BOO!

Round about the cauldron go,

In the perfumed potion throw!

Full moon shine its light on you,

And make thy future troubles few

This is the charm I make for thee,

As I will so mote it be!

found treasure

You know when you're scanning the channels and land on something that you haven't seen in a hundred years & in the 1st ten minutes you realize why it's considered a "classic" and wonder yet again why it's not on your keeper shelf...

The Great Escape
Steve McQueen... a baseball... a motorcycle...
And a passell... passle... well crap a whole lot of STARS and character actors & everyone of them is an "oh him!" A wonderfully complicated tour de force & oh yeah can we talk about the soundtrack...

I think watching this with my mother so long ago (yes it was that long ago!) was the first time I fell in love with motorcycles. :-)

And OHMYGOD I just looked up & there's Illya Kuriakin... okay it's David McCallum!!! Yeah what can I say I was a Man from U.N.C.L.E fan too! *sigh*

This may not be a "literary" post, but it's JOY for me tonight!

spin cycle

colors, mixed with darks, mixed with whites...
the water's too hot, the colors bleed,
blacks fade to gray

and wouldn't you know that tissue I couldn't find was in the pocket

the load is off center & the washer goes
thud
thud
thud
against the wall & tries to walk away
while shaking the load free
of all that
dirt

keys to the future

It's just a few days till the Autumnal Equinox, traditionally for me a time much anticipated. The heat of summer wanes, blessed fall rains come more and more frequently, change is in the air.

There are multiple anniversaries for me of great losses, but there's also Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a multitude of Winter Holidays (Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa), New Year's Day.

And this autumn, there's also School. Cleaning up, strengthening, building on the foundation I started at the beginning of my career, so that maybe - just maybe - it will carry me to the end of my career.

around the block & back

I prefer the lovely gnarled limbs and knots of old trees that serve as reminders of high winds, storms, floods and droughts survived over many years.

I find vintage furniture and clothes, with their battered marks of love & use so much more comfortable than new things that have to be “broken in”.

I remember the first time I read that lovely poem of Whitman's praising the lined and wise faces of old women in favor of the fresh faces of the young. I was in my twenties, and it was such a shock to read it and know that men - any men - could want to be with someone... ahem, seasoned. And I remember thinking that I couldn't wait to become a woman 'of a certain age'.

I have to remind myself of all that when I look in the mirror and see the evidence of my life laid out like a roadmap.


And when the plans and dreams I’ve made are dashed to the ground and trampled, then run over by a herd of stampeding cattle and then burned to ash by a raging brush fire, I have to remind myself that it’s all “experience”, and will – eventually – be simply another sticker on the steamer trunk of my life: a tangible reminder of difficulties endured and survived.

pinprick predicament

disappointment sits
its weight
Smothering the breath from
straining lungs

Anger
Seethes within
Snaking thru veins with
poisoned teeth

puncturing
the pretty pink balloon of

Hope

deflated
it lies
filthy on the ground
trampled beneath the heels
of wait&see

traffic report

I keep trying to move over to the slow lane & get off this freakin' freeway, but WTF I can't get outa this lane! And the big SUV behind me is tailgatin' and I'm wedged between two 18wheelers & no CB to talk to them...
"hey guys" I call out the window "let me outa here!"
No one is listening.

There's just no clean/easy/painless way to do this is there? No safety net. I get knots in my stomach if I think about staying where I am, and knots if I think about leaving.

At least I went to the local college & enrolled for classes for the fall that will help me get to a new & different place. Meanwhile, I'm runnin down the road w/ both hands on the wheel.

I do have a great roadsign posted to keep me focused:
Sometimes the easiest and best way to get where you will be is to leave the road.
Spoken eloquently by The Walking Man