a BLINDING heart

The pen has no compassion.

I've been very sick the last month. Complicated complications and back to square one from my injury of a year ago. So, I limp like an old cowboy and am considering giving up writing. Writing has become very empty for me, the pen has no compassion.

I recently read an article published by infed by David Brandon, Zen in the art of helping. It has made me pause and consider that perhaps my writing will be as dull as I am of late. Unlike art, writing is not a solitary brush of self-exclamation. Writer's want dialgoue, a dance partner, applause! I want none of that. The colour orange speaks loudly enough for me - "See me on the edge of winter's leaf?". I am comforted by that honesty and the cool hush of their dignity in the face of an unknown end.

If only
I could throw away
the urge
to trace my patterns
in your heart
I could really see you.

Bankei

What will a girl do?

I've been burned out on writing lately. But, have been feeding my soul in other ways.

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Wise quotes...

I haven't been writing. I haven't been blogging. I haven't even been gardening or baking bread. I don't have writer's block and my pain killers are working just fine. I am reminded of an old lover who became quite agitated and vexed when I grew silent, even when I would try to placate him with this gem, "When you have nothing to say... there is virtue in not saying it."

I have nothing to say. This is a time when you rely upon wise quotes and John Candy in the movie Armed and Dangerous.

Grasshopper Haiku

Good friend grasshopper
    will you play
    the caretaker
For my little grave?

Haiku of Issa (1763-1828)

I have been reading and writing haiku since I was 10. Issa is the most endearing of the haiku masters of his time. While weeding in my tiny potager garden, I happened upon a tiny grasshopper shading himself inside a single okra flower. Who would not be silenced by such a small miracle?

   

Pepper Hash Relish and tiny, tiny feet.

I've found a monthly free newspaper that is letting me write for them as a freelancer. This has given me an opportunity to hone my writing skills and make bread and baby booties.

These lullaby booties are so darn cute it hurts.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share my mother's Pepper Hash Relish Recipe.

Eloise Ward's Pepper Hash Relish

12 green peppers

12 red peppers

12 onions

2 cups sugar

2 cups vinegar

2 tsp salt

Take a soap box if you're too little to reach the meat grinder, (ours was mounted on an old wooden table in the back yard) a towel, and your peppers in the bucket we used to water the horse and go outside. Grind peppers. Take your peppers inside and give them to your mother who will put them in a big soup pot and cover the peppers with boiling water. Clear a path from the kitchen to the table outside. Go grind the onions. Start grinding. Stop and sit on the soap box to cry and wipe the vapors out of your eyes with the towel. Throw the towel over your shoulder (added to instructions after laying the towel on the table under the meat grinder where the onion juice dripped on it and wiping eyes with towel).

Start grinding again. Note: crying does not make the cat or neighbors feel sorry for you. Do not walk away from the table or leave your post unattended. Your older sibling will bring more onions in an effort to torture you. You are now unable to see out of one eye. Look out of your good eye to make sure your older sibling did not put a chair or clothes basket in your path so that you would break your leg or worse yet – have to grind more onions. Carry your pot of ground onions to the kitchen. Give them to your mother who has drained the peppers and put them back in a big pot. She will then add the ground onions, sugar, salt, and vinegar to the peppers.

Go get a kitchen chair to stand on if you can't reach the stove. You must stir this until the onions and peppers are mixed together. Simmer everything in the pot on low for one hour. This is a good time during which you can go flatten the tires on your evil siblings bicycle. Return in time to find your mother making a 7-Up float and help her sterilize the small pint jars that hold the pepper hash relish. Fill jars, seal. Remember to call your father and remind him to bring home the bicycle pump and more ice cream. Makes enough pepper hash relish to last your father eight weeks as long as his brother Wilbur doesn't come over to go fishing and stay for dinner.

Now I must go remove all the "you's" from my article on seed saving.

Write with Authority and Inspire Trust - from PureBlogging

Learn to Write with Authority and Inspire Trust. Lynn Terry, the universal force behind Self-Starters Weekly Tips sent this link out in her latest weekly tips.

This article written by Michael Martine and posted at PureBlogging, is an in-depth look at the information and techniques needed to focus your writing to increase readership and monetization efforts.

High on the lists is, "Know what you're talking about in the first place." Okay. "Prove you have experience by relating it to your audience." Ditto. "Begin with a strong lead." I need to work on that one. "Remove qualifiers from your language." Augh!!! Impending doom and nausea. I'm an obsessive overqulaifier. 

Let me take my red gingham apron off and call Wally and the Beaver in for their afternoon snack. I was raised to be understated and undervalued. This is going to require some mind-bending consideration on my part. Hmmmmm... mental note to self, "Yes, June, you CAN remove those ugly qualifiers!" (Oh, and yes girls, we don't have to vacuum in our high heels anymore.)

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect...

"Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect." This beautifully written excerpt is from Wabi Sabi Simple. I rather doubt that I would make a good Buddhist. I wasn't a good Methodist, Irish Catholic, or Jew. But, I think I could embrace an ideology which asks me to create beauty, value imperfection, and live deeply.

It doesn't require God, who seems to have me literally on some cosmic hit-list. It also does not require tithing, sacrificial offerings, or chanting. It emphasizes, "the value of simple things as a path to harmony." God knows, I'm simple. Not plain. But I ache for some mental and physical solitude in which to heal.

I'm hoping this will be the beginning of a journey back from the blinding heart of being hit by lightning. Maybe I'll learn to enjoy tea, discipline myself so I will no longer be required to frenetically multi-task until I'm a small blob of used up humanity, and avoid all mimetic behavior.

Oh...who am I kidding? I have ALWAYS disliked tea. I was born multi-tasking. And I have always had to fight for every inch of ground I've ever stood or for anything I've ever wanted. This is definitely going to be a much longer journey than I had initially anticipated.   

Wabi Sabi for Writers: Find Inspiration. Respect Imperfection. Create Peerless Beauty.

My Father Wore Two Pairs of Pants

"Americans unloading precious belongings to make ends meet..." This article seems to be EVERYWHERE on the Internet. My doctor reminded me yesterday that many of today's youth (anyone under 40) think that The Great Depression is located somewhere in China or can be seen on the Science Channel.

I recently read an article on AOL that interviewed a couple in California who had both been employed by one of the larger mortgage/finance companies. They had both lost their jobs and were unsure of how they were going to make their monthly payments of $10,000.00 a month.

REALITY CHECK:

I was a single mother for twenty-four years and raised two children on $1,276.80 a month. We didn't have cable TV and they didn't wear tennis shoes that cost $140.00 (do the math--that's $70.00 a shoe!).

My son is now in college majoring in Philosophy and minoring in Business. My daughter has a two year old that sits on my lap every morning while we learn to read and sing nursery rhymes.

My father was born in 1919 and came from a family of thirteen. (Makes my dinky hurt just thinking about it.) He stole a tube of lipstick from his sister to give to his sweetheart when he was eleven. He trapped muskrat and sold them to buy shoes--and I've been told he butchered cats and sold them as chicken meat to make enough money to put gas in his brother's car so he could drive to Cleveland to go to work on the ore boats. He shoveled coal in the furnaces below deck. He knew firsthand the desperately cruel poverty of The Great Depression.

When I was ten and it was blistering cold, he came stumbling in from outside wearing two pairs of pants. I could see the blue checks peeking through the holes of the bark colored wool that was crusted with ice. When I finally summoned up the courage to ask him why he was wearing two pairs of pants, he quietly replied, "They have holes in different places."

I made muffins this morning--and a loaf of bread. I have lettuce and spring onions waiting for me in the garden in anticipation of a fine evening salad. And tonight, I will read The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle and sleep beneath my past--a tattered quilt made from my father's pajamas and two pairs of pants.

Mostly Mangled and WEbook

I am old enough to remember the mangle used in my father's dry cleaning shop. After two days of being adjusted and put back in place I must admit I'm feeling mostly mangled. Flat out and spent. Damn. For those of you that aren't up to speed on my travails. I've been hit by lightning. Five freaking times. Then last year I slipped in raw sewage and fell on a broken sewer line at the rental house from the seventh level of hell and broke my proverbial and non-proverbial ass. Damn. These events led to a fit of depression, great loathing of real estate agents and attorneys, nine weeks of physical therapy three days a week, followed by pain killers and more loathing, and the need to write.

Technically, I was writing before the move to hell--my memoirs. Since the move, I wrote a book about protecting your rights as a renter. I'm also interviewing next week for a freelance writing position with a local newspaper here in High Springs.

I found a new web site that looks like it might be my new home. WEbook is the Internet's latest addition to online publishing. Check it out!

I'm going to take a nap and count my blessings. 

Five words you can cut...

I've been on the couch for about a week. Two weekends ago I thought I was ready to be normal again. Walk freely through the world and do what I want - when I want. WRONG!!! After three hours of exhilarating fun at the Chrome Divas of Gainesville Bunny Run and two hot dogs later - I couldn't stand up, walk, or even wiggle my ugly little toes (I could win an ugly toe contest for sure). Alas, it was not to be. So... I've been sucking down painkillers like House after an all-nighter at Krispy Kreme and basically have been a raving BITCH. Hey FYI - if you do a search for BITCH on AOL there's not one listing. Hah! John left. (Thank God!) I have an appointment with Dr. Jack this afternoon at 3:00pm.

To make matters worse, I just found out that there are really only five words that I should perhaps cut from my writing. Eek! I used four of them in my last sentence.

Five words you can cut... from Writing Tips.