Creative coup

I am taking over this blog - no longer will you worry about whether or not Butterfly Woman is a man or a woman. This means I finally figured out how to create my own profile.

Sadness

There is a certain sadness
in the gently falling snow,
a softness, a delicacy of touch,
the tender surrender to soft warm flesh.

With dogged persistence,
it bandages winter wounds,
covers the carnage of autumn’s passing,
colors with wonder the weary
through their long gray desolation.

And yet there is a certain sadness
that awe filled eyes, cozy curtained,
cannot understand till jolted
by a thorough washing, to
fully face its joy,
feel its bite, its sting,
and finally believe
it's real.


@jms 30jan08

Magic Child

We were watching a movie entitled "My Neighbor Totoro". It is a Japanese animation in which 2 little girls discover a giant tree spirit living in the tree adjacent to their house which they have just moved into. Something about the idea that a young girl (age 3 or 4) could see a tree spirit was intriguing to me. It pulled at something inside of me, arousing it as if from a deep sleep. I was enchanted not so much about the movie but about this little person inside of me. Adults might name this child 'my inner child' but I will use the term 'little gifted one.'
My little gifted one is a creative genius. He can take simple everyday occurrences and make magic out of them. He is the one that roamed my childhood making up games, active games, which were fun to play. He is also the one that helps me build stories with magic - not Harry Potter magic, but true playful magic. All to often we are told to put away, our childishness and march into the adult world because that is what you have to do survive. In doing so we forget that magic maker inside, the source of our creative genius.
I have noted in my writing experiences that being creative is a very hard thing to do. Sometimes it just does not seem to happen. I believe that this is because I am being too adult in my approach to whatever it is that I am writing.
I hope to put some playfulness into my classes, to help revive the little genius inside of me and my students. Then the creative magic can begin. That is all I have for now --- FRANK

Sneak peak at tomorrow's assignment (Jan. 30)

The assignment in class tomorrow, Jan. 30, will be to write
a story with a moral to it similar to Aesop's Fables.
Frank

closings - small poems by Frank

This is a title
and then there was or were some line(s)
of various meanings and/or lengths
All of which mean nothing to me
of course you can read into this as
some sort of character flaw(s) ----------appearing between the lines----------
of the author's attempt to mask what he himself refuses to see
what lies beaneath this facade--is another human choosing to close his heart
all because he thought it too painful to feel
whatever it was or were some time(s) ago
He feels nothing because he tells himself so
in-between checks of the heart - is it still closed?

Authors

They dance around in wonderous whys
no-ing this writing they won't do
because it has to be great
waiting for applause and various lies
of 'loved it' and 'really really good.'

I was in a down mood so this is what came out.
FRANK

The Computer

     The front knob turned slowly because she was thinking.  What should she do first?  Feed the cat?  He meowed plaintively at the top of the stairs.  Have lunch herself?  Her stomach growled.  No.  The soft melodies of Sirens were floating up the stairs from the den.  Like Ulysses, she couldn't resist.  She turned to go downstairs and dropped the groceries on the landing along with her purse.  Did her cell phone inside need charging?  Was there an unheard message on it?  The love/hate battle began.  Technology always won either way and she ran quickly down the stairs to the computer.

     She had always disliked this room-her husband's domain.  Rows of books on every subject piled high in no order on shelves thick with dust.  Refusing to clean here, she had stayed upstairs in the kitchen and played her favorite opera CDs on a K-Mart special.   But he had bought this computer ten years ago which he kept on his desk.

     She couldn't go near it and was almost afraid of it.  What if she pressed the wrong button?  Would the lights go out? Would the windows crack?  Would smoke and steam come rolling out from the nest of wires hooked to it?  But she felt left behind and saw her techno friends marching toward the horizon while she limped to catch up with them.  Even her seven-year-old was attached to an i-pod when she drove her somewhere.  Black cords dangled from her ears and she smiled sweetly at the sound of songs that Grandma couldn't hear. 

     The computer screen called soundlessly, fish swimming back and forth across its surface.  A screen-saver, they called it.  There were so many words--spam, icon, delete, enter, search, web site.  It was a web for certain, a tangled mass of threads that caught you and pulled you in.  And here she was, sitting at the desk, reaching for, of all things, a mouse.

Stew

I’m replaying the scene over and over again in my mind. Sometimes I’m so bothered by the interaction that I actually say the words I’m replaying out loud, just to comfort myself. How could things have gotten so ugly and so misconstrued in such a short time? Why didn’t you say something earlier instead of letting it build into this ugly mountain of resentment?

“Listen……….” I cut the potatoes.

“You always………….” The carrots are peeled. The onions diced.

“I hate it when you………….” Chop the meat into bite sized pieces.

“You said………………” Add 1 cup of water and some beef stock.

“You think you are…………..” Seasonings. Salt, Pepper, bay leaf.

“Why do you………..” Garlic. Lots of that.

“You did………….” Worchester sauce gets added, you know, for a kick.

“I don’t want you to……………” Plop it all into the pot.

“I’m tired of……………” Turn the heat on low.

Let simmer for hours. And against my better judgment, that’s exactly what I do.