November WCM

Good job Shirley, Harry, et al that just put out the most recent WordCatalystMagazine-the November issue-i just have had a chance to skim parts of it but it looks as good as ever-i will read all of it later, in small doses to be able to appreciate it fully. i am glad that Shirley has allowed me to continue as a columnist, though i know i stretch the boundaries for length and what is allowable as a column. My "column"---"Just a PostCard"--another time, another place--just might be a short story or novella, whether it is fact or fiction---hmmm,ok the names are not anyone i know--the rest, nope, not tellin'
peace
-will-

Sundays

Late posting--got home late last night and had one of those nights-so today was mostly a "bed" day--but it was worth it--yesterday went to church--yeah, i did, first time in years-expected the ceiling to crack or a tsunami to hit -church building is only about 4-500 yards from beach--but all went well, saw people i hadn't seen for years and it actually felt good to go for service--actually, it was a dream for my Mom and other members on her side of my family for me to be a preacher--obviously got sidetracked--now, wait, that's not as strange an expectation as it sounds---my grgr grandfather was a Church of Christ preacher up well into his nineties(he also was in the Confederate calvary serving under Nathan Bedford Forest), my gggrandfather (his father-in-law) was a Church of Christ preacher for years , even before it was called Church of Christ--then it was the Christian Church--i had at least three other grandfathers that were Baptist preachers--so as i was being raised, our preacher and my family really pushed that-as did one of my favorite Sunday School teachers---my first and second grade teacher, same wonderful woman, also went to church with us. Then I was just too shy and stuttered too bad--well, it just didn't happen--but it felt good going to church Sunday, then we ate at a barbecue place and went to the beach--it had been months since i'd been there--so Sunday was a very good day for me and well worth the "paying for it" later---i need to find a way to get more energy, get past this fatigue, and who knows--maybe writing will start again--if you've read this so far, you know it hasn't kicked back in yet---still waiting for my muse-----i do have faith in her----more later
peace
-will-

Rivers

Time keeps flying by-almost to Samhain already-and the priestesses of the Moon that wear the symbol of the crescent-but like every other spiritual or religious thing-society finds a way to trivialize and commercialize it-"trick or treat"--right, monster movies, costumes and cash registers---

Thanksgiving is next, i guess, and everything but thanks is given--supposedly to celebrate the first feast where the Native Americans kept the Pilgrims from starving--thanks to the point that most of those tribes were extinct in the next few years, either through warfare or disease--

ok, i am in a bad mood today-so i am just going to close with words from "To the Morning"- a song by Dan Fogelburg from his "Home Free" album in 1972-i think his best album.

The sounds of the day
They hurry away
Now they are gone until tomorrow.
When day will break
And you will wake
And you will rake your hands
Across your eyes
And realize
That it's going to be a day
There is really no way to say no
To the morning.
Yes it's going to be a day
There is really nothing left to say but
Come on morning.

peace
-will-

echoes

trying to write last few days, actually longer but harder for last few days--just seem to get echoes, maybe an idea might surface but no words to carry it on or maybe some words that seem to go nowhere-looks like this will be first WordCatalystMagazine since i started writing with Shirley, Harry, and crew that i will not submit anything, well, except for column--not the way I want it to be but doesn't seem to be anything i can do about it--all sorts of excuses--could even claim that i am preoccupied with other things--but no, that wouldn't be true and if i can't be true with my writing, why even bother--so the ideas or words i've come up with just bounce back as echoes--not complaining--life goes on and that's just the way it is---now--and i am too damned stubborn to give up or i would have--a long time ago

peace
-will-

balmy

Today, just before sunset, i walked down to the river--to sit and watch like i often do--it was still in 80's, no breeze, very humid and, well, like Florida is often described like many other like places--balmy--i used to like to travel in the fall or winter to places such as Texas, DC, Tennessee, any place further north than here--so when i got off the plane at Orlando, the moist, warm air would hit me and i would feel home--well, as much as anywhere feels like home now. Today, as i got closer to the riverbank, the humidity increased and i could feel the damp saltspray and the smell, i love the smell of saltspray. i found one of my favorite seats on an old piece of landscape timber/railroad tie and lost myself there. as the sun sank lower, the clouds turned from white, to a light pink and as the sun dipped further, then a Maxfield Parrish sky, with the pink and orange glowing as if lit from behind (i was facing east, so the effect was even more pronounced)--i am not a big fan of pastels, as in Miami Vice, but when they appear as painted by Parrish, well, yes, it is beautiful. Then i noticed a small pod of 4 or 5 small dolphins--they were pretty far out in the river, which is at least a mile wide, so in the fading light it was hard to tell what kind of dolphins they were. Bottlenose are the most common, but if that's what these were, then they were juveniles, very small--but they looked darker--so perhaps they were harbor dolphins which are smaller and darker than bottlenose dolphins but have a lighter stomach. i watched as they broke the surface and then started coming out of the water and turning flips and even tailwalking. You know, the kind of stuff they train them to do at SeaWorld--right--i think these did just fine without a trainer--as if i am arrogant to think their performance was for me. As the clouds faded to grey, an easterly breeze picked up and the salt smell washed over me, cool and welcome--an old friend, as sweet to me in its own way as wisteria or azeleas----
oh, almost forgot--got a rejection e-mail from a person named Cook at Ambersand (&) for a story i had submitted. I must say that this, even though a rejection, was handled with a lot of class. Obviously, Cook had actually read the story--told me the things, hmmm, not sure if Cook is a he or she, anyway, that he/she considered good, some suggestions to consider, etc. i wrote Cook back addressing a couple of things and got a response in a few hours--again actually considering what i had written and commenting on that--in other words, every thing a good rejection (if there is such a thing-no, that's not fair, like it or not, if you write, rejections are a fact of life)--anyway, this rejection was handled with professionalism, class, and actually trying to help--no arrogance, ego, or cute statements like "we don't have any idea why we chose what we did but your effort just didn't fit whatever we were looking for" nope, i did actually appreciate the response from Cook
peace
-will-

Twitted

Very pleasant surprise today--got to talk to a very special friend, used to say best friend-i consider her that, i hope she still feels that way. The conversation took place entirely through private-guess they are called direct-messages on Twitter though i have made no bones in previous blogs how much i dislike that program. Maybe it's my own shortcomings, but it reminds me too much of old chat rooms--at any rate when there is a cast of thousands-she literally has that many followers and follows about as many--well, i don't believe i think fast enough, i certainly can't type that fast and from the length of my blogs, it's very apparent i have trouble with the whole 149 spaces thing. We have been friends for, hmmm, several years now and i don't know how we have lost touch in the last year or so----i need to talk to her in person or on the phone, probably if i am lucky i will have to settle for a few minutes on the phone---i certainly am not attaching blame to either one of us, i just need to understand--that's the kind of friendship we had. A truly beautiful woman--hmmm, i guess i need to explain something, after lessons learned in life, both positive and negative, i have come to believe that beauty doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how a person looks--to me it comes more from inside and how a person acts and treats other people. So, a person might be physically attractive but not close to being beautiful to me--hmmm, ok, an example-think reality television. On the other hand, some folks that some people might not consider so physically attractive are incredibly beautiful--think Mother Theresa, and other people that you might think of that live for others, put others first, and are literally radiant. This young lady, and she is a Southern lady, is not only beautiful but is intelligent and model attractive. We both have had our share of bruises in life, even now-- and yes, when we first realized we were friends, we set groundrules that we have followed--is platonic the word? She is an outstanding writer in spite of my never being able to convince her of that. We took a class together and seemed to have been friends for-well, a long time before that--i told her things about her life that she had never told anyone else and it kind of went on from there. I have missed her and wondered what i did wrong, though i suspected some things were changing in her life. i hope to find out soon and to be reading her writings like she used to share. she certainly deserves to be happy to have the best in life.
my own writing is coming slow and painfully--
peace
-will-

Nightmares

Sidetracked a little today--it would take too much energy to be derailed. After mentioning succubus last night and listening to Amy Lee and Seether, "Broken," now--i decided to see where term nightmare originated---i didn't think it had anything to do with mare, as in female horse--that seems to be a popular idea--as if riding a horse out of control, etc. in your dreams--i thought it might have something to do with mer, as in sea or ocean but looking it up on Wiki,

i found out that it comes from an Old English word, maere, which means goblin or incubus--who, of course, is the male equivalent of succubus---the original idea was that when you were asleep, such a spirit would try to suffocate you or suck the breath out of you--which explains why one of the posters advertising the old movie Gothic, about Mary Shelley and how she supposedly came up with the idea for Frankenstein, was a drug/alcohol induced nightmare--anyway the poster shows her in nightgown in bed with a goblin sitting on her chest like it was either drawing the life from her or at least tormenting her--interesting, succubus or incubus has come to mean more of a dream lover, yeah, perhaps with a sliding degree of evil involved--that is also how people in the middle ages to 19th centuries also saw vampire or vampyres--as drawing the lifeforce from folks --now i guess in the vampire "culture," such a being would be seen as a "psychic" vampire---that's why centuries ago, people that had consumption or tuberculosis were seen as the victims of such a vampire, that explained why for no apparent reason, they wasted away--it was also thought that they could turn into such a vampire themselves when they died, so they might be beheaded before they were buried--if problems continued, then later they might be exhumed and have their skeleton arranged in a "skull and crossbones" configuration-or if they were considered to appear not decomposed sufficiently, their corpse might be burned

years ago, i had a friend who was a Russian Orthodox priest(hope he still is, but our paths haven't crossed for years)--it was not long after a real exorcism had been done on a widow and her daughter who had been seen in our mental health clinic--but that is a story for another day---anyway, the priest always told me that it was dangerous to dwell on such things and how centuries ago, priests would go into the desert to meditate and they were invariably tempted by succubi and how it took a righteous man to resist them

And then, at least in the Old South, it was considered dangerous to have a cat alone in the room with a baby, especially a sleeping one, because of the belief that it could suck the life out of the baby. The idea being that cats were creatures of "both worlds" that could at will move back and forth between them.

So, nightmares and vampires, a few cats thrown in--- more info than most people would want to know-not as interesting as succubus or succubi, i suppose

peace

-will-

Days

Hot day today. Mid-90's--supposed to have tied highest recorded temp for this date. I don't do too well with heat or with cold, so i spent a good portion sleeping--then decided to check out my meds--I think 3/4 of them (and that's approaching 12 or so--(actually i take a lot more than that, but not as consistently as i am supposed to) have a microscopic label on the side that say "may cause drowsiness"--hmmm, i wonder--fatigue and taking a handful of pills that may cause drowsiness, hmmmm again--maybe it's time to have annual long talk with doctor (appt scheduled next week).

A friend that seems to be available only on twitter--which i hate--twittered that her muse was unavailable and that she is having trouble writing. Yep, me too--but i have no doubt that my muse, my patient muse, is here but for whatever reason i can't hear her whispering as she breathes into my ear---her attempts to inpsire me--- "inspire" from the Latin word, means to "breathe into." i tried to listen to all sorts of music tonight, ranging from Glenn Miller to George Gerswhin, to the Allman Brothers in 1970 at the Fillmore East when Duane and all the original band was still alive, then to Jackson Browne and to the Eagles, Beth Hart, and Jeff Buckley---i guess i am nothing if not consistent--anyway, all that great stuff and nothing from me so far. Last night i wrote a two page poem but i don't think so--the "delete" button will probably get it. And it's late so i guess nothing tonight unless the muse decides to come in my dreams or in between or like a succubus, which come to think of it wouldn't in herself be bad--or maybe bad but oh so good.
peace
-will-

monday night

Late Monday night--back to old habits, I'm afraid. Earlier tonight, I caught some of "Hell Freezes Over" on VH1 classics, you know one of the few music channels that sometimes plays music--of course, a movie was after that, FM, a movie that was good the first 60 times VH1 or Classic showed it--of course, the good thing about the movie was that it actually showed fm radio back in the seventies when they would actually play a solid hour of music or an entire album or two---anyway, I missed the first third of the Eagle's concert--the part where they played "Hotel California" but still saw some good songs including the one--"Get Over It" sung by Don Henley and with one of the greatest lines I wish I had written for when you get totally overwhelmed by society today and the people that are totally absorbed with themselves and that nothing is ever their fault, always someone else's or society's--anyway the line--"I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass."--ahhh, sheer poetry--of course, they close with "Desperado" but I like the version best when the meld it with "Doolin' Dalton"--still a great song, even better than the version sung by Linda Ronstadt, or maybe as good as. It's strange to watch an old video from the 70's when Ronstadt is singing it and the Eagles (at least in their incarnation at that time--Glen Frey shown for a few seconds on piano, Don Henley with an Afro on drums, Randy Meisner on bass, Bernie Leadon on lead guitar and Don Felder on rhythm--strange when you see how well he does duelling guitars with Joe Walsh on "Hell Freezes Over") are backup band for her. Good music though, even though right now I am listening to The Four Tops singing "Walk Away Renee"
I have the right music going, but just can't find anything to write on my own--maybe I'll just give up and go to bed-------
peace
-will-