Velvet Verbosity

Welcome to another 100 Word Challenge!  If you’re just looking for the prompt, just scroll down to the bottom.  It’s there in big red letters, can’t miss it!  I’ve got some catching up to do in this post.  First on the 100 Word Challenge round up from two weeks ago (when my Mac decided I was overdue for computer problems), Examine. 

My pick for that week was Niqui with a poem to her daughter.  Be sure to visit her site and leave comment love.  We writers love the love.

Examine

Asleep, oblivious to my examination
She breathes softly against my side.
Lashes fanned against her slumber pinkened cheeks
Midnight fringe against skin; gold, rose, and cream.
Her warm weight is a comfort in the cool of an unfamiliar room.
Repose of the innocent, her lips curve
Sweet as warm cocoa, and the howls of a newborn
screaming her way into life,
She dreams candy dreams.
I remember the first time I saw her
Waking to see eyes of liquid ink, her story waiting to be written.
With one look, I loved her.
Oblivious to examination, she sleeps against my side.

In other words on Examine:

• A literal examination by Rammi.
• The Clifton saga continues by Angelgal.
• The cold hard facts by Patsy.
• Sweet little Mama hen by Patti.
• Examining motives by LCeel.
• Check your head by VonCookie.

Yeah, so by the way, you all are making it more and more difficult to choose a pick of the week!  Right on.   This last week’s challenge was Give.  My pick is Jessie Sven’s piece on giving during the holiday versus giving all year.  Let me (and Jessie) know what you think!

She told me once that she didn’t believe in Christmas.
“We should give of ourselves all year, not just a single day.”

I find it difficult to explain how I give with a clenched chest.
Pennies to charities.
Toilet paper to housemates.
Graphite to a creaky hinge.

How difficult to explain that for one day, to those who expect nothing, I can truly give. For that one day, I’m reminded what it feels like to give with bubbles in my heart. Not because the world needs and cries and chews at my fingertips, but because I feel like wrapping presents.

In other words on Give:

• Give Me Strength by Pattiken 
• The beautiful giving of motherhood by newcomer Tracey
• What to give by LCeel
• A Time I Had Magic by Mary
• “Wacha give me for ‘er?” by Patsy

Holy 100 Words Batman, that’s a lot of reading y’all!  That wraps up last week’s challenge.  If you are new to the 100 Word Challenge, go here.  The new challenge is NOT from a book this week.  I know, *Gasp!*.  I was waist deep in #writechat on Twitter and decided to ask my fellow Tweeters for this week’s prompt.  I chose this one from WritingSpirit.

Kaleidoscope

Happy writing!

With love,

You’ll remember a couple of weeks back that I was interviewed as part of Neilochka’s Great Interview Experiment.  (Carla interviewed me, and if you haven’t read it yet, go here.)  In turn, I got to do an interview too!   Internet, meet  Gathering Dust.

You started your blog with the lyrics from a David Gray song.  I’m a huge David Gray fan, by the way.  Tell us more about why you chose to open your blog that way, and why that particular song.  Obviously, there is also some connection between the song and the name of your blog.  Explain that too.

Well, first off, ‘Gathering Dust’ is the closest thing I have to a favorite song. I love DG’s voice, and I love the music. It always makes me feel like it’s late fall, almost winter, where the trees are bare and the nights are starting to get really cold. I have a picture in my head of a full moon over a lake, and there is frost on the ground…It’s a very cold song, but I think there is a little light of hope in it. Just the title of the song says so much about who I am - when I started this blog, I was starting to get antsy with my life. I didn’t have a lot of direction, and I felt stuck where I was - hence ‘Gathering Dust’. The particular line I used in my header, ‘I don’t know where I’m wanting to be, I just know I have to be there alone’ says that I’m on my own journey, and I have to get where I’m going myself - no one else can swoop in and rescue me. The first two verses of the song hit home with me. It’s all about discovering who you are and where you’re going, and not being able to be with someone else until you know who you are. It’s sad, but also uplifting, in a way. And I feel like that is how my life is - not always sunshine and rainbows, but always hopeful, always looking for something better.

I like to think everyone blogs for different reasons, and I think that’s somewhat true, but I also think there’s a lot of commonality in the reasons.  To satisfy my curiosity, tell us what compelled you to start blogging, and what keeps you in it.

This one is pretty easy. My sister (http://saradoxical.blogspot.com/) told me to. And I keep doing it because if I didn’t write, I wouldn’t survive. I might not be writing the Great American Novel anytime soon, but I can entertain people and touch people through my words, and I think that’s all anyone wants.

I see from your blog that you play softball.  That’s awesome!  What made you choose this sport, and what was your funniest softball moment?

I LOVE softball! I got into it because we have a team at work, and the first year I was there, they needed more girls, so I volunteered. I was awful. Couldn’t hit, couldn’t throw, couldn’t catch, couldn’t run. Three years later I’m consistently mediocre, and getting better every game, so I’ll take that! I love the team spirit we have, and I’ve gotten to be good friends with some of my coworkers because of it.

Funniest moment….hmmm…Either my first practice the first year, when I got hit in the face with a softball and couldn’t stop laughing while everyone else was freaking out, or this past season, when I tried to round second base and completely wiped out, and ended up [probably] scarred for life. I’m not sure what it says about me that my funny moments involve semi-serious injury

You share on your blog that you have Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I know a little about this from a family member, and I understand it can be quite painful.  However, most chronic illness also has a deep impact on our psyche.  How has living with RA affected you emotionally?  Has anything positive come from it, any wisdom that you would like to share?

Whew. I could go on and on about this (in fact, I have - I have an entire post about it somewhere in the archives) but then this could end up being a book. I’ll try to keep it short.

When I was first diagnosed, I went from scared to depressed to scared to pissed off to scared to accepting to scared….Fear is the biggest thing. I don’t know how RA is going to end up affecting me in the future. Yes, I can
try to control it, and mask the symptoms, but it’s always there, and something I’ll deal with the rest of my life. There is a lot of uncertainty - will I be able to have kids, will I be able to keep full function of my hands, will I be able to walk thirty years down the line? I don’t know, and no doctor can give me a real answer. So it’s scary and I can’t do anything about it. I’m not someone who is used to being afraid of things, so learning to live with that fear has been a challenge.

But on the positive note - I’ve learned how strong I am. I’ve seen how my friends and family pull around me. I have witnessed generosity with donations to charity walks I do, I have been called an inspiration by loved ones and strangers alike. I’ve grown up. I’ve learned that I can’t hide behind fear and I can’t just let life pass me by because of what might happen when I’m forty. Dealing with RA has turned me into a stronger, more independent woman than I could have imagined. And while I wouldn’t say that this made developing a chronic illness worth it, it does make it easier to digest.

You’ve returned to college.   First off, congratulations!   You seem to have the courage to continually reinvent yourself and your life.  Anything you’d like to tell the blogosphere about that?

Working fulltime and going to school fulltime has made me crazy. I’m insanely busy and I don’t sleep enough. The end will justify the means, but right now? I’m just trying to make it day to day. Going back to school wasn’t something I ever really planned on doing, but I’m glad I am. I’ll be even happier about it when it’s done. Ask me this question again in two years

A lot of bloggers seem to blog just about every details of their lives, but everyone draws the line somewhere.  What are three things you would never blog about?

Well, first of all, I wouldn’t say ‘never’, but just ‘right now’. My mind could change on these (although the first one isn’t likely as long as my mother is reading!)

1 - Anything more than bare bones on my love life. I’m a fairly private person where that area is concerned, and while I’m sure if I get into something serious someday, I’ll blog about it, right now I don’t need to share the details of my escapades. And I’m sure my mom doesn’t want to read them

2 - Work complaints. We all have bad days, but I don’t want to say something bad about my job and then find out the boss read it. I’ve learned that some things are better saved for personal email. And not broadcast over the internet.

I can’t think of a third one. I’m pretty open, and I’m sure if someone asked, I would tell them anything.

Who are three people you wish would read your blog that aren’t, and why?  Who are three people you would never want to read your blog, and why not?

Well, I’ll answer the second one first, because it’s easy. There’s no one I can think of at this point who I wouldn’t want to read my blog. It’s on the internet for a reason - otherwise I’d just keep it all private.

As far people who I wish would? For all I know, they might already…But I would just say anyone who thinks they know me, because chances are, they really don’t. It’s easier for me to be honest on paper than out loud, so pretty much anyone in my life could benefit from reading what I’m really thinking.

You like to read a lot.  What book have you read in the last year that you would recommend?  Tell us about it and why we should read it.

The Principles of Financial Accounting….oh wait, probably not a school book…Hmmm. OH! ‘History of Love’ by Nichole Krauss. I’m actually re-reading this right now. I got it as a Christmas present last year and LOVED it. It’s a story where things are intertwined and tied together and you’re getting to know multiple characters and feel for them, and something about the narration just gets me. It’s a beautiful story, sad and loving and hopeful all at the same time. I should probably come back to this question after I re-read so I can be more thorough, but oh well. Read it anyways! Amazing book!

You mentioned developing a passion for photography that was cut short due to RA.  Do you still dabble in photography?  Any you would like to share?

I haven’t been doing much recently, as I’ve been so busy, but eventually I’ll get a website up and some pictures scanned in. If I ever get a semester with some free time, I’m thinking about auditing a basic photo class just so I can get back in the darkroom - that’s something I love more than anything. There’s a certain piece to working in a darkroom - everything else disappears, except that certain square inch of a photograph that you want to burn in perfectly. It’s my happy place, and one day I’ll hopefully have one in the house I don’t own yet

I think the last question should be fun.  So, when you want to let loose, what is your (legal) poison of choice?  Your favorite drink?  Dancing in the dark?  What?

Rum and Diet Coke and 80s music - cute heels, a lowcut shirt, and dancing all night with some of my girls!  Or, for when I’m feeling more low-key (like the last couple of weeks) - Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk, comfy sweatpants, and the West Wing complete series DVD set….now that’s my own slice of heavenly relaxation!

With love,

My ambitious plans for NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo have been sabatoged by illness, a broken bone, but mostly by computer troubles.  My Mac recently crashed and the experts determined it was a hard drive failure.  So, I forked over the dough for a new hard drive only to find that my Mac was still misbehavin.  Tomorrow, my best pal goes back to the experts for some more diagnostics.  All I can say is, I’ll be really peeved if the hard drive was never the source of the problem.  Either way, it’s been a frustrating experience.

Still, the 100 Word Challenge MUST go on.  My pick this week (and it was a tough one this week) is from newcomer Mary. As always, I’m in awe when someone creates poetry from a prompt in exactly 100 words.

Silk Dress

“Come into my room
help me choose the dress.
Is it too morbid of me to ask?”
Your first choice a fuchsia dress
silk, long-sleeved, belted.
“Is it too garish for a funeral?”
You decided:
wear what you liked,
bright color a deliberate
counterpoint to your fading.

Final statement
by a legend of stylish dressing.
“Perfect choice, Mom.”
“Guess what? It’s a size 10!”
We laughed at your perverse
pleasure, loss of weight
even to cancer
size 10, even in your casket.

It had its intended effect.
Mourners said how lovely
your dress was, how so like you.

(Mary H. Warren in loving memory of Mary M. Harvey)

In other words:

• Morty needs new material by LCeel.
  
• An artist and his materials by Patsy.
• Washed up by VonCookie.
  

That wraps up last week’s challenge.  If you are new to the 100 Word Challenge, go here.  The new challenge is from One Hundred Demons, by Lynda Barry.  Incidentally, this book was given to me by a good friend years ago, and I originally rejected it out of hand because it is a “comic”, but it has since become one of my most cherished books.

Give

Now if you’ll excuse me, my computer needs some rest.

With love,

For all the Thursdays in November, and in celebration of NaBloPoMo, I’m going to pick a Henry David Thoreau quote and post it here, and YOU get to write whatever comes up from that quote.  Start a debate, write a story, agree, disagree, w h a t e v e r.   Post it, comment here, and I promise to come visit you and leave chocolate super-fab, geeky-sexy comment love.

This Thursday’s Thoreau quote is a particularly provocative one.  It made my mind take pause: As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

(I will edit this post later with my response to the quote, but I don’t want to influence anyone else’s thoughts.)
With love,

He is homeless, his address written into the deep lines of his face.  We stand face to face over the opening of a trash barrel.  I throw away a package wrapping, he digs through looking for scraps to cobble together a meal, or for redeemable cans for change.  There are band-aids all over his face.  He pays me no mind as I glance at him, wondering what broke him.  He is the kind of man I think of when people smugly say, “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.

This man is the living, whispered argument to that quote.   The man we ignore so we can continue to believe the lie.

Should I give him a dollar?  Or would he only be insulted?  Or worse, would his wet eyes make contact with mine in gratitude?

Artwork by Crowsong

With love,

P.S. Challenge, write your own word portrait, tips are here.  Leave a comment with a link to your post.

Internet,  my computer is brok-en.  I don’t know how badly yet, since I need to wait until Monday to get it seen by a computer doc, but since it also failed about a month ago, I’m guessing this time could be the end.  Right after I tried to wrestle my computer into submission, I stubbed my toe on a couple of hand-weights and I’m pretty sure I broke it.  Purple, top and bottom, doesn’t seem to be the right color, and the pain is radiating through my whole foot, and right up my calf.

So, the round-up is going to have to wait until I get this sorted out.  To keep you all going though, here’s the prompt for this week:

Material

With love,

Day 14 of NaBloPoMo.  It’s Saturday, and I’m not much in the mood for writing on Saturdays.  Therefore, this is a good day to introduce you to a new blogger who I met through Neilochka’s Great Interview Experiment.  Aren’t you lucky?  Actually, you are lucky, because the woman who was set to interview me is as sweet and delightful and interesting as I could have hoped for.

I was tickled when she sent me the interview questions, in exactly 100 Words.  Girl after my own heart, I tell ya.  Internet, I give you Carla from Down Under, and our interview.   Once you’re done with the interview, be sure to check out Carla’s other posts.  She writes with a raw beauty.  Bisou, Carla!

With love,

It’s day 13 of NaBloPoMo, and you’re realizing you don’t have as much to say as you thought you did.  Writing every day can be tough!  If you’re stuck, free-writing is one method to un-stick yourself and break through writer’s block.  Also referred to as stream-of-consciousness writing, a free write can unlock fresh ideas too.  Ideas you might not have known you even had.

This week’s prompt is THE THREE LITTLE PIGS.  Don’t think about it yet.  Set your timer for 15 minutes, and then GO!  Write non-stop for 15 minutes without stopping, no matter where the prompt takes you.  Stop immediately when the timer goes off.  No stopping, and no editing!  Now, if you’re brave, post it to your blog, and leave a comment here so we can find it!

Here’s a treat for you when you’re done.  It’s best not to watch it until after you’ve done your free-write.

Christopher Walken’s Rendition of The Three Little Pigs

With love,

For all the Thursdays in November, I’m going to pick a Henry David Thoreau quote and post it here, and YOU get to write whatever comes up from that quote.  Start a debate, write a story, agree, disagree, w h a t e v e r.   Post it, comment here, and I promise to come visit you and leave chocolate super-fab, geeky-sexy comment love.

This Thursday’s Thoreau quote: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

(I will edit this post later with my response to the quote, but I don’t want to influence anyone else’s thoughts.)

**Updated to reflect my response 11/13/09

This quote begs the question why, and what can be done about it.  Surely not shattering families to run off to Vaudeville.   Perhaps the why is obvious.  Life happens.  We grow up being taught all the wrong things about what’s important in life, or rather, the teaching, while good intentioned, is skewed, incomplete, and unintentionally backwards.  This is because most people who are teaching children how to have a fulfilling life haven’t figured it out themselves yet.  They’re also getting their information from the media, whose job, let’s face it, is to sell us on things, or the government, whose job is to sell us on OTHER things.  Either way, it’s all about money and material things, even though the desired state of mind are at opposite ends of the spectrum.  One wants you to be hedonistic fulfilling every desirous impulse, while the other wants you to work hard and give back.

So we try to live according to these lessons.  We follow a certain path which we have been told over and over we want.  We must want to go to college, not for the sake of learning, but for our career.  We must want to make as much money as we can.  What we do doesn’t matter, only how much we can make at it.  We must want to get married and have children, it’s the natural order.  We must want to buy a house, a car, televisions, etc.  We must want to like volunteering at our children’s school, and so on.  Yet all of these wants have been implanted by the interests of others.

No wonder we get confused about how to live.  Quiet desperation sets in as we feel the pull from every direction.  It seems everyone wants a piece of us.  Products want us to love them, the government wants us to pay our taxes, our parents want us to make them proud, our spouses/partners want us to like them all the time, our children want us to cut off our right arm and hand it to them.  We hardly get a moment to even think about what WE want, what would make us feel fulfilled, or so we think.  The desperation builds as the yearning grows stronger.  Desperate men do desperate things.

What we need to learn, is balance.  As social animals, we do have responsibilities to our families and our community.  This does not need to trump our deepest inner calling though.  Let’s say you feel called to be an actor, but you’re a Dad.  Running off to Hollywood is impractical, but completely suppressing the call is also impractical because it will either lead to you going to your grave with the song still trapped in you, or you’ll just disappear one day, leaving broken hearts behind you.

So, love your family, pay your taxes, and start a local theater.

With love,

She is sweet faced and dimpled, smiling gently at everyone in general, and no one in particular.  Kindness spreads from her like angel wings.  The glint in her eye is apple pie, and picket fences, and rosy-pink babies dressed in organic cotton.  It is hand-knit mittens, woolen socks, and comfortable shoes. It is coordinated decor, neat stacks, and pure-bred puppies.  It is intelligence focused humbly in one virtuous direction.

She will make her way through life one tiny, careful choice at a time, measuring each decision by a delicate code of balance that is nearly unconscious, for she has been loved well, and raised wisely.  She will listen before speaking, look before leaping, but perhaps unnecessary when decisions come easy to one who has been raised without doubt. Everything will progress as it should.  She will be made wife, and mother, and balance a steady, slow progressing career in between.  Fulfillment is not a question in the vocabulary of her psyche.  It is already here, and there is more to come.  Temporary plagues of inconsequential insecurities only serve to wrap support more snugly round her shoulders.

She is, in a word, unmarked.

With love,

P.S. If you would like to write your own word portrait, tips are here.