Last Post for '09? Seriously?

Every time New Year's creeps up on me, conspicuously hiding amidst life's haphazard duties, college classes, holidays, tests, trials, trips and everything in between...I find myself wishing time to move slower, not only so I can look back on the year about to end, but also think to myself...where did the time go?

It's what we all say isn't it? Where did the time go? When I at the horse rescue farm I volunteer at in Reedsville I was talking with the owner and she said "just when put the Christmas decorations away, it feels like I'll have to take them out again in a few weeks." We all know what she means don't we? Christmas flew by way too fast, but it was enjoyable as always! Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, the world just transforms for those few precious weeks and everyone can distance themselves from life's worries. , soaking in the nostalgia and time with family that Christmas brings so near.

I'll admit, I'm still holding onto that Christmas magic! I love driving through my hometown of Sheboygan, WI and seeing all of the lights casting glows on houses' facades, as well as traditional Christmas trees bedecked with their own lights and ornaments. But while my family and I take down the ornaments, the decorations, the outside lights and eventually the tree, we reflect on this Christmas, as well as the year which is about to come to a close.

When New Years rolls around we all usually gather 'round the television and watch one program or another as the famous ball drops in Times Square. The countdown begins, we wait with baited breath...and then suddenly you blink and its 2010. 2009 is immediately regaled to a not-so-distant memory. It's forever out of reach, becoming another piece of our lives we can revisit only in our mind. 2010 on the other hand? Stretches ahead like a freshly paved highway through undiscovered land. Each bend brings something new, endless possibilities hiding behind mountains, sleeping in valleys, waiting in the sky or creeping up behind you like a tailgating car.

This whole "fresh start" idea is played up by the media as much as Christmas is. Which is probably why as soon as that clock strikes midnight thousands of people rip out a sheet of paper and begin scribbling their aspirations and goals they've spontaneously set for themselves. Now, maybe some of you think them thoroughly through and actually stick to 'em as that "fresh start" state of mind begins to wear off like peeling paint on a house. And for those who do, kudos to you! I respect people who make New Years Resolutions and make an honest, deliberate effort to see them through.

I'll admit something else, I've never been one for New Years Resolutions? Why you ask? I'm not quite sure, but this year? The whole notion of them has been creeping about on the outskirts of my conscious, like a marble rolling beneath the floor, caught in the furnace pipes, always evading your attempts to catch it. Why, you may also ask, if I've never before entertained the idea of New Years Resolutions, would you do so now? Again, I can't tell you. All I can say is this, I guess as people get older and their lives change, it puts things in perspective for them and makes them think that hey! Maybe there is something to this whole resolution thing after all.

With that said, are the resolutions I have lofty or large scale? Of course not! Making such resolutions are one of the reasons I believe people set themselves up for failure before they even begin. Now those that do set large scale resolutions and follow through flawlessly, kudos to you. I've never been that type of person. But perhaps, now that I'm reflecting on my own tentative resolutions, one of them is a bit large scale. Either way, it doesn't really matter whether your resolutions are of a large or small scale, as long as they're logically attainable and reasonable...that's all that matters right?

2009 has been a year of many tumultuous happenings, as well as highs. No doubt all of us will have our own personal memories when looking back on this year, and that's what makes the New Year so unique. Each of us looks at it in a different way, as well as anticipates it. I won't go into full-blown nostalgia and talk about all the things I went through in my life. Because the truth is, I'm not naturally that open of a person! I'll leave the nostalgic memories to you, the reader. Before you go, though, let me just say this. For all of you who have taken time out of your day to read my blog, have found something meaningful in my posts, whether I made you laugh, reflect, think, respond, or even inspired you to write something of your own...I want to extend a very heartfelt thank you to you all!!! When I started this blog for my first college English class at UW-Sheboygan a year ago in September, I had no idea it would grow to this, as well as garner so many followers. After all, I'm just a nineteen-year-old college student who has an indistinguishable passion for writing. Whether it be short stories, blogs, novels, poems or anything! Whatever comes to my mind each Wednesday I write down, always surrendering to the "free writer" inside of me, letting it take that proverbial wheel and steer me, sometimes, haphazardly, down the literary highway. Some days it's drenched in golden light, warming my skin. Other times its laden with boiling storm clouds, weighing each word down. One thing I've found, that for how random they are, each blog post has a subtle connection to the others.

With that said, I know I'll continue to hone my writing skills. It is, after all, my life's greatest passion and undeniably what I want to do for a living someday. I hope you, the reader, will continue to read my blog and find something meaningful that you can take away in each post. Of course, your comments are always welcome. I enjoy feedback! May you look fondly back on 2009, and even though we've all had our share of hardship in this year, I pray that you've recovered from each roadblock and find strength in family and your faith. A very Happy New Year to you all!!! Enjoy the ride that lays before you.

Nocturnal Writer - Part 2

I've decided to continue my first post last Wednesday entitled Nocturnal Writer and share with you a poem I wrote regarding the subject.

I'm still mystified by my recent discovery. All this while I had either convinced myself that I was a morning person, refused to accept that I wasn't, or somehow led a balanced life between being a morning and night person without fully falling victim to one or the other. How's that for confusing?

But now that I've accepted that I am in fact a night person, below is a poem I wrote about how my writing seems to take off once the sun falls behind the earth like a yellow plate slipping between soapy fingers and the moon rises like billowing lace curtains against a silent wind. I hope you enjoy it, and with Christmas Eve tomorrow...may you enjoy this season with family and friends, while also finding time to realize the true meaning of Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!!! To everyone who reads my blogs, leaves comments, became a follower or just takes time out of their day to see what I have to say I appreciate it all! When I first started this blog a year ago I could never imagine it would grow to become a part of my daily life. But now, without fail, each Wednesday, here I am, writing another post...and I love it! Like I mentioned many times before, this blog is another extension of my writing, and I couldn't live without it. Each blog post is random, because I free write each one, but somehow there's always that underpinning of connection between them all. Next Wednesday seems hard to believe will be my last post for 2009! Crazy right? I'll have to make it extra special! :)

Moonscape

By sun’s light I once wrote,
Seeking words amidst its
Gold-fingered touch and warmth.
The proverbial highway drenched
In mid-day’s sparkling aura.

When it fades like a gray-skinned
Barn, darkness tumbles into voids,
Spilled tubes of ink leaking into
Shadow-drenched corners, filling
Up the evening until it is night.

My inner words escape, through a
Passage accessed only when the sky
Is awash in sugary morsels. Time’s
Hands are parallel to the twelfth hour.
A story forms itself like the tide ebbing closer.

What is it about the night?
That so inspires me to write, to mold
A vague idea into something solid
Like wisps of smoke back into a cigarette?
Why not other times during the day?

The night has an infamous reputation.
It is the only hour set upon the watches
Of society’s illicit. It is when bonfires and
Beer bottles litter the night, dodging the law
And any notion of common sense.

Night is when the world drenches itself
In slumber, like an unfinished painting.
Beneath the film of darkness color
Pulses alive and just as brilliant.
I touch it, and this is where it begins.

Ideas tumble forth, like a thousand
Books open. Words melding into one
Another until they resemble a story.
Darkness beyond the cold glass of my
Windows is meant for sleep, but I lie awake.

Well past the time when cats restlessly roam
I lay hunched over pen and paper, another
Novel taking shape like the one-eyed moon
Fingering lace curtains, falling through to
Quench its curiosity of this nocturnal writer.

What then, shall each night bring?
Haphazard ideas, a flash of brilliance.
Will it bring the elusive ending of
A story within grasp? One must only
Wait until the moonscape appears…to know.

Nocturnal Writer

I'll start today's blog post with a single question: are you a morning or night person?

For some of you the answer might be easy. Other times you might have to sit there and think about it for a few minutes. Or even some of you may be inclined to say you're both! That's the fence I'm straddling right now.

Last night, perhaps a little before suppertime at 4:30 to 5 an idea for a story came to me. So naturally I started writing in down. Eventually my hand cramped up so I fired up my laptop and started typing it out. Before I knew it eleven o'clock rolled around and I had to get to bed. But after brushing my teeth and the whole lot ideas were still blooming within me, so I grabbed my pen and notebook once more and started jotting them down. Finally at half past midnight I shut off my light, but still my mind hummed on that proverbial literary highway and I didn't drift off to sleep until 1 or 1:30.

Those of you who are writers will know what I'm talking about. An idea comes into your head and it's like it's a summer thunderstorm suddenly swelling on the horizon. There's nothing you can do to stop it from building up, from thickening the air, from consuming you, from pursuing you. You simply have to surrender to it, and let it run its course until finally you can sit back and make sense of everything. Picking through the haphazard words and ideas you've thrown onto the paper like a tornado shredding through a suburb, demolishing house after house.

So what does this have to do with the title of this blog post? Well, referring back to the idea I was up writing about until half past midnight last night, I'm come to understand something about myself. When I had my summer job at the library I had to be to work at eight o'clock. Therefore, in order to allow myself enough time to take a shower, eat breakfast and straighten my hair I woke up at five o'clock each morning. Was it difficult getting up that early five days a week? Sometimes yes. But I loved my job! I mean, I think I can safely say that it's any writer's dream to work in a library. I'm no exception! I love Sheboygan's library, and my former co-workers as well.

Unfortunately it was only a summer job, and a strained budget prevented me from working full-time there, so it ended in September. A few weeks after I found myself getting up at seven o'clock, or even six thirty. My mind and body were still on that early morning time. But it wouldn't be long before the wheels loosened, the track fell apart and I found myself tumbling back down to the old, rutted highway I knew so well. Sleeping in.

For some of you sleeping in until eight thirty may seem like a terrible waste of a morning, and I'd have to agree! But there's another side of me that says, this was the time I was meant to sleep in. I was never a morning person. I only woke up at five o'clock five days a week because I had to. But isn't that how a lot of us work? We would only wake up early in the morning because we had to? And I'm not just talking about work. Since I don't drive, occasionally the owner of the horse rescue farm I volunteer at in Reedsville picks me up in Sheboygan when she has to run errands nearby. She's always been an early riser, getting up at five thirty each morning. Of course, she has ten horses to tend to. But usually she'll pick me up around seven o'clock in the morning. So, naturally again, I have to wake up at five o'clock just to be ready in time. Are you seeing a pattern here? Funny, it took me a while to figure it out myself!

I only wake up early in the morning when I have to. Otherwise, let me sleep in! Sure, I've never done what my brother does...sleep in until eleven o'clock and then have pizza for breakfast and lunch. That's just crazy if you ask me. But even still I find myself thinking eight-thirty is too late to sleep in. What's your opinion? Are you a morning or night person? Or both like me?

Another point I wish to address is the fact that I seem to write better at night as well. Like I mentioned before in this post, I thought of an idea for a story and was up until half past midnight jotting it down. Looking back on it now I realized that as it got later and later my mind became more active and eager to develop the story. I paid no mind to the clock and kept writing, ideas spilling forth. Why is this you ask? I have no idea! Perhaps it's because I've always been a night person, but it took me until now to figure it out. I've always known in a vague sort of way that I seem to think better, and write better at night. It's like my creative side comes out of the shadows where it had been curled up during the day, sleeping like an old cat. Once night time falls it comes alive, stretching its limbs, howling with all its might, it recaptures its youth and blithely glides along, relishing the night and its darkness.

That's not to say that during the day my writing is sluggish. In fact, it's just as good. But just as I seem to be more creative and perhaps more productive at night, so am I more apt to write when the weather is say, overcast and rainy, or a whiteout blizzard is whirling outside my windows, or a severe thunderstorm is pounding away. In turn, when the weather is just the right temperature for shorts and a t-shirt and there's not a cloud in sight you'll find me outside on the patio, typing away on my laptop.

I guess my point is, each type of weather, and time of day, presents different writing opportunities for me. Which can produce varied results obviously, and I think it's part of the reason why writing is so special. Sometimes the weather, or time of day, can mean the difference between a productive day, and a day when it wasn't so productive. Other times what you struggled to get down on paper during daylight hours can suddenly be within your grasp like a mirage coming into focus, when nighttime rolls around. I know it's happened to me!

Of course, I could go into how a writer needs to be in the mood to write, and I could talk about a lovely thing called writer's block as well. But that's a whole other blog post entirely! And as it usually goes each of my posts are verbose as it is. No need to expand them any further right? If I remember correctly, for one of my college English classes I read a piece by Annie Dillard about writer's block. It was very well done. I think it was during my second English class that I stumbled upon it, so invariably I don't remember much, but one line stuck with me, if only a fraction of it. It was a line in which Dillard remarked that each time a writer sits down and makes up their mind to write, they don't just shoot off like huskies across the snow, it takes time to develop things and get the ball rolling.

That singular frame of words, huskies across the snow, gives me such a mental image of exactly what Dillard means. Huskies bound across the snow at top speed, effortlessly, smoothly and with exact precision. Do I wish I could begin every writing session like that. Of course! But as it goes, it doesn't always work out that way. Even if I'm writing in preferred conditions and I'm in the mood. Of course, even if it is a rough writing day, sometimes when I go back and reread what I've written, I find a few precious jewels I can save, or find that the piece as a whole isn't as bad as I thought, or perhaps I don't have to change a thing! If you wish to further look into Annie Dillard's book which I've quoted from, it's entitled The Writing Life. I'll attach a link to a website where you can read excerpts from Dillard's book, but I can't promise that it will work! Hopefully it does though. I know when I read the excerpts I greatly enjoyed sympathizing and agreeing with a lot she had to say, as well as just reading about her wisdom as a life long writer!http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060919887

In short, I've met a lot of writer's both in life and online, and I've found that a lot of my struggles are their own. I always enjoy talking with fellow writers, and hope anyone who is will post their own ideas to my blog. You're always welcome!

Until next time, I'll be working on my latest story idea and perhaps Wednesday night will find me writing once again.

That's What Christmas Is All About Charlie Brown

It's no doubt that around the Christmas season there are myriad concert specials, television shows, new and old movies, cooking shows and everything else related to this time of year.

Commeralism has found its greatest niche yet...and it's never letting go. Now, I've never paid much attention to the commerical side of Christmas, per se, except after watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV last night. For anyone else who's watched it, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that in the segment, Charlie was down because Christmas had turned into one huge marketing plow to get people to shop, spend more, buy more expensive gifts...etc.

Of course everything took on a humorous side. Like when Charlie and some other character who's name I can't recall, went down to look for a tree and all the lot had left were flamboyant colored metal ones, which the famous tiny tree with but a few branches stood hidden amidst the incongruous larger trees. In the end that humble little tree happened to turn out perfect for the play Charlie and his friends were putting on.

In a lot of ways, the true meaning of Christmas is like that little tree. The metal, oddly colored ones are like the media giants hovering over the season, drenching in shadow everything they don't like, and casting a bright, probing light everything they do. They are the ads you see on television, beckoning you to buy that new phone, that new iPod, that new flat-screen TV, that new CD. They're the over-sized signs in store front windows and shopping malls crying out in a shameless matter to buy, buy, buy!!!! 20% off, 50% off, buy one get one half off, all sweaters half price, doorbuster sales between 3AM and noon!!! Black Friday, I believe, is the kickoff of the media's hold on Christmas. Sure, it helps stores inch their accounts into the black again - hence the name Black Friday - but those absurdly early and late doorbuster sales seem like some sort of sardonic game to me.

Now before I go any further, I'll confess that two Thanksgivings ago my Dad and brother stood outside Best Buy in Sheboygan from ten o'clock Thursday night to five o'clock Friday morning so we could get a good deal on a new desktop computer we'd had our eye on, but other than that? No one in my family has ever willing lined up in front of a store with throngs of people just to catch a good deal. Yes, it does have to do with money being tighter this year than ever before, but I'm sure there's other people feeling the pinch too. So why is it that every Black Friday, hoards of people take the bate that retail chains and the media dangles before them? Plain and simple: people like to shop.

It's probably no secret that I like to shop too. I'm a girl, what can I say? I love walking into stores and looking at the sweaters, jeans, boots, dresses, scarves, purses, earrings...the list goes on. Also yes, I am attracted to good deals. Who isn't? But when stores start pulling out sales of the likes of Black Friday or those tri-level Christmas deals...I draw a thick chalk line. I can't stand stores that boast 20% off jeans, buy one get one half off!!! and then stick you with hidden costs or absurd rules that make it nearly impossible to figure out if you're actually saving money or having the wool pulled over your eyes.

I may be sounding cynical, but that's always been my view of shopping when it comes to Christmas. I have one more thing to admit, my view also has to do with my disdain for large crowds. I'm the type of person who values my personal space, and being squeezed right next to people or having to weave in and out of them like I'm walking a corn maze just to get somewhere...isn't my cup of tea.

I could also bring to light the many Christmas contests that go on. For instance, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, Snoopy decorates his dog house in a grandiloquent fashion in order to win the prize for best decorated house. Charlie rolls his eyes and remarks "even my dog has gotten into it." Meaning I'm sure, the commerical side of Christmas. This year, my Mom convinced my Dad to put up lights on our house, and it looks great. But again, even putting up Christmas lights can leak into that media side of things. Relatively close to my house there's a couple that always go all out with the lights. They're everywhere. On the roof, around the windows, twined up in the trees, and around bushes. If that wasn't enough, they also place myriad lawn ornaments everywhere including deer, snowmen, elves and not surprisingly...Santa and his sleigh.

Yes, my family and I drive past it every winter, and yes, it is fun to look at every year, and I'm sure his neighbor's look forward to it, but there's always a persistent glossy veneer over stuff like that. A shine polished and perfected by the media as it coats a thick layer of wax over what Christmas was originally intended to be. A grandiloquent display not for the eyes...but for the heart and mind. A remembrance of what Christmas is truly about. A message that is still portrayed on TV, even amidst the tumult of commericalism. A message told innocently and simply from one of Charlie Brown's friends who's name I still can't remember! Anyone know it? I believe he's the kid with the blanket.

In remembrance of Christmas, my church in Sheboygan holds one of the most enjoyable Christmas eve services I know. Well, at least that's my opinion! Before opening gifts and arriving at parties we all gather at church to celebrate a message that hasn't been completely lost amongst the automated voices coming eerily from lawn ornaments, the screaming signs declaring half off everything in department stores and the all around chatter rising from the media as a whole to distract everyone to what they feel is more important.

Well at the service we sing traditional Christmas caroles, read from the scripture about Jesus' birth, the three wise men and then at the end we all line up in a huge circle on the perimeter of the sanctuary with candles we were given, lighting them one by one and singing Silent Night. There is something so peaceful, so uncluttered, so removed from the media's shameless din and from everything else commerical about standing amidst my family and congregation, looking at those candles flickering all around me, and listening to voices softly singing one of my favorite Christmas songs. But church isn't the only place you can escape Christmas' commercial side.

It can be in your own home as well. The media, and a materialistic world tells us that it isn't Christmas without presents under the tree. I beg to differ. Yes, I understand that it's nice to receive gifts and have a little something to unwrap. Who doesn't like receiving gifts right? But once again, gifts aren't what Christmas is all about. Every year around this time the ringing of bells, cheery voices calling out and those famous red buckets are all blatant signs that for every privilege we enjoy, there are those less fortunate who view Christmas as just another day to struggle through and provide for those they love.

Christmas is a time of year to remember those less fortunate people, and give any way we can. Whether it be the donating of small toys to places like Salvation army, or dropping off nonperishable cans at local food pantries, or at food drives. It could be donating warm weather clothing, holding a brat fry...or any number of things. Granted, the Christmas season isn't the only time of year that we should all be giving to those in need, it is a time of year when everyone could use a little extra.

In addition, Christmas is about family. Although I talked about the darker side of those lucrative Christmas deals, I do enjoy going to the annual Old World Christmas Market in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin with my parents and visiting the hundreds of booths and vendors there. Everything from roasted nuts, to Swedish ornaments, handmade alpaca sweaters, German pancakes to a whole lot of other stuff! I ended up buying a cashmere black and white tweed scarf - I'm crazy for black and white tweed - and a pair of handmade earrings from a lady who's daughter I graduated from high school with. I always visit her booth. :)

You may be thinking, but isn't that contradictory? First putting down retail chains for playing on people's habits in order to bring in more cash and then talking about shopping at a Christmas market? Perhaps it is, but let me put it this way. I only have a problem with stores when they outshine what Christmas is truly about. When they shove expensive electronics and merchandise in your face or when they offer seemingly good deals that have a labyrinth of rules swept into their dusty corners...that's when I have a problem with it. Also, the Old World Christmas Market doesn't put forth any deals like that. All the vendors simply offer high quality, hand made, often imported goods at sensibly priced costs. Sure, there's lots of people, but I would brave such masses any day over the barely contained pandemonium of a crowded shopping mall any day. The difference in atmosphere has a lot to do with it to. At a shopping mall doorbuster sale everyone is trying to get that good deal and be one step ahead of the next person. Now, I would get into horror stories of people trampled to death outside Wal-Mart because frankly? Stories like that are a pathetic and very sad outlook on today's humanity. I won't tap that vein.

In closing, whether you adore Black Friday sales and all those Christmas specials and don't mind braving huge masses of people to get them, doesn't really matter to me. Of course, what does matter is what you think of everything. Your opinion is always welcome on my blog! Any feedback is appreciated.

To get myself into the Christmas spirit I make handmade Christmas cards. It really helps me get back to the basics of Christmas. I've always enjoyed handmade crafts, which is why I enjoy the Old World Christmas Market so much. There's always that special touch to something handmade: the slight mistakes, that inimitable quality and look, and the way it reaches out to you in a way that nothing store bought ever can. When I make each of my cards I think about the person I'm sending it to, and that makes it all the more special. I'm almost done with them, having one three and a half to go! Perhaps I'll post some pictures on my blog later on.

As Christmas draws near, I hope you too don't lose sight of what Christmas was intended to be about. Today's media has cast a long, hard shadow over everything, but I won't be fooled. Just remember...when you're walking into a store, passing neighbors, boarding the bus, greeting friends, buying clothes or at work...to anyone who dares to wish you a happy holiday, proudly tell them back Merry Christmas to you too.

People trying to take the word Christmas out of everything this season is another blog post entirely. Honestly? I can't stand it. But for now all I'll say is Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

Rediscovered Joy

In lieu of my online Creative Writing class I have recently begun writing poetry again. I dabbled in it in high school, but nothing every became of it. Think of my passion for writing as rooms in a sprawling mansion. For a long time through grade and high school I stayed in one room, pacing the floor, unwilling or afraid to step beyond the doors to uncharted writing territory. I didn't press my knowledge of writing, I stayed where I was, secure in the comfort it brought me.

My writing class has really allowed me to step beyond that singular room and explore all the corners I want. Now I'm finding I roam about the mansion freely, instead of limiting and confining myself. I've found that just as writing short stories and novels, writing poetry comes easily to me. Especially when I'm writing about what inspires me most!

Which, for those of you who know me, would be 1) The countryside 2) Small towns 3) Abandoned barns, farms and houses 4) Historic homes 5) Small towns 6) Thunderstorms 7) The Great Plains and finally 8) Country and small town life. As I've said hundreds of times before, even though I've lived in the city my whole life, I truly believe that I belong in the countryside. Hey! Just look at what inspires me! There's something so releasing about driving through the countryside, listening to the silence permeating over whispering fields, or taking a picture of a dilapidated house stripped of paint, fingers of sunlight spilling through its cracks.

Writing has always been that place I can go to visit such places, even as I sit before my laptop, in the bustling city of Sheboygan. I let my mind's eye take me up the front steps of that abandoned house, or lead me down a narrow dirt road to a forgotten small town, swaying corn field or quiet farm nestled in the hollow of a valley. I've never had a terribly busy life, but still it's nice to get away once in a while isn't it? If only for a few precious moments as you write. Whether it's a blog post, a story, a paper, an article...or any number of things.

Poetry is just another extension of that. But I believe it holds it's own power that makes it stand apart from my usual short story writing. What I mean by that is, whereas it would sometimes take you a paragraph or more to say something in a story, in a poem you can condense it into three to five lines, omitting words and adding in sensory details until the thought they are trying to portray becomes all the more powerful. I've posted a lot of my own poems on my blog, so feel free to read them. Condensing thoughts like that is one thing I really love about poetry. You can say a lot in a few words, increasing their power and play on your senses.

Also, you can speak in a language that literally flows and makes the words come alive. Recently I picked up a book from Sheboygan's local library that holds a collection of poems paying tribute to America's vanishing rural landscape, entitled Remember When. Albeit simple poems, they hold within them the ability to draw mental images in our minds, make us feel, taste, smell, touch and experience the words. Each poem is a miniature, condensed story within itself. I'd like to share a few short poems from the book that I particularly liked.

Some poems bring to life simple, everyday moments and turn them into something as if we're seeing them for the first time. Norman Rockwell was a master at this. His paintings portrayed everyday American life, yet each painting I saw made me stop and look deeper, as if I'd been too busy, or too consumed in tasks to realize the magic that lies within everyday moments. One of my assignments for my online class revolved around writing a prose piece for a painting. We had to come with a story of sorts behind it. I choose the Rockwell painting Family Grace, in which a younger boy and his Grandparent's were eating dinner. I found that it wasn't hard to create a scene behind the painting, because Rockwell injected so much feeling and emotion into it.

The first poem I would like to say is entitled Barn Lights at Night, by Mary Rufledt Gladitsch.

Lights on in the barn

Still make me smile

Knowing someone is home

I go back for a while

What a treasure I had

as a kid on the farm

returning at night

to that glow shining warm

Day after day

Night after night

Secure I could count on

my dad

and those lights.

Alongside each poem is a beautiful picture of the countryside. Whether it be an old, abandoned homestead and what it used to look like, an old family farm which has outlived its purpose, rusted farm equipment or any number of things. These images only add to the beauty of the poems, and make you feel them all the more.

Another poem I found particularly notable was one talking about an abandoned farm seen from a highway, as its title suggests: Barn Seen From Highway 53, by Mary Rufledt Gladitsch.

Forgotten barn

cradled now by

elderberrry bushes

overgrown and

forgotten too

Silent loft

echoing with

young boys

sweat

Sweet smell of new

mown hay

haunts

your rafters

Harvest memory

grows

dim

I was inspired by this book, and I haven't even finished reading it yet! There is simply something so poetic about the countryside. Something tranquil, something unassuming, something captivating, something breath-taking, something undiscovered and something worth while writing about. If you enjoy the magic of poetry, I would love to read some of yours! Or simply tell me what inspires you to write, no matter what type of writing it may be. To close off this blog post I would like to share a poem I recently wrote about a fictional abandoned barn. Often times when I'm reading, driving through the countryside or just plain bored I'll get a singular image in my mind of say...a desolate country road, a weed-entwined abandoned house, or a proud, old barn succumbing to nature's touch and find that I have to write about it. Such is the case with the poem I wrote yesterday. After reading half way through Remember When I garnered an image of an old barn, much like the ones portrayed in the book. Because I'm a visual learning, and a detail-oriented person, I couldn't rest until my fingers had put words on paper concerning every detail of that barn. My writing has always been heavily detailed, just read my blog post from a while back entitled Detail-Oriented and you'll get a better idea of where all of this is coming from.

In closing, which was supposed to be a paragraph ago! I hope you enjoy my poem, and again, feel free to submit your own, or simply drop a note saying what inspires you to write. I'd love to hear from you!

What I Seek, I Shall Never Find Again

Laughter drifts through splintered wood.
Is it from children past or the incessant
Prairie wind weaving between vine and beam?
Its fingers play deftly upon rusted farm
Equipment. Sleeping relics of days long ago.

Faded wood once proudly cloaked in red,
Now stands exposed to nature’s crude finger.
Each board a gray slate like winter’s barren trees.
Thinning with age, bringing sagging beams closer
To the surface, until its skeleton is all which remains.

Swaying, patched roof like the back of an old mare.
Pungent scent of fresh hay lingers amidst rafters,
Heavy footfalls of men puncture the heavy stillness.
But it is only the wind, once again playing a nostalgic
Tune through the barn’s hollowed soul and heart.

Deep into the earth its field stone foundation sinks,
Reclaimed slowly to the land which it once so
Proudly housed and stored, providing livelihood to
The men whose own hands raised its walls and beams.
Those same men now lie in the ground, befallen to fate.

Wooden windows set deep in aged stone, desolately
Peering through a labyrinth of shamelessly clinging
Vines and weeds. They twist and twine atop every
Surface, breaking through windows like prying fingers,
Or spindle like arms reaching up from the grave.

Atop cinder blocks an abandoned farm truck sits,
Hollowed headlights facing the dilapidated barn.
They are one in the same, both having accepted fate,
Yet silently they yearn for those heavy footfalls,
Booming voices and familiar grind of country life.

Rusted engine runs no more, tires bent and stripped.
Beams bowed, silently crying out in a voice stretched
Thin and dry for the weight of a single hay bale.
The dusty wheel begs for the slightest touch of a finger.
Both watch the weed-laden drive, waiting for time to return.

Blue Eyes Cryin'...

"I'll admit, my musical tastes have never been all encompassing. Which is to say I'm not one of those people who freely tells anyone..."yeah! I like all types of music!" and then proceeds to name off more than a dozen artists from blues, hip-hop, country or big band. In fact, once I find a dozen or so artists that I like it's relatively hard for me to branch out into uncharted territory and discover new artists. Perhaps I find a familiar comfort in artists I know so well, and have come to cherish their certain sound. Or perhaps...I'm just not as open minded as I first assumed I was!

Does it bother me? Yes, it does. Which is why after joining an Internet radio site called Pandora, I forced myself to create stations on artists I never heard a single song from, or were only slightly familiar with. The outcome? I now have a myriad of new favorite artists that I am quickly sequestering on my YouTube channel and hopefully soon on my iPod! Such new favorites include: Patty Loveless, John Anderson, Lorrie Morgan, Vince Gill, Bryan Adams, Suzy Bogguss and Kathy Mathea. I spelt some of their last names wrong, I apologize.

My point is, having an open mind, or in my case, prying it open with pliers and keeping it that way until new music has a fraction of a chance to seep in, will benefit anyone in the long run. After all, exposing myself to such music was how I came to understand that while I previously listened to only a horrid pop station based locally in Sheboygan called The Point and bought only pop albums, my heart truly lied in 90's country. I discovered this around high school, after a friend played the songs Holy Water by Big & Rich and Any Man Of Mine by Shania Twain. Just two songs can fuel a life long passion for a certain genre of music, as the two mentioned set fire to my obsession with country music, especially the 90's stuff. There was just a different sound to 90's music, in my opinion it was when every genre had it's been sound...country, rock and even christian music alike. I also like a scattering of 90's Christian music, which include artists like Rebecca St. James, Michael W. Smith and David Meece. All of these artists bring back memories of my past, especially the last one. While my Mom was driving me to my R.E.I.N.S sessions she would pop in a David Meece tape and we'd both sing along.

I think what I'm writing about ties into one of my old blog posts entitled That Special Song in which certain songs evoke emotions out of us that turn a gloomy day into a bearable one, or inject a sense of nostalgia in us like I experience. Anyone who tells you they just listen to the music and not the lyrics is blowing smoke. And even if a song didn't have lyrics, it would still speak words of sorts to you per se, conjuring up images in your mind, creating a story. I wrote a blog post about that too, songs creating images and entire short-short stories in the two to five minutes they play. I can't remember what it's called though! But this brings up another point that all of my blog posts are connected, no matter how scatterbrained they might seem.

After all this you're probably looking at the title of today's blog post and thinking. What do the above paragraphs have to do with blue eyes cryin'? The answer is...nothing. I was simply planning on tying the title into this post well in the first paragraph, but obviously that didn't happen. So now that all hope of a smooth transition between subjects has been recklessly abandoned, I'm simply going to insert it here!

I'm sure you've heard one, perhaps you have a favorite that mentions it, or specifically sought one out for a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife...etc. Or maybe you've never been such a detail oriented person as myself and don't really notice such things. In any case, what am I talking about? Can you guess? I'm talking about the myriads of songs that mention two little words that seem to sum up so much, and hold so much within them it's become a world's obsession, and any artists' key to blissful song. The two words? Blue eyes.

You have to admit there isn't a time when you haven't come across a song that mentions the words blue and eyes. Right off the bat I can name at least a dozen, but for the sake of readers, I'll only list a few.
Sweet Thing by Keith Urban.
Well you're pretty blue eyes, they were drivin' me crazy.

And the title of my blog post: Blue eyes cryin' in the early morning rain.

Though it kills me to mention it, Taylor Swift also tips her hat to blue eyes in her song Tim McGraw.
You said the way my blue eyes shined, put those Georgia stars to shame that night.

There's also a SheDaisy song and albeit they don't explicitly state it, it's obvious they too tip their hats to blue eyes in their song Passenger Seat.
Then he shifts those ocean eyes back to me.

So far I've only listed five songs, but I'm sure all of you reading this are mentally checking the list in your mind, refrains to a dozen songs or more spinning against your memory like index cards falling from a tipped filing cabinet. Why is it that blue eyes are so much more mentioned and talked about than any other color? Now for any of you with blue eyes perhaps you could lend an answer. After all, with the way the world sees it, you have the most desirable color. God knows why, what's wrong with us brown-eyed, green-eyed or hazel-eyed people? Or even grey? Perhaps I should ask any songwriter why they choose to sing about blue eyes. Is it more poetic, more poignant? Does it evoke more out of the listener, reader...etc?

With all of this you may be asking, so Corrie, what color eyes do you have? I have hazel eyes. My Mom will argue that they're brown but...I see green in there too! It's funny, my Mom has green eyes, my Dad has blue and what did my brother and I get? Hazel! But that's a totally different blog post entirely. I'm also the only left-handed person in my immediately family. Did you know it's rarer for girls to be left-handed than guys? Okay, okay I'm digressing again. Back on subject!

It's no doubt that the media, and Hollywood's antics as well, significantly influence American culture as well as our ways of thinking about music, books, television, and even ourselves. Blonde hair was popularized decades ago, when Marilyn Monroe, apparently a natural brunette, died her hair a very light shade of blonde, thus becoming one in a thousand artificial blondes that trod the earth today. No, I have nothing against them, but seriously? I think they are way too many blonde heads bobbing around in Hollywood today, as well as on television.

So is it any surprise that Hollywood, and the media, would have a helping hand in popularizing blue eyes? Both in music and in television? After all, the ideal woman is blond and blue-eyed. Just another off shoot of the artificially created perfect image of who the supposedly perfect person is evidently supposed to be. Now at this point I'll admit, one of my own celebrity crushes has blue eyes, and yes, it is rather attractive I'll admit, but I also go for the whole dark and handsome thing. You know, a guy with dark hair and dark colored eyes. Although, God help me, that could be another media-generated cliche all it's own! What is happening to the world?

In closing, if I ever meet any of the artists of the songs I mentioned above, I'll ask them why they mentioned blue eyes in their song, and perhaps I wouldn't have all this speculation but straight up answers! In the mean time, as always, feel free to inject your own opinions. And if you happen to have blue eyes, even better! I could use opinions straight from the source!

Dreamin' My Dreams

Don't we all have that childhood dream? That singular dream that begins to take shape the moment we first start grasping who we are. What color we like best, what type of clothing we like to wear, what type of music we like, what interests us, what inspires us...etc.

It's a dream that embodies our maturity over the years. For example, say you like horses. When you're just a little girl, or boy, you might beg your parents for the latest American Girl horse tantalizing displayed just out of reach behind a pane of store front glass. When you're a bit older, say elementary school, you might pine for a pony...then on to junior high and eventually high school where it's 4-H, riding lessons, showing, leasing, buying, more showing, more horses. And on and on and on! Do you see where I'm trying to go with this? Your dream could either start off very simple and focused, like the little girl looking at the American Girl horse with yearning eyes...and eventually morph into a dream of owning a breeding or horse rescue farm. Or it could be a huge dream from the beginning, with a little kid's mind stretching as far as his imagination can go, intrigued by endless possibilities, tantalized by the future and what it holds.

Whatever your personal dream is, in this week's blog post I'm here to tell you about mine. Granted, it's always been one of my dreams to own a horse, a more dominant goal - or dream - in my life is to someday buy an old house that needs fixing up and renovate it while I'm living in it. There's something about living in a dilapidated, tired old home and bringing it back to life that inspires me in so many ways.

In my last blog post I talked about the horse rescue farm, Sunrise Horse Farm, that I volunteer at in Reedsville. On the side of the gravel driveway leading to the farm there's an old, paint-stripped, hollowed out house that's been abandoned for twenty years or more. The first time I went out to her farm I noticed it immediately, conspicuously blending in with the labyrinth of trees and fallen branches. Its tall, narrow window frames looked out at me with empty, black eyes and its frame leaned to the left, as if it were contemplating giving in to slumber which as pulled at its every rotted beam since nature took its toll.

Perhaps from how I described the abandoned house you already can guess why it is my dream to own an old house that needs restoring! If that wasn't proof enough, take my obsession with an indispensable site called oldhouses.com in which realtor's can post listings of old houses for sale to potential buyers specifically looking for them. The listings are open to the general public also, and you can sign up to receive new listings added to the website to be delivered to your email inbox, which of course I do! There are so many beautiful houses on the site, which you can keep in a feature called a scrapbook. In my own scrapbook are mainly Victorian style homes and early style Colonial's, with a few Dutch Colonial's and Antebellum's thrown into the mix.

While perusing the archived listings on the site, which are houses that have sold but still remain on the site for viewing pleasure, I stumbled across a Victorian home labeled old house story. That usually means that whoever posted the listing has a blog or story attached to it, how they renovated it, what it means to them...etc. After clicking on one such blog it led me to another one, which I immediately became engrossed with. It revolved around a couple of unknown age who had bought a late 1800's Victorian farmhouse and were restoring it while living in it. Not only that...they were blogging about it!

Instantly, while reading nearly every blog post, I thought that they were living my dream. Time and time again I've defiantly told my Mom that an old house is significantly more interesting than a new house. Even if you inject character and individuality into a new home, it is still blatantly lacking that inimitable character and history that an old home has. Each old home as a story to tell of all the years it's seen, and all the people which have passed through its rooms and doorways. It's a story that can only be acquired over centuries of existence and change. A story that can't be duplicated in newer homes, no matter how precise you try to replicate it. Again, like I've told my Mom many times before, I'd take the sagging floors, crumbling, under insulated plaster walls, outdated electricity, drafty rooms and windows, peeling painted siding, high heating costs and everything in between any day in favor of a new, perfectly functioning new home. I wouldn't want my home to be perfect anyway. Sticking doors, sagging floors and drafty windows are all part of its story, its character, things that make the house almost like an individual and coincidentally they're the same things that so palpably attract me to historic homes in the first place.

Adding on to any older home's fixer-up persona, so to speak, like I said before I've always found dilapidated, old homes intensely appealing. Take one of my poems I wrote recently and posted on my blog entitled Memoir of an Old House, in which a ramshackle, neglected old house finds solitude and common ground with its aging owner who is a forgotten man of divorce with nothing but the house for company. Whenever I write about houses I always receive strong mental images in my mind, and then work my hardest to transfer as much detail of each image onto paper. There's just something about houses in general, but especially old houses obviously, that inspire deeply and endlessly in my writing.

Once again, I digress, but getting back on track! Referring back to my passion for dilapidated - and also abandoned - houses - another one of my favorite magazines, unsurprisingly, is This Old House. Albeit I enjoy looking at the pictures and reading the articles my favorite section of the magazine is the one on the very last page entitled Save This Old House. Within this section readers submit a picture and story of an old house in danger of demolition, in desperate need of repairs or just in need of a loving touch. These are the houses that, to throw a trite phrase out there, pull at my heart strings. It also angers me when I read a story about a beautiful house in danger of being razed in favor of mundane condos or a parking lot. I won't get too much into that topic because I know I'll end up going on a rant!

To further explain how much I love dilapidated homes, take a short story I've been tossing around in my mind like a piece of sweet tasting candy rolling on my tongue. It's entitled The Healing House and was inspired by a certain late 1800's Victorian home I discovered within the Save This Old House section of the afore mentioned magazine a couple months ago. In one my former blog posts I'm sure I described how after viewing a singular picture of a historic home I begin weaving a story around and behind it, until a new short story is born and revolves around a house! Like the all the rest of them do. :)

In The Healing House there are two characters, who are sisters, Georgina (22) and Gwenyvere (16). Their parents, Dawson and Gillian Harding, were to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in Sweden for half a month, skiing, touring and a slew of other things. A month went by and still Mr. and Mrs. Harding hadn't returned. Georgina - who is the story's main character - called police from their comfortable, newly built home in New York's countryside and the search began. It wasn't long before the Harding's were labeled as missing persons, and an amber alert went out everywhere.

I won't bother you with too many details, but eventually Georgina and Gwenyvere give up the search and split up their parent's belongings, putting the four-bedroom house for sale. A lawyer plans to place them both with relatives but one thing Georgina and Gwenyvere both agree on is that they don't want to become a burden to any of them, especially seeing as their mother only had one sister and their father only had two brothers who lived in the Alaskan wilderness. Georgina barters with the lawyer, searching for a second solution. It's then that the lawyer discovers one of Mr. Harding's longest kept secrets. A secret, in fact, that he was planning to reveal to his family shortly after returning from Sweden. It seems that from his few and far flung descendants Dawson Harding had inherited a one and a half story Victorian Queen Anne home in the obscure, small town of Union Springs, Alabama.

Georgina of course, before asking for more information on this sudden and puzzling find, jumps at the chance to save the dilapidated home which had been left abandoned for five years, and drags Gwenyvere from their plush New York home to a rambling, drafty, paint-stripped Victorian home foreign to them in every sense of the word. Except for the undiscovered memories that lay hidden within its walls, within its rooms, and within its very core. Memories that will force them both back to the thought of their parents, whom they had both tried to distance themselves from because of the numbing pain. Georgina had given up hope along with the lawyers, excepting the facts as a sign to move on while Gwenyvere stubbornly stood her ground, silently wishing they would keep searching, they must still be alive.

Obviously there is major tension between the sisters after the move, but in all honesty, they never got along in the first place. Both of them are so completely different. Those differences are only amplified after the search was ended for their parents. I entitled this short story The Healing House because over time, while both of them restore the house and discover hidden, albeit painful memories to relive of their parents, wading through such dark waters will in turn heal them, both their personal scars and those ripped between them. The house will become both a connection to the past and a connection between each other, as well a connection to a new future. A future in which they no longer push the memories of their parents into a dark, shadow laden corner but keep them close to their heart, remembering what was, and how a series of unspeakably painful events brought them to an unassuming house which silently did so much for them.

I'll admit, though you probably guessed already I've never been one for brevity, but hopefully I didn't ramble on too long about one of my recent short story ventures. But I'm excited about it!

Old houses are a major part of why I write, if not one of the main reasons, and they will continue to inspire me. Both in my writing, and my own life. Like I mentioned way in the beginning of this blog post, I someday wish to own a dilapidated old home not unlike the one I described in The Healing House and live in it while I fix it up. Whether I'll sell it after I'm done restoring or simply choose to stay permanently is up for discussion! Knowing me, I'd become irrevocably attached with every single house I restored. It can't be helped though right?

A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

Yes, I know, it's a overused phrase, but I'm using it in a different way. What I mean by that is. Instead of saying something like "when you look at this photo it brings back so many memories, ones that took place before it, ones that took place during it, and those after it. That's definitely a thousand words isn't it? Whether it's a picture with your Grandparent's taken exactly two months before they passed, the quirky snapshot of you with your boyfriend smiling next to his car that he crashed a week later and totaled...or that old, grainy black and white photograph of your Great-Grandparent's house perched upon the flat countryside of the Plains. You'd never been there, but had seen many pictures of it and a myriad of stories woven with mystery, love and nostalgia. With that said it would seem that each picture is worth a million words! Or perhaps an infinite amount. In any case, I believe none of us can look at family photos, present and past, and not feel something, whether it be good or bad.

There's another side to photographs, as well as paintings. The reason I bring up paintings is in lieu of my latest assignment for my online Creative Writing class. The assignment was to find a painting and write a short prose piece about it, or in other words, create a short-short story behind the painting. Prose is the ordinary language people use in speaking or writing. But before I get into that, let me for a moment talk about the relationship between photographs and my own writing.

Whenever I write a short story or novel you can bet that it's origins originated from a photograph. Which is most often a house! Take a current novel I started roughly last summer called Ties That Bind. It's a supernatural-based mystery that I based off of a picture of a c.1899 Victorian Second Empire cottage I found on oldhouses.com. Now with any Second Empire home, in my opinion at least, they give off that haunted house aura. Perhaps it's the curvaceous mansard roof, the elegant gingerbread molding or the mere fact that they stand out from the myriads of look-alike houses. Whatever the reason, upon the seeing the photograph of the house, with its own mansard roof and dark and light green paint job, my mind started concocting a story behind its historic walls. The story ended up being about a girl around my age who looses both of her parents in a horrific accident, only to be beckoned to her old Great Aunt's bed side where she unknowingly encounters the supernatural and is given a cryptic skeleton key and an even more portending warning from her Aunt's dying lips.

Agnes Blackwell, or Aggie, the story's main character, leaves her parent's modest bungalow in the quiet cul-de-sac she called home and arrived on the doorstep of the abandoned Victorian cottage where the threads of her past all come together to weave a web of deceit, lies, horrors, undiscovered sins...and at the heart of it...a century's old curse who has haunted every female member of Aggie's family since her 5th Great Aunt, Virginia Blackwell, started it all in that unassuming, dilapidated cottage. The curse began there, and it will end there...with Aggie. Can she break the curse and save future female Blackwell descendants? Or will she become another victim and bring everything full circle? Forever expunging the Blackwell name?

I'll admit, although that particular short story that I started was largely inspired by the c.1899 Victorian cottage on oldhouses.com it was also inspired by my favorite TV show, Supernatural.

As another example, take my current project, a short story series called Wide Open Spaces. In which five friends live in a fictional rural small town called Templeton located in Oklahoma's panhandle. The town is stricken by severe weather, mainly tornadoes, and the five friends have to learn to live in harmony with them. The town has never been industrialized. They are at the heart of Americana, clinging to a quickly expiring way of life. If you want a clearer picture of just what kind of life I tried to portray for them look up a song by Mary Chapin-Carpenter entitled I Am A Town. It perfectly captures the essence of Templeton, and that of the five main characters. The inspirations behind this particular story? For once, it's not a house I found on oldhouses.com but rather a fictional bungalow! Granted, yes, the bungalow closely resembles one of my favorite homes to ride my bike past in Sheboygan, but for the most part it came from my own imagination. Whenever I talk about houses they always take on human qualities, or what's known as personification. There's something about them that causes me to habitually put them at the center of my stories. Or it could just simply be my obsession with them!

As always, I digress, but as I've said many times before, even though I sometimes veer far from the tracks which I first set out on with each blog post, somehow the path I end up and the beginning path are linked. Whether that link be inconspicuous or obvious is up for discussion.

With that said I can return to my latest assignment for my online Creative Writing assignment. Just as I showed you I can create in-depth stories behind a single photograph of a historic house, so was I asked by my Professor to write a prose piece about a single painting we found online or in life. While first meeting the project with trepidation, thinking to myself...how am I going to do this? How will I create a believable story behind a singular painting? Most of all what I found most intimidating was the fact that I had to write in third person. Naturally - and as perhaps a direct consequence of reading so many books written in first person growing - I've always written my short stories in first person. For me, it seems the most natural and the best way to convey my "writer's voice" onto the paper.

Albeit, once I finished the assignment I realized my trepidations were ill-placed. I had no problem writing in third person, and in fact found it a refreshing change. Also, writing the prose piece wasn't hard either. It was basically like writing a condensed story which led up to the point of the painting. For my prose piece I chose a Norman Rockwell painting entitled Family Grace. I've always been intrigued by Rockwell's paintings, they portray such simple moments in life that appear to be amplified snapshots of Americana and favorite past times when captured by his brush and deft hand. Below I've posted my prose piece, which carries the same title as the Rockwell painting. I'll see if I can post the painting as well, so you can get a better picture of where my story is coming from.

I've enjoyed posting my writing for you all to read, and look forward to the comments you may post. My Creative Writing class has been one of the best college classes I've taken so far!

Family Grace

The look on their faces belied their words; didn’t they know he wasn’t a little boy anymore? “Thomas,” they had said, with voices overly cheerful, stretched like thread barren clothes on the line, “Daddy and I are going to take you to your Grandparents. Would you like that?”

On ordinary days, yes he would have, but not now, not when the sky is blotted out, or when pale, relentlessly moving drifts of sand roll across the land like prehistoric creatures. Through cracks in his shuttered window Thomas saw old Model A’s abandoned in those haunting drifts, some swallowed whole; while others were stripped clean by thieves.

Grabbing his hand, his mother tugged him along anxiously. They yearned to escape this place, he could feel it in their touch, in their words, even on their lips as they kiss him goodbye on his Grandparent’s doorstep. With what child-like youth that still clung to his bony frame he held his mother’s hand a moment longer, relishing the feeling of her smooth skin against his. Her green eyes lifted to his, cast in shadow beneath the tattered rim of her straw hat.

“Thomas,” she whispered, her voice reaching out to him like the sand-choked wind scrapping against the wooden clapboards of his house, stripping it of paint, trying to get inside. “You know Daddy and I have to look for work. We agreed a long time ago, before any of this began.” She flung a gloved hand behind her, as if to encompass the ubiquitous storm layered upon the Great Plains. “That we wouldn’t take you with us; it’s no life for a little boy. Shhh,” she whispered when Thomas opened his mouth to object, pressing a finger to his lips.

“You’ll have a good life here. I know I did when I was growing up.” His mother attempted a laugh but it tumbled from her lips like a hurricane lamp pushed to the ground by a gust of wind. Thomas feared his mother would dissolve into broken shards right there on the doorstep so he wrapped his arms around her, trying to ignore her trembling shoulders.

“Be good now.” Each word tickled his ear, but stung his heart like the particles of sand whipping against his face. “We’ll return for you, I promise, all of you.” With a rustle of muslin skirts and short sobs she was gone, pretending to fumble through her purse as the Model A drove out of sight, Thomas’ father at the wheel.

A gruff voice welcomed Thomas into the Colonial style home. The Palpable scents of dinner drifted to him from the kitchen, which was tucked into a nook at the back of the house. A rough hand fell on his shoulder, hardened by years of farming and working the land. Now the land is rebelling, Thomas thought. How ironic.

“We’ll wait in the keeping room for dinner,” his Grandfather said, steering Thomas into the small area off the vestibule. Crackling flames lit the fireplace, their heat reaching out, beckoning him to an antique Windsor chair near the hearth. According to the myriad tales his grandfather told about his beloved home, the keeping room was originally used as the main heat source since it was located directly off of the kitchen. Nowadays his grandparent’s used it as a parlor of sorts, a place to seek respite from the day’s grinding pace.

Everything about this house is comforting, Thomas marveled. His Grandfather sat down beside him on a pockmarked settee. As if all the years his Grandparent’s had lived in it the house had emulated their personality, or became a living thing.

Living, the singular word halted his thoughts. Just moments before his parents had been alive and well. What if they became another statistic, another victim of the pale, towering clouds that rose on the horizon to bury entire cities?

He was too young to be contemplating such things, his mother had chided him many times, but what was he to do? Even in the shelter of this house, in the protection of his grandparents, he could not escape from the tumultuous wrath of the dust storms. It was inside him, as if he had swallowed a handful of that dust.

The muted clank of dishes drew him outside his head. In the large chair he turned, looking up at his grandfather’s weathered face. “Time to eat son,” he announced, turning slowly towards the kitchen.

Ladderback chairs scraped, three pairs of hands folded in tandem. His Grandparent’s exchanged soft smiles. Their eyes sparkled, as if indistinguishable candles flickered within them. They had always lived simply, working and living off the land. It hadn’t given them much, and now seemed intent on taking it all away.

Still they prayed, to a God they loved dearly, and knew wouldn’t betray them. Grandfather’s rough voice spoke slowly as he prayed, as if walking a familiar path.
Thomas thanked God for this moment.

The Outside of a Horse is Good for the Inside of a Man

We've all heard that quote haven't we? Whether it came from an inspirational speech, a horse-loving friend, a book you were reading or any number of things. What does it mean to you? Obviously if you love horse - like me - you know what the quote is trying to convey, but if you don't like horses, what are you supposed to glean from it?

Like a lot of young girls I was bitten by the horse bug early on in life. It all started when my Mom brought my brother and I to Hardee's, I was maybe three or four. Upon going through drive-thru I found out there was a toy in the bag. As it turned out that toy was a plastic, white horse. To this day I still have that horse stashed somewhere in one of several toy chests scattered around the house, buried amongst other childhood relics like memorabilia treasure waiting to be discovered and remembered.

Since that day my love of horses has grown ten fold! For each birthday and Christmas after that little white horse my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends all bought me horses, and I couldn't have been happier! I'm sure while I was growing up my parents, albeit feeling joy watching me feed my obsession, also undoubtedly felt a trickling sense of trepidation. After all, horses are infamously synonymous with high costs. But despite that looming fact I still found ways to get up on a horse every now and then.

It started with a therapeutic program called R.E.I.N.S, and although I couldn't tell you what it stands for anymore, I can say that after struggling to balance my bike while riding without training wheels, after just a few short weeks of riding the horses in the program...I rode my bike with ease, no trace of the lack of equilibrium. The program was a huge help for me throughout my childhood years. All of the horses were extremely relaxed, therefore I felt comfortable around them. Perhaps too comfortable! Some of the horses would sense my confidence up in the saddle and want to take off at a trot. I still have a lock of hair from the tail of one of the ponies I rode in the program tucked away in my closet. I can remember what the horse looks like, but it's name? That's a different story. But I do remember a small pony I rode upon first entering RE.I.N.S who's name was Nugget.

I've come to realize that as I get older I remember things in freeze frame, like my mind's eye is a stuck-open shutter, always snapping pictures and storing them in towering metal filing cabinets where they sag against the floorboards of my memory under their relentless weight. Like I was discussing yesterday with the owner of the horse rescue farm I volunteer at in Reedsville, I also remember directions to certain places by landmarks along the way. For instance, for the right exit off of the highway to get to the horse rescue farm I recognize it not by it's name but by the fact that there's two red barns across the street. Just as on the way up to my Grandparents' house I know I'm getting close by the scenery becoming familiar.

Whether all of that is evidence of a photographic memory I'm not sure, but that's how I've always remembered things. This is what happens when I free-write, I get myself off track! But it all ties together in the end anyway, like I've said before. For how random my blog posts seem, and how varied their topics are, there is always a connecting thread between all of them like a bridge across every river.

After R.E.I.N.S I was involved in 4-H for a number of years. I dabbled in a program called Horseless Horse, which teams up people who have horses...with people who don't, and while the program wasn't all successful for me, I did get to spend some more time with horses and even show a few times! It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I really got involved with horses. At the high school I went to it was tradition that all seniors, in place of exams, would complete a nearly year-long project called Capstone. Since it was a Christian school the project focused on a problem based locally in Sheboygan - my hometown in Wisconsin - and how we, as students, could look at it through a Christian point of view and come up with solutions. I decided to do horse abuse and slaughter, since the issue of horse slaughter was up for debate in congress at the time. I garnered myriads of information, and visited a few horse rescue farms around Sheboygan, one of them being Sunrise Horse Farm in Reedsville, Wisconsin, which is owned and operated by Mary-Ellen Kiel.

When I first arrived she only had six horses, but as of current times she has ten. Just like the horses at R.E.I.N.S all eight horses are extremely docile. Mary-Ellen only uses six horses for the program she runs, the other three being owned by other people. The first time I'd stepped foot on her farm I hadn't been around horses for a while, but after meeting her and taking a walk down to the barn I realized that my freshly built up fears were senseless. I felt at ease around the horses, whether I was feeding them, brushing them or simply feeding them treats. Mary-Ellen herself is a very kind, unassuming and compassionate woman. Usually it takes me a while to warm-up to strangers, that is, to open up, but I found myself chatting amiably with her, perhaps finding comfort in her friendly disposition and that of the other people there.

Nowadays I try to make it out there just to help out with chores and such, as well for major events, such as the Christmas party or her recent Fall Festival, which took place last month. I am comfortable around all the horses and enjoy spending time around them. Take yesterday for example. It had been a cold day, with the wind gnashing its teeth in that all too familiar matter of Wisconsin winters, while temperatures tauntingly dipped below fifty-five degrees. Despite the biting wind and the cold stone walls emanating that chill in the barn I found solstice by brushing the eldest horse of the eight, a thirty-seven year old Morgan named Jubilee. Forgetting my gloves in the house I soon found my hands warmed by his body heat, not to mention his luxuriously thick winter coat. In turn I found laughter in the three barn kittens scampering around my feet, and Mary-Ellen's sole remaining dog, Shep, who was eager for attention.

There is something peaceful about completing a task as seemingly mundane as brushing a horse. While I listened to the sound of him methodically chew his food, the normal creaks and groans of an old barn and the scampering's of the mischievous kittens I let my mind wander like it always yearns too like a half-broken Mustang straining at the bit to run across the Plains. On the farm, in that barn, amidst the horses, eating a simple, healthy dinner with Mary-Ellen, feeding the horses hay, or playing with the kittens or petting the dog...life seems simpler. All of the complications, worries, fears, uncertainties and everything in-between falls away, as if only a few words are scribbled on that page, in that moment, instead of entire paragraphs hastily scrawled across it's surface in a dead panic as you rush from one thing to another.

Of course, I know for me it has a lot to do with the fact that Sunrise Horse Farm is located at the end of a secluded dirt road, removed from the bustle of city life. Mary-Ellen herself said she lived in the city for nine months years back but she hated it so much she moved back to the country. If any of you reading this blog post know me you know I despise the city. Its noise, its pollution, its hectic, haphazard pace, its complicated way of life...everything! Just as I wasn't born to endure Wisconsin's frigid winters so was I unequipped to live in the city. I can feel it from somewhere deep within me, perhaps from the well in which my resident writer at heart springs from, whenever I enter the countryside...this was where I was meant to live.

How can you be so sure you ask? After all, I've lived in the city my whole life, only entering the countryside every now and then. Like I said before, I can just feel it. Think of it as spotting that perfect dress across an entire store length. You haven't tried it on, haven't even seen it up close but yet you know...it's the perfect fit and style for you. Or perhaps you're reading a really good book and find yourself relating to the character in such a way you start experiencing the story along side them, almost as if you've entered the story itself. That's how it feels whenever I enter the countryside. If you want an even deeper picture of just how much I love the countryside and small towns read my blog post entitled Where The Green Grass Grows.

Well, this has been an interesting blog post! I varied with topics ranging from therapeutic riding, 4-H, photographic memory, the horse rescue farm I volunteer at...to my indistinguishable love for the countryside and horses! See what I mean? I could write all over the board when it comes to topics but yet there's that constant underpinning of connectivity. It's always there...you have to look a little harder to see it.

In closing, for anyone wishing to get around horses again, I strongly advise looking up local horse rescue farms, animal shelters or any other non-profit organization. Not only do they need help in any season, but you'll also become re-acquainted with being around horses and fall back into a plush comfort around them...just like I did! In addition, to loosely quote Mary-Ellen, it's during the wintertime that places like the one's I've mentioned, including her farm, need all the help they can get. Whether it's the holidays coming up, school, relatives arriving or just the fact that winter maroons us inside our homes...volunteer help becomes slack, shifting the burden of work upon those who remain. At Sunrise Horse Farm, the wind may be biting, the barn's stone walls may be permeated with a deep chill, your fingers may be barely able to hold a curry comb as you work burrs out of thick, winter coats but there's always a certain truth...the sweet, aromatic smell of a wood stove along with its welcoming heat and a steaming, warm cup of hot apple cider will be waiting for me. That, as well as the horses, the atmosphere and Mary-Ellen's inviting, amiable personality will keep me coming back through the winter.

Perhaps my next blog will focus on my obsession with apples!

Memoir of a Writer at Heart

So...it's Wednesday again, time for a new blog post! A couple weeks ago I posted a poem that I wrote 'outside' of my online Creative Writing class through my college, UW Sheboygan. I think I'll be posting more of my work in the future, not just for feedback, but because I want to 'get it out there' so it speak, instead of each poem and short story just sitting there marooned on my laptop! That's one of the key points in my Creative Writing class, opening up your work to other students to not only receive constructive criticism but also to help you expose your work to others. That has been one of the tripping factors for me, showing other people my work. But I'm learning that it has its benefits, and no matter how much people point out that you could improve, when you take their advice you realize that it was all for the better.

I'm also that type of writer where I'll simply sit down and type free-handed for an hour or so, then come back later or a few days after and read it over, then keep writing from there. It's always been hard for me to go back and re-edit this, take out that, fix a paragraph here, or God forbid completely delete everything and start over! But the latter is exactly what I'm going with a short story series I finished last March. After finishing the story I realized as I went along I began to see a clearer picture of what I wanted it to become in the end, but in the beginning? Not so much! So I braved it and am now roughly a hundred pages into re-writing the beginning of said short story, which is a series called Wide Open Spaces. And no, the title of the series wasn't inspired by the Dixie Chicks song, I've never liked their music save for possibly one song.

When I say 'free-handed' writing, you may be in the dark has to what it means, or perhaps you do free-hand writing yourself. If you're part of the latter, kudos to you! Free-handed writing has always been where I'm at my most creative. Whenever I want to work on one of my short stories I simply re-read what I've already written before and then build off of it to continue the story. Also, I don't like to simply stop in any old place when I'm writing, I either like to stop at the end of a chapter, or at a 'dividing' line within a chapter, where the story shifts from one scene or from one place in time to another. For some, simply writing whatever comes into their head and then making sense of it later seems too much of a haphazard way to write, but for me, even though my fingers are 'following' what my mind is telling me, I'm still in control because I'm constantly registering what I'm writing, instead of just writing 'blindly' where nothing makes sense.

Is that to say that everything I put down on the paper is perfect on the first try? Of course not! But like I said before, even with this blatant fact accepted in my mind, it's still hard for me to go back and edit things. Even though I know such changes could benefit me in the long run, I guess I look at changing such things 'in the moment' as opposed to how my story will be better because of it, say, a few days after when I write again.

Not only has my online Creative Writing class inspired me to continue free-writing it has also inspired me to once again delve into poems. I dabbled slightly in poems in middle school and maybe even early high school, but it sort of fell by the way side like old, tattered clothes ripping off of the line and falling into a muddied ditch. It may be no secret now, but I've always been inspired by old houses and as my professor for the Creative Writing class said "houses are always ripe material, because of their relation to the human body. Such as "windows like eyes," and etc. In turn, I've also been inspired by Fall and trees in general, especially when they are stripped clean of their leaves and all color, stretching from the barren and frozen Earth like skeleton hands of bleached bone.

Delving into poems has helped flex my writing muscle, so to speak. Instead of simply taking a break between working on my short stories I am continuing to write in between, whether it be a poem or two I've written outside of my class, or a poem for my class, or writing a blog post! I've learned, both from myself and from others, that it is good for a writer to write continually. What I mean by that is, you cannot just write once or twice a week and think that your writing muscle will be in top shape. You have to find a way to write a little something every day, or at least four to five times a day. Now if you're a writer you may find that claim incredulous, but it doesn't have to be anything 'big' so to speak, like pounding out a hundred plus pages on a short story of yours. Sometimes I get hung-up on such thinking. Telling myself that when I sit down to work on my own short stories that I have to write x amount of pages or it won't be significant enough. I think for writer's the claim I'm my own worst enemy has never been truer! Who's to say that writing simply three or four pages isn't significant enough? Take a few days for example, that's exactly what I wrote for my Wide Open Spaces, three pages. Within those three pages I could have captured something special, or taken the story line a step further, or reached a climax, or revealed a secret. You don't need to always write a hundred plus pages, or whatever limit you have set in your mind. Whether it's three pages, four or ten, it doesn't matter! As long as you feel both your story and you have benefited from the writing exercise that's all that matters. Within those small amount of pages could be hidden the jewels you'd been searching for, or the plot twist that your story needs to freshen it up, or keep the reader guessing.

One of the reasons I decided to continue my blog long after my English classes at UW-Sheboygan ended is because I enjoy writing, and also enjoy in sharing my random thoughts with everyone who cares to listen! Also, it's a great way to continue my writing, even when I'm taking a break from my short stories or I'm in between assignments in my Creative Writing class. But for how 'random' my blog posts are, I've always seen a common thread within them. Invariably because of my writing nature a lot of them - like today's! - have had to do with writing, but in turn a lot of them have to do with historic houses, country music, the countryside or a combination of all of these! I guess the point is, for how haphazard free-writing is, there is a constant underpinning of tight control that only emerges when we allows ourselves to reach back into the sea of words we've written and pull out sturdy sentences, whole paragraphs and poignant thoughts that'll only strengthen everything for the better.

Just so you can catch a glimpse into just how inspired I am by old houses below I have posted a poem I had to write for my Creative Writing class. It is entitled Memoir of an Old House and it is written in first person from the house's point of view, in which it is reflecting on its dilapidated state and also that of its owner, who is a lonely, aging divorced man. Ironically they are bonded together in their desolation, and find solstice in each other's aging and the blatant fact that there's nothing either of them can do about it.

In closing, I hope you enjoy my poem, as well as what I have written about my writing habits. As always...happy writing!

Memoir of an Old House

Sagging floorboards creak underfoot
As my owner pads his way to the kitchen.
My invariable early morning complaints
In tandem with his own.

My plastered walls barely restrain
Wind’s frigid exhale beyond.
Thin air curls out of wrought iron vents
His feet seek refuge from the cold floors.

Through each wavy pane in these wooden windows
With their deep sills and paint-chipped frame
I have witnessed many centuries unfolding before me,
Caught in time’s snare while the world tumbles forward.

His hand slides deftly down my banister,
Its wooden surface has lost its radiant shine.
I know the routine he follows each day,
Each of my rooms a reflection of his life.

My six-paneled doors stick when humidity rises,
He sleeps in on Saturday mornings.
My rusted screen door bangs open on windy days.
He stays up late to watch film noir on Sunday nights.

I, a lone aging sentential perched upon a hill,
He a forgotten man of divorce.
In our abandonment we have found unity,
A common ground like my cracking foundation.

Stories To Tell

Have you ever looked at your closet? I mean, really looked at it? Or do you simply throw open its doors, reaching blindly for one piece of clothing or another while your Mom yells at you to hurry up? Or do you stand there, analyzing the perfect outfit for the day, skimming over your collection?

Why would I ask these questions? The truth is, I haven't really looked at the clothes in my closet for a long time. I'm always reaching to the upper shelf to grab a scarf, or on the floor to grab a pair of shoes. Have you ever thought of the story behind each article of clothing in your closet? Have you thought of how they reflect on what type of person you are? Your class, your taste, your mood, your style...etc. You could be sending people a certain message by the way you dress and not even know it! Whether that message is positive or negative, is the true question.

Albeit, some people send a message via their clothing on purpose. Some may dress in a disheveled manner, signifying they don't care or have no ambition. Other's may choose to dress in only baggy sweatshirts and sweatpants, signifying that they value comfort and perhaps don't concern themselves with the latest fashions or what others think. Still others, like a girl in my art class at UW Sheboygan, may dress in all black and wear corsets with heavy black make-up around her eyes. She's a very nice person, and quiet like me, but the first time I saw her I couldn't help but bring to mind every judgment and stereotype about a person who dresses like that. The only reason I pushed them aside is because my best friend dresses in similar fashion, choosing to wear mostly black, dye her naturally brown hair black and wear heavy make-up. Upon seeing a person like that you can't help but think they're on the fringes of the social world, but upon getting to know her in high school, I realized that she was a very friendly, open person who dresses the way she does not to prove a point or give a statement, but because she likes to.

Just as I dress the way I do because it's how I feel most comfortable, which is basically jeans, t-shirts and the normal lot. In winter time I live in knee socks, scarves and sweaters. Not only do I like wearing all three of these things because of the blessed extra warmth they give me, I also do so because I like being wrapped tight so to speak when the wind forms a biting edge and snow flutters from the sky.

This whole blog post came about after I recently began wearing old clothes in my closet again. It's no secret that times are tougher these days and money is scarce, therefore I've had to go without virtually no new clothes this year. So, I braved the uncharted depths of my closet and pulled out some clothes I hadn't worn in a while including one thick sweater, two long-sleeved shirts, one pair of jeans and one hoodie. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? And it was! I was amazed at how many clothes I had forgotten about, and just like finding a lost book somewhere around the house you loved, you can't help but dig in, so to speak.

As I was rummaging through my closet, though, I couldn't help but think how so many of my clothes have meaning or stories behind them. Take for instance the thick sweater I found at the back of my closet, I remember getting that when I was a freshman in high school. Now a sophomore in college I found myself reminiscing of that year that I scarcely recall! Also the pair of jeans I found in my dresser drawer reminded me of all the summer's and springs I worn them out to a local horse rescue farm - Sunrise Horse Farm - that I volunteer at occasionally in Reedsville, Wisconsin. I recalled all the times I'd been on my knees, pulling out weeds, or walking through the pasture to retrieve the horses.

In addition I remember a white shirt that I had bought specifically for graduation day to wear underneath my white gown, as well as the pair of white flip-flop sandals I'd purchased that same day. Albeit I still wear the sandals - now retired for the winter! - I haven't worn the shirt since, and it now either sits atop my closet shelf, or resides at Bethesda Thrift Shop. I also recall buying a white skirt for that day as well. What a graduation that was, I received a whole new outfit!

Speaking of shoes I also have a pair of "buckle flats" that I purchased during the end-of-the-year presentation my senior class and I had to give at my high school. Those too I still wear, albeit retired for wintertime!

I also have a red, elbow-length sleeve sweater that I wore during some of my graduation pictures, as well as a brown shirt I wore for the others, both of which I still wear today. On a hook on the shadowed back wall of my closet I have three or four dresses that I wore during the numerous banquets I attended that were put on by my high school. These dresses hold special meaning to me because every banquet was special in its own way. One year I remember seeing a girl who wore the same dress as me! But I wasn't one of those girls who got all flustered, in fact, I thought it was funny. One dress in particular - a strapless number I bought from Maurice's - holds special meaning as well, seeing as how I finally braved a strapless dress and pushed aside the fear that it would fall down!

After reading all this, you might be reflecting on your own experiences with your clothes, some of them related to my own, some of them completely different. Perhaps because I'm a girl this blog post has come more easily to me but, I'm sure if they thought enough about it, guys as well could come up with stories behind their clothes. They just might not be elaborate or heart-fell as the stories we girls have!

With that said, the next time you open your closet door, whether it be to change for school, to find something to wear on a date or a day out with your friends, a camping trip, a skiing trip, changing out of your ugly work uniform...or simply searching for your old, stand-by favorite that you love to wear just lounging around the house...look deeper than the fabric, the embellishments and the labels...to the story behind that piece of clothing.

Do you ever wish you had a walk-in closet? I know I do!