An ode to Luna bars and Harry Potter!

Last night I went to a writer's meet-up group and got some nice little feedback on my stale old mixed-up jumble of a story: "Your writing is a powerful emotional tool--but use it wisely."

The problem is, God if that's actually a good description of my writing! More likely, it's a reflection of an emotional snippet of a page or two, which was written almost two years ago, probably. ("When did you say you wrote this?" "Um, I'm not sure... Maybe a couple months ago?" You lying nutcase! What's the point, anyway?)

Yes, anyway. That's all I wanted to say. I don't feel like thinking too much more tonight. After all, I reckon my mind has recently been swept up and away by a nice little fantasy story, just recently...

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/17/09)

Pep-Talk!

What was it again? Stolen? The fact of my missing life's calling seems to me a natural thing. Not so much 'stolen' as gone away. Gone traveling, but we think for just a bit. And who talks about us when we're not around? Not even like cruel gossip, but just in the sense that we are on the minds of others, earning their concern & deserving of their good intentions. I feel like I don't appreciate myself enough, nor the good I do. I feel as though those around me are placed in danger of making the same mistake each time I make it in front of them, by devaluing the work I do or the progress I make. What is the saying? "Stress is the denial of what IS." And just WHAT is!? I need to look around myself, honestly. Determine which aspects of my life truly do not reflect me, and change them. And the ones that do reflect me? Well, learn to approve of them, and thus learn how to accept what IS--whichever 'is' you are.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/8/09)

...

Drop of voices falling in a crowded room.
Hum of late morning's buzz like a radio show.
How powerful women will the nights to end.
Mouth-throat dry, sticky to a stunted tongue.
Tales of baby chicks named Stella, says the River Daughter,
updates of domesticity, known futures in advance.
While waiting here, in limbo for the waiting days,
watching people 'chase the trees', all the way to Montreal.
"Not much going on, just a whole lot more of the same,"
she says, speaking to a two-year-lost friend.
Seeing her past breach future memories,
then break-in to her present discontent.

"To leave the house of fear..."

There's this guy at a coffee shop that seriously messes with me. I never can tell how I was feeling before I talk with him, or how it relates to the way I feel afterward. All I know is that I've gotta let go of the implications therein, whatever they may be. I've got to deny the call to clumsiness that beckons me in his stoic presence, reflecting everything but me in his eyes--dark eyes, obviously.

(But I was worried, I'll admit it, or rather concerned when I heard tales of a bad bike crash, and knew it could likely have been him...)

And then, I'm not even certain of his name! I think I know it, but I've never asked nor has he offered. He has this air of unapologetic arrogance, that I can neither condone, nor completely ignore, as it seems more steeped in self-deprecation than in conceit. It's like that other bearded boy, erring on the edge of misanthropy--not for a second accepting another's joy or happiness as a thing that ought actually to exist. Go figure.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (4/6/09)

Half-Assed & Drowsy Lament.

Day 7: I'm filling up my days with a meaningful jabber of activities. Poised between distraction as necessity, and my refusal to consider regret an option when we can see instead the future. Whatever the shade of context--I miss my invisible one.

I ran into this evening a fate that seemed far worse than mine: A man who lost his still-young wife to a heart-stricken disease. And merely months ago. This sentence, then, I must be grateful not yet to serve. The stairs that await my lover's steps, forever forsaken? If so, at least I do not know it now.

Here are the state of things: One shred of hopeful in the frail form of an email; my extremities aching with an unparalleled brash of exertion--the brief discomfort, a comforting thing; building words atop each other recklessly, and haphazard sentences sure to follow in the failed fall's wake; the peaceful sensation of plain powerlessness, to look time straight in its dozing eye.

I heard some of these words read by twin poets tonight: Matthew & Michael Dickman. My own thoughts feel numb and uninspired to compare with the maroon music of theirs. But the truth of the matter is that the words I choose are in fact inspired--only that my inspiration has ceased to show itself clearly. Rather, his foggy image maps onto my mind, merely a blueprint of what was and will be--but what is just isn't, in this much-too-long moment. (And anyway, all the words are as torturous to say as not, so I suppose I'd better--just in case it helps to say them.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/7/09)

Afternoon in Guadalajara, Mex

scraps as crucial as oxygen,
as forgotten as reality,
as taken as a life, for granted.
she lays bent against a dirty column,
seeing all of it in the black of closed eyes.
thoughts incomprehensible run past her vision
at times with the lightning of an unknown past,
sometimes with the stillness left to tomorrow.