Blog Manifesto

Blog Manifesto


This blog is dedicated, as the title would suggest, to the qualities of being young. We are young writers. We are playful and sensitive, fluid and changing. We are unashamed with our art. We wonder at the world, puzzle over the meanings of things and twirl in delight at images and ideas that float by, grabbing at them as they pass. We are curious and constantly inquiring and prying concepts open and taking assumptions apart. We are on the ground, close to the earth. We have bare feet and wiggle our toes into nature. We carry our blankies still and wrap up cozy and comfy with each other and tell ghost stories and shiver at creepy things. We laugh and we cry and we take a lot of naps, drained from our outings and exertions.

We write as gifts to each other, tying them up in ribbon and leaving them around for each other to find, hiding and waiting for the person to wake up and read. Surprise! We weave our stories together to create a bond. One writes, then the other. then another again. We have a shared reality that we have crafted, bit by piece by patch, by string. We write simple, honest authentic things, with our unique voices. You can tell each one of us from the other, without knowing who wrote what. Our voices are clear and gentle and original. We whisper and our personalities roar! Like children, our feelings are strong, our passion for what we write shakes us. We are moved and sometimes left breathless, by our own words or the words of each other. We cannonball into each others spaces. We fall backward into each others writing, like into a pile of leaves or a soft bed. We gobble and grin and ask for more. (footnote kudos to JC)

Then we go to bed, wake up to a new day and do it all over again!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

resilience.

resilience

they told him if he did it, he could be fitted with a prosthetic that was more comfortable and more manageable.  they needed more leg to work with.  he had such a short limb.  i think only 6 inches to work with.  one of the shortest limbs they had ever fitted. 

we were 14, i think, when they took him to the shriner's hospital in lexington, kentucky.  not for the usual checkup and visit.  but to stay. 

i remember him lying in that bed, when we visited.  he was pale and gaunt.  you could see the pain written in his glassy lustrous eyes.  heavy doses of antibiotics and pain pills to get him through it.  pins sticking out of his stump with metal hoops connecting.  they broke the bone on purpose..  and as the bone healed and grew from the inside.. a quarter turn every week.. and crack.. the bone separated again and again until they could grow up to two whole inches of bone.  it was a success.

in the months he was away, he cultivated a decent kantuuucky accent.  we would visit often.  that place was awesome.. they had a basketball court!  and gaming room with pool table and ice hockey and foosball.  that place was decked out.  i wanted to stay. 

he would wheel around like a nut in his wheelchair.  and once again, i was running behind.  i would never have admitted to him how much i admired his choice to go through with the operation.  was incredibly brave.  when he came home, he was changed.  distant.  they asked him a few years later if he wanted to go through with it one more time.  he tried, but he got really sick and they removed the pins and sent him home after recovery. 

he went through so many legs... it was never easy for him. 

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