Random book notes

Some notes scribbled on an index card inside the book "Abba's Child" by Brennan Manning that I found

In my struggle to surrender to God's will, I am constantly bumping into the obstacle of overcoming my False Self and living in and living out the true Me that He has created me to be. This False Self was born out of my own need to compensate for a lack of love, acceptance, and out of a need to find an all around safety that eluded me growing up. Thus I created-- no, this I *let in* the impostor of False Self-- Compulsively seeking that "perfect image" for everyone else to see, to admire; ensuring attention without ever really being known.

Sometimes, as was inevitable, the facade cracked, ad in those bright cold moments, when my True Self became apparent, I was crushed by the failure of both my who I was under all that protection, and by the inability to maintain that 'perfect:" face.

As glamourous and fashionably deceptive as my large Jackie-O flasses-- my glittering False Self blinds me from the Light and Truth of my emptiness and hollow loneliness. The glitter of this falseness holds a perception of light, a lie that distorts my reality and diminishes my capacity to distinguish Truth.

The imposter is keen to the exact natrure, color, shape and size of all the veils I use to glamorously cover my broken emptiness. Weight, Hair, Skin, Makeup, Clothes, Speech, Intellegence, Money, Recognition, Power... all centering in being noticed rather than known. How I crave compliments! How my False Self shudders with delight in catching someone watching me. A flirtatious smile glitters off my veil of Conceit, my coverings, like blood diamonds, sparkle under the manufactured lights and settings.

a Soundtrack Journal of my State of Mind

There is so much going on right now, in this crazy season of decisions, transitions, trust and faith. Hard times have caused my plastic mask to lose its luster and crack and its been interesting to see the relationships that have remained constant, that have fallen to the wayside and that have grown in response. The Maria that glitters and sparkles to keep out the probes that might find the insecurity is being replaced by a broken and more honest Maria. Where the newly exposed skin peeks out, it is raw and sensitive to the sun… I find myself hiding from they daylight hours and nursing the tender surface… still not ready to thicken it with exposure, to let commitment and conflict callus over parts that need to do work.

In the process of this growth and hiding, I’ve found myself really turning to my music. Here are the tracks that have been carrying me on their notes and caressing me with their lyrics.

·         “All We Are” Matt Nathanson
“I kept falling over/I kept looking backward/I went broke believing/That the simple should be hard”

·         “Turn to Stone” Ingrid Michaelson
“Let’s go to sleep with clearer heads/And hearts to big to fit our beds/And maybe we won’t feel so alone/Before we turn to stone”

·         “Gravity” Sara Bareillis
“Set me free, let me be/I don’t want to fall another moment on to your gravity/Here I am, and I stand so tall/I’m just the way I’m supposed to be.”

·         “Quequ’un M’a Dit” Carla Bruni

·         “Crash and Burn” Savage Garden
“When you feel all alone/ a loyal friend is hard to find/ you’re caught on a one way street/with monsters in your head/ when hopes and dreams are far away/You feel like you can’t face the day”

·         “Rain”
“its hard to know when to give up the fight/Some things you want will just never be right/ its never rained like it has tonight before”

·         “Twenty four” Switchfoot
“All of my symphonies/With twenty-four parts /Life is not what I thought it was /Twenty-four hours ago/Still I'm singing 'Spirit, take me up in arms with You/ I'm not copping out /Not copping out “

·         “You’re Not Alone” Meredith Andrews
“With heartache your closest friend/and Everyone else long gone/you had to face the music on your own/But there is a sweeter song that calls you home singing/you’re not alone, for I am here/let me wipe away your every tear.”

·         “Naked as we Come” Iron & Wine

·         “Jueves” La Oreja de Van Gogh

·         “Lonely Tonight” Matt Wertz

·         “I am still Running” Jon Foreman
“In my darkest fears the rights become the wrongs/ I am still running, I am still running I am still running I am still running “

·         “Close Your Eyes” Dave Barnes

·         “Brandy Alexander” Feist

·         “Sober” Pink
“I don’t want to be that girl that has to fill the silence/The quiet scares me cuz it screams the truth”

·         “May Angels Bring you In” Jimmy Eat World

·          “Untitled” Kira Haddock

·         “Heard the World” OAR
“Holding my breath tight, trying to keep my head on right./There's a chill in the air, nobody could care /How you're caught up in the fight of your life.”

·         “Silent All These Years” Tori Amos

NaNo tidbits

People talk of sorrow as if it was soft, fluid and yielding, of drowning it its waters, being bathed by its tears. They talk about it as if it had a soft caress, comforting even. True sorrow isn’t soft. True sorrow is a thing of jagged rock surrounded by hungry, licking flames. It burns your heart, your motivations, your desires in such a blaze of white-hot heat that not even the ashes can tell the tale of what once was. It crushes your soul under the weight of mountains, squashing out every breath, immobilizing every limb so that your fingers can’t even twitch as you search for the air to scream. It steals your ability to fight, from the inside out. The person you were, dies. Gone. Everything solid, is ash. Gone. Everything real. Gone. Everything solid, real, tangible. Gone.

********************

Vergissmeinnicht

The sun was sinking in a violent slash of crimson like a fresh wound, just beginning to pucker and bleed. Purple and blue clouds blossomed in the west, slowly changing colors with the iridescence of day old bruises. Mist floated over the park like waiting ghosts, so low to the ground that it almost felt drizzling rain, suspended, afraid to find its way all the way to the bottom. Tiny beads of moisture clung to my body, decorating my skin and hair like tiny shining pearls, like tears

NaNoWriMo Freewriting

The places they are from stain the liquid words that spill from careful lips.
Eyes shine with the reflections of their travels over pupils dilated to the strength of their home suns or moons.
Hands folded over tokens of comfort, leather and fabric.
Eyebrows taut against strangers
Lips traitorously slacking, moisture forming, to share.
***
He leaned, as to create an open space, but folded an arm in, against what might take the invitation. His other hand danced, fingers nervously caressing keys that would punch through a distance for a companion, a savior.
***
She made a dead sound, like the wind pulled through the hollow of a rotted tree. It might have been pretty once, even beautiful, but the world has moved on with the beauty since then. They eyes weren't dead though... death would have made their glassy sunken stares less terrifying. They were eyes turned inwards, not staring at anything more than the abyss of black and soulless nights brightened only by the hell flames of deceit and betrayal.. 
***
I close my eyes as an ambulance approaches below. The rolling sounds wash over the room and hit my ears like waves crashing on shore. For a moment, I can smell tamales and gunpowder, feel the vibrations of a wife being slammed into a wall. The ambulance arrives, the sirens are shut off, announcing their arrival with silence. I am brought back to my new ghetto, super sterilized, white washed, with lunacy perfuming the air, a medicinal smell. I flex my wrists against the leather restraints-- and smile.

My mother shone with a rugged Italian beauty, classic, but too rough, too large and loud for a magazine type appeal. Still, eyes always lingered on her face, her lips, a little too full to be sensuous, her eyes set too far apart to be piercing. Still, there was a perfection in the combination. An allure that caused other woman to sneer and hold on to their husbands arms, every so slightly tighter.

Intersections in Winter

a december moon
watches
death, painless. Numb
wind knocking down giants
homeless dreams
of meth and sugarplums

-written after channel surfing and seeing an image of a homeless man dying on a doorstep. I closed my eyes and say a black and white image where the only color was a muted strand of christmas lights that reflected on the half frozen puddle at his feet that he died in. As his eyes glazed over to the same sheen of the puddle, a syringe dropped out of his arm, not an attempt to get high, but to speed up his heart beat to promote more warmth. I think he is a character in a story I haven't written yet. I have seen him a few times, pushing a shopping cart behind the main character of my story about a broken toy, asking for change outside the courthouse the day of a death penalty sentancing. I'm not sure why he is following me in my stories.

Found Poem

I found this poem on my iTunes playlist. titles of songs that together pulled out an poem that had been dormant in my fingertips.

Accidental babies, all at once
(Almost crimes)
from accidental rooftop love.
Angels of another, lonely day
Ashes
Beautiful in the moonlight behind my eyes.

Before it's too late... sing me a lullaby
not of Fire, or Ice...
but on how to bend the Black and Blue
to better days for daughters of despair and doom.

So when brand new days bought of the borrowed time
(of hearts)
pierce the silence like bullets of bright lights--
can you see the tears in her eyes?

Outside, cars and telephones take us away from cautions lovers
Are we carried?
Captivated? Hostage to the barrel of the clock
that beats
slow rhythms
of cold water hearts

Untitled

I am not a stranger to the lonely silence
between guitar strings and the waning moon
But when it all sets and fades
know
the dices were loaded all along.

All of your sharp edges
cut me down so low, so good
my wrist, bleeds. a melody
a song for goodbye

I scan city streets and coffeeshops
for chords from our song
memories like childhood flavors
on my parched tongue

I lie on the brown summer grass
and gravity pulls me, down
in between sleep and dream
I remember
it was you
who tried to save me.


I have a memory of a memory that I hold onto. It clings to the back of my eyelids, I catch quick glimpses when I blink, and fuzzy pictures as I drift asleep. A memory of trust and love, unscorched by suns of passion or hate. A deja vu comes over me, a flower, a shade of blue jean, a note rung true in between words. Its an image I can only see clearly out of the corners of my eyes and my heart. Something I run parallel to in order to see clearest and understand.

Forgottenness and memories- poems

Suspended in forgottenness
I have been having this recurring dream. I fall into a small puddle that grows and grows as I float under the surface, my finger tips barely skimming over the surface break. All of a sudden I am pushed up, gently but quickly, like an inflated beach ball that pops out of the water. I find myself, bone dry in a quiet wood, as described by C.S. Lewis in "The Magician's Nephew." There is no breeze, no movement or life of any kind, but a strange pulsating from the pools of water all around. They are shades of lilac and dusty lavender, tinged rose and a soft chartruse green by the light shining through patient trees. I step into one of the pools, my feet not causing ripples, not feeling wet, the only difference being that the pulsating from the pond pauses and matches my heartbeat. As the beat quickens, a single breeze pulls through the trees from behind me, whispering words in another language. My hair whips forward and covers my eyes, I look down into the pond and my reflection is blurry, a person shaped ripple of lavender and rose colored water... I blink and the reflection starts turning black. I quickly step out of the water and the breeze stops. This is a pond of past in a world between tomorrows, yesterdays and nevers.

Living in a land between worlds
a wood
lost in space and time
lost in heart and responsibility
waiting

Roots skimming along the top soil
trees felled at your feet
by puffs
of winds of change

leaves dance as they nervously wait
unsure
un steady
unrooted
a twilight with no promise of tomorrow.
~ ~ ~

A story for hope, a memory
Whether a murder mystery, science fiction or a romance novel, from Shakespear to the Bible, from oral tradition to Penguin Paperbacks, all story is trying to get us to understand a few simple things: What home is, where home is, how we lost our way, how we get back. In home we find the roots of love, the rounding of our characters, home gives us an element of the plot that makes us the main characters in our own stories. We live lives suspended in what we do not know, acting out while we search for the questions we don't remember how to ask.

when the past is lost
the present falls loosely around your body
like old skin around bones
here, a promise of tomorrow aches
unfamiliar
like trying to remember a flavor
never tasted

creation
return
beyond
a life between parenthesis
blinded

we hide in prose
cower in rhyme
building legos of castles with memories
we hope aren't lies
hoping for a moment
to just experience
a now.

forgetfullness
a power in a loss
the action in the slip
that allows past, present and future
to crumble to grains of sand
too fine for our grip