Deleted Comments

Just a brief note to readers, if you have read and commented in the last three days and been deleted AND were not a track back spammer, please accept my apologies. I have deleted hundreds of spam comments these last three days and may have inadvertently deleted some legitimate ones as well.  (yes hundreds not sure what word or words triggered the flood, but hope the gate is closed now 🙂

And now back to my nanonovel.

DeR spammres

I will delete you because I do not wish to have your link in my blog. But I might delete you anyway just because of your inability to spell. I make occasional errors myself. But yours is simply atrocious so please go away now.

Happy Thanksgiving

I am all the way back to Dec 2007 in the pulling old poetry off  MySpace in preparation for cancelling the account. Glad tonight I haven’t yet. Having kind of a hard day/week/month/lifetime, or so I felt this evening as I went to bed. Had an incredibly hard time finishing my 10 gratitude items. Couldn’t sleep, so got back up and decided to recover some poetry as long as I was awake, since one of my current goals is for MySpace presence to be gone January of 2012. Anyone who really knows me knows that me being awake/ up after midnight is far from usual.

It was also apparently just what I needed to turn this wee pity party around and make a smile of my frown.

It was great to reread a few blogs from 2008 and 2009, a lot happened I didn’t expect. A lot I was told would happen didn’t happen either. Normal for everyone, I guess, but due to my proximity sometimes my problems seem big.  I come away from reliving those two years of my past in my “just brushing the surface” blogs and I am truly, truly grateful for my life today, ALL of it. So easy to forget how blessed I am, how much magic surrounds me and how the best things happen when I have faith.

For

All

Impossibilities

Their’s

Hope.

Everything is gonna be Ok. I just gotta keep showing up and doing my best.

And believe.

Namaste.

New Shoes

Running Barefoot

When I was a child
I got exactly two pairs of shoes a year
In September I was fit sturdy second-hand leather oxfords
to keep my feet and stride
contained appropriately
within the patterns that pomp and poverty’s circumstance proscribed;
School shoes.

And gladly every spring
I shed them, forever forgotten,
for a new pair of canvas running shoes.   Like Bradbury’s protaganist
I could jump higher
run faster
laugh longer
on the wings of  my new spring shoes.

I remember when you were my new spring shoes
and your kisses freed me from all the leather restraints of being
anything
other than just me
and together we ran faster
and jumped higher
and loved betterUntil we wore each other like a favorite pair
each stain and fray adding to the story and the charm
And love and life were nothing we could ever throw away.

But the soles of summer shoes aren’t meant to last
And the silver wheel turns
And the days grow chill
And Mother mortality crept in while we slept.
In winter cold I lay alone, bereft, I wept.

So many shoes since then.
I see them on the store shelf, attractive to the eye,
Glossy, glittery, strappy pumps with stylish designer names
Boots of softest calf
Rocket science running shoes
Lightweight professional slip-ons
Calling out to me to try them, buy them
Commit.

And sometimes they almost fit
and sometimes I do buy them
and I married again after you died
and my toes turn inward with the years of leather shaping

but my happiest times for heart and feet

are still running barefoot throught the grass
remembering that summer with you.

CC

I-Resurrection

I-resurrection

My computer went to the brink of death
And came back funtional
But a clean slate.
Gone was all the data
Useful and otherwise

This technical resurrection
required I reboot my Ipod, it did not recognize the computer as mine
and could not agree to also regenterate itself unless it, too, was a tabula rasa
These older generations do not have the ability to regenerate
and communicate that the younger Ipods do.
30 Gigabytes of empty memory now sit in my palm
where once my musical library hid
The white dead thing no longer
crooning my favorites, lulling me in each activity with perfectly selected playlists
waiting to sneak and resurrect some small snippet of melodiuos genius
some forgotten or neglected track
with its almighty “shuffle songs”.

I must now decide which of the 3215 songs I had on there before
I will choose to reload
and in what order.

Where to start,
And what matters most
are always the hardest questions.

I try and visualize later today
Anticipate the needed soundtrack, who will I be then

I reach to touch the future
and fail.

Grabbing instead a random handful of plastic cases
And starting here at the letter “F”
I listen, humming along. adding some pieces I didn’t before, leaving off others I added and mostly ignored
choosing to ignore those added and played too often in homage to some wound
or soul deep sore;
humming and tapping my feet
Rebuilding my tower of bass notes pilons and guitar riff bricks
into a new tonal refuge
In my digital game of  spiritual Lego’s.

CC

Leaving Rome, a poem inspired by “Eat, Pray, Love”

Italian town of excess
of taste and touch and smell and song
I’ve only been there in books
or dreams
or genetic memories
but live its promise to the fullest, I believe,
each Spring
Culmination then with May day revel
I move into my contemplative stay
My Ashram
Only to bounce again to revel with the Samhain dawn
I am learning patience
to let go my powerful need to control outcomes and just show up for the process.

so many times in practice to Rome and India
this year perhaps I’ll get to Indonesia…..

I am learning forgiveness for my own weakness.
Forgiving yours no longer necessary
As I find the taste of baking soda nauseaous but brownies, bread and cookies
Are not the same without them.

So many times in teaching others I lined the ingredients up
First lesson for my second years
“Now you have established who you are and who you want to be, its time to let go of the things that hold you back,
to dispense with the angers
the righteous judgements
the things that rob you of your magic,”
I would say,
I would lead them to the classroom, a kitchen
The ingredients lined on the counter
flour, sugar, cocoa, milk, eggs, vanilla, baking soda
“taste this,”
I would sayas teaspoonful after teaspoonful raw ingredients would be placed upon their tongue,
Some would try and refuse
Some would retch
and others would taste, puzzling ahead
one, maybe two would
just taste.

“Now, taste this, ” I would say
and place a warm bite of brownie in their mouth.
“More like it,”
“Yum,”
or smiling silence.

“How is this about magic,
about anger
about acceptance” I would say,
“Each of these ingredients are your past,
the bitter hurts,
the sweet loves,
the nauseating struggles….this brownie is you.
Which ingredients would you leave out?”

CC

Composting Grief

Composting Grief

Hidden anguish slimes and molds
Putrifying,
Bitter sulfur assaulting, overwhelming the senses
Lethal carcinoma of the spirit
Exterminates hope.

Grief shared
Encounters
Aerobic decomposition.
Losses layered with laughter become strengths
Watered with tears, recombined by conversation
Innoculated dream decay
grows love.
CC

Home

Home

Home has forever been defined for me by  lines from a Robert Frost poem
and the clicking of two ruby shoes.

The poem is Death of a Hired Man
the words are found close to the end of the poem
I cried the hardest I think I ever had the first time I read it
Not for the hired man
I wasn’t yet eight
and the edges of my world were just beginning to curve;
the gravity of my situation spinning less around me
and more around others
as my galaxy gave forth to wider humane scape.
I did not cry for the hired man, I cried for me.
Knowing for sure
that in this world, I had no home

Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’

Home,’ he mocked gently.

Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
then was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

For everything in my world was earned
deserved
(or so I was told and chose to believe)
from the ample bruises to the sparse hugs
and when life was moonlit only and clouds hid even that,
I knew no arms would
or should

take me in..

So in answer to that knowledge I have taken in all hounds,
harbored the homeless
loved the strangers
pillowed the head of all the hired men my home,
my arms and fires could warm.

but never found
never allowed
my own home.

Then there were the two ruby shoes
and there “No Place Like Home” magic,
so far as I could see
the red shoes brought Dorothy back to the same grey places
the same tired faces
from first viewing at four to somewaht past ten
I knew I would not use those shoes at all.
I sang and dreamed of that place Over the  Rainbow
so much like my father’s heaven,
yet different, more like Frost’s home, unearned.
Dorothy was no witch at all, just a simple little girl
And knew if I had those shoes
I would not come back to my grey life again.

Perhaps it was the song by America,   but probably not

I think the lyrics by rote came first, the wisdom came years later
all I know is somewhere as I grew
Oz began to mean a place where I learned what I already knew
appreciated what I already had
my smallness by a journey made greater.

CC

A very interesting day..

I finished my newspaper work on time, and even turned in the right file this time. (Whole other story and not a pretty one, mind you. It was evidence that my tech skills are that of a dinosaur even if my words occasionally are more highly evolved. And Nov 19  issue looked great and they had tons of timely previously cut material to cover my boo boo. Less than half of what I write sees the page usually, although most of it is available online, due to space constraints.

Anyway, anyone who wants to read my current professional work can find it at www.santansun.com. Nope, no byline, but most of the articles in the AZ Arts section are cobbled together by yours truly from press releases, websites and phone calls. My stuff is way at the back starting I think on page 58 through page 65 and the new Editor rewrote my best headlines, but hey, no words are sacred and that is the way the professional writer flavored cookie crumbles or the one about Warhol influenced art at the post office would have the  headline “Pop goes the easel”.

My nano novel is going slow. Will get back to it in the morning. Had to say hi to the blogosphere. Need to go to bed now if I am going to write before going to my “boot camp” training in the AM.

I am not going to talk about the Occupy movement and how that all went down. I don’t have enough clear facts about what happened to cognizantly defend  my initial  reaction (which I have to everything including social networks and GPS), namely “OMG, I am living in that Orwellian dystopia future I read about as a teenager. ” Then after thinking these thoughts, unfortunately and like so many of the rest of us, I go back to my routine. Mostly I go back to what I normally do because I do not understand the purpose of the movement or how I can actually effect their goals. I do oppose the use of police force to squelch free speech and I do believe money and the few who have most of it control large portions of our government. I think that’s evident from the inability to get anything done in Washington, regardless of what percentage of persons in America believe we need infrastructure jobs or the rich paying their fair share of taxes, Big Brother won’t let it happen.

But I also go back to what I do because I cannot save the world if I can’t even tend my own garden of needs. I have bills to pay and mouths (to BIG canine mouths besides mine) to feed, and people who depend on me to meet my responsibilites. I try to change the world a little bit by smiling and saying thank-you as often as I can, by buying local and buying organic if I can, by not consuming more than I need. My commitment is to “Ahimsa” as I understand it and integrating that into my daily small decisions and choices is my own Occupy movement. I am trying very hard to occupy with mindfulness the life I was given. I respect those whose path is different than mine, whose options and choices allow for them change the world in bigger, louder headline ways and don’t believe that resorting to sneakiness or force to stop them is right

So I guess I did talk about what happened to Occupy camps across America, but I am done now. And off to sleep so I can go work on the whole Slow Old Fat Triathlete becoming faster and thinner (however still getting older).

Happy Thanksgiving if I don’t get back before then, And don’t forget Small Business Saturday!

FTR: I am alive and nano’ing

I am nano-ing.

I am back at my training.

I am also working very hard at another goal that right now seems as impossible as the triathlon seemed this time last year, and that goal is to get out of debt. Therefore I am working very hard taking all hours I can get as a nurse and doing a wee job with a local newspaper that actually seems to care about writing the local stories rather than just placing words on paper to fill the space between sold add space, which unfortunately seems to be the case in many of the free local papers.

(side note: If any readers know of paid copyediting work or paid non-byline writing opportunities I am all ears….or does that metaphor work on line? My dream job as a writer would be to again be writing the precis on the back of books, or be a book length published poet, because no one ever knows who those writer’s are.  My brief brush with author fame and notoriety convinced me I really am much shyer and much thinner skinned than people realize)

Anyway, I really do mean to blog more frequently but that being said, we know which road me and my good intentions are on so here are my top 5 blogs to read when sadly mine is silent. (and I am doing 5 not 10 and doing this  “from” favorite not “to” favorite because I am ever the rebel.

1. http://whatever.scalzi.com/   Scalzi is the grandpa of the online blog and although his claim to fame is sci fi writing there is no shortage of politics, humor and cuteness here. I especially recommend finding his Thanksgiving Advent section if maybe a smile is in order. Has a bit of a Mental Floss/NPR vibe.

2.http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/ Another blog I have read for at least a decade I believe. On which we have watched Wil Wheaton grow from a man I would have considered capable about lying about his “Mema” to someone who I would want to bake my own Mema cookies for cause he is that cuddly. This blog has more of a “People”magazing/LOLCats.com feel somedays, other days feels like reading a modern day Emerson.

3.http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/ This one is I hope self-explanatory, if not, click on the link and read a few entries. Everybody should floss daily!

4. http://www.wired.com/geekdad/ OK, this is often kind of like window shopping in the really expensive stores, other times, like his post on Mandelbrott it is as close to formal education as I get these days. (and yes, I really, really want the Angry Birds Board Game!)

5.http://imarriedanomnivore.com/ I have followed her and her recipes since she was on Blogspot. Sadly I haven’t added her to Facebook because I am weaning myself off facebook if it wasn’t for certain old friends and poets I would be done with it.

Anyway, I must get back to updating my nurse credentials, actually cooking and eating breakfast and adding to mynovels  word count if not its plot.  Later this week (in preparation for MY big shopping day “Small Business Saturday”) my five favorite local businesses and five favorite not as local but still not evil empire size shops.

But hey, whats your favorite blog or website? I really want to know?

P.S. I expect once I am sure of the facts (I know crazy of me isn’t it to check those out first) that there will also be a blog about the not very “American Values” response happening around the country to the Occupy movement.