The prodigious exultation of being a word-nerd

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Blogging has allowed me to become a true, and very contented, word snob.  I have always loved words.  As a teenager, I kept a duo-tang (who remembers those?) filled with lined paper and would make note of all the unfamiliar words I came across while devouring all the books I used to read.  Those words that eluded my pubescent mind became a staple of my vocabulary once I had defined them and cemented them into the library of my brain.  They circled my imagination and urged my cerebrum to come out to play.  They tickled my tongue and they began to flow like blood in my veins.

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(look at how lovely my penmanship was in high school)

I assiduously began to incorporate those words into as many scenarios as I could.  My teachers were duly impressed.  My fellow students merely looked at me like I had three heads.  My flamboyant wordiness was an ephemeral fantasy and I had to tone down my elevated rhetoric to become a conventional high-school student filled with angst rather than synonyms.

Today I still continue to incorporate those words into my daily conversations, not to sound more intelligent but, because I enjoy the way those words sound when I say them aloud.  I relish being able to use the phrase ‘alarmingly verbose’ instead of just saying “he talked a lot”.  I enjoy describing winter as arduous and not just “shitty”, although shitty can truly encapsulate the past winter months and potentially the ones to come.  And I will forever want to be mystified by language and not speak simply to communicate.  I want to thrive in my love for words.

My enthusiasm for articulate phrases has never waned.  It has followed me throughout my journey.  It has haunted my sleep and clandestinely pursued me during my conscious hours.  May those words forever churn in the maelstrom of my imagination and may I always be able to maintain my romance with the language of expression.

 

Feeling the burn

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candles

Candles burn, hearts yearn,

Wine fills up the glass.

Eyes glance, loves’ chance,

Time to make the pass.

Hand touches, blood rushes,

Hearts pick up the pace.

Distance lessens, romance beckons,

They linger face to face.

Lips meet, taste is sweet,

Blush is in her cheeks.

Hot breath, sweet caress,

The feeling that she seeks.

Touch sparks, bodies arc,

Passion is in the air.

Energy builds, needs filled,

Souls are laid to bare.

Solved puzzle, bodies nuzzle,

Two seem to become one.

Bodies spent, minds content,

her sky has found its sun.

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Oh, the things you’ll see

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cloud porn

cloud porn3

Hours after a summer rain,

the skies are host to what I like to refer to as “cloud porn”.

It is my guilty pleasure to watch the shapes change,

to watch what or whom the sky would like to reveal.

I didn’t see the face with the big sunglasses,

smiling from the sky,

until I added the picture below.

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The real perception of time

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To the people who work at Shamrock Lodge, the weeks of the summer of 2015 are flying by. It seems like only a few days ago we were saying hello to the first of our summer families but that was weeks ago! We have officially begun week five of our ten week season and it has gone by in a blur.

But time is a funny thing. To us it hurtles through some time-space continuum at warp speed while to others, to children who are anticipating their days at the Shammy, time moves slower than a turtle.

Their restless nights are spent planning their days in the Kid’s Klub. Their exciting visions of their little legs on water skiis, making it around the circuit for the first time, disrupt their sleep. Their predicted screams as they skip across the lake in the tube echo in their minds. Their week of fun and games at the lodge is as tangible as the parents longing for some quiet moments while the kids are busy being entertained from morning to night.

Many lounge chairs are filled with dozing parents while their children are, not only waterskiing and tubing but, playing soccer, going on scavenger hunts, bouncing on the water trampoline, building sandcastles, playing tennis and having canoe races.

Time, from the perspective of the parents and children who have already come to the lodge and returned home, has gone by in a blur of sunshine, laughter and memories. But for those children waiting for their chance at their Shammy vacation, time seems to go by one very slow second at a time.

Ask me in forty years and I’ll tell you what happened

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When I look back at the road behind me, I am content with many of the life altering decisions I have made.  There would be nothing worse than glancing back over the history of my life through the eyes of regret.  But will I be that fortunate in another forty years to feel the same way I do after the first half of my life?  Will I take all of my knowledge, and the lessons I have learned about only living once, and disregard the opportunity to obtain the most happiness I can possibly achieve?

I don’t want to reach my ninetieth year and remember the moment that I let an opportunity for pure bliss pass me by.  I don’t want to have “what if” nagging at the  back of my mind.  I have 46 years of growth and experience under my belt and I can only hope I can wring every ounce of those two things out of me when it comes to pursuing my ultimate happiness.

wringing

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Sure, I’ve made my choices and I go through the motions of every day life but how would I feel if there were something out there that was just perfect for me and I let it pass me by?  Whether it be a job, a trip or a new love….opportunities are not presented every day.  Some of those chances are serendipity, a fortunate accident, and some are created through some mystic energy in the universe, perhaps a karma of sorts.

Regardless of the circumstance, I don’t want to regret a moment in my life where I should have taken a chance, but didn’t.   If  you ask me in forty years, I hope I am able to tell you that I followed my heart and made every moment possible by simply taking that chance on something that seemed like it was meant to be just for me.

 

 

 

To covet or not to covet, that is the question

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I remember the word covet securely fastening itself in my brain after I watched The Silence Of The Lambs.  I had always admired the word as part of the English language but never truly gave it the power it so richly deserved.  For having a mere five letters, the word yields much more of an impact than meets the eye.  With the pun intended in that last sentence, I began to realize how it easy it could be to covet something that was so far removed from my reality, yet so much of a presence in my daily thoughts.  I could always see what it was that I wanted.

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Signs and portents of the things we covet will surely present themselves in a myriad of ways and those glowing neon reminders will only serve to keep that item at the forefront of our brains.  Though we may not have access to the object of our attention on a daily basis, the wish plants a small seed in our brain that sprouts and grows every time we give it a moment of thought.  That lingering speculation permeates the moments of our day and the spark of what could be fuels the evolution of our fascination.

By giving ourselves permission to covet, we allow ourselves the opportunity to keep our desires alive, to live with passion.  And, even if those dreams never come to fruition, we were privately granted the right to give that fantasy a breath of life, if only for a few fleeting moments.  There is no legitimate way of telling our heart it was wrong.  It will beat the way it wants to beat and we are powerless to its incessant drumming.

I am intimidated by the fear of not following my desires, of never having opened the door to possibility and thus never being able to define what is truly important to me.  Coveting those things, identifying the wants that truly envelop me but knowing they may be the things that I can never have, affects my world on a scale beyond my comprehension.  But those impervious wants, those things I covet,  allow me to begin to sketch the blueprints of what it is that I truly desire.  The idea that I may eventually attain those things satiates my thirsts and attempts to quench that desire.

To covet is to wish.  To wish is to dream.  To dream is to live.

What I might be

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu

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I have been so consumed by my job lately that I have begun to redefine myself by my career and not by the person who is performing that job.  I give up small parts of myself to become a larger piece of the work puzzle and, although I thoroughly enjoy my job and the people I interact with on a daily basis, I lose sight of the potential success of my personal goals.

cogs

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I saw this quote and the cogs in the wheels of my creativity began to align and click into perfect place.  By allowing myself to become what I might be, I give myself permission to become all of the things I wish for myself.   Work is a means to pay the bills but work will never be the summit of the mountain of my possibility.

Each day I write this blog, each day I allow the words to flow from my brain, is a day I step closer to what I might be.  There is a part of me still lurking in the shadows.  There is a creative mind waiting for the moment that reality does not quell its desire.  When I finally am able to truly let go of what I am, that creative mind will become what it should be.

Branching out from every day life

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“Our life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

treehouse

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This picture is my bliss.  If I could press a magic button and be transported to this place, I would be a happy woman.  I have never been lured by the latest fashion or by the possession of “things”.  I am not a person who is concerned by status.  I simply want to feel joy in my day-to-day life and this representation of simple happiness truly defines the life I wish to live.

I want to create my own standards.  I don’t want to be held hostage by the confines of what society deems acceptable.  I refuse to compare my success to the success of anyone other than myself because that would be unfair to me.  I want to live on my terms and live by my own rules.  I want to live the way I want to live….nothing more, nothing less.

Being able to climb up into this tree house at the end of a long day would make all of the effort worthwhile.  Just to know that this little piece of Heaven existed would make all of the daily hardships seem more acceptable and afford me that much-needed escape at the end of a long day.

The perfect tree awaits and I have begun my search.  I don’t need bigger and better, just my own little piece of paradise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or sometimes more than a thousand words

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When I first saw it, I was captivated by it.  A simple photo of a friend on Facebook grabbed and held my attention but it was no ordinary photograph.  I had hoped there was more of an explanation to it than mere Photoshop and I was thrilled to hear her tell the story behind the picture.

She had agreed to have her portrait done by her friend who is fascinated by the origin of photography.  He posed her and painstakingly went through the process that photographers went through back in the late 1800’s.  His camera was an antique with the accordion-style lens and the black hood that covered the head of the photographer.

He waited until the precise moment that he thought he had captured her true essence and he let his finger plunge the button that would acquire every detail of her spirit.  The result of his effort was remarkable.  He printed her face on tin to truly encapsulate the original process of printing a photograph.

I stared at her photo for a long time.  There was so much more to it than just a picture of her face.  There was a story in her eyes.  His diligent process captured much more than just who she is now.  This snapshot seemed to hold the story of generations, perhaps lifetimes of moments that led up to her being in his studio and posing for this shot.

It wasn’t a selfie or a picture as a second thought.  There weren’t 100 takes in a minute because that is all we have time for nowadays.  He paused, he let the camera do what it was meant to do and he took a thousand stories, captured them in one single photo and printed them on a piece of tin.

erin

Look at the artwork in this photo and hopefully you can now understand why I was so drawn to my friend’s picture.  Without the use of any computer tricks, this photograph projects so much more than just a face on a piece of paper or a computer screen.  This picture has depth, emotion and a lifetime of moments that led to her presence in our present reality.

If I ever have the chance to do this, I will jump at it.  I would love to see what kind of story my face has to tell and what ghosts from my past linger in the background, searching for recognition.

I had come home

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coming home

There was no sweat on my palms,

merely a certainty I had never known.

There was no rapid heart beat,

only a calm, a sense of knowing

that when we met

we were meant to meet.

It was a feeling of being brought together

after a lifetime apart.

It was a sense that a long journey

had finally come to an end.

It was an understanding

of a soul knowing a soul,

and that our time to meet again had come.

 We had met before,

perhaps decades or a lifetime ago.

We had since locked our doors

and hidden inside,

but your eyes knew my eyes.

You had seen my heart before

and when we met again,

 I recognized you without hesitation

because so much about you was familiar.

I had come home

and you were there to welcome me.