Sunday Scribblings: Wonder

This week, Sunday Scribblings, is curious about wonderment:
What do you wonder? Have you experienced wonder? Is it a feeling? An emotion? A place? Tell us about wonder.


Wayward and Hallow

A seed that wanders
a weed that withers
will it ever be real for me.

To reach existence
a swim through light
all to taste the blight of day.

Through serenity and womb
to pick Mother's bloom
I must eat through flesh and doom.

Gulping down the bloodless moon; in search of home
the scent that sails about the sun
how many more times around?

For every moment of woe and wonder
with every wakeful eye
a third shall fail and die.

Sunday Scribblings: Deadline

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is deadline.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zapr0yIfE

Blue Oyster Cult
Deadline

You said you'd be here at a quarter to five
I didn't know if you were dead or alive
How long you think that I can sharpen my knife
I've got better things to do with my life

It's almost the deadline
Don't miss the deadline, darling
When all your bad dreams will come true

Don't miss the deadline
It's almost the deadline, darling
I wouldn't want it to happen to you

Phil screamed at him, and he hung up the phone
I wonder if he ever felt more alone
He never finished his coffee that night
The photo they showed David was a terrible sight

He missed the deadline
He passed the deadline, darling
And I believe that somehow he knew

He crossed the deadline
He passed the deadline, darling
There wasn't a thing anybody could do

Listen my darling, now, don't play with fire
You find a way to balance faith and desire

It's almost the deadline
Don't miss the deadline darling
Consequences are easily misconstrued

Don't miss the deadline
It's almost the deadline, darling
I couldn't live if it happened to you

Sunday Scribblings: Mentor

This weeks Sunday Scribblings prompt:

Have you had a mentor in your life? Would you like one? For what? Have you been one? How? Everyone could use a little more help in their lives, can you see where you could be a mentor now?

I met a rasta man nine years ago. I spent three hours with him. My husband told me where to find him. He runs a shop in Sacramento. It is open for business twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I found him.

I asked him to turn my natty hair into dreaded hair. Three hours later, he did so. I walked out with my temples slightly throbbing and with a sense of dizziness. My hair was sticking up in all directions; it was such a wild do. I felt like pinhead. I loved it. I thanked and praised him.

He gave me so much more.

Jay didn't say too much to me. I sat, a bit nervous, in his barber chair and felt every strand of separation. He carved small squares into my scalp, pulled and twisted. The aroma was pungent. Slightly sappy, salty, pure. I never asked what he was using. I imagined awapuhi, hemp seed, olive, beeswax. Trees.

I was alone in the shop with him the entire time. He wondered what I had been wondering. I told him travel. There were no babies then. Aaron and I were recently contemplating some sort of flight. A place that we hadn't seen before, maybe it didn't exist, but we held onto an idea for a simple life, villages and islands and a quaint home with lots of land. I told Brother Jay about our anticipation for discovering a passage. A voyage. He said that I had fears. He was right. He told me not to dwell on an exact route; he told me to "go". He never gave me a sense of where, but he spoke of his time in Vietnam, of his property on an island, of his wife, freedom, Africa. He mentioned Fiji. I was beside myself, how did he know?

He said that there was no need to search for a passageway, that I was already on the journey. He told me to keep going. He was working on creating intensely tight locks. I felt dazzled. He never stopped to show me a reflection in a mirror. He worked slowly. He spoke with confidence. With ease. He said that if I kept going I would get there.

He gave me so much more.

I didn't walk away from Brother Jay with a plan. I slipped away from his shop with a lighter head and a shear sense of contentment. Confidence. I whispered to myself, "I'm already there."

Aaron had a visit with Jay the day prior. I never asked my husband what they spoke of.

The following week we were 'let go' at our jobs (we worked for the same company then). They never used the word "fired". They, simply, regarded our hair as "unprofessional". There was no use arguing, so we walked away together. This was our first month in our new apartment together. I was pregnant two months later. We were poor. A bit scared. I thought about Jay. I visited his shop a couple of times, during those days, just to look at beads. He didn't say much to me, he just looked at me. He bore the most telling gaze. And I knew, that the journey had already begun. That we were ready for our flight. That the squares had paved an undeniable path. That we would go.

His wakeful eyes, his thinning hair, his endless locks. His clever sense, witty and sound. The man with the yellow van and the discount prices is a guru.

He helped us to slip from the cracks and allowed us to let go. I wonder if he knew that we would never come back.

photo by Carole Herzog Photography

Sunday Scribblings: The book that changed everything

This weeks Sunday Scribblings prompt is absolutely wonderful:

#206 - The book that changed everything

Is there a book that you read at a particular time in your life that changed everything for you? Is there a book you think should be written that would change everything? Words have an incredible power if they are read/ heard by the right person at the right time. What collection of words has been powerful for you?

I love this one!

During my junior year in high school, I found myself living within more than one world. In one, I belonged to contentment and mirth and in the other, to daydream and illusion. In those days, I found comfort crossing the thin line between reality and delusion. This was the perfect time to discover one of my absolute favorite authors, till this day, Neil Gaiman. A close friend of mine introduced me to the Endless, immortal siblings in Gaiman's graphic novel The Sandman: Brief Lives, a world of twisted mythology, gods and demons, confusion and reality, chaos and existence. Quite certain that this was a reflection of my own world, I easily fell in love with the siblings of the Endless: Dream, Death, Destiny, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium.

Brief Lives takes the reader though a bittersweet story full of choices and consequences, loyalty to family and mortal responsibility. Destruction, the missing brother of the Endless, chose to leave behind his cosmic chores, 300 years ago, for a simpler life; one or mortal duties. Delirium, the youngest of the Endless, is intent on finding him, but Destruction has no desire to be found. He has adopted the idea that mankind does a fine job destroying things without him; his realm is no longer necessary. Delirium, who only wants her family to return to the way it was in the days of more delight, asks all of her siblings to accompany her on this journey. Dream, the Sandman, is the only sibling who accepts her invitation, as he is dealing with the devastation of a lost love and is in need of a break from his worries and woes.

In this volume of The Sandman series, Delirium is forced to recognize that the Universe is changing. "...she was growing up or at least growing older...she was no longer Delight; and the blossoms had already begun to fall in her domain, becoming smudged and formless colors and she had no one to talk to..." In so many ways, my own light had become smeared and deluded.
The Sandman , in it's own epic reality, has always exposed tragedy and humor. As Delirium struggles with the idea that she must except change in her own realm, throughout her journey she is able to enjoy moments with her beloved siblings, their words and their wisdom. We are able to experience the idea of 'brief lives' at the end of an awkward dinner, where Delirium walks away from her meal, a pair of chocolate people, and we see the food has suddenly identified a sense of life through her transcendent touch. As the Endless brother and sister turn their backs, Gaiman, so exquisitely writes, "Touched by her fingers, the two surviving chocolate people copulate desperately, losing themselves in a melting frenzy of lust, spending the last of their brief borrowed lives in a spasm of raspberry cream and fear.” One of my favorite descriptions in this issue, this line clearly helps us recognize the idea of our lives within this brief dream. We are granted time, and not much of it. And change is inevitable because life is equal parts bliss, absurd, and awful.

Years ago, The Sandman became my dream away from dreams. And to this day, he still comes to me in so many unforeseeable ways.

It's Such a Magical Place

The trees are friendly, captivating at length. Earth, up here, is the color of pumpkin and peach, misty, with tiny pools of dew that hang on all day. The night's sky makes me feel like I'm wrapped in a blanket of jems. Glistening, shimmering, indigo blue. It's a sky to roam underneath. I hear that the farmers' markets are never few. And these morning turkeys, clicking and gobbling along the path, on the eastend of the house. We have adapted comfortably. The mountains, and then the foothills, and then the charming little place.
It's home.

It snowed during our first week here!

The boys are so funny.
They ran downstairs, barefoot! And came back up, screaming!
Frosty toes.

I think that they ate more snow than they played with.

The sunshine, melting away the powder.
A halcyon sky.
Grass Valley, a little jewel of a town.

What's goin' on, Govinda?

Govinda is quickly turning into a brave little boy.
I sadly, say
goodbye to my baby as the world gains a bright little boy.

A young Spartan!

Treasures and toys

(Thank you Renna for these lovely hats!)

His favorite brother, sweet ♥Jahson♥

Wide eyed with Roby

Soul sounds

His beats make mommy happy.

A tough crowd is hard to please.

Goodnight folks. Govi has left the room!


Thank you, Govinda, for so many moments to savor.

Sunday Scribblings: "When Pigs Fly"

This weeks Sunday Scribblings prompt:

"When pigs fly!"
"When hell freezes over!"
Is there anything in your life that you are so certain of, you'd say these words? That won't happen, "In a month of Sundays?"

leads me to a single image and an eternal thought.

Immortality