Category Archives: imagination

Second, third and fourth thoughts

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I am a thinker.  I’m not like the bronze statue perpetually perched on bent hand in a state of posthumous concentration but I am equally consumed by thought.  I never give things a second thought, I give them a third and fourth thought until I am satisfied that I can think no more. Maybe Winnie The Pooh was on to something.

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I never do anything on a whim.   I have to examine things from many angles, deconstruct the complete picture and piece it back together while thinking of all the probabilities and possibilities of that situation.  I replay conversations in my head thinking about what words were uttered even examining the inflection in the words that were spoken.  I don’t have an eidetic memory but I can certainly recall conversations, sometimes verbatim, and I  will analyze those words until I am satisfied that what I heard was what I was supposed to hear.

My brain likes to disassemble moments or conversations, examine each piece and then slowly rebuild that moment until it is once again the sum of all of its parts.  I don’t know why I am the way I am.  There are moments that I would like to be that duck that allows the water to bead and roll from its back, just lets it go, but that is not how I am built.  I need to analyse – I need to dwell on an idea until my thinking has left me satisfied and content.

I am a thinker.  I am a re-thinker.  Potentially, I am an over-thinker.  In any case, I can rest assured that I have exhausted every angle before I’ve come to a final decision and that thought helps me sleep at night – until I think I may have missed something and spend many early morning hours thinking about what thought may have eluded me.

Where are you on the think scale?

In the wee small hours

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With no curtains for protection, the jagged streaks of moonlight spilled through the bedroom window across my duvet.  I had awoken only moments before, trying desperately to talk my body into falling back to sleep before my brain woke up but it was too late.  In the same time it took me to blink twice, my brain had formulated twelve simultaneous problems that it was determined to solve before I was allowed to return to slumber.  And, as an afterthought, those cranial neurons began formulating ideas for new blog posts and I was scrambling to record them before they evaporated into dream dust.

I have lost count of the number of times I have awoken from a deep sleep with a great idea for a post.  But between the darkness on moonless or cloud-covered nights and my inability to locate my phone to document them, those potentially great ideas vanished into thin air.

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There must be a gigantic vault of lost ideas – a safe so large it contains all of the great writing ideas that were unable to come to fruition because they were never forced from our subconscious onto our keyboards.  It hides in the vacuous space of our imagination and traps wandering thoughts as they escape during those wee hours in the morning.  If only I knew how to break into that vault.

As my late-night Kathleen Turner voice gurgled out incomprehensible syllables I tried my best to recall and record the latest gem last night but, as I replayed the audible gibberish this morning, I couldn’t really comprehend where my thought process was taking me.

One day I’m going to crack that safe and I’m going to need a lot of Red Bull to keep me up long enough to record the wealth of ideas that is trapped in its metal casing.

 

I just wanna know

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hands

If my hand brushed up against yours,

would your fingers curl around mine,

would you reach for my touch

as easily as I long for yours,

and let your thumb

gently caress my skin?

If I kissed you,

would our lips slightly touch

before you turned away,

or would your face lean into mine,

absorbing every ounce of the passion

I want to share with that kiss?

If I said I love you,

would you immediately build a wall

to keep me at a distance,

or would you pull me close

happy to share my emotion

because you feel it too?

If I fell into you,

would your arms catch me,

would my body be met by the warmth of your flesh,

or would I awake, once again, from my dream

wondering if you really exist.

I just wanna know.

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The more things change, the more they are different

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Blogging is a fickle mistress.  Back when I started this journey I had no followers and no clue what I was doing.  I just wanted to write.

With much persistence and an avid desire to keep writing, I did just that.  Along the way, people began to read what I had to say and, not only that, took the time to make comments and leave their two cents about the words I had spent so many hours crafting into submission.  Those were blissful times in my life and, as the momentum continued, I gained new followers and new friends throughout the process.

But as with all things that change, and contrary to the subjective saying, nothing every really stays the same.  Life gets in the way and those little joys that were once so ingrained in our daily lives are shelved to make room for reality.  During the last three summers, work has taken a front seat while my creativity has been stored in a tool box in the trunk of my life.

Every autumn, I find the key, open that trunk and hope my creativity has maintained some of its shape during the bumpy rides it has been made to withstand.  Although the integrity of my imagination seems somewhat intact, the struggle to achieve the same level of contact with readers and followers seems to wane.  It is the fault of no single circumstance and it simply means I have to delve back into the vigor of writing that I had when I began this wonderful pilgrimage through written expression.

I have sworn to be diligent, not only in my writing but, in my covenant to be a good follower of all the blogs I have chosen to support with my likes and comments.  I have been inattentive, through no fault of my own, and have made a pact with myself to make up for my negligence and become more of a presence in this world of words, especially with those who have stuck by me on this ride.

Relationships of every kind take effort.  I look forward to challenging myself to put forth my best effort to post things of meaning and to post them often.  I look forward to mending fences, creating new connections and having my little typewriter appear in many areas of this blogosphere and throughout the other worlds of people who love to read.

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Sometimes it feels like only your keyboard will listen to you, but if you keep at it your audience will grow and you will find your true voice.  ~ SN

 

 

The things we were meant to find beautiful

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They grab my attention

and hold me in their embrace.

Chasing them to catch just the right shot

is like chasing the illusion of perfection.

Their shapes, like our lives, can change in an instant

also changing our perspective.

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Once you adjust your position

the view is never the same.

The closer you get to something,

the more beautiful it becomes.

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Sometimes, if you are lucky,

the view is so much better than you anticipated

and those moments should be savored,

breathed in like a fine wine.

 Our destiny is written in the sky,

our hope, painted on the largest canvas possible

but our dreams can change in a whisper.

Although the wind may alter the portrait,

perhaps it was meant to change.

Just maybe, life is as big as the sky

and those clouds should be the cherished blessings

of the things we were meant to find beautiful.

A little blood on Halloween seems almost redundant

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I used to love carving pumpkins.  I was one of those weirdos hoping to have the most creative pumpkin on the block, so I bought a carving kit and some patterns and locked myself in a room to avoid distraction.

Walls were spattered with stringy pieces of eviscerated pumpkin.  Elongated strings of profuse verbiage slithered under the doorway, assaulting the ears on the other side of the door, and small drops of minor arterial spray infused themselves into the paint on the wall.  But at the end of the painstaking process I achieved success!  The copious amount of band-aids, blood loss and light-headedness were worth the effort.  My pumpkins were the talk of the town.  My then-boyfriend’s children (who I still refer to as my step-children) were even proud to acknowledge the creativity on our front doorstep.

After my first attempt, I became a little less guarded when it came to the carving process and the whole family would get involved.  Where there were originally only two arms covered in pumpkin guts, eight sticky arms reveled in the joy of dissecting the large gourds and separating the seeds from the gooey mess.  Each of us skilfully created our masterpieces and sat back with a smile as the toothy pumpkins returned our stares.

The house would begin to smell of the roasting pumpkin seeds and, after a massive clean up, we would light our pumpkins and snack on the seeds in the darkened living room.  The memories of those nights of laughter and camaraderie are the ones I still hold close.

As the eve of Halloween approaches, I am slightly saddened that those years are so far behind me.  I live on a street where no children trick-or-treat so there is no need to create any more scary faces.  Perhaps this year I should take advantage of the fact that my digits are all still intact and drag out the carving tools once again.  I’m sure my dog would like to sit in the dark with me staring at faces like these:

pumpkin

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Happy Halloween everyone!

Even the greyest skies can be beautiful

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Mottled grey,

monochromatic morning

lending a painting

as the ceiling of our day.

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The sky need not be pink

for us to see its splendor.

There is beauty in all things,

we just have to look beyond the norm.

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A storm will come and go

but there is always artistry

in the wake of its anger.

From darkness blossoms light.

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