midnight blue ink
mocking muses
running off stories
river flows
blending old and current
muddied waters
writing sorrows
drowning at dawn
so boring and trite
Writing about twilight inspired her stay in that moment and wait by the river as dusk turned to twilight and twilight turned to midnight…the wee hours of the night when thoughts rushing in the mind seem to take over and rambling reflections start shouting and the subconscious takes on a life of its own. Yet, wisdom deciphers what is and what is not…
Who am I? If I tell you who I truly am, what is left for me? I always thought this for a long time. How much we are guarded at times. How close to my chest must I hold my cards? If I tell a person a secret, well, something no one knows but me, will he/she still accept me? The answer is a) probably not b) no way c) maybe with time d) all of the above Well, I know, you, Emily, will accept me…you have no choice, you stuck, glued at the hip…poor you!!! {chuckles}
In the past 2 weeks I am reading some Daily Quips from ButterflySand and they are getting under my skin, not quite like those ghastly giant hives I get off and on but still they are making me think. Shoot! For a person who tends to overthink things to the point of insomnia, I’ve tried with all my might this past week to shove it under the carpet in that walk in closet of my soul. But darnit! it is persistent, consistent and pervasive like dust in our homes (Oh, how I love my home at night when dust is veiled with twilight!)
I reblogged a post by Dave Kester on Stop the Stigma and I invite you to check that as well because that post truly impacted on me and I think people may truly appreciate his humble candor in this piece on secrets we hold about our personal self.
My ruminating all started with a post on Rage also by Butter Sand and made me see how we all have our weaknesses or failings when we may just explode, be upset, get frustrated, become impatient and then there are explosions…yikes! One would have to wonder what brought that on, right? If we do it in the privacy of our own homes, we dismiss it after a few moments of feeling shame. But when it happens in front of a close friend, a child (even worse!) or in public (work, store, etc.) then we know we need to do something about it OR withdraw for fear it happens again…and not get too close for fear someone gets to know us TOO well. What if it is another type of flaw we harbour and don’t want anyone to know about us? How do we hide it? How is it nurtured to stay within us for so long? How does it settle like a comfy couch and yet…is it really that comfy?
Well, this writer/blogger/artist/poet made me think a lot. I am thinking that perhaps there is a reason I am noticing more posts of similar nature. Fate? Serendipity? …maybe I am at a place in my life where I AM supposed to be just about now.
DungeonPrompts are weekly prompts that allow bloggers to do some introspection, if they want, and write from a personal account OR a fiction, poem, story. This week it’s about Writing in the Flow. Well, that surely rings a bell. I read Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way years ago and did all the exercises in the book. I took a journaling class at U of T at St Michael’s College years ago as well, partly to unleash my creativity so I could write more but what happened was it opened my eyes to a lot of pent up stuff I was holding back. I suppose that too will hold back our creativity. Well, if you look at this week’s prompt you will see some quotes that Sreejit posted that allude to that fact as well.
So I read this prompt and another light goes on. The instructions are so similar to what I tell youths on the phone and yesterday in particular I repeated and did a relaxation/imagery meditation with several youths who phoned our service. I may do it once or twice a week but rarely so often in one shift. Nonetheless, I do find it fascinating that so many pieces are falling into place…feel like being visiting by old friends and family. Like anyone, we have people in our past we don’t care to revisit but some boomerang back because we have things to settle within ourselves…still.
And so some of my past readings are forcing me to do some serious introspection…thank goodness for poetry for some thoughts are articulated with a bit more grace…the good, the bad and the ugly. I tell you, Emily, I am so busy on overdrive with this pondering!
Today is May 1st and it does feel like a beginning as we enter, finally, in our neck of the woods. Pam at Butterfly Sands posts yet another lovely thought to ponder on her Daily Quip which I reblogged earlier this morning. This is how I want to end this reflection, Emily, on a positive note as she described that people don’t just love you despite your flaws but that our flaws are what make us…make ME and I’m wonderful…YOU are wonderful as you are!
Lately I have gone back to reading a book on the bus and subway on my way to work. My son scolded me last week for being such an easy target to some people reading on my smart phone. He took my Samsung Note, waved it in the air saying, “Yoo hoo, come and pick me! It’s worth $700” and it sounded more like “No need to pick pocket, it is yours for the taking.” We then had a discussion about that. I mentioned I rarely took my phone out on the subway because I had seen three teens grab a man’s phone and run out the doors just before they were closing. Well, he scolded me even more as if I were his child or student (he’s a high school teacher).
“Yeah but,” I started. Gee, come to think of it 25 years ago when he was 10, he was the one who always said, “Yeah but, Dad” arguing a point with his dad. I had nicknamed him Yabut instead of Abbot! I tried to assure him that people riding the bus off the island of Montreal to the suburbs all read on their phones, i-pads etc. He kept shaking his head, lifted his hands in the air, “Do what you want. This is why women are such easy targets. Rarely will a woman run after someone who grabs her phone or tablet. And people who mean to steal know that.” Well, I guess he is right there and it was not the time to say it was actually a young man who got robbed on the subway the other day and it was “taken by surprise” that wins usually. And I was touched that he was concerned about his mom.
So this week I started going back to my old habits which is nice because I also missed reading. I am very expressive wherever I may be, such as a doctor’s waiting room, the license bureau or a bus. When I get to a passage that moves me, I will smile, chuckle and yes, cry too. The first three chapters of The Hunger Games, I wore my sunglasses on the subway because I could NOT stop the tears, the violence (physically and emotionally) was just so intense. I only read this book last year because so many youths who call read it and wanted to be a bit more in touch with some characters. If the kids are anything like me, we tend to relate and get some characters under our own skin. I was Nancy Drew and Cathy Ames for years as a child, then as a teen became Marie Curie. Oh, I was Sainte Thérese for many years too and would be washing those floors for Mother Superior day after day after day. “I never promised you a Rose Garden” was one book Sister Dufferin gave me when I was 15 and I could not finish the book as I became Sylvia…I could literally hear all the voices dragging me into their consciousness, I thought I was losing my mind. I eventually read the book in my early thirties. Later I tried to read the diaries of Virginia Wolfe and managed two and a half but had to stop, as there too, I became that scared, frightened child who grew up so misunderstood by her “expert” doctors.
That said, {I digress. Yes, I know…I am getting there, Emily but you know me. I get sidetracked sometimes}, I like to read some books my callers read to see what is “affecting or infecting” their minds. Violence does not seem to affect youths as it did me as a youth. I suppose you could blame it on violent video games but let’s face it. Really! Let’s be honest. When I was growing up I found Bugs Bunny and Road Runner quite funny and they are sooo violent! It is just the scenery that has changed but perhaps we are not that much different. I really don’t know the answser to that one.
I remember going to a movie with a friend/volunteer from a distress centre, years ago in Toronto. He had made dinner at his condo and we ate and chatted a bit too long. Well, I AM a woman and a chatterbox, and he is Italian…so meals tend to drag on a long time. We arrived at the cinema just in time but most of the good seats were taken. We had to sit in the front. I still do not remember the movie except it was terribly violent and Vince and I would hide our eyes so often. I recall turning around to look at the teens and young adults sitting around us and they did not “appear” to be troubled by this. It dawned on me then, how many “seem” desensitized to violence. If that is the case, how can we stop the violence and wars that exist today? Most youths will tell me scoffing, “We know it’s not real!” But I wonder if the mind can be exposed to all that blood and gore and still…
Now, Emily, how the heck did I get on reading to violence again? Oh yeah, my emotional reaction wherever I read…yeah, that’s it. Maybe I am old enough to not care if I am reading Erma Bombeck and chuckling alone at the back of the bus, or weeping at a tragic passage or part that makes me reflect on my life. When a book, story, article or poem does that to me, it means the writer touched my soul.
I know it’s still winter and we should be expecting snow, storms and even blizzards. But…and there is always a but, by this time of year, it is difficult to be as wise, preventative and proactive. We get two or three days of wishful springtime weather and then BAM, it snows but it is that heavy, sticky melting kind…so warmer outerwear is not quite necessary. That was on Sunday and Monday. It was welcomed as we know it is what helps the maple trees create that lovely sweet liquid…that sap will run all night with this weather. So we embrace it …sort of.
For some odd reason, this morning I decided to throw in my neck warmer, my pilot warm hat and warm felt mittens into my backpack. I noticed it was snowing and it did not appear to be that sticky melting type of whiteness. Of course I weighted it down with a good umbrella incase the snow turned to heavy wet snow or even rain…you just never know.
Tonight I went out for a later dinner…I had to get some fresh air. It is healthy to walk when you have a sedentary job but it is also mentally therapeutic and healing. So warm hat, mittens and neck warmer I wear and out I go. Cars are driving slowly, expecting pedestrians to run on amber lights and could slip and fall, so they wait almost patiently, it seems.
Several hours later, leaving at the end of my shift, I could not see a foot path on the sidewalk…the snow drifts were so high, I had no choice but walk on the street…my back to oncoming traffic since it is a one way. Cars passed slowly, not ONE honked or skidded to avoid me…they kept to their left and rode by slowly…Nice!
But the attitude off the island…away from the big city and on the south shore, in the suburbs something happened to some driver’s’ brains! Driving their SUV’s or other wheels…sheesh!!…patience car person!! While you impatiently want to cross that cross walk where travelers have just stepped off the bus, you are in a warm vehicle…the walkers are facing cold weather, strong winds…having a difficult time to keep their head up as the pinching, freezing snow is burning their cheeks, blinding their eyes…so patience while we just get out of your way…okay?
On my way to work today sitting on the bus I decided to put in my ear buds. I do that sometimes to block out the noise, chit chat and drift off to my singer, my choice today Damien Rice – 9 Crimes. Today I did not turn on the music right away. I observed the people on the bus. The girls on either side of me were reading messages on their phones and listening to music. Perhaps they were pretending as I was…who knows? Then the girl across from me was reading her phone. The man next to her was scrolling on the face of his phone…perhaps reading an article, the news or a book.
An older woman (older than me, so that would be close to 70ish); The girl across from me stared at her and looked around…I supposed (I’m guessing) she was hoping someone would give her a seat…but she never offered or even shifted in her seat to show any signs she would. I was about to give her my seat but I noticed she was walking with a purpose and I looked at the far end of the bus and there were a few free seats way at the back, so I waited.
The woman continued on her quest towards the back of the bus, walking slowly, cautiously…no one lifted from their seats…she went up the 2 steps to get to the far back. I could tell she had seen a few free seats. And she sat down at the last row. Many do not go that far because of the steps. She did.
When we get on at the front of the bus there are about 6 seats assigned for older passengers, persons with disabilities, pregnant women and parents with a baby carriage. Rarely have I seen people giving up that seat to people who should have it. In fact even the parent with a carriage, the bus driver will have to bark out orders for passengers to give their spot that has been designated to this person. As for the other designated passengers, even the bus driver does not intervene. I wonder about that sometimes. If I am seated on any of those seats, I always give my spot or offer it but it disappoints me to see that many younger people do not.
Well, the purpose of this post was really to say that I was window shopping…I mean stranger gazing. In the entire bus and it is a long double bus …you know with an accordion attaching the equivalence of a half a bus. At the centre is a circle where passengers can stand and turn…wiiiiii with the bus when it does make turns. I only saw one couple at the centre, standing and chatting. They looked in their early to mid-twenties. Guy was trying to impress gal with his knowledge of bus schedules as it appeared to be gal’s first time taking this bus to get downtown. It was interesting observing the body language. If I were working on a research project in anthropology, I would say they were flirting. Ah, March love affairs and the approach of Springtime…I sighed a bit thinking about this. There is something so powerful about this time of year that seems to stir the heart.
Everyone else on the bus was either reading a book, reading or staring at their phones or had their eyes closed. What did we do when we did not have screens to stare at? And even if we had music to listen to, did we not see, observe, and notice humanity? Did we not witness human kindness? I do think we still do but it may be a bit more difficult to see. Thank goodness there is a kindness blog I like to follow that allows me to see how wonderful we still are, and I weep happy tears at the kindness of people.
I have to say that my bus trip in the city yesterday was so much different. I was seated next to young man with long hair; he was placing his guitar next to him and his backpack under his seat. I had suggested he use the front shelf behind the bus driver for his bag so it wouldn’t get all wet. And we then chatted all the way to the city. He had an amazing life, coming from a small town in Northern Ontario, travelled to Vancouver a lot and would be spending the summer there with his girlfriend. We talked about Hastings Street and I mentioned I had driven by there once and had not particularly been shocked and he said he lived on the streets by choice for several years. I was so pleased talking with him. It was like talking to a caller I may have spoken to on our phone lines, who knows but I felt a nice connection and it really boosted my day. A great way to start my shift.
Unlike today but my walk in the glorious March sunshine, I walked slower to allow the air to wrap me with its loving Spring essence and even took a few shots for prosperity.
We live in a world where everyone is rushing. People are on automatic pilot. We walk past a friend, colleague and in passing, we blurt out platitudes, casual greetings, automatic questions that we really do not expect a response, we do not want any discourse and in fact if we ask, How are ya? in passing we are stumped…literally, have to back track, if someone says more than a nod of the head, smile or meek “fine”. It’s sad, isn’t it? How pathetic have we become?
How are you?
Why do you ask? Do you really want to know? Cos I could tell you a thing or two… Do you even care? Why the hell do you ask if you just say it as you pass you don’t even friggin stop or pause, or even look me in the eye. So don’t bother to ask me EVER who the feck cares, right? I really don’t take it light and don’t want to even fight about this, you don’t actually care about me or anyone but you.
Tournesol dans un Jardin 
