NASA Image of the Day

Monday, May 28, 2012

Warning: Authorship is not, by definition, autobiographical

It always astounds me that every spark of creativity is assumed to be drawn from the depths of autobiographical despair and angst.

I daresay that if it were, indeed, so, there would be very little creativity in the world. Indeed, having no license - or daring - for either character development beyond personal understanding or known lifestyle, the resulting prose would be the dull, flat stuff of weedy paperback novels, stolen from the same plot line as yet another pair of heaving somethings, cast aside amidst the throes of ....well.....something seedy. 

And yet, mixed amidst the dire dreams of monotony, and tucked into the confines of a still beating heart, there live the quiet meanderings of the creative mind: ever the stuff of possibility, which, quenched by the better part of both valour and common sense, bid adieu to the sad, stale realities of the workaday, and, casting caution aside, ........live.

This is not autobiographical. This is beyond largesse, laundress, and finesse, and hovers somewhere in the nether shadow betwixt all good Reason, and the things we we were told would only result in us being......well........

not ourselves. Interesting, that.  

Quietude, Finitude and the War of the Roses

His eyes were fixed on her face.

Her hands instinctively flew up to her cheeks, hiding the lines that time and pain had etched there. He stepped towards her, gently grasping her hands in his, and raised them to touch both hands, fingertips all, to his lips. His voice was low, and quiet.

"You have life, and the passage of time, in your eyes, to mix with the fire there". He pressed one of her hands to his chest, and raised the other to his cheek, laying it gently there, like a bandage. She stroked his face gently, spreading the fusings of time and agony away, like a brushstroke on canvas.

"Ah, Mishka mine." Her laugh hovered in her throat, like a piece of toffee, savoured and tasted, like the fire of a sip of brandy, on a freezing winter night - just enough tremble and sizzle to make him breathe in, tingling, and exhale....and, in doing so, recognize the thrill of being alive.   

She bent her head, and pressed her lips to his cheek, and then drew back, smiling at him.

"I can feel the air, coursing through here". She touched his throat, gently, with her index finger, where the pulse was beating like a slow, methodical drum.

Then she threw back her head, and laughed, the wildness not yet extingished, despite the years.

He smiled, stroking the cap of hair, which made her look like some strange elf, or a wild Inuit woman, loping along in the gathering gloom, devoid of pelts. He rather liked her without the tresses...or with them; it just made her fiercer, somehow. The Roma in her made him twinge....and trod gently. He knew that glint.
"Can you imagine?", she murmured, leaning in against his lips, speaking against them, with hers, while conspiratorially, rubbing his nose with hers, and murmuring....."that some poor chit told someone else that I was a LESBIAN?'' The sudden, spontaneous grin split his face in two, with her glinting hazel orbs two inches from his face....he couldn't help it: he burst out laughing. It rumbled in his chest, comfortably.

Then he swung her around, roaring, until they both tumbled into the sand, and lay there, laughing; too old to care; and too young to stop from clinging to each other.  The urgency, after this time, was touching.

He pressed her face against his neck, and spoke to the top of her head.

"Clearly a manic woman, Contessa Fireball....or maybe just jealous, I think." He said the last somewhat softly, and kissed the top of her head. "Are you still mad at me for leaving?" They were locked in an embrace somewhat startling to him, if only for its fierceness.

"Everyone leaves me", she said, quietly."Except the ones who cling to me until I can't move, or breathe...." she sighed, moving her head back , to look him full in the face, softly, and smiled at him. He held his arms in the air, exaggeratedly, wide-eyed, and she gave him a soft punch in the arm.

 "Life gave me a moment of fire so sweet that it burned itself into my life, and my heart, forever....." She spoke the words with a nostalgic reverence, savouring them, quietly.   

She continued. "Some might call me old, my darling, and I never was any kind of testament to physical perfection or beauty, but the lines are a different, wild testament -  to fierceness, and feeling. Did you expect anything else from me, at the last, then?"

Her voice was soft, but her eyes were green flecks of steel, nestled amongst the grey. This was a woman who had made it her business to drag men bigger than him back into wanting to live. Beneath every other conflicting emotion coursing through him, there was immediately, there, along with what had been present the day he met her: unspoken, implicit respect. 
He ran his finger along her lips, and kissed them. They were soft, and firm, and gentle rock, just as he remembered.

Age had made her interesting, concerned, compassionate, fierce, and complicated: gone was the girl. The  wild rock woman in her place pressed her fingers into the side of his head, laid her cheek along the side of his face, and said,

"Time has flown away, along with all of the things I might have asked you, as far as what you might have expected of yourself,  my Soul. There is only today."

They lay back, wild and calm, peering at the stars peeking out into the blanket of ink sky, and as she cradled her head against his neck, the green flash of sunset burst out for a moment, lighting their face in glint and shadow - and the promise of a new day. He felt a calmness he had not felt for twenty years, surging through him, like an elixir.

He bent against her, breathing in Time with the rise and fall of her breasts, which he laid his face upon,  gently, as, staring into the sky, he was suddenly awestruck at the diamonds which had suddenly shown themselves, whirling and still, in the pale, glowing sky. 

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Towards Expression, Impression, and Growth!

The artistic impulse is instinctively towards healing and creation, through expression of some sort. If you look at a DaVinci, or modern visual art, or think about music or sculpture, the idea of "being touched, moved, and inspired, somehow" - the "pointer finger connecting to pointer finger" as one little girl said, perfectly - is its Essence.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Search for Air - A Discussion of Process

He was slightly bent over, one hand on his hip, breathing in and out laboriously. Spittle was hanging from the end of his nose. He turned his head rapidly, sideways, to peer up at her, through one open eye, pirate-like. The other one was squinted shut. A glob of the nose spittle flew up and hit her in the eye. She smiled, unfazed, like a surgeon.

"What was THAT?" he whispered, weakly.

"Eight solid hours of induced laugh therapy", she intoned. She wiped the nose spittle glob out of her eye with her shirt, sighing with satisfaction. "I learned it from a slightly odd Indian man who most people thought was just psychotic. He turned out to be a genius, therapy-wise, despite being alone a lot." She smiled at him again, watching him anxiously, like a bug.

"I may have overdone it a bit, but I didn't want you to think I had been neglecting you. I just get very focused." He was coughing, and gripping his side.

"Is it supposed to result in this much sharp, stabbing pain?" he answered between coughs.

There was a little spittle lodged in the corner of his mouth, foam-like, which he couldn't quite manage to wrap his tongue around. The tongue itself was hanging out of his mouth, dog-like, fighting for cooling air, like a lizard - and, really, to shepherd more of the air stuff into his lungs. The resulting intake of breath was interspersed with a strange moaning sound. He was terrified he'd have to urinate next, and destroy the whole carefully orchestrated process of bodily functions he was still, at the moment, mastering. He could only imagine what he might have looked like, to someone passing by....

"Stop, oh stop", he gasped.

"Are you sure?" she said. "We want to try and push this to your burn limit, if we can. The effects last longer." She was squinting, as if she had a tic, where the spittle had flown into her eye, as the cool air hit the wet surface. A mad image of Groucho Marx flew into and out of his head, briefly, standing there. He felt lightheaded.

He was staring at her face, helplessly, gagging at the tic. He thought he might die at any moment.

"Can't you just stop all movement briefly?", he moaned, finally. The tears had slipped out of  his left eye, and were pouring down his face. The body was showing its rebellion against stroke.

"Liquid release!" she blurted out. "Usually it's the other end! You're really worked on the control focus exercise, haven't you? Good for you!!!!" She was relentless. He thought she might end with "my little elf man", or something equally impossible. He was allowing himself the moan sound mixed with air, generously.

"Ahhhhhaaaahhhhhh errrr mroooow, " he said. He crossed his legs, still bent over, and fell over, at last.

"I'll be right back", she said. "The phone's ringing....."She trotted off, like a pole vaulter. He noted, absently, that although the rest of her body moved - including her breasts, which jiggled slightly above the underwire bra beneath her shirt - her head, like a bobbling dashboard doll, remained unflinching, like a strange orb eye, or a rock, with hair on it. The sound of his moans bounced off it, echoing slightly in the afternoon sunshine, as she retreated.

He lay there, silent in his sudden private moment, looking at the dark stain on his trousers, and sighed. He was her slave, he knew, happily.  He felt wonderful, despite the nasty smell. He barked out loud, suddenly, for no apparent reason that he could understand, feeling free at last. Martin Luther King Jr., he knew, would have understood. He looked upwards, slowly: the dark cloud had lifted.  

Never again would he refer to himself as Schleprock. She had won.

  

Monday, May 14, 2012

Happy Mother's Day, 2012

Sunday May 13, 2012

One of my fondest memories was of my mother and I going on a hike together, one Good Friday, down
Red Hill Creek Valley.

When we found our destination, and after looking at various small animals, including birds, squirrels, and the occasional rabbit or two, the best lunch ever got cooked over an open fire: wieners and beans.

The smell of the open can of beans, roasting over our little fire, while we roasted wienies and then mixed them in the beans, was out of this world, and seemed a rare feast to a little girl with a smudged nose, and a canvas cap. All I knew was that I had the coolest mom, ever.....still do, in fact: an adventurous spirit still wending her way, with my dear Dad at her side, through the highs and lows of life. My life has been blessed, as a result.

For everyone lucky enough to have a mother in their lives - or a woman dear to them, who tried to fill in for her, as best they could - here's to remembering, celebrating, and letting them know how grateful you are for those moments.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I love you!