Month: August 2014

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JSW Prompt August 25

My sister says that Mommy killed her.  Mommy says that I don’t have a sister…..

 

It’s a weird thing, this confusion.  I want to believe my sister.  She says she is my sister after all, but one would think Mommy would know if she’d had another child.  I don’t know how that happens, the child thing, but I know she would know.  And wouldn’t she know if she’d killed something?  I know when the car hit a bird once, she knew, and she cried for a long time.

Thing is, my sister, Rebecca, looks exactly like me.  Like standing in front of the full length mirror in Mommy’s bedroom and seeing myself, but in different clothes. Rebecca dresses mostly in white frilly things with ribbons and bows and stuff.  I like jeans and tee-shirts, tennis shoes, cause the white wouldn’t last long outside in the mud and rain and even the dry dirt. Mommy says I’m too much the tom-boy which I don’t understand either.  My name isn’t Tom and I’m not a boy but then Mommy says a lot of confusing things.  Like I don’t have a sister. And nobody lives in the house but us.

Rebecca comes to play when I’m alone in my room.  She likes to play with my dolls, dress them up, brush their hair, pretend to feed them and change their diapers.  I say pretend cause I know it’s not real. Real babies eat and cry and poop but plastic ones don’t.  She doesn’t like to play outside.  She’s scared of the pond in the back. But if playing inside makes Rebecca happy, that’s okay.  I like when she’s happy. She seems sad an awful lot.

When I ask her why, she says its because Mommy killed her. And if Mommy comes in, she hides. I don’t know where because I’ve never found her, but she never lets Mommy see her. Ever.

And when I ask her where she hides, she just smiles and tells me it’s a secret……

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Parallel Worlds

“The ‘Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ speaks to possibility and it speaks to opportunity. By appreciating its existence and adopting the paradigm of its existence, we start to realize that our future has infinite potentiality, and we realize that the ‘Ideal Parallel World’ of our dreams already exists along one path of our potential future; therefore our behaviors in the present can guide us to that ‘Ideal Parallel World.”

― Kevin Michel, Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams

 

I’ve always been fascinated by Parallel Worlds.  As a writer, my sense has been that all my characters live in their own ‘worlds,’ with something like a soul cord connecting us all together.  Sometimes when I’m drifting in the car (not driving of course), I get the sense that I’m looking at a world very different than my own, seen through half-closed eyes, then gone when I blink and attempt to actually see.  Then again, I was always the child dreaming of discovering the doorway in a tree leading into some magical world far different than my own.

To understand that this magical world might already be my own, in my own potential future, is much harder to understand.  Actually, I don’t mean understand but accept.  It is hard to accept that we are the ones responsible for our own lives – our futures.  It’s so much easier to blame our parents or family or the job that doesn’t appreciate us or even the ‘world’ for being against us.

And it’s easy to agree that the ‘world,’ or ‘god,’ or whatever name you might give your higher power, seems against us.  How many children are starving in this world?  Have no fresh water?  Disease?  How many people wander our streets homeless, seemingly forsaken by the world that accepts us?  How many people want only for themselves at the expense of their neighbor?  But is it the ‘world’ that has turned against them or have we, in our ignorance and fear,  turned against ourselves?

We created the ‘future’ in which we are now living, with all it’s wonders and horrors.  Yet the ‘Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ tells us that we have endless potential to create a different world and that, how we act today, can and will create the world we want for tomorrow.

Scary because we can’t blame anyone else anymore.  Today, I challenge everyone reading this blog to make this the day to look forward into the future we desire, not just the one this world tells us that we deserve or will have…just because.

 

 

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Capturing Forgiveness In Every Moment!

If you would like to read DeeOhGeeRay’s entire post, here it is.

deeohgeeray

PaintedFloral

Greetings! Welcome Everybody!

Capturing forgiveness sounds like a lofty goal for sinner and saint alike. There is a key point to present in this matter and that is,  we all carry out two main things while we live our day-to-day lives. Of course, we do not need to know this as a truth.

It works that way all by itself.

Learning and working within ourselves to help our lives which is our own personal story can boost all things and our standing in both the flesh and spirit realm. Looking at one tool today to aid the process of forgiveness. The two main processes at work in our lives is this:

  • The words and sounds we make have a direct effect on the things around us and in the depths of our very soul. In other words we actually make our own soundtrack, by the music we play in our…

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The sum of our day is like completing a page in the book of our lives. DeeOhGeeRay

What a beautiful way to think of life.  So many times we exist day to day, barely hanging on by our fingertips, hoping that we will survive until tomorrow, or the next day or the next day off…… the next vacation.  Then all will be well.  But how many times is that next day off the kind of day we really need?  And how many times it is just another day where we cling to the routines of our lives, praying that we can exist through just one more day?

But what if we looked at each day as a page in the book of our lives like DeeOhGeeRay suggests?  As a writer, I suddenly wanted to make every moment of each day as complete and as fulfilling as my favorite book.  And I wondered, how many blank pages do I have in my book already?  How many more until I learn to slow down and live every moment of every day as if it was my last? Or rather, my first?

The song says, ‘Live like you’re dying,’ but I don’t want to live that way.  I want to live in the joy of each day, finding the peace of each and every moment, to see the sunshine shimmering on the leaves and feel the dirt in my fingers as I plant flowers I hope will come back year after year, reminding me of the beauty of this world.  Hope.  What a beautiful word. Don’t we all live with the hope that one day things will be better; that vacation day will come and be perfect, we’ll get that raise or a new car or a bigger house.

Those things, however, are written in ink which washes away. Tomorrow we look back and wonder why that raise didn’t make us happy; why this day isn’t better than any of the last?  I don’t want to live exhausted any more, feeling like I’m barely making it day to day, living for work, and then going home and working more.  Or just toppling into bed because I can’t face another hairball from my ever-loving cat or a pile of dirty dishes in the sink because apparently 8 to 12 hours is not enough time for for my sons to wash them.

What do I want to write on today’s page in my book? Will it be joyous and positive or will I waste another day just clinging by my fingertips, hoping to get to tomorrow?

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How Would My Relationships Change if I Resolved Never to Lie Again, Pt 2

In re-reading my former post on this topic, I realized I wasn’t actually totally honest in answering the question. I was honest as far as I went, but I stopped short of visualizing how my relationships would change if I never lied again. Instead I talked about what was in my present, how I was affected by trying to live lie-free now, instead of how these efforts could change my life.

That, I’ve realized, is a much harder question. So, now it’s time for the real truth.

How would my relationships change if I resolved never to lie again? No ‘that dress makes you look fab,’ or ‘I’m tired (just because I don’t want to go out).’ Neither would ‘I’ll be back in a hour (when I know it’s gonna be at least three),’I’m fine with that movie,’ or “No, I don’t mind when you constantly correct my grammer’ be allowed.

Wow. This is gonna be harder than I ever imagined. I have no problem being open and honest on questions about my money, my house, my job…. but get into my interior life and I’m going to have to make a lot of changes that are hard for an extreme introvert to even contemplate. Can I stand up and assert myself when confronted with a situation where, normally, I’d back off and just agree even if those agreements are lies?

For example, if a friend loves a particular book and wants me to love it as well, could I risk being honest if I actually hated the book? It would be so easy to just agree. What would that hurt? It wouldn’t hurt her would it? And it wouldn’t hurt me?

Or would it? Deep down inside, don’t we die just a little each time we lie, each time we are dishonest with others and with ourselves? I doubt my friend would care one way or the other, but I bet she’d be touched that I cared enough about her to give her an honest opinion.

I’ve tried to be totally honest with the people I’ve met lately and you’d be surprised at the distrust that I’ve encountered. Funny thing, but if you tell the honest truth, most people will think you’re lying.

My lies or truths are never going to change the world in the way most people would think. I’m not responsible for the Red Button or negotiations to stop the war in the Middle East. I don’t have the President’s ear and I’d be terrified (truthfully) of being a missionary or aid worker to a war-torn country.

But I truly believe that each honesty we tell, each lie we avoid, does change the world, one person at a time. And this is the only way that the world will ever change for the better.

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JSW Prompt – 8/8/2014

‘Not all haunted places are houses….’

I know. And I’ll tell you my story. I’ll begin by saying I’ve lived a normal life. Regular childhood. Two happy parents, a dog, a succession of cats, a sister of whom, to be totally honest, I could have often done without. Not that I dislike her; we are just worlds apart in just about everything.

But back to the haunting. My haunting isn’t a house and it isn’t a place. My haunting is in my head and so it’s one from which I can never walk away. Have you ever had a memory that just won’t go? Trust me when I say it’s a hell of a thing.

Once upon a time as most stories go, I had a character named Nell. She was a reporter, living in Chicago and she was a good person. Strong, focused, living life the way she wanted to live. But because of events in my life, I allowed her to be snuffed out in a pinpoint of darkness. It’s a rare thing for a character to simply vanish. Since my characters are part of me, they all carry the spark of who I am. And mostly, they evolve and change as I change, coming forth in a new form, new name, new life.

Years later, I still feel that I betrayed the character. If I had been stronger in my own life, I could have saved her. I could have kept the weight crushing me from crushing her, too. But I didn’t and now her ghost lives in my mind, a reminder of how fragile that creative spark within us can be.

In what way are you haunted in your creative life?