Dear Diary,
Feeling some poetry coming on…
The Kaleidoscope
Infused with light
Dazzles with brilliant vibrant color.
The shapes spin etched and clear.
In the darkness
The hues become sullenly muddled.
The figures huddle upon themselves
In a murky mass.
I make the shapes come much too close.
The sharp edges penetrate;
The colors spill into my eyes.
Whirled by unseen hands;
I see
A dimension
Unusual
At once both breathtaking and unnerving.
Dear Diary,
“Strangers’ Angels” is the sequel to my novel “The One That Got Away”. Although it is still a Work In Progress, I am sharing a piece of it with you. Below is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of Strangers’ Angels…
Anna lugged the overflowing laundry basket down the stairs to the lower level laundry room of her apartment building. Interspersed amongst Anna’s own clothes were a few of Kate’s dirty articles that she had begged Anna to wash. Anna struggled to slide through the doorway before the door slammed shut behind her. She set the basket down abruptly next to the row of washing machines and took a moment to wrestle escaping strands of hair back into her hair clip. The dingy room was not air-conditioned and Anna could feel the stuffiness and heat enveloping her body and the musty smell of damp clothes and old concrete invading her nostrils. She brushed at the perspiration on her neck and forehead and contemplated how to jam the door open. She glanced around the dim room for an appropriate propping object and found a large, irregularly shaped rock by the entrance. Most likely, it was there for the very purpose she intended. Anna opened the battered gray door and moved the rock into place with her foot. It was heavier than it looked.
Anna’s scalp unexpectedly prickled right before a wave of cool air pushed its way from the far corner of the cramped room. Anna immediately turned towards the fresh air and involuntarily shuddered as it struck her chest. Her eyes scanned the recesses of the dark corner and became adjusted to reveal a shabbily dressed woman limply holding the hand of a scruffy little boy. The woman’s face was worn and seemed aged beyond her years. Her eyes held no emotion as her mouth worked wordlessly trying to express a thought. The child stared at Anna with an intensity that was completely unnerving. Actually, the fact that was most disconcerting to Anna was that she seemed to be attracting quite a bit of attention from the stranded spirit world lately. She was accustomed to glimpsing them occasionally, but in the past, she was not an object of interest to them. She had never sensed a stranded spirit in the laundry room before. She had been here numerous times over the past two years. Why would they be suddenly following her? Anna shivered again and began to hear garbled whispers in her mind. The woman was trying to speak to her but the confusing mixture of multiple voices made it impossible to discern meaning. The child glanced up briefly at the woman and then addressed Anna with a startlingly clear voice.
“They are gathering. Be ready.”
“What? Who?” Anna sputtered in exasperation. She felt like stamping her feet in frustration at the abundance of riddles. She knew it was ridiculous to question a stranded spirit because they never answered. To her shock and surprise, the boy did clarify, at least somewhat.
“The Dark Ones. They are gathering again. Mine, yours, and the ones trapped below.”Anna became aware that the filthy child was surrounded with a pale but definite white glow. This stranded spirit was a Bright One.“At times they gather to fight against their prevention.”
The child spoke calmly inside of Anna’s head. The other voices blended together into a backdrop of vibrant shushing. The tall woman became suddenly agitated. She clutched the small boy’s hand tightly and began to look about the small room with mounting apprehension. She seemed to be expecting something or someone to appear. Anna could feel the approaching presence tickle the back of her senses with dread.
“Be ready.”
Anna wanted to ask more questions, but knew the time had passed. Their images scattered from Anna’s view just as a purposeful rush of frigid air pushed into the room from seemingly nowhere. The stark light fixture that hung from the ceiling swayed erratically in its wake and small clouds of dryer lint mingled with discarded wrappers leapt into the air and shifted their positions. An empty can of soda skidded across the floor as the purveyor of the disturbance materialized. She was not fully formed and appeared to be just passing through. Her presence scraped across Anna’s brain like fingernails across a chalkboard. A shot of fear jolted through Anna as the Dark One threw a sidelong glance in her direction as she pursued the pair that had formerly occupied the space that she now slid through. She was gone as suddenly as she had appeared. The dust and paper scraps settled leisurely into their new locations and the only sound was the brightly decorated can slowly rolling to a stop.
Things were getting too weird. Anna felt that she had a high tolerance for weird considering the fact that unlike most people, she had the ability to remember past lives and observe those who were trapped in between theirs. However, lately there seemed to be a disturbing trend developing and it was surrounded by a suffocating feeling of dread.
For a limited time the Kindle version of “The One That Got Away” is being offered on amazon for the special price of $3.03. Pick up a copy of it so you’ll be ready for “Strangers’ Angels”!
Dear Diary,
Father’s Day is coming up and yes, I am not a father, but it got me musing about parenting. Parenting is not for cowards. We all flail about trying to do the best that we know how to parent our kids. We have Super Parent moments and we have Bad Mommy and Bad Daddy moments. But we try earnestly to give our children a loving foundation for them to be successful, happy adults. I have six kids ranging in ages from 6 all the way up to 22. I got to wondering; what was I ultimately trying to express to them as their parent? The following is a letter to them attempting to explain these thoughts…
I want you to fly. I don’t want you to live in a box. Being comfortable outside of the box allows you to see more possibilities and to be able to spread your wings wider in pursuit of those possibilities. Boxes can seem safer than the open sky, but whether the walls are made of cardboard or steel, they can still crumble as well as merely confine. Finding yourself in a ruined box is more difficult to overcome than to learn to live without the walls in the first place. I want you to grow to be independent and confident people that are not afraid of your imagination or taking chances to go that extra mile on a path that is unknown to you. It is true that life doesn’t owe you anything and that you can’t expect it to be fair. But it is your responsibility to make the most of yourself and play the cards you are dealt the best you can and be ready for the next hand.
Don’t be shy to be and do what you see for yourself. You are the only one that wakes up everyday and walks in your shoes, so walk the path you feel that is right for you, not the path others believe fits you. Don’t let fear, anger or boredom rule your decisions or your attitude. Don’t waste your time wishing or waiting for something else or for things to change. Remember that opportunity only dances with those on the dance floor. Make life happen. If you don’t like something in your life, take the steps to change it, but realize that this will usually take time to accomplish. Most things that are important require time, patience, energy and stamina. And you will certainly have pain and you will certainly make mistakes and you will certainly fail at some of your endeavors, but do not accept them as the end. Your failings are an opportunity to learn and adjust your efforts based on valuable experience. It is not about the falling, it is about how you pick yourself back up and continue on as a stronger, smarter person.
Be tolerant and kind to others but also be sure to stand up for yourself and what you think is important. If others are unreasonably rude to you, realize it is their own unhappiness speaking and it is their issue, not yours. Be picky about who you keep close to you. If you think about it, you do know what a true friend is. Don’t expect most to understand you and be okay with that. Know that everyone has their own unique perspective and that’s okay too.
Keep learning and trying new things. There is always more. To stop is to stagnate, so stay open and live fully.
Lastly, I want you to know that I do not necessarily want to shield you from the world, but I do want to help you have the tools to navigate within it. I am not perfect and I do not know everything. I will not always agree with your choices, and you will not always agree with mine. We will be angry with each other sometimes, but know this… I love you and I will always be there for you regardless of the circumstances.
And because your mother is a nut for quotes, I will end my ramblings to you with one from the book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” By Richard Bach:
“Your whole body from wingtip to wingtip,” Jonathan would say, other times, “is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body too.”
Dear Diary,
Death spoke to me, in the humid stillness of a summer night. He brushed my cheek as a sullen breeze and whispered coquettishly,
“Are you ready?”
The barely perceptible words permeated through the clutter of every day happenings that jumbled and shifted within my head. The question seeped and soaked through the smell of frying bacon, the caresses I had slipped through my children’s hair, the rushing anxiety of being late for work, the annoyance of shattering my coffee carafe. The question stood stark and unrelated to all of these things.
“It will be when it will be,” I answered, wondering at the anniversary of my death that I had passed over all of these years; the date that I would only fleetingly be aware of or perhaps not at all.
“What will you be remembered for?” He pushed the other thoughts away and stood before me to gain my full attention, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees with his haunting breath.
I mused for a moment and said, “I want to be remembered for kindness, a playful spirit, and hopefully for words I have written.”
“Most will be lost and forgotten. It is the nature of death.” He smiled then.
“I know,” I replied, “but I will try until it is time.”
“Fair enough. I will be seeing you,” he promised and slipped away leaving a foreign shadow over the plans of my upcoming day; of preparing school lunches, sorting through email, grocery shopping, balancing my checkbook, and trying to get past writer’s block on the sequel to my book.
And life goes on until it doesn’t.
Dear Diary,
Poetry today…
The sweetness was always there
The first moment the bright spirit breathed air
Lovely wings of the butterfly
Knowing to give without needing why
Fragile in flight against the wind and the rain
Bedraggled but driven to fly but again
The translucent colors, they dripped from the wing
Leaving pale smudges of where they had been
Creating stones more worthy of giving
Blood red rubies more useful for living
And stealthy, sure arrows with light at the point
Guided to strike both at face and at joint
Rubies and arrows; tools for true living
Arrows to smite and rubies for giving
The sweetness, it lingered
The spirit stayed bright
And the giving continued
Protected by might
Dear Diary,
A bit of inspiration on a rainy, pre-spring Tuesday morning:
What truly makes your heart beat? I don’t mean what makes your heart skitter or skip a beat from a temporary thrill. But what makes the blood course hot and fast through your veins to spark the electricity in your brain to move your muscles to a meaningful purpose? What idea burns within you that begs to be realized? Have you put it on a shelf or tucked it away because it is too difficult? Bring it out, dust it off, or mend the tears and scratches. Embrace it. Live it. Be it.To not do so, would be to breathe but shallowly.
Here are a collection of quotes from famous people who lived their passions:
Do what you love. Know your bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. ~Henry David Thoreau
We all have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility. ~ Albert Einstein
Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. ~Mark Twain
Passion is the genesis of genius. ~Tony Robbins
Like the north wind whistling down the sky, I’ve got a song. Like the the whippoorwill and the baby’s cry, I’ve got a song. And I carry it with me and I sing it loud. If it takes me nowhere, I’ll go there proud. ~Jim Croce
Slip inside the back of your mind, don’t you know you might find a better place to play? ~Oasis
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaption, but through daring. ~Henry Miller
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase ~Martin Luther King Jr.
All of our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You first have instinct, then opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. ~Emerson
Today is a new day, begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered by your old nonsense. ~Emerson
Rock on, Beautiful People.
Dear Diary,
The foothold gives
Within the shifting sienna soil
Slowly sliding downward
A little more
Crumbling outward, and settling on level, if not firm, ground.
It does not appear
That the way to continue is to retrace the fallen steps.
The earthen walls are sheer.
The sky crowns the distant precipice
Of the first faltering steps
That led to this place,
A different place,
With an unfamiliar view
And unusual possibilities.
It is a dry river bed.
Swirls of sediment mark the distant memory of rushing water,
Now absent.
It stretches ahead
Beyond the reach of sight
Destination unclear.
Further down, the bank is yet passable.
Ascent would be possible through tangled trees
And steep, rock strewn incline.
The point of origin could perhaps be reached
Once again.
Climb back up or explore onward?
Water begins to seep in ever increasing rivulets
Soaking the thirsty ground.
Saturation becomes mud.
Walking becomes unsteady.
The roar of the approaching torrent can be heard
Before it arrives.
Scramble to the bank or ride the impending wave?
Ride.
Dear Diary,
A jewel in any place:
The shocking pink was startling against the drab gray of the thick peeling walls.
The smoke curled around the intent faces framed with golden hair and extenuated the bright blue of their eyes as they peered down at me in the haze that we had created.
I blinked from the smoke and the tears that stung my eyes.
I gazed up at them.
As I stood slowly between them, their hands reached for my shoulders.
I listened to the compassionate words that flowed from their perfectly lipsticked mouths.
I felt enveloped in the intensity of the warmth and care extended to me even though I was surrounded by the dirt and smothering dullness of the starkly lit back stairwell and the confusion of my despair.
The beauty of true friendship shone as a jewel in this unlikely place and seared my memory in vivid color.
Dear Diary,
A love note. Happy Valentine’s day.
I breathe
the essence of the surrounding sea
and your presence.
I hear
the dancing of the pounding waves
and your laughter.
I taste
the tangy salt air
and your kiss.
I see
the sparkle of the sunset on the glistening water
and your eyes.
I feel
the ocean breeze blow through me
as does your spirit.
I embrace with all of my senses
the roil and the beauty of the crashing sea
as I do you and I
in our journey together.
Dear Diary,
Poetry today…
My heart skitters within
And then there is nothing
Laughter has seeped out
Along with the heartbeat
Tears will not form
It is dry and silent within
Only whispering echoes reside.
Perhaps that I have broken
Will break you
Enough
To see.
Perhaps not.
The vast empty space
Begs for the jagged pieces to be collected and sorted
From their scattered places
Sculpted into something less fragile
Tarnished pieces discarded or polished,
New pieces brought in to fill the holes.
Beauty must be sought
Regardless of the sources
And built over time
To replace the dusty rubble and silence
That has come.
Dear Diary .... by Kellianne Sweeney 