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!

Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Scent Lingers

Dan's family had five kids and each of them had a garden plot on the south side of the house.  Dan won an award for a prize eggplant.   His dad would trellis cukes and they would grow five feet tall covered with the veggies.  His sisters grew beans and the most amazing tomato plants.  The New Jersey climate was exceptionally suited for tall over bearing tomato plants.

They didn't grow flowers.

We grew everything that caught my grandparents imagination.  We had as many flowers as we had veggies.  Every shack on our property had a bed of something growing against it to soften the visual edge of flat black tar paper.  Flowers look wonderful against the black backdrops.

We had 4 oclocks against the smokehouse.  I would go over there in the afternoon and check them out to see if they were open yet.  I would stick my nose into the trumpet shaped blossoms and smell in till the petals collasped around my face.  

I got my morning fix from sniffing the morning glories.   They sort of stink a bit, and they often had buzzy visitors, so i would pick a flower and carry it away from the plant and let what ever was on it fly away before I snuffled it.  

Touch me nots were next to the 4 oclocks.  They are a form of impatiens that pop out their seeds in an explosion when disturbed.  Popping out touch me nots was a lot of fun, and it ensured next years fun as well.

They always came back.

Grandma collected seeds from everything and put them in white envelops for safekeeping.  She wrote on the front with her beautiful old fashioned perfect script and tucked them away in a glass jar in the cupboard.

 I was talking to JC this am about a few random memories and these popped up like we had disturbed our seed pods.

I got ideas cascading out.


not done.  not done.
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