... blogging will resume

Reblogged from Fox Chase Review:

… blogging will resume on a limited basis when we return from Pittsburgh. We are looking forward to June 30th – F. Omar Telan and Richard Okewole in Fox Chase  and Poets on the Porch – July 13th 1 pm to 4:30 pm   before our summer break from the 14th of July to September 1st. We look forward to seeing those who can make these two outstanding events!

While you're waiting, we have some instrumental Rolling Stones for your enjoyment. They have the guts to get out there and read. To other humans. Face to face.

An Osmosis Kind of Love

All the years I knew my grandparents, my grandmother woke early and prepared a warm house and meal for my grandfather as well as his lunch. It wasn’t her him-centric gestures that taught me every evening was not guaranteed. She and he chastely kissed at the threshold every morning before he left for work.

It wasn’t an animal, a dog or cat, who taught me the excitement of a homecoming, even if that homecoming was faithful five days a week. My grandmother busied herself about the time my grandfather left from work for home and a quiet expectancy came over her. Before I was a big girl, she taught me to seek the sound of gravel grinding in the driveway under his truck tires and his progress through the gate and house to his living room chair. Taller grandchildren pressed their faces to the scent of sheer curtains cooling from the Southern California sun just to see Grandpa pull into home in his faithful Nissan truck.

I am getting to know

Gimmee Two Steps

If a person you are with walks a distance in front of you, they aren’t respecting you enough to let other people know, “Yeah, we’re out in public together.” That disrespect needs to be addressed quick like.

Kids and parents, parents and kids, siblings, youngers and elders.

If you’re a couple, you can watch the progress. One step in front, two steps—two yards. If you haven’t said anything, speak up and see where the conversation goes. No matter the person’s response, keep watching. Relationship termination if you’ve discussed it and it is more pronounced or a resentful look comes across when they turn to wait for you.

If you’re the one who walks two steps forward—or two yards—best be asking yourself why.

“She’s always fussin’ something in her bag when she could have done that in the car on the way here.”

“My parents are always so LOUD and whatever they were saying in private keeps on coming when the move into public space.”

“My son is five and he still can’t keep up so I practically drag him everywhere. It’s so much faster to do errands without him.”

Perhaps the only reason I would accept is

Kinetic Arts

I have been absent, I know; I will not speak to that.

Last night and this morning I began exploring artists from other countries and time periods, methods and media. Several of the sites were not in English and did not need to be for, as you know, art and music transcend barriers.

What we have is a privilege of connecting around the world to  intuition, to inspiration.

Milan Dobeš Museum in Bratislava Slovakia has a video on its homepage, the music of which is transcendent and the images captivating. I suppose that makes museum curators not just students of art but artists as well.

May this find you well and deep in revelation.

©2013 Sandra Davidson

Wary Dreamer

Rarely have I dreamed of myself or as myself.

Perhaps it is the writer in me, those times when I wake from dreaming and, in the dark, scribble franticly to capture the essence of contiguous or repetitive dreams. No matter what the dream, I wake as if movie credits had
According to a professional source, this is highly unusual. A woman who has worked in the counseling profession for more than 20 years said she’d never had a client who dreamed this way.begun to roll. This is not to say I am unaffected by the dreams.

There have been few exceptions and I find them alarming and disturbing to the point I do not wish to rest, to risk sleep and another first-person dream. One span was in my early 20s. On a nightly basis I was eviscerating a person I knew; the details were visually and tactilely real.

These dreams pushed me into my first experience with a counselor. Obviously I resolved the underlying fears attached to the dreams and to the object of the dreams.

I’m not a violent person, though I know I could be if the act were necessary.

I’m dreaming in second person and first person again, sometimes switching between the two. Most often these dreams feature people I know. I can identify the key triggers, but they are rusty things, things I thought I had dealt with years ago. I feel I can find no resolution because the fears are known to me.

I want to go back to my normal. I can find no way across the chasm except down and forging through.

With Child and With-Child

Dear Mr. Jesus,

“Unfortunately I can’t have any children, but I have raised and had several in my life. That ship has sailed so I just make the best of the little ones in my life now.”

via Not Mine | DEPRESSION: my muse.

You have grasped the solution I still struggle to accept. I don’t struggle often; with-child isn’t a title I will wear. Every now and again, my child slides its hands around my neck and squeezes until a lump forms, and then immediately am alone to recover in gasps, wheezes and tears.

Unlike you, children are a part of my life no longer. The children who were aren’t children anymore.

Your grace and acceptance humble me.

©2013 Sandra Davidson

Reminding to Remember

“I’d like to have balance in my life, but I don’t feel I do as a rule. Sometimes for short periods of time I seem to achieve balance, and it feels real good—so good that I’d like to have it all the time.”

Balance today was revealing and also self-revealing. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and it’s hard to admit where I have been and how different I want to be from a reactionary recluse.

Jean writes, “…I don’t have to spend energy any longer scolding myself for being lazy. I’m not lazy; I’m terrified….” I take a deep breath and support my jaws in my hands as I stare at the screen. I’m not a survivor of ritual abuse or cults. I don’t have multiple personalities. Abuse. That is what we have in common and I’ll not crack myself open to count the ways, means and times.

 Jean goes on, “…the false belief that I am only worth something if I am being useful to others. …but my instinct is to put myself last. …I am worth as much as every other human being on earth—no more, no less.”

Agh. My husband, he tries to unravel my illogic when I say I am using more resources than I am giving back. I seek some—well, balance, of course, but also purpose. I do not wear a watch. That I cannot have in our home a ticking clock counting the wasted minutes and counting down to whenever it is that I will cease to exist is ridiculous but necessary or I too would be (and have been) paralyzed.

I want to turn away from you, from what you feel because your words, experiences ignite a volcano at my core—destructive, cleansing, and eventually the bedrock from which new growth rises.

Turning away is not an option. I can accept what pieces of you are so familiar to me, and I can remind myself that I know, I already know. I often just need to remember and your timing is usually right when I need reminding.

The Farther Star

It is simple to be a bright star in a dark sky.

The rarer success is to be a bright star in a blue sky, able to withstand the nearer sun and still reach a beholder, should there be any who will lift their attention from the paths at their feet and the surround of distraction.

There then a reward to lay lightly to a touch and reveal your truth: Resourcefulness is the seed set upon the wind, freedom is offering up everything you are to the risks, and tenacity is finding purchase wherever you next set to ground.

©2013 Sandra R. Davidson—photo and text.

A Voice of Resilience

I’ve become fond of a WordPress blogger because he finds profound truth in simple images that evoke a deep resonance. I may not agree with every post; I don’t have to in order to appreciate his writing.

“…long sessions of ruminating is [sic] a virus”
“We are islands by mistake…”

And he finishes with a line of hope, a line of perseverance.

http://depressionmymuse.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/the-wind-carries-my-wailing/

Make Space

Last night I saw a box with negatives and a few photos. I took it with me when I went to bed and used my husband’s light tray to examine the images; many negatives were more than twenty years old. I went through every set and kept none. I tossed and recycled, then shredded the negatives to dump as trash.

It was something my husband didn’t understand, “All of them?” Yes, they were from a time that is no longer part of me. My momentary regret was to be unable to return any to the subjects of the negatives. Too many years ago to know