all is One

all is One

image Gretchen L. (c)

Rhetoric

The art of using words effectively.

What you will read in the following is how the writer deems to see the world and how world the “conspires to blind the writer.” These are simple words, but with profound meaning.

Let us take, for example, the word “apple.” You go to any grocery store and you can buy apples, a simple enough act, right? Many varieties are available, highly waxed and stacked in bins of various geometric patterns, alight in shades of reds, greens and yellows. In its basic sense you take them home, eat them and your brain tells you that you ate an apple. However, you really have not, not in its strictest sense. You may have eaten it, but have you really tasted it? Unless you live where you can have access to roadside stands or go to growers’ orchards and pick firsthand the freshest apples from the tree, you have not really eaten an apple. You have tasted a lie. Real apples do not make it to grocery stores. What you see there are the “apple-shaped frauds that are waxed and preserved and fixed like bugs in formaldehyde. Most people have never really tasted an apple.”

What else in your life has been lying to you? What other excuses are out there masquerading as the real thing, saying that you have lived and experienced the world, when in fact you have been led around in blinders? As long as you follow the mainstream, you are subject to someone else’s rendition of what is real. Unless you have been to Alaska in the middle of a salmon run, fished for these glorious creatures, gutted it on the spot, wrapped it in tinfoil laced with butter, and buried it in hot coals to cook, you have never tasted real salmon.

What does all this have to do with writing? Simply this. If you have never tasted a real apple, you can never write about an apple that is real. If you’ve never been out in a cold November rain letting the rain soak through your clothes, or wipe your nose cold and dripping, letting snow form icy strands in your hair, how are you going to write about characters that live? They’ll only be seen from the inside of a heated room, or through an early morning windowpane damp from dew. If you have never lived it, how are you going to write about characters that live?

Real life is not free, but if you care to look, it can be cheap. Here is real for you. Turn off the television, go outside, and get by yourself. Feel the breeze blow across your face, look up at the sun with your eyes closed, taste some ugly fruit at the local produce stand. Bite into some runt Thompson seedless grapes your neighbor grows in his backyard. Ride a bike, smell the air around you, even if it’s not always pleasant. It’s better for your writing than recycled air-conditioned air. At least once, give yourself something real to hold on to, because if all you know is someone else’s perception of life, how can you write from within your own self? That’s the only true way there is.

In closing, I would like to add if one takes the above literally it would be an impossible task. All this was meant to be was an exercise in perseverance in becoming more aware of what we do write, stay in the moment, objectively stir our muse, and use our innate intuition to make our point. Good luck and happy writing.

gretchen L. ©

A Wonderful Invite

Hi everyone,

I just received a wonderful invite from Cuore di Luna, (thank you so much) to join here at the Salon, so I thought I'd say a quick word or two. As time goes along I shall visit often. When my muse gets in the right mood there's no stopping me. I appreciate the welcomes and hellos and I look forward to meeting all of you.

My blog is new so there isn't much there, but it will fill up as I get going. And just for fun, this afternoon I made this collage. Well, I hope to chat with you soon, take care, and keep your muse amused.

hugs,
gret

image (c) gretchen

AVAST YE SCURVY SEA DOGS!

AVAST YE SCURVY SEA DOGS!
YOU CAN BE GOOD LITTLE ARTISTS AND WRITERS
OR
YOU CAN FOLLOW ME AND THE CREW OF THE CALABAR FELONWAY
IN OUR SEARCH FOR
THE DEAD MAN'S CHEST!

( just don't tell Heather I've arranged this little side trip or she'll have me and my crew walking the plank before you can say shiver me timbers!)

Ask Anita Marie for an Invite and become one brave and foolish Souls that will venture into the treacherous dark Lemurian Waterways aboard the Mysterious Buccaneer Ship The Calabar Felonway in search of the infamous Dead Man's Chest.

FOR YOUR INVITATION CONTACT (and for your secret Buccaneer instructions...shh don't tell anyone)Anita Marie
gargoyle642001 at yahoo.com

A Brief Note on Detours

A Brief Note on Detours

I wanted to see some Bog People today.

My local natural history museum has an exhibit about the Bog People culture of north-western Europe, and I was hoping to get a glimpse of the peat-soaked remains of some of my distant ancestors. (“Hey, there’s Uncle Ingmar!”) However, unknown to me, a 10 K Run that had been organized to occur in the vicinity of the museum. As I tried to get to there, I got caught in a tangle of blocked-off streets and crowds of people. I finally gave up and turned around.

Being somewhat miffed at having wasted the gasoline (I’m not kidding) and disappointed at not seeing the Bog People, I tried to salvage the trip by detouring to another museum in the general area. This museum is dedicated to displaying the remains of Ice-Age fossils. When I arrived there, I was delighted to discover that the park area around the facility was being converted into “Pleistocene Garden”, displaying the modern-day descendants of the native plant-life from the Ice Age.

I felt myself being transported back in time 25,000 years. I imagined I saw a giant sloth lumbering through the brush and thought I heard the trumpeting of a distant mastodon. And, I even think I caught a flash of the tawny hide of a saber-tooth cat slinking through the tall grass.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, if there was a lesson to be learned today, it was merely the reminder of that adage, “it’s the journey, not the destination, that’s important.” I went looking for one thing and ended up with something better.

Text and Image: Lori Gloyd (c) May 13, 2006

Rue: something wicked this way grows...

Rue, herb of grace, herb of woe,
On cankered soil and dead men’s bones you grow,
Dark and wicked things you know,
Herb of grace, herb of woe.

Four thieves plundered through the land,
Robbing bodies black with plague;
A lotion kept the Black Death at bay,
One that included the herb of grace.

Your sap can burn the unguarded flesh,
Used as a whip, you can raise a weal.
You look so innocent and small,
But your juice can sicken as well as heal.

Companion of witches and helper of thieves,
The Holy called you Herb of Grace;
But are you a talisman against the dark,
Or do you pave the road to a darker place?

Rue, herb of grace, herb of woe,
On cankered soil and dead men’s bones you grow,
Dark and wicked things you know,
Herb of grace, herb of woe.

A magazine article - Widowhood

What do you think of when you consider the word "widow?" An old person perhaps, white haired and having reached that stage of life where the present status is to be expected?

Recently I went to meet other widows for Sunday lunch. We were all younger than 55, still looking young and full of life. Each of us had a tragic tale to tell; the beautiful blonde girl at the top of the table, nine months pregnant, struggling to control her beautiful two year old daughter, who had lost her husband in a meaningless motorbike accident; the woman in her early thirties who had woken up next to her dead husband whose 4 year old daughter proudly showed us photos of her Daddy; Simon, widowed less than a year ago who had lost his wife to brain cancer. Simon's wife, knowing that she was dying had kept a journal for her son to read through the long years of his growing up without her, and now Simon had written poetry and had made a memory book to honour her and he brought it to show the rest of us knowing we would understand his need to talk about her - to remember - to share.

One the topics most keenly discussed was the similarity of our experiences after the loss of our partners. Where we had expected kindness we had often found indifference, where we had expected nothing we had often discovered empathy. We had all had experience of neighbours who crossed the street rather than talk to us as if our new "condition" was contaminating. We had all had many so called friends who had promised to ring us "next week" two or three years ago. We had suddenly become invisible. One of the consequences of this invisibility was that there was noone to share our memories with, nobody with whom to say "Do you remember when........." This was especially true for people widowed in early middle age, where the children were grown up and had left for college (as mine had) and where there were no longer many relatives living close by.

Becoming a widow as I did in my early 50s was the defining moment of my life. My husband, to whom I had been married for over 29 years, had just made me a cup of coffee and was going upstairs to the study. I heard a crash in the hall and a strange groaning sound. I ran and found him lying face down on the floor and realised immediately that life had changed forever. I dialled the emergency services and turned him - somehow and with superhuman strength he was able to put his arm around my shoulder and that is how 5 minutes later the paramedics had found us. As I gave him into their care he turned blue and I had to help to try to perform CPR on my husband as the paramedics struggled with their equipment.....all in vain. Within the space of 30 minutes my old life was shattered and I entered a strange world where I tried to make sense of people and events without the man who had been my closest companion and best friend for so many years.

The time that followed remains a blur of misery. Without him everything seemed to fall apart - in the words of WB Yeats "the centre" did "not hold" and I fell into disarray. Even the fabric of the house seemed to conspire against me as the heating system failed the day after the death, the fence fell down, the pipes sprung leaks, the car exhaust fell off.....this was "his" territory and I was adrift.....

I think if someone had reached out then and said "please stay with us awhile," or "would you like to come and share a meal with us" or even "can I come and just sit with you" I might have fared better. There were long weekends where I spoke to noone from Friday to Monday and even one week when I was on holiday when I spoke to noone at all and lost the use of my voice as a result. I struggled with simple things like shopping, walking around the supermarket as late as I dared with my eyes on the ground to avoid making eye contact. I lost the ability to make rational decisions for a while. I stopped sleeping, preferring to stay up all night and watch endless tv programmes about gory operations and near death experiences. I wore dark glasses even when the sun stopped shining. ............

I have recovered a sense of self. Yesterday, with my new partner at my side and my little dog Martha at my feet I stood looking out at an unbelievably blue sea on what must have been the first day of summer and was glad to have survived. At the weekend, talking to other widows and listening to their stories I had almost "gone under" again, I had almost allowed myself the luxury of a downward spiral into grief, but I will not go there again until I have to. I want to make the rest of my life count and thereby honour my late husband's memory. I want to survive and prove that it is possible to do so.

And I want to remind people that it is only a small act of kindness - the sharing of a meal or simply some time - that would have made the loss easier to bear in those early dark days.