Heads Up, Writers!

Heads up, Writers! 

It’s time to save the world! We need a Charles Dickens, to show us what the census numbers really look like walking; we need a Thomas Paine to tell us just what might really work; we need a Rachel Carson to bring us to our senses; we need a Martin Luther, to bring us back to God.

We’ve had plenty of minor players.  Who’s going to write the story that brings us fully back to center?

People who are great in their various professions, skills, and callings think profoundly but narrowly.

Only writers think of all the connections and the what-ifs; and some of you must wrap your imaginations around all our ideas, events, and characters, and write the words that will save the world.

You know who you are.  Heads up!

The Laundry is Ready to Come Out of the Dryer!

And, the 2009 Tax Returns are still waiting for those items you need to look up.

And you can't remember for certain if you FINISHED the dishes (no peeking now).

So WHY after reading blogs for the past hour, are you WRITING one?

Uh ... cuz I haven't done so in about a year.  If I just write SOMEthing, then after this I can write ANYthing, like I used to, back in the days when I wrote.

Just like riding a bicycle!  You never forget how.  Later, friends.

I Will Choose the Picture

This is the photo for Writer's Block Challenge #54.

When I downloaded the photo, the title of it turned out to be "train-station-trey-ratclif."  Whatever that means.

To the right of the photo are possibly windows.  I think I see the hint of trees.

A long way distant from those trees ... a long way distant from the hour when I write, is another world.  Very real.  That is the picture I will write about.

It is quiet in the woods tonight.  The snow is knee-deep, but the wind has stopped howling.

The fire inside my cabin is warm.  It is warmer in a cabin made of logs and heated by wood, than it can ever be in a frame house heated by natural gas and forced air.  A wood stove's fire burns constant.  Twelve-inch logs keep the cabin snug.  Sometimes, in the deepest winter, you need to open the windows to let out some of the warmth.

It is quiet in the woods tonight.  The birds are bedded down, the deer have withdrawn to the swamp, and the moon is high in the sky.

The pines are draped in new snow.  The stars are beginning to glint from afar.  The light from the wood stove is all that I want.  For it is quiet in my soul tonight, as well.

Repost - Writers Block Challenge # 27

I wish I had a camera that could show the view from me:

Peripheral and everything I do and do not see.

And it would have to focus without zooming, and should stay

Attentive to the details and wide angles of each day.

Photographic memories!  I’ve heard some people have them.

Not me, though, only words are stored, retrievable at random.

I cannot tell you what I saw unless I first told me!

Word pictures I’ll remember.  That’s why I write poetry.

 

 

Poem by Rani Kaye, All rights reserved.

Second Wind

This was originally posted on Yahoo 360.

 

Writer's Block Challenge # 22 (My first time participating.) :

 

 

Why would a quiet soul want a scary door?
This is not the door to MY heart.
If I close my door, it is only for solitude ... it is only to revive ...
and never would I want to terrify you away.

P.S.  If you ever see a scary door like this one,  I say slap some paint on it and plant some flowers!

Writers Block #52: The Agnostic Shepherd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is dismal.  Some have heard angels sing.  Some say that star leads to a faraway hope.  My feet are wet, and I have no idea why it has to snow again tonight.  I am looking for a lamb that wandered off at sunset.  Perhaps we’ll both be dead by dawn. 

 

Centuries from now, people will hate and kill each other, because of differing interpretations of what was seen and heard tonight.  If, indeed, anything remarkable has happened tonight at all.

 

If God was real, and he was going to save us, you would think he could just start over, and get it right this time.  What could be so important to him about my wretched life?

 

And where on earth did that lamb of mine go? 

Writers Block Challege # 51

Solace:

I am holding up a mirror
It is holding back the tide
All the monsters that could harm you
Are here on the other side

You are safe within the vessel
Safe is what you'll always be
Though the demons think they see you
All they really see is me

Poem by Rani Kaye
All rights reserved

My grandparents

The first of my immigrant grandpas was William.  He came to Massachusetts from Scrooby, Nottinghamshire via Leiden, Netherlands in 1620.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mosmd/leaders.htm

Shortly after William arrived, my grandpa, Christian, (a Mennonite) came to Pennsylvania, where he died 4 years before the American Revolution.

Right around the time Christian died, my grandpa, Aaron, also arrived in Pennsylvania.  When the War broke out, he migrated to Canada because this branch of my family favored the King.  They returned to the U.S. a couple decades before the American Civil War, in which they fought for the Union.

At about the same time Aaron's descendents returned from Canada, two grandpas, Pieter and Johann, came to Michigan from the Netherlands.

My most recent immigrant grandpa, Johan, brought his son, my grandpa Wilhelm, to America so that Wilhelm would not have to serve in the German military.  Johan was, according to family verbal history, the illegitimate son of Wilhelm I of Prussia.

None of these grandpas ever knew each other, but their children were all living in Michigan and eventually produced my two parents.

 

I have been studying genealogy, and history.  Unraveling riddles from my childhood.  Some day, when I have finished my research, and found my voice, I hope to write about those riddles.

     

Writers Block Challenge # 27

I wish I had a camera that could show the view from me:

Peripheral and everything I do and do not see.

And it would have to focus without zooming, and should stay

Attentive to the details and wide angles of each day.

 

Photographic memories!  I’ve heard some people have them.

Not me, though, only words are stored, retrievable at random.

I cannot tell you what I saw unless I first told me!

Word pictures I’ll remember.  That’s why I write poetry.

 

 

Poem by Rani Kaye, All rights reserved.

Writers Block Challenge # 26

Ladybug, Ladybug

Fly away home

Your house is on fire

Your children will burn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d fly home if I could, 

But I’m lost in this weed. 

The flower I’d chosen

Has all gone to seed.

The seeds have made wings

Of their own, and I fear

The wind will blow them and me

So far from here

My children will burn

‘Fore my wings touch the sky

Why did I choose this damn flower?

Oh why?

-- Poem by Rani Kaye
All rights reserved

Writer's Block Challenge #24 -- Ghetto Edgers

Steve and Ardene have a place at the lake, but they live 'round the corner from us, on the edge of the ghetto.  Mike and I were walkin' the dog one Saturday.  We walk towards the east ... two blocks east and you're among manicured lawns and golden retreavers.  Back in the 'hood, and one block west of our place, Steve was on the sidewalk near his house, poking a rake handle at some shoes draped over the telephone wires.  "Shoes hangin' over the lines like that means a drug dealer lives here," said Steve; and I had no idea how he would know that, or if it's even true.  Steve and Ardene were missionaries to Africa most of their lives; and then when they retired they moved back to a neighborhood no longer predominantly Dutch.

Ardene was my middle son's teacher in first grade, and Steve was my husband's best man at our wedding.  We chatted with Steve while he tried to snag the shoes down off the line.  Then we headed home with our dog.  I suppose he eventually got the shoes down.

They had us up to their cottage at the Big Lake once.  We walked the beach, and then went indoors and played dominoes.  Steve and Ardene are older than Mike and me, 'though not by a lot.  Their kids are our age, I guess ... but my own folks were roughly 20 when I was born, and 20 years age difference isn't so much when you're in your late 40s.  So Steve and Ardene were 60-something.  Big deal.

But Steve up and died one day, while we were eating dinner.  We heard the ambulance come 'round the corner.  Wondered about it.  That's all.

Next morning, Steve's daughter knocked at the back door.  Wanted to tell us herself.  He died on his birthday.  Gettin' ready to take Ardene to dinner, where they'd meet all their kids, to celebrate Dad's birthday.

It snowed the day of Steve's funeral.  Hadn't snowed that winter till that day.  Their church was like a gymnasium.  Not very Dutch, even though it was CRC.  We all sat on folding chairs.  The place was packed, though.  Had a nice luncheon, after, I suppose.  Steve's funeral luncheon kinda melds in together with other funeral luncheons I've attended through the years.  Cake and coffee and white paper over long tables with people scattered here and there.  Probably some ham on buns, potato chips, potato salad, large assortment of jello salads made by ladies from the church.

"I want you to know, I will be okay," Ardene told us next time we saw her.  "I don't want you to worry -- Steve left me okay off.  I don't plan to move.  I plan to stay."  Those of us who still take care of our house and lawn, this close to the ghetto, sometimes reassure each other that we're stayin'.  It's not the color of our skin that matters -- any neighbors who take care of their place and don't let their kids run wild are excellent neighbors far as we're concerned.

Sometimes when I drive through town on my way to work, I see shoes draped over the telephone lines, and I wonder whether Steve was right -- that they mean something, I mean.

So shoes that dangle, as those in this photo do, even though they're at the beach, make me think about Steve, and encroachment by drug dealers, and once-lovely neighborhoods with absentee landlords, and ghetto-edgers like us, who think if you plant enough flowers everybody will remember that Time Began in a Garden.

Writers Block Challenge # 23

Stuff and Nonsense by Rani Kaye

(formerly known as “Mystic Poet”):

 

This should be a cozy haunt:

Up and down the stairs I jaunt.

If I try to walk away,

I’ll find I’m asleep, and stay.

If I try to reach "awake"

I’ll discover my mistake:

(Flying through here in the rain ...

Lightening out my window pane ...

Pelting teardrops o’er my head;

I am really still in bed!)

Have you ever dreamed you waked?

Took a walk, and couldn’t shake

Some fool notion you’re not there

But asleep in bed, somewhere?

If you do, just say a prayer!

And your spirit will recover;

Leaving dreamland, find the other

Place that is your true abode

(While the shades of death withhold

Your existence from the sky ...

In determined steps to try

To remember on which day

You assumed a shell of clay,

And were bound by time and space

To exist in but one place

Until time and space shall end --

Then you get to fly again!)

 

-- Poem by Rani Kaye, all rights reserved

A Quiet Soul

Writer's Block Challenge # 22 (My first time participating.) :

 

Why would a quiet soul want a scary door?
This is not the door to MY heart.
If I close my door, it is only for solitude ... it is only to revive ...
and never would I want to terrify you away.

P.S.  If you ever see a scary door like this one,  I say slap some paint on it and plant some flowers!