Posted on:Avoiding real work HUMOUR NaPoWriMo2021 writing

If you are a first time visitor to this site…

So, weird format. Right? Let me explain. If this is your first time here, you are entering on Day 24 of the National Poetry Writing Month challenge: 30 Poems In 30 Days. The blog site doesn’t look like this May to March. Just April while NaPoWriMo is raging around the globe. Look it up. It’s a thing.

It’s my third year participating. In the past, I have participated as a “Panster”. That’s where you have no idea what the heck will come of out your head and you slap it down as it arrives. This year, I am trying out the “Planner” format and I’ve put my very own twist on it.

I am playing with a Verbiage & Distillation recipe where I “show my work”- writing down the thought cloud that comes before the poem so you can see how I got to where I ended.

I do a lot of cooking and liqueur making where I have to go from a bunch of whacky ingredients down to the essense of all of them in a single taste. My best libation so far- Camp Fire, a bourbon infused with maple and New Mexican Morita Smoked Chili Peppers. Sounds strange but it’s been fun to watch people go through all the faces as they identify its components just as the chili pepper starts to cook your mouth in a really good way. Then they ask for another pour. {Insert sounds of cheering here}

I try and write that way too. Gathering all matter of extraneous thoughts and distilling them down to the best part. Just like in the movie The Holiday, when Jack Black’s character Miles said to Kate Winslet’s character Iris before he played the piece of music he wrote for her, “I used only the good notes…”

Yeah, and I paint my recycled bottles with nail polish as a hobby. Hey, at least I’m not collecting string or gray eyebrow hairs like Nathan Fillion.

Posted on:Free form poetry HUMOUR Poetry Sarcasm writing

Poetry! Cosmic Detention or Contemplating the Universe Beneath a Dark Sky. And No, I’m Not High

Cosmic Detention or Contemplating the Universe Beneath a Dark Sky. And No, I’m Not High

Maybe-

the reason we haven’t had a recent visit from extraterrestrials

is because we just aren’t ready for them.

Maybe 

this planet is a giant playpen

with high sides on our technology

so we won’t climb out

and stick our fingers

into the

Socket Of Creation

and break it

Maybe

we need a few more millenia

to winnow out our aggression

and our massive egos

before the Galactic Babysitters

will consider taking us

on a deep space field trip

Maybe

they already left behind

a whole lot of evidence of their earlier visits-

You know,

before humanity grew into

an out of control

raging

hormonal cluster of adolescents

who perpetuate the myths

that only males should rule the planet

and colors should be sorted into

keep

and 

discard piles-

and myths like animals are food

and that one group’s religious superhero

could beat up another groups religious superhero

Maybe

many light years out

there’s a perimeter warning that reads:

RESTRICTED AREA;

INHABITANTS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO MAKE GOOD CHOICES

They’re right you know.

We aren’t ready

So here we sit

drumming fingers on our desks

waiting for the door to open

that let’s us out of Cosmic Detention

Posted on:HUMOUR Life Advice writing

I Knew That…

So, back in 1991, big things were happening. The Soviet Union took the first steps to disband the USSR. Yeah. So, now they are trying to put it back together, but hey, “A” for initial effort. The Internet was made available for commercial use and the number of computers “online” reached 1,000,000. The Dead Sea Scrolls were unveiled, and cyclone in Bangladesh killed 200,000 souls. Ah. You forgot about that. Sadly, me too.

Smaller things happened too. I was writing a regular column then for iCE Magazine in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. It was called Karmic Soup and I reviewed films, books, workshops and new technologies in the Woo-Woo realm of metaphysics. I enjoyed the heck out of that gig. I got to interview some amazing people like Dr. Brian Weiss; a pioneer in past life regression. Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut who returned to Earth with a whole new thought about what’s “out there”. My favorite was The Amazing Kreskin. I was given a twenty minute time slot with him and when his agent pointed to his watch to call time’s up, he waved him away and we spent two hours talking and laughing. I still get Christmas cards from him.

On a more personal level, I was starting to cook some fiction in my head while I also did intuitive readings and was a part of a fantastic channeling circle. Yes. I did channeling. No. It’s not dangerous. It’s akin to meditating out loud. Trance channel and author, Kevin Ryerson, once said (through one of his guides) that praying is talking to God and meditating is listening to God. Brilliant. And I assume that God would have far more interesting things to say to us than we do to It/He/She.

Today, I was going through one of those scary boxes where you stash crap in hopes of one day organizing it. In among the paperclips, sketches, building plans and writing samples, I found a “list” that I had channeled on some random day in 1991. It was so simple and straight forward that I filed it in the DUH category of my “keep this ‘cuz you might want to use it someday” box.

The list isn’t going to cure cancer but it actually could create world peace if everyone followed each point. Really. No fooling.

I have a slew of things that I’ve written down; big ideas and such. A year or five would pass and there that thing would appear out in the world because someone else had the same thought and actually took the time to do something with it while mine was fermenting in the DUH box. Ask my family. They’ve been witness to dozens of moments when our mouths fell open as we saw the very thing in the DUH box on TV.

Anyway, it’s twenty seven years later, but here is A Plan For Living. Needless to say, the advice herein was mostly forgotten over time, but now I am printing this out and I’ll look at it often to see if I can actually do what I wrote.

Thank you Highest Teachers & Guides. Don’t give up on me. I’m a little slow, but eventually … I get it.

a plan for living

 

Posted on:HUMOUR Life Lessons Rude People

Not Helping

Actual exchange this morning while out with my dog.

Other: “Wow. she’s really showing her age. How old is she?”

Me: “Uh…Seven.”

Other: “Yeah. That’s about as long as they live. Oh, well.”

Me:

cat mouth open

I say nothing..aloud. If I said what was going through my head at the moment I’m pretty certain that Other’s head would have exploded. Instead I patted my dog and turned back towards the house. In my head, aside from the tirade of profanity that was creeping up my collar, I was thinking, I hope like hell she never volunteers to be a grief counselor. So not helping.

I’ve known Other for a couple decades and there hasn’t been any signs of dementia or other disorder that might cause her to blurt out any unfiltered thought that pops into her head. That leaves one conclusion. Terminal rudeness.

Imagine this line of thinking if we adjust the scenario with one exchanged detail…

Me: “Wow, your mom’s really showing her age. How old is she now?”

Other: “Eighty nine.”

Me: Shaking my head on an exhale. “Yeah, that’s about as long as they live. Oh, well.”

You see the problem. Apparently, on her planet, ours was a normal exchange. I don’t want to live on her planet. I don’t even want to visit there.

I know my dog is getting older. I know Great Danes don’t have as long a life as smaller dogs. No shit, Sherlock. Just let me bathe in the bubble of *happy dog time* that I do have… And I swear to god, if you say one rude thing after she’s gone, I am egging your house on the hottest day of the year.

There. I feel better. Now, THAT helped.

 

Posted on:HUMOUR

People of Earth! This is who won all the online debates…

I made this for anyone who needs it. You’re welcome. Copy and paste into asinine debate areas and message threads.

 

 

 

People of Earth 

This debate has been resolved.

There is no further need to post your own

personal opinions on this topic

as they are now irrelevant.

The final word on this topic has been decided by:  

(Select one or all that apply)

The _____________ religion,

The ____________ political party,

The ____________ gender,

Ms./Mr./Mrs. _______________; a self-proclaimed genius. 

Thank you for your participation.

This resolution is now International Law.

 You may return to your lives.

Move along…

There is nothing to see here.

 

 

 

 

 

∞Mdh2015∞

 

 

Posted on:HUMOUR

Defining a Villain or a Politician…or Both

I’m doing some research on crafting a better villain for my fiction and I saw this poster; a cheat sheet of attributes that make a character a villain. The more of these they have the more villainous they are.

Here’s the thing; I got about seven into this list of 100 and I had to stop and ask myself if this was a description of politicians and corporate giants. I’d expect their high school year book achievements to read this way if they were honest. Go ahead. Give the list a look-see and be aware of whose face pops up as you go.

Is it any wonder that people have such a deep seated distrust of our “elected” officials? I use the term elected loosely because I don’t think that purchasing a position by out spending your candidate is an election. That is called an auction.

It makes you stop and think when out of 100 Villainous Traits more than half can accurately describe the people we have to rely on to decide the fate of our economy, our national safety and if you have a vagina, the privacy of our health care choices.

I think I empathize with Loki better than most members of Congress.

Happy Friday

Cheat Sheet of Villainous Attributes
Cheat Sheet of Villainous Attributes

Posted on:HUMOUR Life Lessons New Novels The Business of Books writing

I’m A Little Busy

Participant-2014-Facebook-Profile

What do you do when you’re about to begin a huge kitchen renovation project?

You also start writing a new book. Of course you do.

For the past several years I have been watching from the bleachers as writers got down there on the floor and dug in for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge: 50,000 words in 30 days. Start day- November 1. End day- November 30. That’s not really a novel at 50G’s. More like a novella. But there’s no rule that you can’t write over 50,000. So I am. Writing over the amount that is.

It’s day thirteen of NaNoWriMo 2014, and I am currently 24,005 words into a brand new, adult paranormal romance novel. It’s happening, Writing in the early morning hours and late afternoons. Touching the Bones, is coming into focus and I am really having fun writing these characters.

It’s happening, in spite of my Olympic levels of distraction; ordering materials, fixtures, furniture and all it takes to transform a 1933 kitchen into something less; Katherine Hepburn stars in Little Women and more, well, me. Right now.

There have been three families before us living in this old house, and we’ve been here twenty two years. We’ve lived with the original pale yellow and black accent tile that looks like a diner Billie Holiday might have frequented for three in the morning breakfast’s with the band members.

A few years ago, an elderly woman and her friend were walking past the house while I was outside. She stopped to tell me that she had lived in our house when she was a child. I invited her in and found myself watching her face as she moved, room to room, lost in memories held in these walls for eighty years. She noted the tile in the kitchen being the same and most of the other features typical in an old Midwestern house; laundry shoots from the second floor, milk door that opens to outside to the drive way, small alcove in the front hall for the telephone-back when folks had only one.

As she stood in the doorway of the master bedroom, her hand flew to her heart and she whispered, “This was my parent’s room.”  My full laundry basket on the floor suddenly seemed to defile the now, sacred space. As she left, she touched the Brass door knocker on the front door. I had painted the old door gold on both sides; for golden opportunities every where you look.She asked if I knew about the knocker. I didn’t. She said that back in the day, door knockers let people know if there was a specific crafts person or professional person living there-like a business shingle. This knocker meant a doctor lived here; her father. I had no idea and I’ve seen that thing every day for two decades.

doctor door knocker

It makes me feel a little bad as we take crowbars and hammers to the pale yellow and black tile that’s stood guard all this time in that old kitchen. But not bad enough to stop whacking it into dust and getting excited about the brand new space that I will [finally} have where I can create my food wonders.

So, as I am writing, writing, writing… I  am also jumping at the loud sound of the doctor door knocker. UPS, delivering my new bronze pendant light.

My cat is hiding a lot. My dog is getting her cardio work in running to the door to greet/interrogate delivery and construction people; and I am falling into a schedule of trying to write before it all begins and after it ends…so… I’m a little busy. It’s a really good busy though.

And like all things that need to be born into the world or transformed, there is disruption. There is chaos. There is pain (hammer…thumb). There is exhaustion. There are tears. And then…there is something worth every minute and every stupid crappy thing it took to get there.

I’m smiling through the plaster dust and typing like a mad woman with band aides on my fingers.

Happy Fall.

Happy everything new.

On wings of words I fly into your heart…

on wings of words I fly into your heart

P.S.: If you want to see a snip of the new novel, go to the home page and on the top you’ll see the appetizer menu- a taste of Touching the Bones. You can read chapter one there.

or click here………   https://wordninjagirl.com/appetizer-menu-a-little-taste-of-touching-the-bones/

 

Posted on:Art HUMOUR Kintsugi Life Advice Life Lessons Love Milestone birthday Turning 60 writing

What I’ve Seen…Reaching 60

Arteyes

Tomorrow is my birthday. It’s a big one. Sixty. At this auspicious moment I am wondering how the hell did this many years pass so ridiculously fast?

When my kids were young teens itching to do something they weren’t ready for yet, I would get out the construction tape measure. I would lay it out to 100 inches and chalk where their ages fell and how long their wait really was to participate in the activity that eluded them. Then I would point down the line to how many more times they could do that forbidden thing in the one hundred or so years they had to live their lives. It made the two inches from 14 to 16, when their driver’s license would come seem like the paltry eye blink that it was.

Looking back down my own line of numbers, already passed, I am embracing my million moments that drew together to make me. Gathered knowledge is just hoarding thoughts until you share it. For what it’s worth, these are some of the things I have seen.

Even if you grew up watching shows like Friends and assuming adulthood would be a constant coffee klatch with your across the hall neighbors, you will spend most of your time alone in this life. Unless you are conjoined, this is the way of the world. And if you can’t be at peace in your times of solitude, why in the hell would you think other people would be interested in spending time with you either? Learn shit. Get interested and then you will be interesting-to yourself and to others.

The greatest lesson for young teen abstinence should be the fact that the first person you get naked with will-in all likelihood-not be the last. With the exception of the four couples you will meet who are childhood sweethearts-you will swim into and out of tubs, ponds, raging rivers and oceans of love in all its forms until you find somewhere that becomes your place in the world. That’s where you will build your home- however early or late in life you find it and trying to pitch a tent anywhere else will give temporary shelter and nothing more.

When people close to you lash out it is usually because they want you to love them more than it appears you do. If you pay attention, people will tell you what they want-so listen.

Most people, even the most hardened among us, still have a soft, gooey center and if you are paying attention and listening you can figure out what they love. That is what made them gooey like that in the first place. If they showed you the gooey love, they shared the keys to their castle. Honor that.

There are seven billion people on this planet. When you are not famous, the statistical magic of finding one person who can see you for the blazing light you actually are is a gift rarer then the most expensive gemstone. Own that.

Real love never dies. It only changes shape to accommodate the way you live now.

The secret to happiness is this: figure out what you want and find a way to ask for it.

Love is your own personal experience. It sparks and blooms inside your own head-like a private revelation; a movie only you can see. Even if the object of your affection does not return your ardor with the same intensity or at all, never hold regret for having felt that feeling. To know what love feels like is like visiting the most beautiful place on Earth. Not everyone will go there in their lifetime but you have, and you can tell others what it feels like to stand in the center of all that beauty; what it is to see the blazing light of someone else and have it warm your soul even if it’s just for a moment. It will change you forever; no matter if life or death moves you far away from that other person, it will remain part of who you are now.

What I have seen while I have run, swam, played, danced, loved, fought, created, walked, crawled, bled, cried and laughed my way through the sixty years on planet Earth comes down to this: love. It always comes down to that. And on the last day I get in this life, it will still be about love; who I loved and who loved me.

That is where I have a cave of treasure like Aladdin. I remember all the love my heart has felt. It fills my pens, my brushes, my cooking pots and the large broken parts inside of me. It is my gold.

The Japanese have a practice called Kintsugi. It’s a ceramic pottery ritual where a beloved broken vessel is pieced back together with molten gold used like glue. It gathers the shattered parts together; making it whole again in a new and beautiful way.

Today, I will visualize all the love I’ve known as gold and let it fill the cracks and broken parts of me to make me whole like the day I was born only different…better. It will be my private gift to myself; the strengthening of my weak places. What I’ve seen in my sixty years has been a kaleidoscope of wonder and I am filled with anticipation as the curtain rises on the next act.
kintsugi bowl

Posted on:Flash Note HUMOUR literary Agents Publishers Sarcasm sea salt vs. table salt writing

Salt in My Wound

sea salt

Question: Am I missing out on some sort of secret, super delicious farm salt? Mountain salt, perhaps? Or maybe it’s prairie salt that I should be wanting…

I went to open a box of Triscuits and noticed that the label proudly announced, “Made with sea salt.” Wow. Really?

Technically, all salt is sea salt. Mined salt is nothing but seriously old sea salt that was trapped when the oceans receded from current land masses some 300,000,000 years ago. So… sorry gourmet sea salt peddlers, you’re going to need to come up with a better catch phrase.

That, or maybe I can start bottling and selling Earth Air and Wet Water. Yes, I think I will. Let me get to the patent office before someone steals my idea…………….
And this is what I do to avoid working on the damn speech I’m supposed to be giving this weekend.

Posted on:HUMOUR Life Advice

Hey. Is That Squid on Your Face? The Italian Eyeglass Mafia…

Italian Eyeglass Mafia

I’ve been wearing prescription eyeglasses since first grade. Calculating one pair per year and accounting for lost or broken pairs as a kid; plus some years as an adult when I had two or three pairs; plus prescription sunglasses, I have had about one hundred pairs of glasses.

My life with eyeglasses dragged me through horrifying 1960’s when flesh-tone-sparkle-laden cat eyes were one of two options for girls. The other option were those wire and plastic gender bending numbers worn by accountants, government geeks and nuns. You know them. They’re back again as the ugly things that hipsters now pay a month’s rent to wear because they are suddenly cool and not just the state issue monstrosities you would have gotten with your orange jumpsuit before entering the penitentiary.

The 1970’s brought some better styles and totally groovy rose lenses or sky blue; wire frames like John Lennon or a big girl cat eye from Rayban. I lived in the Phoenix area then and I bought my glasses from Gatesh Opticians. Suffice it to say they were most famous for being Elton John’s favorite eyewear purveyor. R.I.P, Gatesh brothers, now selling outrageous eyewear to touring angels in galaxies far and wide. Mine from that era didn’t hit the same crazy level Elton’s did but I definitely pushed the envelope.

In the 1980’s I had leather glasses, wooden glasses, purple glasses, navy blue glasses, green glasses and others that frighten me now when I see them in photos. I also traveled a lot that decade and had the chance to buy an eyeglass wardrobe in Hong Kong for a song, some of those my most favorite frames.

In the meantime, I’ve tried conservative, dressy, mom-glasses, edgy frames and non-descripts and have settled into a few styles now I can live with but do not love.

There are a few things about glasses that I will never understand. Lots of insurance policies do not cover eyeglasses. If you need an eye exam it’s $100 and up. A pair of frames will set you back $90 to $300 and up. Prescription lenses? Another $150 and up. Don’t want them to look like coke bottle bottoms? Another $100 charge. Not wild about bifocal or trifocal lines that cut horizontally across your line of vision? Add $200 and up. Your purchase is going to cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300 for one pair of glasses. If you can’t see, you’re going to have accidents that will hurt you and maybe others so isn’t it incredibly stupid that insurance companies would rather roll the dice that you won’t get hurt instead of coughing up our own money to give us glasses?

If you pulled apart a pair of glasses, the entire amount of material you’d have is roughly the same amount of plastic, wire, screws and polycarbonate that many tiny children’s toys have. Those shaped plastic things sell for less than $15.00. Total.

Back in 2012, CBS News did a story called Sticker Shock about why eyeglasses are so darn expensive. Apparently, there’s a company in Italy, Luxottica, and they are like the mafia of eyewear. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sticker-shock-why-are-glasses-so-expensive-07-10-2012/  They sell billions of frames around the globe under hundreds of different brand names and control the market keeping the price of eyeglasses sky-high. Like vision-crack, we poor sighted humans just keep going back for more and they just keep getting richer.

This year, as I wade back into the alligator pool to look for a new pair of glasses, I’m going to roll the dice on a website I just found
called www.SpiffySociety.com. They have a virtual try on area for their eyeglasses that uses your webcam to slap a pair onto your face and once it’s there, you can change the color options to see if you like them. It’s kind of genius.

I’ll order a new pair again this year and I’ll wade in that murky pond knowing full well that I’m going to be royally screwed by that Italian conglomerate…again. Yeah, I see you over there counting your money, Guido Scungilli. At least you could buy me dinner.