Forever Young: 04/25/12

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!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

superstitions...

You don’t want to be #13

You don’t want to sleep or work on the 13^th floor

(goes from 12 to 14….skipping 13)

Beware of Friday the 13th…

Dad’s birthday is on the 13^th.

Mom and dad married on the 13^th.

Mom dies on the 13^th.

Thirteen months and thirteen days later, dad has a stroke.

Dad dies on the 12^th.

So, is thirteen lucky or unlucky???!!!...

superstitions

here's a weird one

ruby told me once that if i kept pouting with my lip out.. a rooster would land on it and peck my eyes out. i was 4. i was afraid to go near the chickens on my great grandma's farm just for that reason.

i still havent figured out which side of the bed is the wrong one. doesnt seem to matter which side i hop up out of.. im groggy.. shadow box down the hallway the same way every morning.. growl at myself in the mirror, just like i always do.. and my days end up pretty much the same.

i dont walk under ladders.. that's dangerous

i avoid cats, doesnt matter whether they are black or not. when i was a kid, we had a neighbor lady who had a psycho calico that roamed our neighborhood. i went to pet him one day and he damn near took my face off. i have had an aversion ever since.

used to hold my breath as we passed cemeteries in the car. that was funny, but i always cheated.

used to spit on a new baseball bat.. but it didnt ever make me any luckier. at least not that i noticed.
..opened an umbrella indoors.. didnt make me unlucky
..found ladybugs in my bedroom.. still not any luckier
..blew out all the candles on my birthday cake.. still didnt get my .22 maybe cuz my bro was blowing too.

cows lying down in a field.. means rain.. bullshit

step on a crack and break your momma's back.. never tried it.. i loved my ma

i could go on.. but superstitions are.. bunk ;)

superstitions

It's bad luck to put a hat on a bed.   I heard that one growing up.   We sure never even got close to putting a hat on our bed. It wasn't going to happen. Hats off the bed.    Got it.

Why , how would that have occurred.    Lice from the hat?   A guy coming into your bedroom? What supernatural powers do hats have off of heads? Might you sit on them?

No opening umbrellas in the house. That one made sense! We opened our umbrellas on the porch going out the door.   When you live in 3 small room, you don't have room to open umbrellas up. Those umbrellas stayed on the porch hanging up in a row.

Never take a broom along when you move. Throw it out and buy a new one. Yes! We obeyed that one too. My mother made a point of doing that. Leaving the broom behind.   I do that too. I left my broom behind, and bought a new one. Just makes perfect sense to me, never questioned it.

It is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same match. I remember that one! My grandmother told me that came from the foxholes in WW1. If you lit matches for too long, the enemy could get a fix on you and shoot. I found that comforting to know as a child. Some inside knowledge that would help me when I grew up, in case I ran into trench warfare in my time.

It is bad luck to kill a ladybug. I was taught that one too.   Bad luck to kill spiders too. My grandmother said t is because they eat bad bugs and mosquitoes. We didn't kill spiders we took them outside on pieces of paper. And we brought crickets onto the porch because crickets in the house brought you good luck.

You sleep best with your head to the north and your feet to the south. My husband believes this one. We set our beds up this way, long before there was something called Feng Shui. You have to reverse it in the southern hemisphere.

A watermelon will grow in your stomach if you swallow a watermelon seed. Our grandpa told us that one. We ate a lot of watermelon and worried about the seeds endlessly. :)