Here is writing by a www.WriteYourLifeStory.org class members that struck us all.  Jean expresses such wisdom.

Try writing your own Internal Journey.  Send it to me at AnneRandolph@comcast.net 

INTERNAL JOURNEY 
    by Jean Caggiano 2010

Lovely poem by Kathy Mitchell a www.KitchenTableWriting.com participant 

Wonder all birds into being—
Lush in dog hair nests
their speckled chests rusting into age
picking fat worms from black earth
seeding songs in twilight air.
The color of evening incarnate.

The world is too green, sometimes
the crabapples too pink to fit in my eye.
Petals fall,
a subtle gesture.
Pieces of the world
small enough to hold.


Kathy Mitchell
April 2010
katmitch@earthlink.net

Absorb this poem by one of our regular www.WriteYourLifeStory.org Wednesday morning writers.  We drew pictures of our life work and discovered what surprised us.  An interesting exercise to try.

                                  I AM SURPRISED!


I am surprised I did so much

tried so many things!

Accomplished more then I thought.

I’m surprised I thought I was shy

And didn’t recognize my brain!

I’m surprised I didn’t let me

out sooner!

I’m surprised that people think I’m creative!

I’m surprised I didn’t recognize what creativity

Truly was!

My beautiful warm home. Thanks Mom!

The way I look.  Thanks Mom!

Thinking creatively as an entrepreneur. Thanks Dad!

I’m surprised I didn’t recognize those as creative!

I’m surprised I didn’t recognize my strength and endurance!

I’m surprised at how old I am!

I’m always surprised to find new challenges!

I’m surprised how I use my knowledge!

I’m surprised by my wellspring of life!

I’m just always surprised!

How come no one else is?   

Alice Borodkin
June 30, 2010
www.WriteYourLifeStory.org

Writing On Wellness: WOW

Come join Connie Pshigoda and Anne Randolph for an evening of  Summer Wellness tips and secrets an an opportunity to stir your “inner writer. http://www.wellnessforallseasons.com
You’ll learn now to stay “cool as a cucumber” in summer’s hot days; taste the season’s flavors and “write-hot” with fun and challenging writing exercises and lessons.
Save the date: Wednesday, June 23rd, from 5:30-8:30 pm in Connie’s garden setting.  Invest in your physical and creative health for a cost of only $50. Sign up:  http://shop.AnneRandolph.com  or AnneRandolph@comcast.net

Please confirm your attendance at 303-758-3426. Directions will be given with your paid reservation.
*Full-time writer, Anne Randolph leads workshops in Denver and at conferences including the Screenwriters  Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read more about Anne’s projects at: www.AnneRandolph.com   and  www.KitchenTableWriting.com

We Have To Get Out of This Place! 

Cherry Creek Mall Talk, Thursday Evening- Shirley Riggs

Two ladies dressed in similar coats are walking side by side in a mall, but neither one was looking at the other; and each lady is caught up in her own internal conversation. Interestingly enough, each one of the women is wearing grey outfits in a seeming match to their bland faces.

Some obscure thought process seemed to be going through both of their heads which is bothering them both.  Whatever it is captivates them as they walk together in the fashion of “moonwalk: mannerisms”.  They look as though all they really want to do is escape from the place where they are now. 

Obviously, they are not very friendly with one another as it seems no words are being spoken.  The silent conversation must be something inane as one lady speaks to the other.

“Honestly, I cannot stand these close quarters.  Do you feel a need for more space within which to move around? It is all these people milling around that puts me into a catatonic state.”

To this the other blond, grey clothed woman silently answers but keeps walking.

“I feel that I am in a glass house all the time. It is causing me to be claustrophobic and it is stifling my ability to put a smile on my face.”

“If you wouldn’t take up more than your share of space as we meander along, I don’t think you’d feel this way,” replies the first. As for me, I feel you want all passing eyes to be upon you, never even glancing at my fine attire.  Get a grip girl! The world is not made “for your eyes only,” stuff like they said in the James Bond movie.  You know it, you see it.  The poster is hanging on the mall wall just across the way.”

The second gal retorts,“ If we can break through this glass case, I’ll race you there.”

Suddenly, the lights in the window went off with a click.  The mall avenues were shut down and the two mannequins dressed in grey came to a silently speechless halt!  The jig was up. They had caused no real harm, no real conflict and no real jealousy between them.  They were ready for a new day with new outfits and new places to go; even though they were in their glass case at the Cherry Creek Mall. 

I wish to write to the full extent of my abilities.  I wish to write what challenges me.  I wish to write clear glass, lucid as a string of beads, shiny, beautiful, elusive.  I want to write the bees humming in the garden, busy at their work, the cat, soft on her chair.  I want to write the world into beautiful being, to make the leap of my heart jump off the page into your mouth, slide down your throat and into your belly like hot rum.

I wish to write the thread of my family woven through the centuries of American history.  Each woman in turn unique and specific in her own time, but timeless in my vision of the breadth of the family.  I’m drawn to it thinking some secret will be revealed to me, some special insight into myself, the stuff of my body and mind formed of these women who came before. 

I think if I know them I will know something new about myself.  And I think sometimes if I know them through the facts I cobble together and the stories I build out of those facts, if I write their story and make them characters, I will know them better than the family I know in person, the mother I know like the skin on my face but who at the same time can mystify me.  No, not mystify; rather, feel so strangely distant.  Maybe that’s our legacy, this distance, this reticence.  Is that what I’m wanting to write? My legacy, my family back in time to compensate for the family I don’t have to succeed me? 

I’m not sure it’s as neat as that.  There is some sense of wanting to write it to bring my ancestors back into light, to see where we came from and show others.  Some frustration with assumptions and pat answers about this big, unwieldy, messy thing called American history.  I will not wonder who I am to want to write our history – who am I to not write it? I am the keeper of the artifacts, I am the last surviving granddaughter, I am the stitcher of disparate things.  I have the curiosity and the skill.  I only need work on my will and perseverance.

I wish to write all birds into being.  I know that doesn’t make sense.  What I mean to say is that the world is too green, sometimes, the crabapples too dark pink to fit into my eye.  I can only stand under them and let the petals fall on the sleeve of my coat, pink on black, a tiny piece of the world broken off small enough to comprehend.

Kathy Mitchell
Member, www.KitchenTableWriting.com
May, 2010

Beneath the Façade
by John Maling

The façade of what we know as life and our world, is presented to us through the windows of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. It is the surface—the veneer—of another, underlying world, the material world beneath that world of the senses. Its composition ranges from the macroscopic to the microscopic—the elements, the atom, the nuclei and the even tinier, more fundamental components of those submicroscopic bits of the universe—those same microscopic and submicroscopic bits that make up all life as well.

There are levels within levels—from galaxies down to us—and less; and the incomprehensible mystery of life, made up of those same submicroscopic bits of matter as the stars.  But life is imbued with a magic presence allowing perception and understanding of all that we are and what we are surrounded by.

The mind is the source of all this understanding.  It is the coordinator of all those senses, making whole a welter of disparate inputs so that whatever we view, we view whole . . . be it serene or tumultuous, safely calm or dangerous.
From that welter of sensory inputs that weaves the web of life for an individual, he, she or it creates meaning—purpose.  That is the elixir that in turn creates a society—a civilization—which itself is a vast, living, growing organism.  It is composed of billions of individual creatures, and hierarchies of life, simple to complex, smaller than a single cell to creature-organisms that defy understanding, they are themselves so vast and complex.

Is there a simple idea that might explain this complexity . . . up to a point, perhaps?  The wonder, and further mystery, is that our human organism appears to be complex enough to concern itself in a creative, meaningful way with the mystery of life, including its own existence, as well as the mysteries of the universe: the galaxies, stars, planets, atoms, nuclei and less.  

What underlies this multifarious universe of “things” . . . some that move and think, and some that simply exist, at the whim of things called forces and fields?  

What hath God wrought . . . and why?

John Maling from www.WriteYourLifeStory.org /> EditingbyJohn

SAMMY THE SEAL
-by Jean Caggiano  member www.WriteYourLifeStory.org


Sammy the Seal and Ollie the Otter were the best of friends you see,
Wherever you happened to find the one the other was likely to be.
All day long they played together, frolicking down by the sea,
Picking up seashells and dreaming together of what they wanted to be.
Each day was sunny for they had each other to talk to and laugh with you see,
And each afternoon at half past two, they shared a cup of peppermint tea.
But then one day, Ollie moved away, to the farthest edge of the sea,
“Where the water was better for otters,” his mother had said to Ollie.
Sammy thought he would die and each night did cry, as he heard the waves roll in the sea;
They’d cared and shared so much together, how could he live without Ollie?
“Sammy my son,” finally his mother did say to him one day,
I know you loved Ollie and miss him, and I’m sorry he had to go away;
But you can’t live your life forever inside, hiding away from everyone,
You never go out to swim anymore, to play in the sand or sit in the sun."
 “I know,"  said Sammy, "but it's no fun hunting seashells alone by the sea,
Or sitting alone, all by yourself, drinking a cup of peppermint tea."
"Ah Sammy," his mother said, gently patting his head with a smile,
"You've already learned it's love, my son, that makes living worthwhile;
But this you have yet to learn and will learn as you grow,
You will find others you can love, believe me Sammy, for this I know.
Sammy sighed and hoped she was right and said , as he got up to go,
“I guess if I hide forever inside, "ll never really know."
And slowly he started down the sandy path which led the way to the sea,
Hoping someday, he might find someone , who liked to hunt seashells and drink
peppermint tea.

                                      ON TOP

                      THOUGHTS AT 35,000 FEET

                           by Alice Borodkin
 
Clouds – like stepping stones across the sky

A totality of infinite time.

Reflecting sunlight ,rainbow prisms that light the way.

Oh! What games the mind will play kindled by crystals

That fire the imagination!

Those gossamer clouds, shot through with color

As if God or some great artist dropped a palate

And splattered the sky.



BEING THERE  by Alice Borodkin


Being present and in the moment. Something I never knew until flying brought me to that moment.

Being one with the plane as if I were poured into it. It encompassed all of me. The engines purring softly, the dials on the cockpit panel aligned perfectly. The feeling of being one with the plane. The sky above and the earth below.

Watching as the earth, like a green and brown patch work quilt slid by beneath me. Feeling the sun through the cockpit window so warm on my body it felt like a lover’s embrace. The peacefulness, knowing with all my heart that all was well in my small world.

Being alone, with just the crackle of the radio and the occasional voice of the controller checking in with me as I flew across Long Island sound. Concentration so strong, it wiped everything else out of my mind. Just me and my plane.

Leonardo Da Vinci said, “For once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been and there you long to return.”

I couldn’t describe it better. And he never had the chance to slip a plane gently downward toward the runway. Nor, I dare say, had he watched the sun come up from a cockpit window lighting each cloud it touched like soft pink cotton candy.

Indeed, I feel it would be safe to say that he never flew a new and different plane just to see how it handled and what it could do.

And he never had the opportunity to engage in “hanger talk” exchanging stories about the time my plane did and I did…hours and hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of panic.

Those moments of panic. A deal with God. Please God, let me get out of this safely and find my way home, and I promise I’ll never fly again. Only to land and book the plane for tomorrow. One can only hope that God was not keeping count.

My dad said I could do anything I wanted to, but the 1950’s and 60’s said I could not. What turmoil it set up in my mind. Betty Crocker vs. Betty Freidan. Sort of stop and go.

So I went out and learned to fly. Don’t know why since I had lost two close friends to a nut who blew up the plane to get his mother-in-laws insurance. That was before the word terrorism became the word du-jour.
I was afraid to fly in any plane big or small. If it had wings, I wasn’t interested.
But my husband felt differently about flying. One day he came home and announced that next week we would both take our first flying lesson. To this day, I can’t imagine why I said OK.

During a trial flight, my instructor swaggered out, promptly took the gum out of his mouth glued it to the wing and announced “there that should hold it”

He probably thought I would turn and run. But I simply reminded him that he too would join me if the plane went down.

As we trundled down the runway in a plane so small it could only hold two of us, something happened to me that was miraculous. I became a flying junkie!

I also discovered that I was highly competitive. On a clear sunny Saturday, my husband soloed. I flew, as the saying goes, the doors off the hanger the next week and soloed the following Saturday.

We thought the family that flies together stays together. Wrong. We entered a handicap race that created a schism almost too big to cross. We disagreed over the auto pilot, the compass setting, the fuel consumption, flaps up or down. Now I understand that the disagreements went deeper and into the marriage itself.

I remember landing, slamming out of the plane and leaving my husband to tie down and report our time and fuel usage.

A close friend of mine was tying her plane down next to ours. She later told me that as I was marching off, I said,’ I don’t know whether to cancel my flight plan or my marriage.”   

I was forty years old when I received my license. A gentleman at the airport said I had moxy. Although I didn’t know it at the time, that license changed my life. If I could do that what else could I do?  It was the beginning of the end of the Betty Crocker era for me!

For there I have been and there I long to return. It was the only time I found myself in the moment. I felt complete, in charge of my destiny. How fortunate for me that I have had that moment many times again over the years.

The spirit of Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh accompany me. Just the three of us and the plane and the horizon.