Forever Young: 02/04/12

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!

Saturday, February 4, 2012

rosie, reese, and jc take a road trip..

hold onto your hair girls.. i drive fast

if you wanna sight-see.. better let me take a backseat.. you would get a whirlwind tour with me..

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a road trip to nowhere.. no maps.. no gps.. just drive
down through the hills of southern ohio
deep in the pine barrens
driving those old dirt roads in athens ohio.. so beautiful in late summer

stopping to take a little stretch

i find a pine needled path leading back to a small pond
so earthy fragrant underfoot
we skip stones across the calm surface
sit sinking our feet in
sunnies nibbling our toes
watch the beaver take a dip
and deer warily drink..
so peaceful and comforting.. this, my roots.. my ancestral farm.

back to the car
smiling inside
as we drive along.. on our trip to nowhere in particular
ending up wherever we may.

Reese, Rosie and JC go on a Road Trip.

Okay, the first thing we do is all Fly to St. Louis, which is in the middle of the country and hole up in a hotel room for a few days.   That's my hometown and I really miss it.    I promise we will not tour old stomping grounds. Just sit on the balcony of the Marriott and watch the sunrise come up on the arch, over the Mississippi.

I got a big map out and we take turns throwing darts at it, blindfolded and mapping the results. There is considerable cheating going on because Reese wants to see the Grand Canyon and JC wants to go to Hollywood CA to see the starlets and popstars. Rosie wants to hit every commune on her list and end up naked at Burning Man in Nevada on Labor Day.

We rent a huge, huge Rock star sized RV coach with a professional driver and chef. We load our doggies on board, wrangle our suitcases and head out... through Kansas,   ugh.

We draw all the windows closed and get out our laptops and play omgpop all through Kansas, because Rosie said that Kansas was not worth looking at,

but it's not true. Kansas has some of the prettiest vistas and when they pile out of the bus to give the dogs a break, they find themselves looking back in time at a natural prairie park , to when the first peoples roamed this land.

Of course we manage to go to Medicine Lodge Indian Peace Treaty rodeo and where JC buys a large amount of western gear, hats, boots and kerchief that he sports through most of the west.   Reese fills up on turquoise jewelry including a stunning man's belt buckle that she mails back to her husband.

Rosie takes roping lessons and enters the senior cowgirl calf roping contest and takes third place.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.