Forever Young: 04/02/12

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!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Slipping away...self-awareness 1

My body is slipping away…Oh no! not like that, not closer to the infinite chasm! I mean slipping like dealing with the effects of gravity. After sixty plus years of fighting gravity the battle has been lost. Those perky nipples I used to cover with a band-aid when I went braless can masquerade as a studded belt when I do so today. That familiar bump above my knee is now below it. My ankle bones are lost behind fleshy socks. Bubbles in the bath used to tickle in the nether reaches while escaping to the surface. Now, they pop unexpectedly from somewhere down below my calves. The rounded cheeks I recognize as mine are located along my jaw line…how did they get there? The other set of rounded cheeks I possessed are nowhere to be seen unless you’re looking at my thighs!
How did this happen? I should have seen it coming. My body has morphed into that of my grandmother and aunt. Not together! Each looked, in shape, as I do now and I remember thinking I will never look like that! I will watch my weight, eat right, and maintain an exercise schedule because it’s easy for me to do that! I wish I didn’t remember how sure I was that I could do it! I wonder what else I was mistaken about.