How Spontaneous Function Crashed the Party and the Puppeteer's Magical Muse

"Damn!  This is hard!"
"What's hard?"
"Writing a blog post. I have nothing, but I need something."
"Why?"
"Because I made a commitment to myself to keep a blog."
"Why?"
"Are you going to just sit there and keep asking me 'why, why, why?' Why don't you give me some constructive suggestions."
"Why don't you write about us. Write about our relationship and how we met and how I make your thoughts a little bit...more interesting. You could start out by introducing me."
"I guess I could do that although I'm not even sure how I would tell it."
"Isn't that the best part of story telling? Sometimes the writer doesn't even know how it will play out let alone end. Write about me and how we met. Don't you remember?"
"No, I don't."
"I don't either, but you could just make something up!  It's called a story, right?"
"Right. It's my story..."
"And you're sticking to it!"
"Right. I need a title."
"Why?"
Sigh...

"The Puppeteer's Magical Muse and How Spontaneous Function Takes the Cake

"Is that the best you can do?"
"What do you mean? That's what you told me to write."
"I suppose that's how you interpreted it, but, well, okay, whatever."
"Hmm, it's the cliché 'takes the cake' that's bothering you, right?"
"Yup."
"So let's hear another one."

.
.
.
."Um? Hello? Are you there?"
"I never left.Try again."









How Spontaneous Function Crashed the Party and the Puppeteer's Magical Muse

"Better?"
"It's good for starters.Time for a nap. You know the rest of the story."
"I suppose I do."

How Spontaneous Function Crashed the Party and the Puppeteer's Magical Muse

When I was a young girl left to her own devices, I had ways of amusing myself through play and pretend. Plush animals and hand puppets made themselves at home and talked incessantly.   Invisible creatures lived in tall grasses, clouds formed into parades of sculpted wonder, the wind in the trees, the stones in the streams were alive and spoke of longing while babbling to me. I was never lonely and I was never alone. I have fonder memories of me doing nothing than I do while up to something.

"Yawn. You definitely were always up to something."
"Ah, you're back from your nap so soon?"
"I wasn't really napping. I'm always listening in."
"I should realize that. Can I continue?"
"Continue."

As I grew up, I found friends who also welcomed pretend and was able to point to the unseen and hear the whisper of voices sending us to another world until the adults called us back down; back home.  

"We were hardly whispering."
"When no one else can hear you, it's like a whisper, but yes, right now you are speaking in a normal tone and volume."
"Except no one can hear me but you."
"Right."

My family was pleasant enough. We always sat together for dinner each night but I couldn't remember or tell you what we spoke about. I remember looking at potato skins that looked like elephant ears, or broccoli that looked like trees. I had the ability to visually distort my immediate surroundings. I could make people or objects that were close seem very far away.Their heads would be smaller than their bodies. It was really very odd, yet exhilarating to have this entertaining gift. 

"That was weird when you did that."
"I know.  I've only been able to do it once in my adulthood by accident, but never again since."

Dinner was over and I was excused, later to reluctantly return and help with cleaning up. My sister would wash and I would dry then I would disappear again to play outside or slide into the sanctuary of my bedroom and do the things that made me content and comfortable.



"Let's get to the part where you let me out and put me down on paper!"
"I'm getting to that."
"Eating toadstool and rocking rolls is good for your complexion and penmanship."
"I'm getting to it!"

I am of adult age now. It is not the same as saying I'm an adult now. My age is inconsequential, like yourself, I still think and feel like I always have. My settings have changed and my experiences have broadened my world, but I will always see myself as a child with attentive wonder and I never want to miss the moments where I can delve into the heart of carefree play.

"Very well said."
"Thank you. I've been trying to figure this out."
"I've been with you all the way."
"Some days your naps are longer than I'd like."

Now certainly I can pretend I'm somewhere or someone else right now, but it's difficult and different. Along the way I have accumulated other, shall I say, darker voices who have filled my thoughts with doubts, fears, shame --"

"Not me!"
"No, not you.They definitely come from a place of modern day madness."

These harboring barnacles tend to settle in just when the gods have spread open a wide sheet of a new day before me and say, "have at it, karen!"

"That was me, saying that."
"That was you, wasn't it? Are you the gods?"
"No, I'm just the voice inside your head, let's not completely lose ourselves. Instead, let's learn how to rid ourselves of these 'harboring barnacles'.  Many a tale has been spun surrounding the heavy burden of these terrible tyrants of truth."
"Okay.Talk about losing ourselves. Anyway --"


There is the voice of wisdom and whimsy; play and pretend. There is the voice of deceit and dismay; torment and trepidation.Then there is your voice.

"I love your voice."
"You do? How sweet."
"I love you."
"I'm blushing now."
"Sally felt flush when she turned the raccoon into a souvenir."

Getting back on track, I know my own voice has the strength of a million suns and can roar like thunder, shatter glass and rock mountains.

  
It is the same with you, my reader. You just have to find it.

"My voice doesn't do those things."
"No, it doesn't, but the gifts you share help give me the gifts I share and strength is achieved to match up with any barrier or dark life force that dares to bring me down and for that I thank you."

"Woa."

Right now I am pretending to know what I'm talking about. I'm writing and occasionally this puppet comes into the frame of the conversation and speaks when you least expect it. Having these two way conversations is not in the least bit wrong and if it is, keep it to yourself, your puppet is waiting. So, hey, I always dreamed of being a puppeteer.

Betcha my mom never knew that! She wanted me to take a civil service test and be a secretary or better yet left me a pamphlet on being a state trooper! Could you imagine a state trooper being a ventriloquist?  I remember taking the civil service test, but I never got a civil service job. I kept telling Santa I wanted to be a dentist and nobody listened until I had to run away, but I didn't get far because I'm still right here wishing I had become a professional puppeteer.

"I know what I'm getting you for Christmas."
"I can't wait!"
"How did you know what I was going to say?"
"I'm the ventriloquist, remember?"
"Standing in line, Stu heard the horned owl hoot and ran off with an avocado."

Spontaneous Function: {noun} a string of words that relate to disconnected chaos pertaining to the action of persons or objects in random places doing strange things.

"By the light of the gods!  You just officially defined Spontaneous Function!"
"Yes we did."

"We'd Like to Know a Little Bit About You For Our Files"

I started the idea of writing this Blog in August of 2005 mostly because I had run out of rental space in my head and was attempting to sort out bizarre memories, feelings of inspiration, art work or just rattle off a rant depending upon the size of the rage.

Part of setting up the Blog is to list your interests (favorite books, favorite movies, favorite music) and to give a short introduction of who you are and what you're about. I had already done this in 2005, but I re-read it last week, and I thought it was far too brief and quite frankly almost juvenile. I can't be the same person I was nearly ten years ago!  I'm older, my kids are older, trees are bigger; so I decided to delete my pathetic description and replace it with the mind and mentality of the more mature thinking woman I've become. I mean, c'mon!  Ten years is a lot of time! My sons are grown, out of college and on with their lives! My interests and knowledge have surely expanded. Well, I still have the same job, live in the same place, but somehow, I have to have changed at least a little bit. 

Here was how my previous About Me intro read:

Heart Tunes, Expressive Art, Jesus, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Spontaneous Prose and Strong Coffee just about cover it.

Not me anymore right?  I thought so. (Why do I hear laughing)?

So anyway, when the moment to fill in, type away and write my glorious story and accomplishments into the blank, I froze.  What do I do?  What are my thoughts?  Where am I heading?  Where have I been?  Oh, God!  Who am I?  

I sat at my computer tapping the keyboard, but not a single character showed up. Heck, the space allows for as little or as much as 12 hundred characters.This became a bit of a torment and a challenge to me and I was determined to not be the same person I was ten years ago. The TV was blaring and I sat waiting for that breeze to fill my sails and spin a wild tale from my innermost self and what it is I would like others to know about me............................ Well, I like cookies and Heart...GAAAGH!!  

Ten years and I haven't gotten past my coffee fixation, living my life to the soundtrack of Heart tunes, baking the best fucking chocolate chip cookies, hearing Jesus' quiet voice when I need it most, expressive art that fills your mind with pleasant madness; mentally sensing the artists' grace, pain and spellbinding movements to create the piece.  And finally, I already spoke about my trippy release for Spontaneous (Function) prose and writing down the barriers that hide my light. I know it's buried underneath layers of years, but it never stopped breathing.

Not me anymore?  Hmmm, sounds like me to me after all and that's all I gotta be.  

So the moral of the story goes that whenever you're looking to fill in the blank, it really isn't about what you've done, or what you're going to do.  Where you've been or how you plan on getting there.  It's about who you are when you're feeling good and sticking with your genuine self that pour from your heart tunes. 

However, if you're filling in a space for a job interview it's best to elaborate and flat out lie.

Title credit:  ©Paul Simon Lyrics from Mrs. Robinson

Tripping the Memory of a One-Eyed Fish is Like the Color of Midnight Moonshine

I'm onto something...always have been...something that is going to take me away from the mundane day of working for some fool who whines and complains about how twisted the world is. I want to write poems, write stories, lyrics and limericks. I want to paint these animated nightmares, colorful dreams from peripheral glances that disappear quicker than i can note. I have to push myself to recite the moments that make the time at hand so real.  I have to pick up where i left off. The part of me that no one knows, that is one spark away from an eyeball's shift of self ignition.

In High School I used to write these random quirks I called Spontaneous Function. They came from a gritty place. Born from a witty place of nonsensical expression. At times these phrases had a gruesome turn, a grim look at our madness and Spontaneous outbursts. When I realized going back means standing still so the tattered scraps of paper could catch up, I stopped and I waited. The old idea and the new idea meet and shake hands. 

So where do I go from the place I know myself to be? Well, I believe the first step is to follow the trail of notebooks, journals, scratchpads, sketchbooks, and a variety of scrap paper in various shapes, colors and sizes. Collections of my captured moments of daze and dreams, inspired poems with lighted paths that sometimes wind through dark grinding jaws of pain to serve a place for me to map and figure things out.  All this is saved and can be found in cardboard boxes, book shelves, drawers and in even smaller, secret places of my home. And of course I have plenty of writing stored on the computer!

Not only my writing fill the spaces, but some lively corner drawings, doodles, and lazy lines squirm around the edges to illustrate a deeper level or perhaps leaves another doorway left open to invite a longer story and spell.

It's evening and I'm surrounded by darkness. The computer screen is boiling my eyes. Well, it's not really boiling my eyes, but if you add butter and salt and a little tapioca pudding, I'll get started on ironing the late October eels.