: Sofia and her brother used to play with my sons. I haven’t seen Sofia in years, but her mother is a friend and her aunt was one of my best friends.

I do not recommend this book to anyone looking for a page-turner. It demands a snail’s pace. Sofia’s writing is beautiful. And dense. And challenging. It does not tell a linear story except in cumulative impressions. It is based on a 19th-century Mennonite pilgrimage, entwined with her own inward pilgrimage.

The theme of pilgrimage is very old in literature, and we’ve all encountered it. We’ve encountered it within ourselves too, whether consciously or not.

Sofia is biracial. Her family background is Mennonite and Muslim. Her pilgrimage is uniquely hers, but perhaps not entirely different from yours and mine.

Sofia’s writing is as splattered as my brain, so I wonder if that mysterious part of me that knows something is my pilgrim self. Maybe this is why, like Sofia, I have so many apparently disparate bits clamoring for attention in my head, blocking my writer self. When we look back on our own journeys to unknown endings, how many pieces beg to be brought into wholeness? Isn’t the search for wholeness a type of pilgrimage? Isn’t the pilgrimage backward and forward?

 

 

August 26.23: Coping, but barely

Up and down,

high and low,

I seek my muse.

Where did she go?

Wordless, woeful,

empty me,

as colorless

as writer can be.

I’ve written lots,

incomparable trash,

burned now into

digital ash.

Delete, delete,

erase, erase!

It’s all so dull

and commonplace!

My fickle muse,

sadistic sprite,

flitting about

like some socialite,

will sometime return

in her own dawdling time,

her backpack a-bulge

with adverbs and rhyme,

but meantime I stew

in the juice of frustration

while she’s lolling in leisure,

truant’s vacation.

 

In high school, my English teacher said that our compositions were like the man who jumped on his horse and galloped off in all directions.

That describes my brain nicely these days: it is galloping off in all directions, splattered in a word vacuum. Corners, nooks, crumbs, unresolved chords, flashes of somewhere and sometime — shreds, pieces, yes, oddments — but no words.

What little I’ve written has been tortured.

Sometimes I think there’s a part of us that knows something. Not our brains: that’s a different kind of knowing. In me, now, there’s something that knows I have to gallop in all directions. I think I’m looking for something. Maybe when I find it words will come.

 

July 7.23: Coping, but barely

“One of these things is not like the others”

started playing in my head

as I beheld outlier

in rainbow’d pansy bed.

Whoa! That’s not a pansy!

(I’m sharp as any tack.)

Does he think he’s well disguised

as garden bric-a-brac?

As writer I was nudged

to feel a sense of kin:

some of us are fated

never to blend in.

 

When my son was here visiting in May, we drove down to Bloomington because he wanted to see IU’s campus. By chance, it was right after graduation and happy young people were posing for pictures in caps and gowns. IU was decked out in pansy patches, and they were wonderfully festive. (As a graduate of mid-century Purdue, I can say that I thought that college landscaping meant a smokestack.)

I lacked proper energy, so my son took off on his walk while I watched the pansies and the people and tried out various benches in the shade.

June 22.23: Coping, but barely

I was never much of a reader. My misspent youth was at the piano. But sometimes there would be a Nancy Drew book in the summer, and the piano would wonder where I was. I was with Nancy and her chums, of course, in her roadster and wearing a frock!

Then my own chums and I would talk about the books.

That is my impressive background as a book reviewer. But a book review is an opinion, yes? And I do have a vast experience giving my opinions. Opinions, I find, are quite the fashion these days anyway.

I’ve followed Dan Antion’s blog for some time now. When Dan started to talk about the books he was writing, I followed along but didn’t see that they would be anything I’d be interested in. I rarely read fiction, let alone anything that might border on science fiction or fantasy. But the title of the first book was “Knuckleheads,” one of my favorite words. The hook was in.

This is my review of his trilogy: I have not done so much daytime reading since Nancy Drew! I am in a state of disbelief at how I was so unexpectedly, wholemindedly pulled into Dan’s story.

Yesterday I read the last word of the last book, slowly uncoiling from the tension of the final chapters, and then just sat, trying to remember what my daytime routine used to be.

I am sending Dan’s trilogy to my life-long friend Ann, in NY. How appropriate since she shared her Nancy Drew books with me so long ago. She is deep into “Knuckleheads” and her chum there is waiting impatiently for her turn with it.

A bonus: the pages in all three books have wonderful white space.

 

“Knuckleheads”

“The Evil You Choose”

“When Evil Chooses You”

With congratulations to Dan on his gifts as a storyteller!

 

 

May 10.23: Coping, but barely

The sweet little girls were left briefly in my care. The baby would have none of it: she wanted her own mom and I wouldn’t do. Enter the entertainment committee, aka my sons. Suddenly both baby and her older sister (obscured by a flailing arm here) were enthralled.

The son on the left is the son who is visiting me this week. I inflict this all on you, dear reader, by way of saying that he is the reason I am not much blogging at the moment. I’m just trying to keep up.