Thursday, July 30, 2009

Bite Me


Wouldn't it be nice if we could really eat Tabasco and have mosquitos explode upon biting us?
Anything to limit them to just one bite would be nice...



Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
- Helen Keller

Friday, July 24, 2009

Once...

I saw him...
and I saw him looking at me...
smiling.
I smiled back.
I wanted to kiss him.
Instead we hugged...

and then,

we introduced ourselves to one another.

Nana would have shunned me with a hushing 'Just kiss the boy...'

'The Kiss' by Sister Singleton

Tuesday, July 21, 2009


I was a little kid and still too young for public schools.
But not too young for love and war.
We were in war...us against them.
Earth girls versus material girls.
Childhood charges...
I ran, barefoot padding heavy through the grass and slapping the sidewalk hard.
At the end of the day, I had scraped up elbows, knees and one stubbed toe.
'What happened to you?'
'I don't know Momma'
'What do you mean you don't know? Of course you know! Look at you! You are a bloody mess'
'Well, I remember running and falling... I just don't remember getting hurt.'

So I have learned not to declare war so readily...
but I still sometimes fly ninety miles to nothing.
I still fall and just get up and go.
And I still find injuries and wonder where I got them...

Artwork, Prayers for Pixies, by my Sister Singleton of JustGiveMePeace

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Wind Jimes


Seashells and Silverware
Bamboo and Bullet casings
Taps and Hand-Tuned Tubes
Elephant Ears andBuilding Blocks
Old Car Parts and Cow Bells
Crystal Beads and Leaded Glass
Forgotten Trash & Rings Remembered

Sometimes life isn't so simple, but it always contains simple pleasures...
May we all see them & soak them up, as we may...

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Lions, Tigers, Smokie & the Bear


I just don't have it in me.
He's fourteen or thereabouts.
He's really, really deaf, but likes to bark a lot and he's somewhat blind, but if he sees you, he wants you to love on him.
He especially likes to have his face and muzzle loved on and his little head will become dead weight in your hands if he's really enjoying it.
He was one of Johns' dogs & his name is Bear.
I was told to take him to the vet for his final trip.
'Dont worry about it. I'll take care of him.'
I just couldn't do it.
And so, Bear has been with us since I returned from the beach.
He loves me and he rivals with Smokie for my affections.
Smokie and Bear... two boys.
Both named by other people, both in fact named by guys named John, both fated to be put down and both living with me...
Bear...whose old age and hips had him struggling to stand and yelping in pain, now jumps in circles around me when I come home....and I have yet to hear him yelp.
My dogs didn't know or care that he was an old timer and they made no special concessions for him.
It's like he, himself, has nw forgotten what it was like to live like an old man.
We never can tell where fate will take us and how free will will impact that fate...
I just couldn't take him...
it's not his time.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009


"By doing, I learn what to do. By going, I learn where to go. One day, by dying, I'll learn how to die..." and until then I hope to simply live, learn and love.

excerpt from Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Pass, Trash, Givers and Keepers

I'm cleaning out my world.
Or at least, I am trying.
It's overfilled...stuffed... too much.
I need for nothing, want for nothing.
I have all that I want or need and more.
To excess, in fact.
So much that I feel sometimes over-whelmed by it all.
In my cleaning, I am finding things...
things pushed to the side, stuffed in a drawer, tucked in a corner.
Things I really don't need to keep & in hindsight, a lot of it I guess I never did need.

I'm throwing most of it out.
Some of it goes into a pile of 'Maybe someone else will want this.'

One little drawer of my life...
stuffed...

a card of decorative buttons, a half empty battery package, a watch which needs those very batteries installed, a phone number to the long-ago boyfriend of a friend, signed medical releases for a child I once kept, dog tags for a dog now passed, various postcards and stamps, stickers and incense, old coins and a wooden ring, a four leaf clover I found last summer or the summer before, old photographs and a fingernail file, playing dice and a couple screwdrivers, expired vitamins and dirty old marbles from the yard, lotion samples, wooden peace signs... and some

and in the midst of all of this, I found un-opened and surely tucked safely away for later, an envelope post-marked September 10, 2007. In it, a letter from my Mother. Sprawling letters loopity-looping to the right, each word leaning right introducing the next...filling the single sheet of linen, that wrapped itself around a crisp twenty dollar bill.

I tucked the twenty back in the linen and stuffed it back into the envelope....

and put it in the pile I call 'I might need it later' along with my heart-shaped rocks & holey seashells...

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Fireworks & Fiery Skies


Happy Independence Day....
It means so many different things to so many different people now-a-days...



Fireworks and Family Reunions...
Parades and Parties...
Veterans and Founding Fathers...
Hot Dogs and Hamburgers...

It is the date which the Declaration of Independence was signed...


But in the big picture and on another level, we are very dependent...
so if we sometimes take for granted our freedoms and our liberties and if some of us get caught up in the fun and festivities , forgive us.

May we look up to the skies and down at the ground
and give respect to that which we are all truly dependent upon...

Friday, July 03, 2009

Bikes and Butterflies


My bike is pretty ho-hum. Except for the double wire basket I have on the back.
The basket prompts the neighborhood kids to sing 'dunt-ta-dunt-ta-dunt-ta-dunt...dunt-ta-dunt-ta-dun.'
I laugh and call out to them, 'I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too.'
It's all in good fun. They know me to be far from the wicked witch of the west...but who can resist the teasing with those big ole baskets.

I love them though. I bike for fun, not for sport. It brings out the kid in me.
Sometimes I'll ride up to the store and tote dogfood or teabags back in those baskets.
The baskets are big enough, so that sometimes I will toss a blanket and some food and drink to take to the park.
Sometimes, I'll take it to the creek and bring it back with the baskets filled with rusty tin cans and broken glass bottles that I have found down in the water.
I love my bike just as it is...ho-hum and all.
But IF i were to customize it, I think I would give it some big butterfly wings.
They would sit upright between the two baskets, as I pedaled along, just as a real butterflies wings sit straight up when it stands.

The wings would have psychedlic cleopatra eyes on them in shades of yellow and orange, teal blue and mint green, purple, pink, white and black.
And when I parked my bike, I could lay the wings down over the baskets and have my very own traveling butterfly bistro bar...
I could meet the traveling Beach Party and The Captain next year on their bike run down by the water.