I Hope

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To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.
— “The Book of Joy” by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu  

I love this quote. The case for pessimism is hard to refute when we live in a very imperfect world, with various struggles and strife.

There has been this undercurrent of fear for many since November 8th. The tensions and animosities that marked the marked the election have only increased in the days between Election Day and Inauguration Day.  With January 20th only a few days behind us there is this sense for many that life is going to be faced with arduous trials, but that doesn’t mean we need to live in despair. We have to have optimism, to have hope.

Hope.

It is such an elusive word. How do you describe hope?

We all know what wrong is when we see it. We may not even have an exact name for it. Sometimes it is nothing more than gut feeling, but we know it. The same is true of the expectation that comes with hope, the trust the comes with optimism. We just know it.

Like pessimism, optimism is a feeling. Hope, however, is a conscious choice. It’s far too easy to wallow in the woe is me. We have to actively choose to have hope.

Hope makes us believe that things will be okay. It is a great support which makes us not give up easily, because it makes us believe that situations will eventually get better and can be solved. Hope finds out bright lines even in utmost darkness. It lets one to think miracles even in impossible situations. Someone who has hope will usually continue hoping. Hope makes our life have more motivation to continue and carry on in hard situations.

If one cuts off hope, it ultimately cuts off life. The desire to get involved in making the world a better place is not a bad instinct, it’s a necessary one.  It’s how we have survived. It’s how we will survive.

Having hope is an active, decisive mindset etched into every single moment. No matter the haze and fog that clouds our vision, hope cuts through, never losing sight of the stars behind the clouds.

Hope is not the promise that it will be easy, but the faith that we will get through it.

And we will.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 challenge – Week 4
52essays2017
A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing this week:
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Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

Nobody Knew

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Nobody knew
Those curtains so dark
Hid dirty deeds so stark
The silence is broken

Nobody knew
That which made me strong
Was learned from all your wrong
For no words are spoken

Nobody knew
The sins in midnights past
Have come to roost at last
The silence is broken

Nobody knew
The depth of the danger
Was from kin not stranger
For no words are spoken

Nobody knew
The truths that were shun
Until the cock of the gun
The silence is broken

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At dVerse Victoria prompts us to say it again with the use of repetition.

dVerse ~ Poet Pub | Meeting the Bar – I’ll Say It Again (and Again and Again)

Real Toads: The Tuesday Platform

The Iron Phoenix

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The sky seems more blue, From the bowels of earth

In shades unfathomable, to a world sealed in the night

A fidget enthralled, I’m moved standing still

By this bond twixt light and dark, A phoenix newly rising

In timelessness of twilight, The iron horse travels onward

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Over at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads, Dreaming with Stacie provided a mini lesson on Poetry, Writing & Metaphor and invites to write a poem based on a specific metaphor.

Many of  my subway travels involve elevated trains (el trains as we like to say), where my train may start at a station below ground, but ends at a station on an elevated platform above the streets.  There is a marked difference in the dark of the tunnels and the dark of night. Even when riding during witching hours, when the train emerges from the tunnel it can feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes, especially in the heat of summer. The duality of the Super Tanka seemed the best form to tell the tale of transition.

real-toads-buton
Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads – on Poetry, Writing & Metaphor  – Dreaming with Stacie

When the Reaper Calls

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It’s a call to depravity, I know it for such
He’s put the voices there and I want it so much
With an angelic façade it’s only me I deceive
He offers a gift, have I the guts to receive?
His susurrus guides me down sacred halls
Can the grim not heed when the Reaper calls?

Unlike the moth I know I’m playing with fire
Letting him taunt the release of my desire
Knowing once set free there’s no re-containing this
And like Judas my fate is sealed with a kiss
Only in Death can I live – no, I do not stall
Can the grim not heed when the Reaper calls?

Releasing all that society has my soul caging
I’m wanton in the hold of my disengaging
And the dark shadows rise from deep in my core
As I take the mantle and Thanatos takes score
My back arcs in the throes of sinful enthrall
Can the grim not heed when the Reaper calls?

His susurrus guides me down sacred halls
Only in Death am I living – no, I do not stall
My back arcs in the throes of sins enthrall
He smiles knowing at last, I realize it all
I the new Keres moan in murderous gall
The grim to his kind Reaper – I heed the call

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Lesser known among the gods of the mythology, Keres a daughter of Nyx, is a sister of the widely known Thanatos. In spite of being colloquially known at the Grim Reaper, Thanatos is actually the god of peaceful death. On the other hand, Keres’ forte is violent death, primarily over a battlefield in search for dying and wounded soldiers.

And Nyx (Night) bare hateful Moros (Doom) and black Ker (Violent Death) and Thanatos (Death)…
— Hesiod, Theogony 211, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White

Today at dVerse Victoria prompts us to say it again with the use of repetition.

dVerse ~ Poet Pub | Meeting the Bar – I’ll Say It Again (and Again and Again)

Susurrus

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My whispers
ignored in bright noise
Of noon

Timbre of my susurrus
In your ear heard
Warmth of my breath
On your skin felt

Holds court
Within midnight’s
Solemn depths

Cruel torture of haunting
Knowing I am naught
But a memory
You cannot escape

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At dVerse Whimsygizmo asks us to whisper a quadrille.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub Quadrille #24

And A House Is Not A Home…

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“But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home…”
– Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Also with a respectful nod to both Dionne Warwick and Luther Vandross of course, I have to say – yes.

Until the age of twenty-three when I moved-out for good, I lived with my parents, more or less – that’s a very long story that can be summed up in a poem I wrote here.  It was my parents’ home yes, but not mine. I lived there as a child as all children do because, I had no choice.  Until I could afford to be on my own, I had no choice.  Most parents, at some point, will explain the finer points of home ownership. It almost always comes first in some form of My house. My Rules.  I had my bedroom, yes, but I never felt at home in my parents’ house. A stanza from the  above referenced poem…

Where do I go
This was my shelter
It was all I’ve ever known
I’m taught never to be where I’m not wanted
But what do I do when I’m a child
And where I’m not wanted is home

It was an intangible difference, but one I innately, if not completely, understood even as a young child.

“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

When I moved out of my parent’s house, I moved into Bill’s parent’s house. They were both retired and aging, still for the first couple of years very much with us. Yes, it was technically the parents’ house and there was definite clashing of heads twixt all four of us adults from time-to-time, but there was a mutual respect companionship and love throughout those walls.  As his step-father’s health rapidly declining and his mother was showing the very first hints of Alzheimer’s I found myself in the role of partial caretaker of the elderly parents. Living with them taught me that home and family is are relative terms less defined by blood, more defined by relationships. Bill has cousins, the family of his mother’s best friend. People he was not related to by blood, but were very much his family. That was the first place I felt at home.

“When I think of home I think of a place where there’s love overflowing…”
Home – The Wiz Soundtrack

Whether in an apartment, but especially when we actually owned our own house I learned home was more than my four walls and the roof over my head. Home is an environment. It was my dog I could hear happily barking and doing what we dubbed the happy-happy-joy-joy dance as soon she sensed my approach to the door. It was the feeling that greeted me when I walked through the door. It was my sons and husband who waited for me to get home. It extended out of the walls and windows of my actual abode to those we welcomed within. My sons’ friends who knew they better “greet an adult first when coming through my door” before going to play video games in their bedroom. Our friends and family coming over for barbecue and the annual Superbowl party.   At long last I had found home.

And then I lost it.

“Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project

Through a series of events I’m not going into here, when my husband died I was no longer able to keep living in our home and long story-short I wound up moving in with the one person who always had my back, and opened her home to me when I needed one, my best friend. Coming from a life of being an only child, living with Bill who was estranged from his living sibling and myself having the two boys, I had lived in relatively quiet homes. The realities of living with a large family was foreign to me. It was one thing to know, or rather know of, a string of siblings and nieces and nephews of her family, but I had very little interaction with them over the years. I understood them in the Hallmark card concept of everyone was around for Thanksgiving dinner in which we showed up for an hour or so and then left to visit elsewhere. Still very much walking the Path of Grieving at the time, plus a series of other mayhem that befell, I was grateful, to have a roof over my head. I was grateful it was with my best friend, whom I love dearly. After a twenty years of finally having a true feeling of home in my life, being in a home not my own again was especially stinging. The day-to-day of always having people who were not my family, always around, and as I felt in my business, was something to which I had much trouble adjusting. I quickly understood that none of them would ever really understand how I could be in my room, reading a book not wanting any interaction just as I would never understand the sound and fury and a constant stream of people coming and going that was their norm. Over time I was definitely more at home there. A couple of her siblings have claimed me as I have claimed her as my sister on all legal forms. Still, for all of that, I could never really make the apartment we shared feel like my home. Because I knew from the onset, no matter how long I stayed there, it was always a temporary thing and she would likely be the only person to miss my presence when I finally left.

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.” – Robin Hobb, Fool’s Fate

Twice times I rode the train and went back to my old block, to “casually” pass by my old home. The first time was maybe a year or so after the boys and I left. The house was empty of tenants, the fence needed repair, the yard was overrun with weeds.  The second time was perhaps around the third year mark when I saw it in passing from a train.  The yard was cut, a car was in the driveway, the house was occupied by a family not my own. Both times I was still in grief, so all I saw in my heart were how the Christmas decorations would hang from the awning. The football shaped balloons we attached to the fence for Superbowl, where the grill stood in the yard. I saw it while passing by in a car a couple of summers ago. The building was almost out of my sight before I even realized where we were. I understood I would have been immediately in tune with it before, it did not register because it was no longer home to me anymore.

If there is one thing we humans all have in common, it is that we all want a place to call home.

After several years of living with my best friend I am under my own roof again. I am on totally on my own, no children, no romantic partners, just me, but I feel it. I still have some furniture I need to purchase, some décor I need to work out, deal with a host of other changes, big and small, in my life because of it, but I feel it. The views are very different than before, how I move around is very different than before, it is a very different feeling than before, but I feel it nonetheless.  And oh when I climb the stair and turn the key in the front door at the end of the day, yeah I feel it…

“Home is where the heart is.”
– Gaius Plinius Secundus

HOME.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 challenge – Week 3
52essays2017
A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing this week:
sol
Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

 

You Must Remember This

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I find myself the owner of treasures of value to no one, but history and as the unofficial family historian – me.

My late-husband was a semi-hoarder, a trait well earned from his mother as I came to learn over the years. In a series of happenings in the two years after his passing that I will not go into here, things were put into storage for what I hoped would be for a few short years. Eight years later I in turn have inherited all of these things and have finally begun the arduous process of sorting through them.

Some things were easy to decide what to do with, such as the receipt from Sears & Roebuck. Think about it, I said Sears & Roebuck. The receipt is so faded, I could barely make out the date (06/01/68) and the cost ($27.00), but not the purchase item itself. I’m reasonably sure -were she alive now- Laura, my late mother-in-law, would not be too put out that I tossed it. Reasonably sure – I think. $27 was a hefty amount for a S&R purchase back then. A part of me sincerely feels that she could likely recall what the purchase was for – with the steel trap that was her mind before Alzheimer’s took its toll.

The birth certificate of a brother-in-law, deceased long before I met my husband, is another story. From the 1940s, I can still feel the raised seal of its stamp, letting me know it is official if not the true original. Marriage certificates, note the plural on that. My erstwhile mother-in-law was quite the dish, let me tell you! Old dog tags, family photos, more documents, family letters etc. were also unearthed. Two letters showing some serious animosity between sisters-in-law, shed a light on tensions I had sensed, but could never put name to back then. Letters from my late-husband to his mother while he was in the army nearly made me cry.  I am the only living person who can be the bearer of these captures in time for these specific people.  At least for the moment.

Bill was estranged from nearly every single person he was related to by blood. I know he has, (or knew he had?) a brother in San Diego. A falling out over twenty-five years ago has sealed the deal on my wanting to find him now. Some physical wounds heal, but the emotional scars can still fester. Somewhere out there is a niece with whom I did get along. Regrettably, as life has a way of doing, in with Bill’s passing I am ashamed to say we are no longer in contact. Her father’s birth certificate, among other items are things are rightfully hers and I would love to give them to her. Thus, I simply cannot let them go for I have hopes of finding her and being able to do such someday. But what do I do with this treasure trove now? Had I a private home with the ever useful basement or attic, there would be no question as where to put these in the meantime. However, the reality of living in an apartment where storage space is at a premium I find myself at a personal cross road.  For I also have my own treasures to add to the mix.

In a bin from storage I found the tops Bill and I wore for at our wedding. My best friend presented Bill and I with an heirloom clock. It has the traditional marriage vows printed on it, with our names and wedding date on a plaque attached to it. It is too obvious what it is, and after ten years of being a widow, now living in an apartment he is not a part of, I could not hang it on the wall. So it, the tops and a few other things I’ve deemed a part of “that time” yet feel should not be thrown away, has been stored up on a shelf in a closet. Out of sight, if not entirely out of mind.

As I am still sorting through the cache, currently all are boxed, taking up space on in front of a bookshelf in my living room. I fight the cleaning urge to just toss them and be done with it. It is treasures like these, mementos held onto and passed down are how people trace family. Not just the who someone was on the family tree, but who someone was as a person. The family tree can tell me Dorothy and Laura were sisters-in-law. Only finding those letters tells me that they were not fond of each other and how long that animosity ran between them. The letters tell me how much Bill loved his dogs. The family tree will tell you that Bill and I were married and when. Only the photos will give testament to the not exactly traditional aspects of the wedding itself.

In the interim, my not-so-immediate goal after the sort, is to scan and document everything I can. And perhaps laminate some of the older, more delicate paper items that are in danger of being lost forever. That is fine in and of itself, but while I can scan a photo of my three-year-old child wearing it, I cannot scan the “child-abuse” shirt itself.  Or scan the wedding clock, or the dog tags, or… or…

Most people can easily trace to their grandparents and perhaps back to at least one set of great-grandparents, but not much further.  One of the reasons sites like Ancestry.com and the television series “Who Do You Think You Are?” exist is because there are many who understand the importance of documenting these things, at least the paper things, while you can. In this throwaway society of new or nothing, it becomes harder and harder as people cannot or just don’t hold on to these pieces of the everyday anymore.

The thought that many years from now another family member will come across these previous timelines and enjoy these revelations as I have, fills me with joy. For while the photos and letters can be documented electronically, it is not the same feeling that raised seal or the texture of an old shirt under your fingertips. It is my wish that long after I’m gone, hopefully future great-grandchildren, will come across the old photos, the clock, the “child abuse t-shirt” and other treasures saved and smile just as fondly on them then as I am smiling now thinking of their stories.

That alone tells me I will be holding on to these treasures for a little while longer – throwaway society be damned.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 Challenge – Week 2

52essays2017

A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing it up this week:

sol

Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

Wordle #137 – Early Morning Meeting

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I knew picked a bad time to quit cigs when my scapegrace of a boss texted, and emailed, at 1am to come in for a 7am meeting. FFS, none of us called into this farce needed to be here this damned early and he knew it. The latest ad campaign was in its fifth day of stellar reviews. Even better, fortune shined its loving beam upon us when an unfortunate comment sparked an internet and news firestorm. The fusion of the public parapraxis of a well-known, but well- hammered, celebrity and our tagline exploded across the Twitterverse three days ago. I know a couple of our competitors considered it mealy-mouthed for us to not enact actions of our own at a such an easy target, but this campaign was my baby; I stuck to my guns at taking the high ground and it has paid off.  We have been praised for our restraint, especially with such an easy target. The good news for this quarter is  solidly rising, and hints of possible awards in our future beginning an early buzz. We were sitting so golden; this meeting was simply a stroke to his meager ego, flexing his boss muscle to show he could.  So here I am, nicotine patch on my arm and much-needed coffee in hand as I pass the wall of windows on our floor overlooking downtown, dawdling, before I head in to the shenanigans.

The early morning sun was slowly rising along the jagged horizon of skyscrapers. Its shine, reflecting off nearby windows, was near blinding.  I rarely have time, correction – I rarely give myself time, to take notice, so on a rare whim I allow myself to stand there, forehead resting on my arm against the glass and just day-dream for a moment. No censure, just letting my mind flow where it may while watching the burgeoning dawn. Naturally my mind floats to the object who-has-yet-to-know-the-depth of my affections. I sigh, thoughts of her turning my soul gelatinous in a warmth that is no longer surprising to me. I smile as my emotions leak out in the relative dark of the office floor.

Aurora is so wonderful and smart and beautiful. What would she say to married life with an average smuck like me?

A soft gasp to my side turns my soul so queasy I nearly drop my coffee. Oh dear God! Had I said that aloud?! I slowly turn with dread, relaxing as I face Aurora.

“She’d say that you’re far from average and hardly a smuck.” Aurora takes my hand, grinning at what I know had to be a happy, yet stupefied expression on my face.

“She’d say Yes.”

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week-137
Wordle #137 “January 9th, 2016”

Enact, Parapraxis, Scapegrace, Meager, Spark, Day, Mealy, Quarter, Gelatinous, Queasy, Nicotine, Fusion

Use at least 10 of the words to create a story or poem. The words can appear in an alternate form. Use the words in any order that you like.

Hunter

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the hunter, alone
silent in the snowy copse
his heartbeat heard strong
a loud thumping from within
as his prey is spied

this day the elusive doe
in his sights stands still
graceful neck arched to the sun
breath misting the air

In a swiftness, eyes meet eyes
before frantic bolt

His shots in the air ring loud
rumbling the earth
setting all fauna in fear
of much more than him

his tale to be told come spring
sole consolation
as snow in numbers gather
too close for him to outrun
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dVerse has us Meeting the Bar by trying our hands at writing Choka, an unrhymed poem alternating five and seven syllables that end with an extra seven-syllable line. You can use the 17 or 19 onji (syllable) style.  It can be any number of lines that you choose.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar~ the Choka

I Think of Spring

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A subtle intangible thing
These fallen leaves how they array
In autumn leaves I think of spring

Yellowed hues to the grounds cling
Bringing to thought vernal displays
A subtle intangible thing

I find my heart has taken wing
On how new blooms of crocus sway
In autumn leaves I think of spring

My eyes spy fall’s warm coloring
My soul denies thoughts of decay
A subtle intangible thing

A whim of my own soul’s choosing
This feeling does not go away
In autumn leaves I think of spring

I feel first hints of winter’s sting
Yet smile as I go on my way
A subtle intangible thing
In autumn leaves I think of spring

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For the first dVerse Poetics of 2017, Mish offers us an array of art and asks us to use one as inspiration of  New Beginnings. My chosen image brought to mind the bright yellow of daffodils in spring. Spring is new beginnings in its own way, so that’s where my muse went in the form of a villanelle.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Poetics ~ New Beginnings