Unfinishe....

First, thanks to the Poetess who helped me redesign my blog page, and who urged me and encouraged me to once again pick up the keyboard and type, blog...not for the sake of the masses perse, but rather for the sake of the writer that is within me.

This week has been climaxing on this theme, works and words I've needed to write...to pick back up and begin again to do that which feeds my soul. Write. I am in the process of writing a book...though, shamefully I must say it's been nearly a year since I was really and truly writing with the fervency I know is there if I would only give it the time to exist, to be....and yes, I want to justify my absence, the time in between, but...bottom line it wouldn't change things for me.

This week, I did it though, I picked my keyboard back up and opened the document, the book to be, and started at page one, because writing just isn't the formation of words and sentences, paragraphs and plots, it is also the revision, the edits, the evaluation of what's on the page and where the end must be to see if there is a compelling and a connection from where you are to where you want to be at the end, and how the reader will travel with you. So my writings this week are minor in words, but major in that again the book is in process and the relief I feel takes me by surprise, though it shouldn't. It is as if I've been holding my breath for a year, without need or reason...and so here I am breathing again and feeling a bit silly for not breathing for this past year.

Today, not only did my blog undergo revision but as I was cleaning out a drawer of papers I've been meaning to transcribe I came across a letter I was writing to myself to reflect on the changes that happened to me in the year 2005. (I started this reflection of the year 2005, just after the start of 2006, so the memories of the time lines and the hardships, the awe was still fresh at both the abundance I'd experienced and also the sharp edged trials.) The letter was on nice paper, a good pen scrolled the words, thoughts and captured what I'd lived through....or well, at least they did for the first 4.5 pages. I fondly picked it up and I remembered exactly what I had wanted to do that fateful day in 2006, I remember exactly how it felt to be me at that moment, knowing how pivotal 2005 had been and how important it was that I put it all down....and today I read those pages, both as the woman I was in 2006 and the woman I am 3 years after that year....and at the end of the last word, which left me half way through a sentence I felt real grief that whatever had interrupted me had caused me to leave the whole letter unfinished. I still mourn a bit, not writing it as the woman I was in 2006, a survivor of the year 2005, raw and real...vivid....

2005 was a big enough shift for me that 3 years later I still remember it...it changed me that much. But I write today as a woman who has grown since, I am a product of those changes, and all the ones in between. And, though, I've never been good at journals or journal type things, I suddenly today realized that this has to change, I have to change this...I need to do what it takes to have the discipline to do so. I may not write about what I ate for lunch, or what the weather was, or what the news said...or the even the timeline of my days...I need not write about the minor hiccups, minor routines....but I do need to write.

Life is a journey, each day, each year only comes across us, through us once. And we are never the same. This a gift. I'd venture to say there are things, moments, memories and circumstances we all wish we could go back and react differently to, act differently in....but the value of the sum, the whole is still beyond price, greater than the sum total of the parts, each part bigger than we realize as we live within each one...

One hang up I've had is, well, I've not felt I mattered enough to undertake such an effort like recording my life. I've felt inconsequential, back ground, minor, boring even...but that is not true or right. I do matter. I am special. We all are. I easily see the wonderful, amazing, greatness in every other living soul...how priceless, how valuable...and why I don't give myself the same standing is a long and complicated intertwining of many things, but the great and glorious news is I don't have to see myself the same as I once accepted as only right, and only just for who I am. I don't see myself accurately. This I acknowledge, and confess. But I'm trying to see myself more truthfully, see myself as God sees me....a beloved daughter, a priceless soul....or at the very least at least bring myself up to the same standard and level to which I see everyone else.

The journey is important to mark, and remark upon. One of my pastor's has had a crisis hit his family and he and his wife have begun an online journal to both capture and communicate what is going on, what is happening and I treasure it. It is a gift and an honor to read and pray for them, to be given the details of this part of their journey as it happens. I am amazed...they are so wonderful, great, amazing, so....I lack the words, but I'm blessed and I treasure the time they take while they traverse the part of their journey to stop, to write, to bridge the journey with thoughts and the events I am not witness to in person...to include all who would dare to enter, to read, to walk with them and beside them...through words, through prayer, through...

So here I am, rambling, trying to find my way from the beginning of the entry to the end, trying to grasp the point that taunts me from a vague place in my subconscious, as if it is at the bottom of a river bed, trying to rise to the surface...but the silt still holds it, coats it, and it isn't light enough to float yet, to journey lightly on the top of this ever moving river of life.

I am thankful to be writing again, both here, on paper and in my book...I fit into me again, and there is a sigh, a pressure released...and the possibilities are endless but reachable...the hope ignites again, burning stronger and solidly...not that it was ever extinguished, but suddenly I find myself turned towards it rather that trying to live with it at my back, in the distant reaches of the light and warmth it gives as if the edges were really where I wanted to live, as if I actively picked the shadowlands...when really it was by not choosing, not acting, not fighting, not staying by the light, not feeling as if I deserved to stay by the light and the hope and the fire that resulted in and allowed the distance to span, to grow, to inhibit me...to slide away through inaction, indecision...it wasn't a leap, it was a sudden voila, and I realize my return will not be such a momentary flash of light either...

But for now I write, I see the fire of hope, the warmth and feel the corresponding spark within me, feel the draw and the pull...and I throw aside the weight declaring, incorrectly, that I first be perfect, or brilliant, or ....no, I simply just need to be, and to write...and that is beautiful. Beautiful for the priceless imperfections of today that shape who I am and will be, and mark where I have been and who I once was, and the transitory state that exists only in this moment, too fleeting, too volatile, but present for a breath, for right now...a present, a gift, a precipice.

Words on a page---
Pages in the wind---
the book of my life (to quote Sting)...

Today, though a blog.

~K

Giving a Shout Out

I've just picked up a book, one of my Sunday school classes is doing a study through it. And it is amazing...and the author has a beautiful way of turning a phrase and painting a picture. The hand of God is also in it...in the timing of when it came to me...and how and what will happen next will hopefully give Him joy and glory.

Anyhow, I felt compelled to put it up on my blog so my fellow friends and readers would have a chance to be intrigued and perchance go grab the book themselves, read it and we could discuss it in depth....something I like to do... :)

Chasing Daylight
Erwin Raphael McManus

ISBN 10: 0785281134
ISBN 13: 9780785281139

I've only just read chapter one....but even his acknowledgments were awesome. Here is a quote from the acknowledgments, "some moments are so big you cannot seize them by yourself...." and later, "...words cannot do justice to the level of gratitude I feel toward God who created us. What a gift He has given us. He created us to live, not simply to believe. To follow Him is to experience, to explore, to discover." Isn't that awesome?!
But in chapter one McManus talks about moments and I was enthralled...and I loved it. I have a feeling this book will be one that will be profound and amazing and if I could I'd buy everyone a copy and we'd sit and read it together...over cookies, and coffee or coke...and let the warmth of life flow between us all...all the roads we each have been on would converge in that room and what a beautiful vista that would be...and how awesome the stories we would tell as we shared and grew...and read a book together.

Sigh. If wishes were fishes we'd all need fins to swim in the ocean that would suddenly brim....or something like that...

Be well my friends and write soon. :)

Pieces Out Of Place

Sculpture: Leonardo Nierman, "Form In the Wind"

Pieces Out of Place

a shoe lay in the road today

dead center to the dashed line

my car sailed right over it

keeping me on course,

to work,

my mind collided into

the black worn canvas and white speckledly tattered laces

abandoned in a place

it shouldn't have been, the former occupant

long since gone, shoe forgotten,

yet I am bruised by the impact

still caught up,

intertwined by the displacement

woven close by

another discrepancy looms

like childhood dreams

in an adult life

when fancies should have been

packed up, and relegated to the closet

where the old toys now retire

instead of dead center

on the road of life

now presenting a choice

to roll over it

and continue

or to take it up

make it part of the journey

daring to believe

the capacity exists for one more shoe

distillation in process

a patient excercise of time

questions outside of classrooms

rarely have single answers

valued at the judgements

right or wrong

yet the precedent is set

how do we choose

when the lesson seems

to center on choice itself

when the freedom

within us is simply that itself

daily it is done though

as inconsequetial as driving over a displaced shoe,

only when the need arises

and we become the one limping

do we hunger for the balance

of two shoes on our feet as we walk,

hunger for the protection

of a little rubber and some canvas

against the roads of life

and the length of the journeys

to be traversed

juxtaposition stands before us,

simply another fork in the road,

as it were,

yet sometimes there exists more matter

more depth than that

and I find myself

in pieces,

searching for the other parts

as I journey home

discovering which hues match

the sections of me already in place

and where the occurance of

contrast and light

most strike...

even myself---

discovery and rediscovery revealing

the dichotomy of me

a piece out of place

in a place that is the only peace I've known

tangibly

but that isn't my sole reality

and I hunger for more

contact with Truth

to be moved more fully

by what seemingly is

a piece out of place...

a shoe in the road

and a choice I must make

The Perfect Word

The Perfect Word....ever give it a thought? Well I have. For instance...the title of my blogland home...I gave it a great deal of thought, I went on a quest...it is no small thing to name something.

For instance Hubert Humphrey went down as saying, "In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be." But who really wants to take the words of a politician? (No offense intended to the honest ones that may exist....)

Names are important, there are books upon books filled with possible baby names...and names are debated amongst potential mothers and potential fathers...some people have names already picked out should they bear children and will freely tell you of them...others will only tell you after the child is born, for many reasons...chief among them once the child is named who would dare afront the parents by scoffing, or ribaldly sneering at the choice of names...once the name is there it becomes the audience's job to make it fit n'cest pas? However, I'm off target and am on a tangent rather...

Tangents can be pleasant, as I feel this whole blog to be...a tangent...or rather a commemoration of the funny realities of life...or at least, upon occassion, my life.

I went searching for this perfect word for my blogland home, something that would encapsulate the place, and my purposes for it...and I remember turning to Latin...but it didn't fit...wrong language for my hopes...so I went instead to Italian. But I've always loved words...loved how they can be the bridges of communication, the absolutions, the balms, the elixirs of joy, the boldness of a moment summarized...the expressions however varied of what we see and what we feel.

Franz Kafka was able to more fully capture how words can thrill me or fill me with dread and why sometimes I find it very important to find the right one or right ones...and how it is a process, not an instantaneous occurance though sometimes I'm blessed by such inspiration. Anyhow, here is what Kafka would say of names of words, "Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."

So this blogland home and its naming was one of those moments for me...I searched for a way to summon and encapsulate my hopes for what it would be, a snapshot or a picture, a verbal pixellation, Rivelare, was the name, the word I found. Italian in origin, it means, and I apologize if my definition is sparse or slightly off to the native Italian speakers...all I can say in my defense is that on the computer and with a dictionary is where I found it, if you know the fullness of the meaning feel free to enlighten me. Again I am diverting...

E.M. Forester pointed out more succinctly that words have two functions, information and creation.

Rivelare...the informative definition, paraphrased would be: to reveal, uncover, make known, to show, to allow to be seen, to unfold. And in essence that it what I'd hope to create...a place where I take a risk, and share my thoughts, in an unguarded fashion...to allow myself and my random inspirations to be seen, my griefs, my joys, my whatevers...since by nature I am a very private and cautious person...this was a bold declaration--a motto...a carpe diem of pen and page and wit and words...and pictures...

Now if my internet could stay in a functional capacity and be what it should I'd be closer to achieving it and less likely to forget my brilliance, my ephipanies, my definitions or my words...

Perfection then becomes a process, a discovery and a rediscovery...like a poem or a painting that you need to drink from again and again, and still find at the end...a comfort, that it to fit, momentarily...it to be divine, to walk away and know it was right, not distilled by time or absence.