Tag Archives: Arts

Finding Your Own Road.

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The road follows its own course, we’re just along for the ride.

We stare at the road presented before us, its trees, thorns ad cracked and splintered surface, but what we rarely see are the wildflowers growing in the ditch on the side of the road.

The wildflowers, though beautiful, are hidden from view. They’re rarely seen and seldom talked about, but the cracked and splintered surface is discussed often.

Our roads lead only where we want them to. The only thing we can do is get off the highway, find a gas station, and ask for directions, but we don’t like directions, or at least not a lot of us.

Our direction, whether going through a big city, or a small town, always leads us through cracks and thorns, but once we reach the city, do we stop and look for beautiful areas, no, we’re resigned to believe there are none.

Cities are beautiful, but we often forget about the architecture around us unless we’re standing in it.

Towns don’t have the rush of the city, but they have the problems, and once we’re entangled in those problems they become bigger than the city.

A stop in the towns is wonderful for some people, as are cities, but getting beyond those and discovering what lies beyond the city gates or the township’s borders, that’s when you discover the correct road.

Stay on the road, follow the course and let it take you where you need to be.

Writing Critiques and How TM has changed my view.

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As a child I remember my father critiquing me for anything he believed I did wrong. If I stood with my hands on my hips, “That looks Gay”, or when I’d get bad grades, “You’re stupid.”

This type of critiquing didn’t go well with my creative side, it impeded it.

Now that I have kids and don’t say those things to them, I learned more about what is a good critique and a bad one and how TM figures in to my writing.

The one thing about TM, is that I no longer care as much about the past, or the future. I’m finally able to live in present, and with the present I’m able to handle criticism a lot better.

I recently got my edits back from an editor, though they’ll change the way I write, they’ll also let me grow as a writer, which is more important.

The edits were on a draft of a novel I wrote and they’re what I’ve wanted to hear from someone who knew what they were talking about.

I’ve attended Meet-Ups, but a lot of them are just a bunch of people gathered to drink at a bar, which may be fun for those who aren’t serious about the craft, but for me they limited what I wanted to do and they were detrimental to my craft.

I knew going in to writing that I needed work, and with the notes I received, I know what I need to fix, and I’m also now more aware of my writing issues.

I no longer live in a world where I care if I’m berated for not cleaning my room, but that prepared me for writing more than anything.

As a kid I had to have thick skin, but I also became aware that I could write to escape things, which went hand-in-hand.

TM allows me to worry less about the critiques I received in the past and let me focus on my present writing issues.

Being critiqued is part of writing, and being critiqued well are the best kind of critiques.

Before TM I was fearful of being critiqued and based what I knew on my experience with my father.

I now know that a critique should be a lesson and not a reprimand.

Living The Gift of The Cosmos

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Whatever future, whatever past, each day brings us to the very last.

We see our life, but detest the idea of our death. We wait until the very moment, or near the moment, we’re going to die to make amends.

This ability is purely human.

Does a bird tell the bug sorry for eating it, no. Will the parent of a turtle long-buried in the beach, be sorry for leaving its children on the beach, possibly, but humans are the only creature that is truly sorry for things its done, but we don’t say sorry, and mean it, as much as we should.

Our lives are gasps of air in the middle of a cosmos of gasps. We see the stars overhead, but don’t think about the life we’re living, or how it affects the people around us, not to mention the environment.

Our gasps or air are stories in a cosmos of stories. Our lives, deaths and eventual rebirths, are nothing short of miraculous in a cosmos which pays no mind to person in Africa starving, or to the person in America who is doing the same thing.

The difference between the two is the ability to change the way things are.

We see the stories and the little gasps after they’ve happened, but the problem is, we never understand the reasons for our life, or for why we’re here.

We live in a life where the world changes faster than it has at any other point in history, but we never stop to look around, never think about doing things to help those around us, and oftentimes, we don’t think about those we hurt.

Our little gasps are just that, breaths of air escaping through tubes and chambers underneath our skin, but the act of breathing is something we don’t control, it occurs for us without thinking about it.

In a cosmos full of extraordinary things, we still don’t think about what each breath means or what each day is.

In our world, our life is lived day-to-day, but we don’t think about our life as what encompasses it.

Get through the gasps and stare into the cosmos and see your life for what it is, a gift from the creation of the universe.

Writing Through the Falling Ash

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Searching through the files of our lives, they must look like the deleted technology of a long-lost civilization, long burnt down, crashed and falling to ash.

We watch the reel, enjoying the moments of joy and cringe at the moments of self-realization.

Each of these moments have created who we are, the wrinkles, age and that odd grey color in our hair which we swear wasn’t there yesterday.

These moments are unspoiled by time, life and the things we’ve done since.

Through the years of tears, and every one has a year of tears, no one’s life is perfect.

Staying in a reel, we see watch the life we had, and think about the things yet to come. The loves, loss and the disappointment.

There’s nothing more disconcerting than not being able to see these things. Pulling these files from their roster, some collecting dust, others fresh from the other day, none of them are bad, they just are what they are.

Leading our lives through years, days and hours, each new thing we discover is different, but it may feel the same.

We have the same feelings, but different. The same pain without consequence or the laughter without the joke.

There are some of these which lead to our goals and our strength.

Running through the life which never changes, or appears not to things don’t fall away.

These things add caution and fire to what we want. Going  through, we see the difference of who we’ve become, what’s fallen away, what our foundation has become and where the ash has fallen.

Writing and finding the Honey Pot

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The laughter, pain and confusion of the day rolls by. We’re seething with what we’ve seen, but we put that away, stare at a blank screen and write.

Daily we see things, things which we’re sick about, confused about and sometimes, scared about.

When we see these things we could be worried about what it will do to us. Whether it may cause us mental harm or if, and this is a big if, whether it will affect our writing or on the off-chance, it may do things which could bring out the worst in us.

These are the moments we should be taking notes.

These are when our environment is giving us cues into the labyrinth of the world. This labyrinth hides many things, but sometimes it leads us to creativity, great wonderful ribbons of creativity filled with long writing sessions and awesomely incredible characters.

Our notes, whether written or jotted down in the folds of our grey matter, are the things which lead to the creative honey pot, and like Winnie the Pooh we should bury ourselves in the honey pot, finding every little piece of honey until we’re full.

The honey pot comes more with each time we take these notes, and it continues until we don’t need the notes anymore and we’re just experiencing the things around us, but our subconscious is taking notes, which will be unlocked in our writing session later.

Finding the honey pot, and getting our fingers into the warm, gooey wonderfulness keeps us writing every day.

Without the honey pot, we’re left with a blank page, nothing more.

The more we write, the more the honey pot comes into play and the less we realize we’re pulling from it, but afterward, when we’re reading our stories, that’s when the realization of the honey pot hits us.

It’s always there, but it comes more often when we’re writing regularly.

The best thing to do is get out, experience things, live and do the things you’ve wanted to do and never hold back from what you’ve wanted to do. Then you’re free to find the honey pot and it will appear when you least expect it.

Dig in, find the honey pot, take notes and write, and when you think you’ve written enough, write some more.