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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| "Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 4028 February 29th, 2024 What are five things you believe about yourself? I struggle with prompts like this because they are very introspective. I have to be careful to write about things I truly believe about myself, rather than things I wish were true about myself. But here goes.... I believe I know unconditional love. I believe it exists because of my daughter. Becoming a mother has convinced me that you can love someone completely, without questions or conditions. It is a powerful knowledge, one that both empowers and humbles you all at the same time. It is not the same love you feel for a life partner, a parent or as sibling...it is the love you can only experience for a child you have prayed and dreamed into being. I believe in a higher power, I believe I am a person of faith even if my definitions of God have changed over the years. At heart, when I pray I still see the bearded face of a man, the benevolent son from the stained glass windows of my catholic upbringing. I believe when I have prayed, my prayers have often been answered, especially when I have prayed for strength in times of trial. I believe through faith, our loves ones that are lost, can come back to us and that is a greatest comfort my faith delivers for me. I believe the bad things I have been through have made me stronger. I believe that every scar over my heart has made me wiser, has fortified me in some way. For every low moment, I have been able to draw a parallel to a moment when I have experienced a greater high. The violence I suffered at the hands of one man, enabled me to find the gentleness, protective nature of another. The grief of one loss, has made it possible for me to fully appreciate new love, new hope. Even the worst moments of our journey are purposeful. That has been true for me, and that belief has helped me navigate the bad times. I believe that true friends are far and few in this life and that if you have even one person, you are blessed. A true friend rejoices in your joys and shares in your pain and grief. A true friend will always be connected to you, to the person you have been and the person you will become through all the stages of your life. I believe I am both a true friend to someone as they are to me. I know if I pick up the phone she will answer, open and ready to be whatever I need...a confidante, a supporter, a shoulder to cry on or a cheerleader. I love and appreciate her, as I know she does me. I am eternally grateful for her presence in my life. I believe that my writing is the gift that has saved me, time and time again. My ability to pour my emotions into electronic ink has kept be saner than any therapy ever has. I believe that my ability to transcribe my fears, my dream and my fantasies into words has given me the creative outlet I have needed to feel fulfilled. I believe that writing is my craft, my lifeblood. It grounds me in the way nothing else ever had. Blog City Day 3023 February 29, 2024 Prompt: Leap Year Day. Write something about Leap Year for your Blog entry today. I had to google Leap Year to get some background. It is on of the rarest day to be born on, 1/1461 chance for example. Regardless, 4.8 million people globally share a leap day birthday and they are collectively called Leaplings. Who knew? Obviously not me. Apparently in Ireland, Leap Day is the day women are able to propose to men...which seems risky since some cultures consider it a day plagued by bad luck. Its one of those things that I've rarely given much thought too. I imagine being born in a Leap Year is only marginally less convenient than being born on Christmas Day. |
| "Blogging Circle of Friends " Day 4027: February 28, 2024 Prompt: “Even though February was the shortest month of the year, sometimes it seemed like the longest.” JD Robb What do you think? Does February seem like the longest month of the year? Where I live in coastal New England, January and February are sometimes lovingly referred to as the two "months of suck". This year those months have definitely lived up to that moniker. January has a minor redemption built in because it kicks off with the New Year's day holiday, but by mid-month, the joyful holiday euphoria is a distant memory and Spring is a promise too far off. February, though shorter, seems to be an entire Winter long with its endless weeks of cold snaps and daylight that vanishes before 5pm. This year we have had milder weather which has made it slightly easier to bear but it is still easily everyone's least favorite page on the calendar. March looms large with the promise of brighter mornings, a harbinger to the Spring waiting just around the corner. "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Day 3022 February 28, 2024 Prompt: What are 3 things you appreciate about nature? Nature awakens each morning in degrees. I love that time just before sunrise when the world wakes up in the dim light. Mornings are peace for me, whether I wake to find the ground covered in bright new snow, or find my feeders full of early activity, colorful yellow finches and the occasional buzz of the visiting hummingbirds. There are some rare mornings when that first light has a certain quality in the way it coats the branches and stretches across the across the fields, an almost unearthly brilliance that makes you stop and hold your breathe and take stock of the world and your place it in. Nature is fierce. There is a power in the surf during a storm, or in the wind that rocks the tops of the tallest trees. If Natures is the warrior, then weather is her weapon. There is a terrible vulnerability exposed when its nature verses man. With all our science and technology, we are still completely at the mercy of where a tornado touches down, or where a storm's destructive reach can take out causeways and erode entire beaches in a single afternoon. Who isn't even a little fascinated by the thunderstorms with the booms and crashes you can feel in your chest and the lightening that splits the night skies in silver arcs? Nature persists. I think that is perhaps my most favorite thing about it. It perseveres. I have always found something beautiful in the way a forest will reclaim an abandoned amusement park or collapsing barn. Or the way a coral reef absorbs a sunken ship, laying claim to it with new growth. Barnacles and sea fans can camouflage an old cannon so that it you have to look past new beauty to see the traces of the old lines and shapes. Nature comes back from ravaging wild fires, new green shoots rising from ashen soil. There is a comfort for me in knowing nature cannot be triumphed over. It is a powerful reminder that our time here is temporary and the old world under our feet is taking daily measure of how we spend it. |
| "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" Day 3021 February 27, 2024 Prompt: Tear Jerkers Have you ever cried over a movie or serials or sad novels? What do you think brought on your tears? It has been a while since I tried to write. I started slow this week, editing some older pieces and then tackled a contest entry, my first new original piece of writing in over 2 years. It felt shaky, like throwing my leg over a bike I'd had buried in the back of the garage and wobbling along until my muscle memory kicked in. Still, it always feels like coming home when I take writing up again. These daily blogging challenges are good exercise for the craft. Free-writing may flow more easily but responding to a challenge or prompt always makes my mind/heart connection work harder. Its like using a treadmill, then increasing the angle and resistance to build better endurance. I had to laugh a little at this morning's prompt. I certainly cry over movies and sad novels, but also especially poignant commercials. It seems these days, the closer I approach the true middle age, it is hard not to cry at such things. My emotions seem to run closer to the surface than ever before, as if I know I have half a life left to feel it all, and I don't want to waste it. I cry just as many tears of joy as I do sadness though. This past weekend my friend performed in her first Caberet, something she had written to honor her Dad who had passed during covid. I cried through just about her entire show...a mix of tears brought on by memories, by her grief, by her touching renditions and by my tremendous pride in her for putting it all together. I've come to believe that there is a release in the tears we shed, a release we need more and more, the more of this life we get exposed to. The old adage, "sometimes you just need a good cry", is pretty accurate. I think if something we read or see can move us to tears, of any variety, then we are experiencing it to the full potential, that we are truly engaged with it. In today's fast paced, disposable world, being fully engaged with something has never been more important. "Blogging Circle of Friends " Day 4026: February 27, 2024 Prompt: “Every element was made in a star and if you combine those elements in different ways you can make species of gas, minerals, and bigger things like asteroids, and from asteroids you can start making planets and then you start to make water and other ingredients required for life and then, eventually, us.” Dr Ashley King, planetary scientist Let this quote inspire your blog entry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRjCeoBqrI I read this quote this morning, and immediately began hearing Coldplay's "Sky full of Stars", in my head. I'm not sure that is what Dr. Ashley King would have been happy to have inspired with her words...but that's what came to me. It is not my typical genre of music either so it was admittedly a little odd. I had to pull it up on youtube to give it a full listen. The lyrics connected back in an unexpected way for me. There is something lovely about life starting with the stars and the cosmic combination comes together to create a universe of possibilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRjCeoBqrI |
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