Life as I Know it or Some Semblance Thereof!

Ovation

2013-10-03T20:33:00.001-07:00

I watch

textiled world

through

dimmed window,

twilight muted; sheer pleated sky

spiraling into night’s music.

I applaud

pirouetting trees.

On point branches, limbs, leaves

arch and plié, furl then unfold lithe,

elated against purpled maroon scrim.

Twirled shouts of orange coil, crescendo, boom, crown;

Gift transcends day and falls silent.

by S.Nielson

Of Darning Needles and Dragon Flies

2013-06-11T15:28:00.001-07:00

Picture this:
A wonderfully slow summer afternoon and you on a reclining white deck chair, in the shade of the lilac bush rife with last blooms just beginning to fall to the full green grass below. You are nine years old and the promise of June, July and August stretch out before you like a never-ending Slip and Slid. The sky, cerulean above you, is perfect in its blueness except for a few horse-tail wisps of cloud just above the snow-topped mountains to the East, slow to learn the warmth of the season. You are sticky with a red Popsicle, savoring its sweetness, its coolness painting your tingly tongue, and then letting it drip, drip, drip into your mouth when the tingle becomes an ache. Life is good - perfect really, at this very moment in time.

Suddenly, not too far off in the glimmer of sunglare, you hear an ominous sound...soft to the point of almost not there at all, but you know this sound and it sends chills down your sweaty back. You sit straight up, forgotten Popsicle dangling in your hand, melting into the grass. You swing your legs over the side of the lounge, ready to run should your instincts be correct. They are correct, you are confident of their rightness due to early years spent running from this very predator, and sure enough, from around the side of the garage comes the enemy, flashing iridescent wings beating over-fast in their efforts to attack! It has you sized up and zeroed in on; your ragged breath and chaotic mind, kicked into over-drive, knows the chase will not be child's play. It hovers, seeming to wait for your move, but you're stuck in a quagmire of fear and stand stock-still with cherry rivulets running down the side of your leg and into your sandal. Will this be the day it finally gets you? A zillion thoughts race through your brain, unhappily remembering every lie you have ever told, especially that whopper you voiced last night at Gran's house. You told her "yes!", over-loud and unsmiling, looking her straight in the eye when she asked if you'd washed as you left the bathroom, water still swirling it's way down the toilet.

It zigs up, then zags down, toying with you. The hellacious, lip-stitching Darning Needle! Horror of childhood horrors! Your fear recedes, along with most of the blood flow to your brain, and you are up and running, Popsicle flung to the winds. In science class last year your teacher had tried to convince you they were nothing more than Dragon Flies, beautiful and harmless, even going so far as to say they were helpful, providing larvae for fish to feed on and make plentiful our ponds and lakes for anglers. This was a lie and you didn't buy into it for a minute. You have very wise older siblings and they have instructed you in the ways of the punishing Darning Needle Beast-Bug. You had been warned, more than once, that this devilish insect has been invented to seek out children who lie and sew their mouths shut. The dreadful Darning Needle's beautiful colors and stained-glass window wings are merely a ploy to pull in unsuspecting youthful falsifiers and fibbers and stitch their lying lips closed forever more.

You are not about to let this happen to slightly dishonest, but mostly just little white lies you! With hair whipping back and forth and pink spittle exploding from your wide open and shouting mouth, you pound around to the front porch, arms windmilling to jettison off any income threats, and slam your way into the sanctuary of the front hall, the door banging with a reassuring thud.

"Whose's slamming doors!" reverberates from the kitchen, where your mom is putting the finishing touches on a Tuna Casserole for Lady's Club.

"Not me." comes your innocent reply.

You're safe....for now.

And so goes my tale...and I'm sticking to it! Please enjoy all our relay writers.

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
Diem_Allen – http://mindovermistakes.blogspot.com (link to post)
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com (link to post)
articshark – http://www.drslaten.com/blog (link to post)
Lady Cat – http://randomwriterlythoughts.blogspot.ca (link to post)
U2Girl – http://ancatdubh.org (link to post)
MsLaylaCakes – http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post)
SuzanneSeese – http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/2013/06/bugs-frogs-benedryl-and-vodka.html
robynmackenzie – http://iwanttobeawesomewhenigrowup.com/
milkweed – http://www.thistlequill.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Sunwords – http://susannedoering.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
Angyl78 – http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
susanielson – http://somesemblancethereof.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
HistorySleuth – http://historysleuth.blogspot.com (link to post)

Pity Party, Ticket for One

2013-06-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a while,hu?

The title to this rant has a negative connotation...screams poor pitiful me, really, which is a turn-off to anyone who might chance upon it. Maybe that's the whole reason I'm screaming it, just to be left along in my poor, pitiful state of being...or maybe it's because somehow I sense I've hit bottom and I want to bounce back the other way for awhile. I have to believe there's more to me, I have to hope...

These days are different...these days I am alone, my days full of just me. I remember when a few hours to myself felt like a Heaven-sent escape; I lived and continued to breath thinking of those quiet times when I could have sound or no sound, sleep or no sleep, goings or comings...any old thing I wanted without answering to somebody else.
But these days are different. There is no choice now. I am alone with kids grown and gone and no significant other needing what I am. Now my t.v. runs nearly around the clock so something is making a noise other than just me breathing, rattling around. It's become a distraction to thoughts that scare the bejebbers out of me, like what if I die in my bed? Will it be days? weeks? How long before I am missed? Will I be missed?
Of course I know that's just silliness, I do. I know others are about in this world who know me and even still love me, but when I'm here, alone, night about me like an old gray shawl, tatty and torn with loneliness, silliness doesn't matter. Silliness becomes defunct, outdated and just another part of me that I don't notice because I won't look...can't look, in case it's not there at all.
Slowly I am struggling to find out who I am again. There was a time, when I had screaming kids, a husband demanding of me more than I thought I could give, and a life cluttered with confusion and hurry on every side, when I knew I was happy, when I knew who I was and what I could do. I knew what I liked and how to make life fulfilling for me and those I loved. I had favorites. I don't mean a favorite kid or a favorite family member or even a favorite memory, but favorites that allowed me to know who I was: a favorite color, favorite flavor, flower, season of the year, song, food, holiday, place to visit, hobby, shoes, character from a Disney movie. I was solid with all of those. I knew I was someone because I had favorites separating me into my own category. I had a place.
Somewhere along the way, while I was encumbered with survival mode, my favorites all fizzled away. I ate what others liked because I couldn't decide, I listened to music if others turned it on...their music. Seasons became difficult, each with it's own demands, and fall favorite and spring favorite faded into the annals of my job. Their context changed and favorite didn't matter anymore. I found surcease in the favorites of others, because choice became too difficult on top of the required. Truly, I lost my favorites all on my own, allowing them to leave me because I was too weary to notice they were going...I don't even know if they waved goodbye.
Slowly, so slow I'm not sure yet I recognize them, some of my favorites are finding their way home, I remember I liked to write. I'm in the process of deciding if it's a favorite...I should know soon enough, depending on whether or not I can sustain it and create with a mind half-blind with lose of self. I'm not sure all of me has survived, but I find I'm becoming curious. I think that might be a good thing. I think it was a part of me I used to really like...a favorite.

Constant

2012-02-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

Some hearts meander
willy-nilly beneath
hatching skies
where Griffins fly
and sing.
Some hearts are content
to sit at tended hearth with a smiling
fire, warm
and lasting, always
looking to the leaping flames, the satisfying glow of
low embers
and the occasional, incredible glory of a fast and high flair, bright because of constant
darkness it
rises
from.

S. Nielson

02/14/2012 Valentines day

2012-02-14T09:41:00.000-08:00

My poor vacant blog...feeling neglected and unloved. My new job and sooo many miles on the road have been taking my time and energy. I am thankful for the work and I am thrilled it's a job I can be happy with, feeling like I'm making a tiny difference in this big old world. I adore my girl students, even the troubled and difficult ones...oh wait...they are all troubled and difficult! Yet adorable still, and I'm delighted to be in their lives. We have been exploring concrete poetry in class on this Valentine's day, and I was able to work right along with the girls. I'll post my poem, although the thing that makes it a concrete poem will not be evident for the most part - its shape. You'll have to envision it as leaping flames!

A Week For the Record Books

2012-01-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

What a week, and it's only Wednesday! Oh boy, what's hiding in the next couple of days, I wonder!? As some of you are aware, this has been the year of my undoing...out of work, and job after job has declined to want me. I have felt old and female and fat, far more than at any other time in my life. Monday I had yet another torturous interview, complete with an example of my interaction with the students, consisting of 16 clever Jr. High girls in a treatment center. They were great...me, not so much. I traveled about 120 miles and then back again to feel like a failure! The staff interview wasn't too bad...great people, but I haven't been in a classroom for going on 1 1/2 years and it was tough.
I sent a note to the fellow who arranged for the interview, expressing my thanks for the opportunity and then hunkered down to wait. Yesterday, after fighting down nerves all day, I got an email telling me the job would not be extended to me at this time.I crumbled, complete with denial, self- reviling, and hostile thoughts of running away. Sometimes things just feel too hard to take for even one minute more! Then, this morning I got a call from the same fellow, asking me if I'd be willing to accept a position teaching English at their sister school, which is a private all-girls high school residential treatment center, with just 12 students. I almost dropped the phone! I HAVE A JOB!
It didn't seem real for awhile. I'm going tomorrow to meet the personnel at the center and get the scoop on what's up there. Things are going to get complicated for awhile now, because I have a senior who needs to stay here until graduation in June. I don't know if I can swing two rent payments, but it's got to be better than $25 to $30 in gas every bloomin' day, to say nothing of the hours traveling. Chris is mature enough for me to leave him home alone four nights out of seven each week, but....sheesh! Is there never an easy answer to life's riddles?!! One day at a time for now, I suppose.
So anyway...the mood swings have been spectacular, and I'm on a high at the moment. Chris is at a ball game and I definitely need to celebrate a little. I have in mind to show off a bit by posting two of my pieces that have won honors and awards. Hope you don't mind, but my brain is sizzling and needs validation and re-assurance that I CAN DO THIS!

The first one, Vortex, was published in UVU's literary magazine in 2006. It seems fitting for tonight because it makes reference to angels watching us as we spin through our lives down here below.My mind has been on Robyn today and I feel certain she has had a hand in this amazing turn of events, which will impact my life in ways yet to be seen.

The second addresses my hopeless, too-tired-for-words mood of yesterday, but I'm including it here because it took honors and was published in UVU's literary magazine in 2007. It was selected as the 1st place poem of the year, and I was asked to read it at the award ceremony. I was very honored and proud to share it with my esteemed peers. It's titled Everlasting, and reflects on feelings of despair and an overwhelming desire for surcease from life's harsh lessons.

And so:

Vortex

Spin 'round,'round,'round and fall
all giddy-dizzy down.
Hold fast to long slow grass
to keep from slipping off the edge.

Lay back and watch
the twirling whirligig,
pothered wild
sky and cirrus, weird
birds with circling wings,
silver, streaky jets
whose fisted fumes are cracking open
Heaven's floor, enticing angels
to explore beyond
cyclone skies.

Lay back and watch
while Earth and Heaven catch,
collide to stillness.
Earth is turning, turning, turning.
Who is it then,
that lies back looking
as we spin?

Susan Nielson

Everlasting

When death flies overhead
like a bird, when it
circles, sees, leaves
with wings tapered, pointing up,
then forever is a long way down
a slow road.

Ruts have been cut
in the path with pressing
wheels, blundering
along the same weary trail,
no chance for a shift,
always adrift with the dust,
wind, whatever comes.

The same fixed sun
moves like a drum,
slogging along a hollow,
stuck in it's course,
counting the same stars
over and over.

It would be fine to stop,
not start again,
no sun coming up, going down,
around and around.
Just rest...stillness,
blessed, beyond reach,

while wheels thunder over,
above. And you,
in your last rut,
know none of it.

That would be Heaven enough.

Susan Nielson

Friday the Thirteenth - And the Oscar Goes To....

2012-01-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

I took Chris to school this morning and on the way home I happened upon a black cat...

Lucky Me

Coming home,
a smug cat crawled
from knee-high weeds,
and proudly crossed
in front of me.

...suddenly I sat
on velvet seat,
with street-turned-stage,
script written vividly as
I became enchanted fan.

Four practiced feet
pranced fast,
then blurred still faster,
rocky props not stopping
her high-tailed stage routine.

Dramatic black,
like costumed Goth,
her fur spinning silver with tricks
of light, as her act
became a scamper dance.

Her flying exit off-left
lifted me, left me sighing
for encore, but diva disdained
her return, no refrain
for smile-flashing paparazzi me.

S.N.

Sometimes Strange Things Just Happen... (part 1)

2012-01-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

Momma said she named me Susan because my dark eyes reminded her of the Black-Eyed Susans in the little flower bed by Grandpa's big front porch. The sunny flowers with the ebony pompom centers grew up through the marmalade colored Marigolds and the ruffled purple and white petticoats of the Petunias. I quickly became Susie, not Suzy, kind of plump, kind of plain, with brown hair straight as broom straws, pulled back into a tight, too thick pony tail, crooked bangs sweeping across my forehead.
I was too loud and I giggled entirely too much. My wardrobe consisted mostly of hand-me-downs, and seeing as how I was fourth down of six sisters, by the time they came to me the dresses were more patchwork than pretty, with sashes torn from their seams. Ree got the dresses second in line and Ree was a tomboy. Schoolyard games of "Kick the Can" or "Red Rover" were death to sashes, which presented themselves as easy targets to anyone gaining the lead from behind. If I did happen to inherit a dress come down from Carol that still had sashes, I made short work of them. Robyn, who was next in line after me, didn't know what a sash was until she turned ten and got a new dress for her birthday. Mary Kaye came after Robyn, poor little thing. It's a wonder neighbors didn't take up a collection for the sixth girl child!
Momma loved us and told us so on a regular basis. She also told us She was "gone to China," when she became overwhelmed with our need of her. She never really went to China, but I'll bet she contemplated it nearly every day for many years.
Daddy worked as an accountant and on the side he raised chickens. We had three long wooden chicken coops out back, landscaped with overgrown stink-weeds and haphazard Pottawatomie Plum Bushes.Directly behind the house the egg cellar was build right into the ground. It's shingled red slope of roof was about all you could see of it. That roof became the ruin of many a pair of pants from the sliding down of it. The exhilarating, bumpy race down it's sandpapery surface fast became forbidden adventure, one that often got me into trouble and created more patchwork clothes.
We grew up well feed on Momma's ten loaves at a time, smelling like Heaven, home-made bread. Always there were eight for the family and two to share with friends and ailing neighbors. When she made bread, Momma would let us little ones still at home have a little hunk of dough to make what she called a Henry Loaf. A Henry Loaf was just like a regular loaf, only baked in a tiny tin that produced tea party size bread. I loved to be with Momma in the kitchen, the windows frosted with steam, the smell of yeast and browning crust casting it's enchantment. I felt safe and secure in my perceptions of how things were.
I think back to those easy days of knowing who I was. I thought I had the answers that Momma sometimes seemed unsure of. Often she would cry for no reason apparent to me, no bruises or band-aids, anyway. I thought I could make her happy if I tried really hard and was a good helper...I thought I could do anything when I was five. I was convinced I had a pretty good understanding of my sibling-drenched world and how it all fit together. When I was six there came a prelude to what I came to think of as 'the strangeness." I was grudgingly made to understand how little of the working of my life I had real dominion over. That's about the time I became afraid of the dark.

I Was the Fourth

2012-01-08T20:05:00.000-08:00

My thoughts have been so much on family for the last few days. With the loss of my sweet Uncle Glenn this week and all the trappings that come with it, it's no wonder, really, that my heart has been beating in rhythm with my dear ones on the other side. My thoughts have been full of my sisters and mother, wondering if they have been close to us as we wept goodbye and they smiled hello. I often think of them, but the ache is a bit more poignant with the new grief.
My Momma... she was one of those moms that seemed to come knowing what a "real" mother was. There were eventually nine of us, or ten, or eleven or maybe twelve when you take into account foster children and a miscarriage. There were six sisters born all in a row, then three brothers. As I have grown into adulthood I've considered the effect of six girls on the dynamics of a family. Can you imagine, in days before sonograms, what it must have been like to hear the announcement from the Dr. that it was a girl? ...again?
Mom and dad loved us. It didn't seem to matter all that much that it was girl, after girl, after girl, or at least it appeared as if that were true, to the six of us before the boys came. Only now, realizing the humanness of my beautiful mother, do I understand there must have been moments...

Another Head of Hair

A girl again. Another head of hair
to comb, and worries later on, along
with bras and fits of tears, long-legged boys.
But that, with any luck, was still some years
away. Today her fears for fierce-eyed girls
were few. Her guarded thoughts would hold no more
than toes of mottled pink, a mewling mouth,
a pursed, exacting pout of innocent
insistence, siren, demanding more of her
than merely life. This fragile doll,
diminutive, with Heaven's Breath still clinched
inside her fists, her feather wisps of hair
still drenched with perfect evidence of grace,
was now another care, another need
of her. She stretched her tired, pliant neck,
her scarlet-ribboned stomach empty now,
it's fullness broken. She bent, kissed tiny curls.

Susan Nielson
Fourth daughter born to:

Neva Joy Lee

Delamar Ghosts

2012-01-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

We have a gold mining claim, "we" being my Dad and his brothers, all of whom are gone now except for my own dear 88-year-old Father. It's been in our family for decades and I love hearing stories about it today just as much, or more, as I did as a kid. It has mysterious beginnings that will require another post to discuss...you'll just have to trust me when I tell you it'll be worth the wait!
The claim is located in a wind strafed, other worldly desert in South-Eastern Nevada. Joshua Cactus have nearly taken over and rule the barren expanse of rocky outcroppings where the historic claim is located. It's closest neighbor is a ghost town known as Delamar, once a booming gold mining concern, with a populace of about 3,000 miners and their families. All that's left are toppled stone buildings, lonely graves, and tales whispered on the breezes that ruffle the overgrown Cheat Grass covering everything. There is a feeling there, and at our claim, that is equal to a delicious shiver! I am thankful for the shared history that binds Delamar and my own family. With the passing of my beloved Uncle Glenn this week I have been filled with desert longings and a need to share his passion for the bit of unwieldy earth known as "The Lee Boy Claims". I'll forever listen for his voice in the warm winds murmuring over Delamar and into my heart, claimed long ago.

Delamar Ghosts

Wind hushes
itself to hear
whispers in tumbled walls
and open stone.
Spiders on Prickly Pear
spindles loom poems
ancestral...
thin, woven white
ciphers worn by the sky.
Life with pick and shovel
once bent here,
breathed air ripe
with coyote cry
and blistered earth.
Myriad small eyes
watch tattered shadows
cross over
Dog Weed
and Cheat Grass,
then
vanish.

Susan N.

Where Have all the Moments, Hours, Weeks, Months, Years Gone?

2012-01-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

I took down my Christmas tree today. Christmas, and the wonder of them past, present, and future, came close to me again for a few precious moments, as I lifted down an extraordinarily colorful Shrinky Dink star from the tree. It was a gift to me 11 years ago and has a picture of my 5 year-old Chris in the middle of it. I looked at his adorable smile, a tooth missing, gone to grace the collection of the Tooth Fairy. Wasn't this picture taken just days ago?
Oh no, now I've done it! I wiped away a miscreant tear sliding down my cheek, and wrapped the star carefully in some crinkly, re-cycled year-after-year tissue, and nestled it gently into the lap of my other Christmas Tree treasures, back into the storage box I had removed it from just a few short weeks ago. A bit of my heart found its way into the box, as well. It's just not possible for a mom to let her five-year-old leave for a whole year without going, too!
The warm memories stored in each ornament will be there waiting to tell me stories again next Christmas, and I'll be just as enthralled then, lifting them up to the twinkling branches for their command performance once more. I have to wonder though, as I do every year when I put Christmas away, will my tiny bit of heart find it's way back to me from the box or will it be gone with him to some far off Christmas of his own choosing, complete with a Kindergarten picture of his own small child pasted onto a brightly colored star?

Remembering ... Always, Forever, and No Matter What

2012-01-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

Over the time frame of about twenty years I have lost two of my darling sisters to cancer and my adored Mother to Parkinson's Disease. This week a much loved Uncle joined them and my heart returned to the old ache it has borne before. I wrote a poem at the time my sweet sister, Robyn, left us and have revised it many times since, trying to get it just right, to allow it to speak for me of the nature of things I don't truly comprehend. It is an experimental form poem, wherein the title becomes the first line. It is also a negative space poem, meaning it addresses something that is empty or vacant or...maybe free is a better description, such as the space between the typed letters you see here. It speaks of the holes in a snowflake that create its beauty and compares it to the hole of the grave that doesn't really hold anything more than just bones, thereby defining the beauty of Heaven.

lovely

nothing, arranged
inside a crystal riddle
of happenstance ice. minuscule

perfection, shaped by shifting
chance, like unformed thoughts
that hold a poem. lovely

nothing. only cold bones
are clothed for burial, body
dressed to songs of tears. lovely

nothing, offering up emptiness,
a chrysalis redeemed,
A pristine hope of fullness. Oh, lovely

nothing, hidden, hollow,
empty of hurt, defining Heaven
and snow with a hole.

S.N.

I love you Uncle Glenn. You'll be missed.

Recipe For a Homemade Princess

2012-01-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

By Grandma Susie

Take ten tiny fingers and ten or so toes,

a squeal and a giggle, and a small, upturned nose.

Stir all these together with a tear and a pout

(For a prize winning Princess, you can’t leave these out!)

Next mix in pink cheeks, with a pinch of surprise,

a fringe of fine lashes, and two twinkling eyes.

Blend in a bow and a bright crown of curls,

a sweet, impish grin that’s select to small girls.

Bake in the sun on a swing or a slide,

then remove when well done, with a piggy-back ride.

Frost with sweet dreams and then proudly bring her

to Mommy and Daddy, wrapped ‘round her little finger.

Princess Charlee,
my "next thing to
perfect" Grandbaby!

What a relief !

2012-01-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

Ah...the scary giant half face is gone! I have a brilliant 16 year old son who knew just what to do. He pushed keys and opened that, then closed this, cut and pasted several items, then said, "Mom, what did you do?" looked at me like only a 16 year old can, then pushed more keys, opened and closed more windows, moved things around, mumbled something about a widgit..a widgit? What in the heck? He fairly dazzled me with his clicks and swishes and his profound intensity, his head bent low, his nimble fingers flying, and then - TaaDaaaa! The frightening apparition had disappeared from the screen!! My relief was short lived however. Chris stood, stretched his intertwined fingers outward until they popped and said, "So, did you get all that Mom?"

What in the heck am I doing here?

2012-01-02T16:01:00.000-08:00

One has to be fairly secure in ones computer skills to attempt a blog, and while I like to think I am computer savvy, after several hours of trying to set up a blog site, I'm here to tell you I am not! ...secure in my computer skills that is, and as to computer savvy,,,we won't even go there at this point in time. I have inadvertently posted a picture of myself which is half my head, and yet larger than life...it's spooky! If I were hoping for followers I think this first look would scare them off very effectively, if not leave them in a state of sheer panic. I'm about at that point myself. Someone had better slap me quick!!!