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/

Triangular Vortices

Gifts in the inbox. I read The Writer’s Triangle this afternoon.

Wish I had read this article at age 17.

While hopeful writers soon enough find out this vortex for themselves, it is the same for anything one wants. When I have the money to visit my distant relatives, I haven’t the time because I’m making money (and writing).

Too, it needn’t be such a frustration or isolation, depending on which side of the equal sign you’re on at a given time. Every interaction or observation was fuel when I was working full time. I began using the park-and-ride, not because I had to. While I’m hermetic by nature and choice, I still get a numb rear end and a mind restless for input; I can satisfy my observing nature by making a trip to anywhere.

If writing is your life, life is your muse. In whichever stage you find yourself, know there is trading-off and balance-making decisions—and writing, always a scrap onto which we scribble.

Joys of Aging? Yeah.

When I saw the title, I knew this book is where I’m at. By no means am I an octogenarian, and I’m double twenty and some.

A collection of connections on aging, I Feel Great about My Hands: And other unexpected Joys of Aging, edited by Shari Graydon, seems just the thing when pronounced with “the knees of a 70-year-old.”

I do fit right in among these women who have come of age, the second age of womanhood and third age of life. Joys of aging. I’ve certainly not heard very many olders through the years who gushed with joy about

Inagural Inspiration

“One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives…”
From the inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s poem

No Peace

I find no peace today.

I would follow my feet through the wet grasses and walk in wind among the stone remains of the dead; there is no peace there either. They cry from abandonment. They speak of the hauntings of war. Some are buried far from home and family, caught unaware by death. A mother embraces her child no longer though they are side by side in death on the same day and buried in the same ground.

I find cemeteries poignant. Like the streams that feed the rivers to the ocean of humanity and inhumanity, I follow the steadfast families anchored in generations and those filled with wanderlust in single or in company. Likely my blood is from among the ones beneath my feet who travel no more.

No peace today.

©2012 Sandra Davidson

Greeting Seasonings

Whichever hour I woke, I would set the coffee on and get dressed. With a cup full of light, sweet brew, I’d sit on the top front step. She’d be beside me, sometimes close for warmth, sometimes sprawled on the cool cement.

I wish I could say it was idyllic. With a state highway, train tracks, and industrial river traffic, it was either less or more noisy. I came for the movement of land and sky. She came to heal me.

Artistic Goal Setting

We can achieve every goal we set for ourselves. Perhaps the timeline can be elastic. Perhaps you had setbacks unforeseen that took priority (I’m about to have my third surgery of the year).

When I was 18, I wrote down goals for what my life would look like at age 25 (I’m now 41). The list made it through a number of moves and messes to find me near age 30. Behold! More than 60 percent of the list had been completed though I had not seen the goals list for years. At that point, I reevaluated. Many things left undone were no longer pertinent or were no longer important to me.

A new list was begun, written by hand and purposely ‘lost’ in my shuffle.

I’m writing in response to Progress Report « Live to Write – Write to Live.

The goal of a poem per week is 52 poems. Fifty-two poems in two years is still ambitious. What is telling is that the goal dropped off the radar, and so it ferments, as MarinaSofia said in her reply.

I think our artistic goals are guidelines. An idea may grab you by the horns and turn you right around. Flexibility and not giving up when a goal remains important to you is as important as not comparing yourself to others.

Let your natural pace guide you and, as Deborah Lee Luskin did, find tools that motivate you.

©2012 Sandra Davidson

Keeping Up with Ideas

My head is always full. Sometimes with useful information. Fridays are my favorite reads at the Live to Write – Write to Live blog (link to story at the end).

It’s ideas for me. Sure, writing ideas as well.

What Didn’t Work:

• I used to have sticky notes everywhere and then, from frustration, I’d put all the sticky notes in a conventional spiral notebook, trying to create some order. This note had to be cut in half and the other half taped to some other page—agh. No more.

• I tried tablets. I had one by my desk, another in the kitchen, the car had at least one with several pens. The bedroom, shame, I had three or four, some pulled from other areas of the house. Not working for me.

• A voice recorder works great for keeping the ideas. That’s just it. The ideas stay there because I’m off working on something else and six months or more have passed before I realize some transcription needs to be done. While transcribing, I get distracted by something on the recorder and I’m starting all over again in six months with transcribing the rest of the tape.
• Journal…see voice recorder above and realize I rarely reread anything I’ve written in my journal.

What Works

• Whiteboards. There’s one in the kitchen that’s half whiteboard, half cork. I have one in my office that’s approximately 3′ by 2′, all whiteboard and magnetic. Wet and dry markers are a must for my office. Fine and chisel tip, a lot of colors. If I had enough wall space, every surface in the room would be whiteboard material (you can get it in rolls and sheets), with some dedicated to current writing projects.
• Cameras. No idea where I would be without my digital camera and plenty of hard drive space on the computer (salute to hubby). See, when the whiteboard gets gapped from projects finished and ideas developed, I don’t have to wipe and carefully rescript the remaining items. I point the camera and take a photo of the few things left on the board.
• Cameras. No, you’re not misreading and I’m not miswriting. My digital camera is also an extension of my eyes and brain, even my emotions. I take it with me nearly everywhere I go. If I don’t, that’s when something hilarious or magnificent occurs and I miss the photo. “Three elderly men gathered around a single picnic table, bundled in hats and coats against the wind rolling up the river canyon.” Unfortunately, I missed the shot; fortunately, my mind remembered from the blur left in the digital photo set.
• Two refillable leather notebooks. One brown and one black. Just two. One lives in my purse, the purse chosen simply because the notebook fit. The other is kept beside my bed when there are are times when my mind will not let me sleep until I have emptied it of what it feels are the lists it requires. I use the normal orientation of the notebook for descriptive writing. I turn it upside down and write from what would be the back for check lists and other temporary scribbles.
• Closet doors. Windows will work if you’re willing to sacrifice the view and light. Here’s where either 3″ by 5″ cards or sticky notes do justice to their existence. Plot and character decisions are perfectly relocatable, repositionable, replaceable and saveable. And that’s the only good use for sticky notes. Otherwise I get myself into a mess again.

Love to hear what you’ve got. ©2012 Sandra Davidson
And here’s that link I promised.

Friday Fun – Fave tricks to sneak writing into your day « Live to Write – Write to Live.

The Ring of Patriotism

This gallery contains 3 photos.

My father’s father was a mostly-silent figure in the chaotic childhood life I lived. The very essence of stern came with Grandpa’s partially-cocked head when he needed you to understand wrong-and-right or an accident into which you were about to step. And…mischievous. I love his ornery laugh and hope he has many years more of […]