LEARNED ANYTHING?
Here is a moving bit of writing from Melody Jones who is a part of the Wednesday morning WriteYourLifeStory workshop. Add your own "I have learned..." writing
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I’ve learned…
I’ve learned that what I thought was merely venting and being real with my feelings is seen as whining by most people.
I’ve learned that I do not need to say every worry out loud. Doing so often seems to give the worry more life than it should have, rather than dissipating it as I’d believed.
I’ve learned that no matter how bad I think I have it, it could be worse. Now I let myself have negative feelings and “poor me’s” for a time, and then I move on. If they come back, I forgive myself and I move on.
I’ve learned that people don’t always know how to take me and that’s okay. I’m a person of many facets and emotions.
I’ve learned that my own thought patterns hold me back and that I am not always successful in changing them. But sometimes I am.
I’ve learned that gratitude takes practice and daily awareness.
I’ve learned that my dogs can stink to high heaven, and I love them anyway.
I’ve learned that every bee and wasp doesn’t have it out for me. Wait…maybe I haven’t learned that.
I’ve learned to value the time I had with my grandparents, and still have with my dear 92 year old grandmother and the only one I have left.
I’ve learned that my husband does what I predict, whether positive or negative, and that I have the power to influence the outcome.
I’ve learned that I don’t have to apologize for not liking chocolate as much as everyone else seems to.
I’ve learned that I dislike humidity, tight airplane seats, and movie popcorn.
I’ve learned that I love the air after a Colorado rain storm, the smell of play dough, and the color pink in every hue.
I’ve learned that a day spent without honoring my creativity in some way is a day not fully lived.
I’ve learned that good ice cream is worth the cost and costly moisturizer isn’t.
I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me as long as my intentions are pure and my energy is clean. I’ve also learned that sometimes I care anyway about what others think especially if it’s negative.
I’ve learned that I grow bored with purses and watches, and so I allow myself to get new ones at least every season. Boredom is life unlived.
I’ve learned that I know more than I think.
I’ve learned that I know less than I think.
I’ve learned there’s much more to learn.
Written by Melody Jones, June 29, 2011
www.WriteYourLifeStory.org
WHY WE WRITE
For Anne
With this writing, I want to tell a powerful story—my story. This amazing journey down the corridors of life is like most lives, paradoxically mixed with beauty and pain, growth and redemption highlighted with creativity and shadowed and transformed by tumultuous and quickly changing times we live in. We live in remarkable times and I am a remarkable woman. There—I said it.
With this writing, I have come to know myself and share my experiences. Many of which I have held tucked away in a secluded part of my earthly experience, afraid the strength of those experiences would shatter the normal, somewhat redundant rhythms of other people’s lives.
But here, in the warmth of kitchen, writing with friends—I am heard.
My words still learning to find their proper place on the page, encouraged, appreciated and even praised. In essence, I have written myself into wholeness. There are no longer secrets hidden between the lines of life.
My secrets, my inner wanderings and questions are filling out the pages with truth—my truth. It is my hope we can find solace in the truth of our lives. I want this writing to give instruction to those I love to look deeply, freely into the magnificent beings they are and tell their stories, too.
Katherine Carol
Write Your Life Story, 2010
INTERNAL JOURNEY
Try writing your own Internal Journey. Send it to me at AnneRandolph@comcast.net
INTERNAL JOURNEY
by Jean Caggiano 2010
Poem by Kitchen Table Writer
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
MY LIFE: I'M SURPRISED
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
Writers at Work
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.
Poem
-by Jean Caggiano
When I was one and twenty,
Footloose and fancy free,
I thought the world had been created
Especially for me.
Oh, the great things I would do,
The heights to which I’d rise,
A great scholar I’d become
Full of Wit, and Wise!
But by the time I had reached one and thirty,
I’d a bouncing boy of three,
A husband dear to care for and
A babe upon my knee.
I’d read much more of Spock than Shakespeare,
And not the sonnets rare,
But every symptom of disease
Could quote on baby care.
Now soon I will be one and forty
And have left much undone,
I’ve many dreams yet unfulfilled
And many songs unsung;
Yet when I recall the joy I’ve known
From love and all it brings,
I am content and too,
“Would scorn to change my state with kings.”
I WISH TO WRITE
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 Facade
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