Dear Friend,

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Luck and joy to you!

Peace and goodwill to you from wherever you celebrate around this time. And also from all you don’t celebrate Might as well right?

Here, accept all the gifts from all the rash of new and ancient traditions.

I accept it all. At midnight and whenever. So, I give it all to you too. Take it.

For that taste and glow of sacredness I am celebrating the Solstice because there are unicorns involved.

Thanks for providing them, whoever you are.

I suppose they’re the good old pair from the day? Brought to life in a new story then found by you just now?

You know from that unforgettable scene in the production of Good Omens, when the daemon Crowley and the angel Aziraphel, are talking about the impending destruction of all life beginning with the animals parading into the arc.

Crowley, the fallen angel, is questioning the wholesale massacre by water.

Aziraphel, the angel, is going along with the routine genocide.

In the scene, Noah calls out, “Shem! The unicorns are getting away!”

Where did they go?

So glad you found them.

They were the only ones who weren’t going along with the bullshit.

Rare and magical.

I suppose you can free the pair of magical creatures to frolic around in your world so you can watch them from your inner balcony.

I think unicorns may filter into our realm around the corners of the year, when the new season program updates. So perhaps that’s when you are sometimes able to lure them into licking your luck.

Have an enchanted merry happy unicorny day, dears.

An alter to the Spirit of Christmas, the unicorn tree.

Inner Space

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Tap tap tap

You may hit a spot

Take it by the hidden handle

It might have one

It may not

When you try

Try, try, try,

Error! error! error!

Till perhaps you hit

Where to look

Within, somewhere

You might touch

Your feelers on

By seeing when you look

Settle on what chimes just sweeter

Aim your feeling hook

Feel for sweetness

Don’t tell

You won’t need

Candle, book and bell

When you’re here

They’re already there

Cast, cast, cast it!

Dwell, dwell, dwell

You think you’re imagining

It’s really a spell

Worship

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The spell for owning

Yourself

Her

A room

A town

An art

Map with approval

Adore everything unusual

In your own claim her heart

Set her free

Like you

Appreciate the cracks in her sidewalks

When you do

Walk with yourself in her dawn

Go with her twisting twilight

Why pay her vile attention?

When you could pay her your delight?

WadeShalom Creature

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A shoot of something sprouting

Out from not-a-seed

Brillante green, yet not a tree or weed

Appearing out of love stuff

Like Bluegrass

It erupts like Woooot!

Makes want, then desire

Out of hunger and need

Then it takes root

And like sourdough culture

And redwood forever

Past where I can see

I feed and nurture it

-It grows me

The Alchemist

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A great morning for alchemy
Transforming lead to gold

The feeling of soon, it isn’t soon enough
Lead has it’s place like “soon”
It’s heavy useful and doesn’t shine like my Smithed stuff
So, taking the feeling of what I want

The conclusion of soon
I close the gap
By focusing only on the end
So as far as my reality knows

Now I am in your arms
Now, I think
Best feeling ever!
Why wait?
To wit, alchemy
In a wink

“Black and White?“ Duh

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Really?

How dumb are you?

To divide up normal people

Perhaps to conquer

By an aspect that’s least true

Repeating ”black lives matter”

Is dumber and more boring, too

Than foolishly insisting

Shouting like an idiot

The sky is blue!

The sky is blue!

If you don’t get it

Be an idjit

Now be off with you

Our Own Home-Forged Americans

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Sista Brutha

My Fatha

My Matha

You not vanilla

Thank the lawd

Or of Africa

Not no moe

You’re ours!

You’re forged

You’re mine

You’re yours

You’re here

You’re ours!

Right here

In the land of the slave

To be free

To be

Of America

My nigaa!

My own dear sweet

Genuine

The best

Made in America

Magical irreplaceable nigaa

To Choose this Feeling Life

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I’m getting to become

Like a little kid again

I just focus on

this

One feeling

Instead of

That one

Oh that one

No! This one

-instead

Stay here

In this sweeter

Sweetest feeling place

Feel the sweeter

Place inside instead

Something mild

Choose this one

Warm place

peace place

Free and wild

In here

The Dude

Abides

Color-Coding People?

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So simple minded

Are you high?

Pass on thinking

Short-cut by

Color-code me my worldview

There is no fucking why

It’s just programmed into you

We puppets

Pass on freedom

Are you drinking?

Scripted role-play

Umm umm ummh

Universal way?

Play play play

It’s true like hell

Based on what?

Like shoe size

As a helpful criterion for marriage

We’re stuck in a fairly-tale

Don’t make me fucking laugh

Categorized by fucking color?

Regardless of some evil genius

Who devised this

Back when Lordness wasn’t land

No mo

Here we are

Now

That we still

Follow a fucking color-code

This shit is on us

Nothing about it’s real

Bunch of dumbasses

Make no fuss

No matter what goddam colors us

It’s skin dude

Skin deep

And we are free

To see and choose

So, you see “white” when you see me

What the fuck is that?

Thanks for the box man

There’s so much more than

That color is the least of value

When I look at you

A snap value judgement

Just prescribed by paint

I see the story

Of “brown” or “black” or “white”

A story that really ain’t

And we loose our brains

Without even saying “Wiat!”

And our future

Drains

To crayons

From short-cuts

We can’t not

We act this fucking lame

So, we get what we got

Woman

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Her body by affection warms

It stirs the inner pot

She drinks the chocolate by the fire

Wether it’s true or not

A secret opens up within

By an unknown hand

It grows into a pocket space

A portal to a no-man’s land

A man may enter in

And be in her enchanted place

A paradise or sin

A kingdom

The mystery feminine

Accessory to Slavery

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You’re done here Slavery

She’s mine

My sista

You can’t touch her

She’s mine

Because I love her

He’s mine!

My brotha

You can’t touch him

You’re done here

I chose now

I’m no longer an accessory

Watching, just watching

Jim Crow ii just casually go down

Now I see and bear witness

You go down for real

You’re done here

Exploitation thingy

Whatever you are

Or seem to be

There’s only one reality

The end

It’s Tuesday Again- In Loving Memory of-It’s Thursday Again

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In loving memory of Hugo of It’s Thursday Again.Wordpress.com. You’re welcome for all the fish Rhino House, dear.

Four perfect Tuesdays in a row

Establish the Tuesday feeling flow

Now it’s Tuesday every day

Just because it’s so

Tuesday oh Tuesday!

Again again again

A magical Tuesday every-day

For me to live and love within

A Place and a Space

.Reading time 1 minute.

I went looking for fairies

And angels and gnomes

Hungry for the sacred and for the unknown

I tried each fanciful story ever grown

I searched all the places

And ways to might find them

But didn’t

An empty ache I wanted to leave

But it wouldn’t

Grew

Right where a unicorn might have lain down to rest

This fantastic fantom limb ached in my chest

It settled in where my mistake

It lived, it thrived and bred

Eventually, I did give up the search

When all it’s joys had fled

I put hope down

And picked up despair instead

And let it ramble through my head

Except in a corner my secret face

A holy of holies dusted well-lit place

With plenty of inner pocket space

There yet remains a sacred quiet grace

For davas daemons and fairy rings

Just in case

Photo by Joey Kyber on Pexels.com

Life of a Story

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

 

image

Something
Sucked up the moment
Keeps meticulous notes
The whole thing as it happens kept
Born into patterns
Alive in lives
Traditional me projectile vomits out
Taste becames a home
Meditation takes over the meaning in everything
Falling in love kicks everything else out
Old tastes move home-made soul back in
A project working on itself
Some days lightning strikes
Connecting neurons that never met weld together
A million alive connections align
Pulsing
Life into a story
The sleeping story wakes up
We Talk

 

 

When my world memory started recording my life for me storing it

.Reading time 4 minutes.

The moment I woke up to life I was cuddling a soft brown bunny. And I was thinking. If I say I found it. The gate could have been open. Then I can keep it.

I left the gate around the side of the house open. I had already considered the trouble I could get in for opening a gate next door. Proof there. See, the gate is already open.

Finders keepers. It’s the ultimate authority. I just found it.

I could feel the weight of authority. My sister had enforced this law and applied it with my things alot. so I know it was a good working device I could operate to claim a bunny.

I adjusted the world and had my very own furry bunny. I could have named my wonderful new dream come true America! But something bothers me. I also knew about telling the truth. I wondered if I was telling the truth. That was something else I kew was important. But I didn’t know how telling the truth works. And does it matter if I tell it or not if no one else knows?

So I would test it, I guess. I want this bunny so bad. I want it to keep being. For that I have to find it.

It had to be loose out the gate that I didn’t open. I couldn’t have opened the gate and found the bunny in a hutch that I unlatched to take it out.

Id never unlatched anything before. I remember thinking as soon as I found myself unlatching if I would get in trouble for that. But it didn’t matter cuz the bunny was just looking at me with big eyes between it’s ears and I knew it was a bunny from the pictures. It didn’t run away. That’s how I knew it was as good as mine. I had to hold it. I would just say it was already unlatched.

And left open.

That the door was ajar.

That the bunny was on the ground.

Outside the gate left open. By someone else.

Im holding the rabbit.

I don’t like the way I start to feel.

I turn around with the bunny all droopy. It falls out of my grasp. It hops a few hops away.

Oh no! Need somewhere to keep my bunny from hopping away.

I head towards it lean down and try to snatch it up. But it pours out of my grasp like hopping water.

I get all the way down hold it from hopping. Put both arms around it and hold the bottom so it doesn’t flow out.

I hug it tighter and lift it up again. Now I have a bunny again.

It’s mine.

I caught it. it was escaping.

Someone did indeed let it out then it was running away.

I caught it.

So now I am telling the truth!

Yay!

But the truth bothers me. So I remember the day.

Letters to a Young Philosopher

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“What we like best is not always good for us.”

That’s a statement.

It’s a statement that’s sorta like an equation.

You build stuff on it.

Or use it to try to fly.

Please take it to Kitty Halk and test it, dear.

You might be using the glider guy’s equation to build a flight machine.

Test it like a Right Brother.

I tested it.

Using that statement as truth I glided and crashed insanely. Repeatedly. For years. I couldn’t believe in flight then. Like the world hoped but didn’t back in the day.

Like Einstein said:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I stopped.

Test shit honey.

It has to work to be true.

What you go by has got to at least achieve some tiny flight.

Then you have something solid that works to go ahead and get on with the space era.

Hugs

Life Itself

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

 

Where am I?

Where am I?

I just splashed in

Saunteted in here wet

just to get

a kingly fitting fibbing met


This brave desire to take

Or be taken

In

Line by line

Fiction threads

Entangled in exciting webs

Spun into golden yarn


Now fantasy transports

Delicious delighted scammed

It’s what you get

Unimagined yearning met

Captured

Fantastically converted

Relish

Falling

Captivated

Danced to

Dancing you

Book Club?
or
Strip Club?

Inner Spaces

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Does to enter

And abide

Feel inviting?

I’m learning to ask my inner innocence

Since

I’m made of inner space

Maybe it’s spring there

Yellow blooming bubbles here

Lilac in the air

What breeze?

Where?

Made of the trails sidewalks roads and stops nowhere

In this something something place

Between us

Like where the streets have no name

Between Them

Triangulated

To infinity power

It’s just a place

Like any other

My drive home

My road to work

My way to your heart

All places in space or time or something unnamed

Your heart’s adventure into mine

Of all such places

Where do I want to be?

Where invites me in?

Invisible irresistible places

To go and come

And be

Queendom

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I guess that’s enough for me

Keeping being all of myself

Though this all of me seems

Mostly to be

To much for most 

Of humanity

One’s gotta suspect soulmatiness

It’s here

keep feeling it

It

Itself

And for it  

Again 

Magically bright 

What I want right here

Somewhere 

Here and there

I’ll see

Be

Know it

In this moment

Deeply seen while being

Here, not far

At hand,

Inside 

Where the wild things and the kingdoms are

Because I can recognize

And feel it now

Why wait?

Spire

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To breathe 

To feel magical 

Magnificent 

The basic base human being state 

Existence 

Living 

Breathing Life through

It’s now

It is

It Is

No hill

Over there

To aspire to

I spire it

in every breath 

Or hold it

My choosing blocking thoughts

Block the truth 

Damn the feeling 

Of bright and shining now 

Only now is

My cathedral spire

The kingdom 

In you

Every moment 

Weather you choose it 

or chose shit

Always the same

To be lit

Like your invisible hilarity 

One’s gotta suspect it’s there

Keep feeling for it

Asking questions 

Time taken

So all fucking faith must be

Suspect 

Hope

Wonder 

Try

Ask

Wonder 

Try again

Ah, there it’s all

Within

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com
.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The best follow up with cookies or a thank you note.

I suck at all that follow uppy stuff. I’ve felt so jealous just on principle.

Today, I figured this out.

I don’t bake, wrap and deliver cookies.

I follow up with stories.

I bake wrap and deliver meaning.

So, that’s what I’m up to.

No cookies for you.

Normal?

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Normal

What’s normal?

Who’s normal?

When normal?

How, why, normal?

Who says what’s?

Mine’s as mine as my foot size.

Defined, solidified by National Geographic

Boxes and shelves of people who almost must exist, sort of, because there are pictures

They sorta exist

You know, to be in here, to strike me

Look at that!

So I can dig in the boxes for the most shocking naked, huge, wrinkly, big bright feathery, tiny, adorable or sinking bony.

Curious dark friendly eyes slanting behind skins and furs

Naked painted long breasted moms

All that stuff on their heads taller is than they are

funny expressions

why would anyone move like that?

And in public.

Measuring the world with my foot.

Low Battery Warning- What Charges Your World

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

presence is electric-electricity

it charges your phone

it’s you-and it’s you when you notice

you plug into your own

flip a switch with your attention

inner solar power connects

it goes super nova

as you fall in love

your football team won

P.S

I think The original was better:

Where Am I When I Need Me?

.Reading time 5 minutes.

I just want to name, own, describe, and get what I do.

I’m pretty clear who I am.

My gifts are part magic part audacity, part art

Lots of every kind of composition, strings of intuition, mostly listening, while taking things apart.

Mostly, I just pay a fresh attention, wonder, do research and thought experiments, maybe try a few things, cuz I really do wonder about that, then wonder aloud.

Tweak my own perspective if something’s really stuck. Mostly, my clients Winnow out then names what’s going on. She comes up with answers , then figures out how to see it, feel, think and act. While I just sit there and wonder.

I sit there openly wondering about one thing and another. While also in Wonder and jaw dropping amazement as mere becomes super.

So, you think shifting that this way will cut out the friction over there?

Huh?

Why can’t I see how that’s working then?

Oh, so you say you just needed a cog there, then, yeah I totally see how that works.

But that’s not the magic.

I guess I market their ideas dreams and themselves to them.

So by the time it’s done, they own it, made it, believe in it. They believe in themselves are right in the middle of their purpose.

I think I sorta allow people to reinvent themselves, their relationships, goals, purpose, system, then I market what I see to them.

They buy themselves and walk away rich.

I think the hardest thing for me is to admit that this is so easy and joyful for me that I’d get on buses just to sit next to someone to see one small part of a life turn around, a brightness, a bounce, a stunned or contemplative look, maybe an aura of joy, before one of us reaches our stop. An addictive time sensitive game. I wouldn’t do it in pursuit of just a smile. Smiles are like snow flakes. Unless my victim hasn’t smiled in a decade. Then, they’ll be smiling when they step off the bus. That would be a win.

The other, and more terribly hard thing for me about thing is the awkwardness of charging of people for a gift that feels kinda magical cuz describing how it’s done in unimaginable and duplicating it is dead.

Also, what if I commit to help, and gasp! charge, and then the genie that actually does all the work doesn’t show up!?

I fear. No, dread and deal dead having to do the same thing every day. I know there’s no magic or future for me in attempting rote magic production. Yet, for some irrational reason I can’t stop feeling it’s to be my fate if I dare put my name out there to get paid for this.

I have this fear of ending up like the farmer’s daughter. The one who got locked in a cellar after her father boasted that she could spin straw into gold. She gets locked up and cornered into weaving more straw into gold, every night. Suck might happen to me too, till I end up promising my soul and my firstborn to to Rumplestilskin. Letting people who are counting on me down is just as terrifying.

I guess when you live in a magical world you have fairytale fears. And just because it doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean I don’t keep backing away from some invisible thing in my imagination.

I need someone like me to help me out. I’m dang good at helping folks kick imaginary shit they’ve been backing away from’s ass.

So?

Where am I when I need me?

What You Don’t Know You Believe Can Hurt You

.Reading time 6 minutes.

And why I adore dialogue with you on here.

Your insight is dramatically helpful in the monumental process that is a story teller turnings shame into vulnerability.

Your points give a clear much needed out for when us writers doubt what we are really doing.

We need this way out of our maze of fear and lies we believe feel and react to. Believing I’m exposing my friends makes me feel defensive and small like a weasel. I often suspect myself of something that makes me just like a

Writing a good story is big work.

It’s heavy lifting to process reality into an uplifting story that makes sense and creates meaning and change.

Figuring out how we got out of a tricky spot and how and why we succeeded who and what where the problems and what we learned worked or works is an art. Sharing it is brave.

Finding a way out of lives that won’t bring joy or flow properly no matter what you do or hide is priceless.

I think your points do something to help bring my personal imagination out of the bone yard. A place where I feel like I’m betraying and hurting rather than helping. Hurting isn’t my nature. So I feel paralyzed. So, I fight back.

tabloid producer and accuse myself mercilessly. So I figure the whole world is gonna see me like what I am, some Rita Skeeter, that horrid witch reporter for The Daily Prophet let’s her magical green feather pen stretch butcher and molest the truth about Harry Potter and his friends without a spark of conscience. She’s one of my least favorite fictional characters, ever. So, I’m ready and on the offensive and the defensive, when just like Rita Skeeter, I make this crap up about myself. Then, like the annoying Wizarding community I go and believe the whole thing.

So, then I’m defensive as heck.

I am not like Rita Skeeter!

While I am the only one in this “conversation”.

Only trouble: I wonder if all great writers must have this stupid “conversation” and find a way to end it every time and move forward.

You’re list did something lots of books on writing I’ve read didn’t do.

I’m not sure what it is, but I feel a little bit quenched. In a good way. : )

All the best writers write about what they know with a terrific purpose that’s got nothing to do with exposing their friends. For me, its It’s about helping myself. My friends are part of my life, and lots of what I learned is from my not-so -friendlies. What else is there to write about? How else than to tell my own experience of myself and how my friend’s and family’s crap has affected them and me and the rest of us?

But “Who do you think you are to judge you big meany!?” Still needs to be dealt with regularly. It’s gotta be dealt with. I have to do it. And I have to do it regularly, the way some other professionals have to build up their confidence regularly.

I believe the majority of great story tellers, have to do this. And your words are helping me now. And maybe, it’ll never get as bad as Rita without me knowing where the attack is coming from again.

I wonder if my inner critic identified with a sensationalist tabloid producer. I feel aversion to. I don’t know anything about tabloid writers, and don’t consider them great, or story tellers.

I guess I feel like they are infections. When we are not immune the rest of us wonder if we are also being paid to be contagious pernicious judgey gossips with no right to feel good about our calling.

Huh. I just realized something.

I guess I haven’t figured this out. I don’t know any sensationalist gossip writers at all. Not one person I know thinks I’m that way either.

I just realized. Me trying to avoid being that way is ludicrous. I spin in that cycle rather than just realizing I am not that way. Huh.

Well.

There’s really nothing to talk about.

Note: May get permission to use the points that sparked this. Gotta post my response there first and see if I am nuts after all.

The Settling Into One Moment

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Being just here

Right here

Now

Not there

Or hooked in the book

No waiting

Watching myself wearing this body

Feeling my body wear me

Cool solid air settles around me

I feel it breathing in

Touch my skin velvety moment

Where I touch this chair

Being here where chair

Holds the floor

Feels like myself

Remembering

Always like being a sun

Ephemeral as being a chair

Then, surprise!

Some curry arrives

A newborn moment becomes me

Savaged by beauty and taste

The universe in a smell

Re-Living the Glory Days

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Or, How “writing” yourself into a resume pins you down and wraps you into a neat tied up package.

How to Not Be a Pre-Wrapped Deliverable.

 

RIP Resume Waywardspirit

It’s that “resume” part of jobbing I wanna elbow the hell aside, punch out then tear past whooping.

I feel myself speed out of the stupor of conformity into the real, whatever it really is.

The thought of that octupussy pandora’s trap makes my skin crawl. That squirmy zombie octopus has a super power possessing shadow side. 

It’s designing dangerous and only alive in the insidious way all deadly systems are alive.

It’s, not natural.

It’s not actually alive. And it’s not part of the beauty of the ocean. It’s a monster.  

It’s the sweet lost ghosts of distant past I grew out of. Memories. Fantoms meant to predict the future. When they don’t.

It’s the past with it’s claws dug into my future’s neck. It pins down what’s alive and chokes it into zombie hood.

 

Thee looming boredom of repeating the past hurts my soul’s teeth like scraping them slowly all the way down that familiar chalkboard. 

Designing my own restrictions trying to do again what I did well before takes me back to being naughty.

“No go pick me a willow to spank you with.” 

 

You’re seven. 

You are supposed to be choosing the stinging green willow branch to whip red marks onto the backs of your bare legs.

This ends as it begins. Like writing a resume.

 

 I’d rather go put on some stipper shoes. 

How to Get Invited Back

.Reading time 8 minutes.

How do you get invited back?

Here’s a skill that works for every one every time.

Well, every time unless you talk 90 and listen 10. In that case there’s nothing can save you.

Wanna know how to get invited back if you also know how to listen?

Want lots of people to notice when you show up?

It’s simple.

Here’s how: Bring The Salsa!

Not just any old salsa. The Salsa. Don’t even think I’m talking about any random you snatch up on the way last minute to not show up empty handed. Not this or that restaurant recipe works real magic.

Whatever jar of chunky tomato matter off the shelf, even a gourmet brand, your thinking of has no relation to this discussion.

Most homemade salsas aren’t secret weapons either.

This here is the secret weapon.

This and a bag of chips will have people calling ahead to see if you’ve arrived yet.

It’s not expensive. It’s love.

It’s also simple.

After years of getting asked: How do make that amazing salsa you brought? And me telling, showing, and writing it on scraps or on napkins or note paper or texting it. I also wrote it in cards as a gift, and shared it with guests. I finally wrote it down again. This time after texting it for the fifth time to one of my nieces. She urgenly requests it when she needs to make a splash. I finally just wrote it out and snapped a picture to send out as needed. Just this morning. For good.

Cuz last night Rachel, that’s my niece, requested it and I sent the tips and secrets to her in seven texts. ”Remember to not add water!” kind of texts.

So, I finally wrote the whole thing clearly after lots of practice and lots of crumpled paper. I also got to use my new fountain pen for something special.

I just texted a shot of this, finally. This written-down-for-the-first-time salsa recipe, to my sister Sasha. She’s one who let’s me know when and where she’s gonna be and reminds me how much she loves my salsa and how she hopes…Every time she visits from LA.

And no, she can’t get salsa this amazing at even the best Mexican restaurant. What’s worse, she thinks this particular salsa is an enigma and only I can work it out.

A minute after I send her this recipe she responds:

”Is that how you make the best salsa in the world?”

Yep. That’s how I do it.

Sasha isn’t a bad cook herself.

But with this magic salsa, God is in the details. So is good taste.

That’s all.

Follow the directions. Without substituting garlic salt or canned tomatoes as unless you’re good with seeing your friends eyes glaze over. The universal sign of broken dreams. If you can’t get fresh ingredients delivered, just say your you didn’t hide it well enough and your other friends, kids, siblings found it. They will be incensed and feel cheated, but they’ll understand. Careful to blame it on characters they’re not likely to meet socially like the dog, no Santa, it can get awkward when they call out your presumably innocent roommate for ruining that one party.

Do it right.

Then stand back and watch your friends crowd around the dip bowls and all conversation go silent till the salsa runs out.

And “Where’s the Salsa?” replaces conversation.

Is there any more of this guac?” becomes the topic. It leads to serous inquiries. Don’t be alarmed by the determined expressions of the those inquiring into where that salsa came from. Be ready when inquiries lead back to you.

Remember you’re not responsible for all the people who didn’t get some. How they feel when everyone who got some won’t stop bragging isn’t your fault.

Bragging about the best damn salsa they ever tasted, and too bad for you it’s gone, is a natural human reaction to being on the winning side.

All you can do is promise to double the recipe next time.

See. That’s it. Next time. You’re in.

The word speeds fast. You’ll be asked around so you can pick and choose.

This magic only works made fresh.

If you can pull this off and all is going smooth and your ready to up your game Upgrade your salsa.

For just a few dollars more you can turn the Best Salsa in the World to the best Guacamole in the Word.

All it takes is two or three ripe Hass Avocados cubed or smashed and lightly folded into some or all of the salsa.

The effects though blow every ones’ taste buds. So save it for when you really want the attention.

Be advised though. Once you upgrade prepared to stay upgraded. Or people will start wondering if you really do love them after all.

Shortcut:

Tomatoes can be blackened and peppers blackened and peeled and in advance and refrigerated for up to three days.

No Shortcut:

Garlic paste and especially avocado only happen fresh.

This salsa makes unknown numbers of people show up to parties who otherwise wouldn’t. It starts conversation, facilitates connection and keeps friends coming together. So it keeps friendships growing and community strong.

Warning:

Friends will call to ask if there’s still guacamole.

No? We’ll see you time then.

That’s just one of the risks of a community run on your salsa.

The advantages though are immense.

Hence this is my contribution to world peace.

It can not be mass produced.

Only you can bring it. Fresh for your friends.

Next people will try bottling friendship.

This recipe’s also linked up like network marketing.

Every time you bring salsa or guacamole joy to your friends I score.

I accumulate them karmic points off your efforts. I’m sure they are added up somewhere.

So get out there roast, peel, smash smoosh and serve up some happiness-with chips.

Make me rich!

Oh, and world peace and all that too…

Where Are You?

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

 

Where am I?

We walk in here just to be lied to. You walk in here bravely desiring to be taken in. To be caught in an exciting lie. We hope to get spun into an excellent yarn.

blurred-background-couple-daytime-1232019

 

He wants to be transported into a fantasy.
She delights in the romance. We seek rapture.
o be captivated.
To be danced to. To be danced.

Where are we?

Book
Club?

Strip
Club?

What do you think?

How Do You Define A New Life?

.Reading time 1 minute.

What’s so good?

sketchguru_20160417231843.jpg

 

What do I do?
Here I am updating my LinkedIn profile, and back to being twelve. 

I feel like my kid-self gushing to my kid sister:
Look what I can do!
See what I just did?

Her forehead wrinkles.
Her eyes drain.  She cocks her brow.
Her chin turns up and her mouth turns down.
She looks away. Then turns back with a disinterest and 
that tone.
Her and LinkedIn, both.

What have you been doing for the last few years?

Yes. And?
What’s so good about that?
Oh yeah?
So?
So what?
Yeah. But, what’s so good?

LinkedIn’s haughty smug questionnaires are a different kind of third degree.
Why, only that?
That doesn’t answer the question.
From when to when, and what exactly?

How does that add up?

I’m painting myself into a corner. My instinct is to back away from these intimidating forms trying to get me to trim myself down into a formula.

What are your accomplishments?

Even if I had been working at a conventional job for the past few years, I still wouldn’t up-sale my heroic accomplishments like most guys would.
I’d still be down-playing my worth and value like as many woman do.

What have you been doing for the last few years?

Do you really wanna know?

I didn’t think so.

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Mother’s Day Blues And Pinks

.Reading time 2 minutes.

My Heart Could Turn This Whole Lake Blue

It’s my cracked dilapidated heart that’s been crumbling for two decades. And it’s about my kids.
Years ago their father permanently spirited my two oldest daughters away to Mexico. They were two and four, then. So, they didn’t get to have a mother.
My youngest daughter is with me, but she isn’t with her father or sisters.
That was after my baby son died. e’s okay. But I was never quite.


And here I was year after year trying to compensate for all the love, attention and things, this, my one kid left, has been missing out on. While at the same time, I’ve consistently missed my exiled daughters. Then, of course, there’s that ache where a baby is suppose to be. That doesn’t improve matters.

It’s twenty years later. My two Mexico girls grew up. Without me.
We got in touch, after all these years. They are okay. However, they’re totally convinced that I abandoned them. So, all the abandonment, loneliness, and other miseries they suffered are totally my fault. Every bit of it. I won’t go into just how totally innocent their father is right now.
For my part. Rather than helping this, my one kid left, to focus on growing strong, overcoming, and going after what she needs and and doesn’t have, I focused on protecting her. So, I am pretty responsible for some of the stuff she blames me for.

So, right now, only my son isn’t pissed at me for Mother’s Day.

Now that I recognize my same-old-crap behavior patterns from my shitty-old-relationship, I notice that my kids are on the same direct course to where I’ve been.
It’s terrifying to witness.
Yet.
Do I regret my life?
No.
They probably won’t regret theirs either.

So why not just be happy?
Now.
Already.

 

It Just Happens

.Reading time 2 minutes.

The Wayward Spirit

By

M. L. Redford

the wayward spirit wafts in
through the window when the patterns of weeks, months passed, at last,

let go and shift
she moves about the room like Franny Glass making one or two things

flutter a bit, and is gone
out past the opposite shoulder as I turn in to see what I hear

to notice things
in the room which were always there but hadn’t been noticed for weeks

or maybe months
and which had obviously been there for a purpose, staring through the books

on the shelf to find
a forgotten bookmark, an absent fold, maybe a latterdaymexicanpink

autumnal ritual –
seven parts revelationinitiation and fifteen parts flutterbybestowal –

curiouser and curiouser
are the ways of the spirit: if I follow, will I flutter, will I perch or will I fall?

either way I’ll find
the pink of gist and need to meditate before I waft or get stolen

but the spirit talks
of grounding, without talking, for she is no airy/faeree: the meaning disappears

the more you look
but in looking at the unfindability you discover all the meaning for to see:

body, soul and beauty
but no room at the inn for language, ‘you can speak a hundred languages

if you want but
you’re never as wise as the illiterate who speaks with love in her heart’

she says, without a single word
but thought of a hundred languages smaller than the stars which float away;

the language of Waywarduese
butterflies about all over the points, and all of those points held

in one wing-spread,
colourful and puckering hold, sprinkled and dlappled like rain

Oh!
Can I have it?
Is it for me?
It’s for me?
It’s for me!
It’s Mine!
You stole it from me!
I’ll be generous and
share it with you
if you let me keep it.
Please

blue green orange and red rainbow design decoration
Photo by Ghost Presenter on Pexels.com

Have You Ever Gotten Lured Into A Disqus Discussion?

.Reading time 7 minutes.

 

person looking searching clean
Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

 

I just did.

I Just got lured by a Disqus discussion…

Question that trapped me?

You won’t belive it. I didn’t.

Since I spent all my writing time on Disqus tonight I have no choice but to horrify you with my unsuspected wayward answer to that pirate question.

Here goes.

Question:

What home appliance has helped you most?

That’s when my answer surprised me.

 
Air conditioning, and refrigerator.
No, refrigerator and then air conditioning, that’s what I thought at first.

But then I remembered.
The rest of what appliances to you can hire someone else to do for you.
But you can’t hire someone to keep you cool or keep your food from rotting.
And a fireplace can keep you warm in winter and sorta cook your food.

Oh dang. That’s not the question though is it?

Don’t we, all of us take appliances for granted?

No, we all don’t.
I don’t.

I’ve roughed it for years with no appliances and I know just what it feels like.

I got stuck “pioneering” for about seven years on a ranch in the middle of the Sonora desert in Mexico when I was kinda young and child labour was a thing.

You get used to being hot as hell, all day and all night. You get used to cooking over a fire or on a makeshift stove. You get used to washing your own and everyone else’s dishes in a split oil barrel. Even cooking over another shape of the ubiquitous 50 gallon drum, wasn’t so bad.

Using your own hand or your parter, that’s an adventure a small hand held appliance doesn’t do justice to. I didn’t know about that then though. But scrubbing embedded mud off of piles of greasy jeans, that feel like leather in your hands.

You lean over the wash tub or a taller cement version, called a lavadero if you are super lucky, and move up and down rubbing the garment over across the washboard.  You are all bent over, till your back burns and aches.

So, you just started on this fluffy queen size quilt that you need several people to help to wring out. You are just stretching your back  into shape again, I used to imagine Plastic Man going back to his human shape, and letting the burning subside for a seconds. That little break is great, but that’s when the acrid smell of the weeks worth of soaking baby diapers reminds you of that feeling you are going to get when you put your hands into the slimy freezing water to grab a slimy diaper and wiggle that last bit of poop off it. That is when desperation overwhelmed you even before you snatch the slimy thing out and start wringing the nasty water out, before you even start rubbing it with the big pink bar of Zote, then scrub the hell out of it for as long as it takes.

Once you are scrubbing, its mind numbing endless repetition, diaper after diaper, but getting in there is the hardest part. I’d take them all out at once so I didn’t have to reach back into the pail. That was the part that still gives me the yucky-shivers.
That is a red-knuckled, chapped handed, broken blistered palms nightmare that goes on and on and you get all wet. It takes all day.

Your week is ruined just from thinking about it.

You never do learn the way the local woman scrub mud covered dirty stained rags into bright clean shirts, and emerge with softly calloused fine hands that don’t bleed.
When I got back from my expat adventure, I went back to school in Texas. To save money since I lived on a grim student budget, I opened windows and turned on a fan not the AC.
I didn’t even once consider washing clothes by hand, though. I would have skimped on our meager food first.

Instead, I collected scarce quarters for the laundromat, and washed three enormous one whites one coloreds one darks, every two ore three weeks, in the commercial washers, till I got an old used washer.

Okay, okay, I saved money again, for several more years after that and spared the environment, too by hanging laundry on a clothesline in summer months. I still do it. Sun brightens whites and bleaches out organic stains, plus there’s the fresh breezy smell garden smell, that lingers on the clothes and feels like home, not perfume. But no, I freaken never ever ever washed or scrubbed clothes by hand again.
I love washers!
I heard there is a new one that doesn’t ever break down. That you can buy when you get married and leave to your kids in your will, and it will do the same for them. I want that one!
I think it’s a new type of Speed Queen. Anyone know if this is true?
If it is, is there also a legendary refrigerator and AC system with that kind of reputation that anyone knows of?

The two next in line:
Real badass AC and refrigerator I can get that’s not just marketing hyped.
On a lighter cosmopolitan note, the bread machine and crock-pot are two of my three best little friends.

What home appliance has helps me most?

I know the truth about this. It’s the washer.

The Wayward Spirit

.Reading time 9 minutes.

the wayward spirit wafts in
                through the window when the patterns of weeks, months passed, at last,

let go and shift
                she moves about the room like Franny Glass making one or two things

flutter a bit, and is gone
                out past the opposite shoulder as I turn in to see what I hear

to notice things
                in the room which were always there but hadn’t been noticed for weeks

or maybe months
                and which had obviously been there for a purpose, staring through the books

on the shelf to find
                a forgotten bookmark, an absent fold, maybe a latterdaymexicanpink

autumnal ritual –
                seven parts revelationinitiation and fifteen parts flutterbybestowal –                                              

curiouser and curiouser
                are the ways of the spirit: if I follow, will I flutter, will I perch or will I fall?

either way I’ll find
                the pink of gist and need to meditate before I waft or get stolen

but the spirit talks
                of grounding, without talking, for she is no airy/faeree: the meaning disappears

the more you look
                but in looking at the unfindability you discover all the meaning for to see:

body, soul and beauty
                but no room at the inn for language, ‘you can speak a hundred languages

if you want but
                you’re never as wise as the illiterate who speaks with love in her heart’

she says, without a single word
                but thought of a hundred languages smaller than the stars which float away;

the language of Waywarduese
                butterflies about all over the points, and all of those points held

in one wing-spread,
                colourful and puckering hold, sprinkled and dlappled like rain

                                Oh!
                                Can I have it?
                                Is it for me?
                                It’s for me?
                                It’s for me!
                                It’s Mine!
                                You stole it from me!
                                I’ll be generous and
                                share it with you
                                if you let me keep it.
                                Please

Amanda Palmer at TED

Letter To An Artist

.Reading time 4 minutes.

LeClown,

Now I see why you are so devoted to creating a place in the world for misfits and artists. Artists, so often known for being mentally unstable weirdos, still need the safe space to create and mostly don’t find one. Now you are creating a safe place, a narrative to live in, a dream for us. So we can continue to keep our world beautiful and full of meaning.

Why though? Why are you doing it?

Your life depends on it, too. That’s why.

Now I get how each artists’ live depends on it. My life depends on it. The good life as we know it does, too. Without knowing it, the whole world depends on it, since art is our collective soul.

It’s that, or something else vital, and indescribable, to our collective being that cannot be replaced. Artists’ can’t be replaced with not artist or with AI.  Our highly sensitive people can’t be replaced. The world can’t do without them either. We artists are different. That’s as it should be. How else would we make a difference?

You show a warrior’s strength and a poet’s vulnerability when you share your heartbreaking story. Now, I understand the terrible impact your artist father’s ways had on you, and the pain his choices caused you. I get how hard such stories are to revisit, redefine and retell like you are doing in a way that recreates the world for you. A world safer for artists.

I personally appreciate your coming through for me like this, because just knowing that you, Sarah, Black Box Warnings, and company exist makes me stronger and my artist stock soar. It’s giving me the greatest imaginable value – a sense of community.

I feel safer in the world than I did before hearing your story of seeing your father through new eyes. Your story allowed me see the world through my own broken artist father’s eyes.

Even if we are not in the same community, you sorta replaced the American dream with a dream that includes artists like Martin Luther King included all free black people in his dream. Your dream includes me, and dreams create our world.

That irreplaceable precious sense of having a place in the world where your work matters that your father and my father did not get to feel, come into being when your story changed my heart.  Just like millions of the children of ex-slaves and slave holders never experienced a balanced world, yet caught MLK’s dream and held it, I caught your dream. It holds me.
You are changing the world for all of us. You, and the community around you are building artists a better world by speaking out.
You are doing priceless work. The emotional support you offer as a gift and invite the community to offer with you is irreplaceable and magnificent. Air force helicopters would never see that.
I figure, you and Sarah would enjoy, TED’s The Eight Foot Bride or Amanda Fucking Palmer. She is like you, in the way she redefines the world for artists in a surprising, hilarious, whimsical, irresistible way. Enjoy.

There.
Truce is over.

Your Magnificence will soon be mine!
Waywardspirit