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.

Bookmark and Dog Ear

just a thought...

There are too many lists and reasons for lists. There is a list for groceries, and a list for tasks, a list of things to pack, a list of pros and cons, a list of things to do and a list of things forbidden. I have become an enemy to another list. It is the modern list which exists in the cyber world. It is a dangerous list because it never disappears. It is a long list or what may be considered a directory created for the infinite website places I've visited and wanted to "bookmark" so that I might visit them again with a simple click. It can be controlled, but most of the time, it isn't. Somehow, I had acquired this lengthy list over the course of several weeks, months and even years. It was growing slowly like the slim coating of an alien egg farm. Astonishing and quite alarming when I stop to think and wonder on it, really. Before today, I took pride in skating my cursor over to the icon to open my vault of internet wisdom and waste and I would scan my eyes down the alphabetical steps to all of my favorite places and click to my hearts content. I also, of course, had sub-categories in alphabetical order that would occasionally tease me and make me wonder to myself if the webmaster had made any changes to his front page. Oh, I could check on it another day. This new web-like list, unlike the ones that are harmlessly written down on paper, had become quite a library of places or rather of websites accumulated by my fingertips from mindless bookmarking which I felt were considered fantastic cyber venues at the time. 


Yet after today, I have been looking with tender burden over my own shoulder and I started to notice the golden one who once was consistently giddy was now getting swallowed up by the crashing wave of "favorites" along with the never ceasing passing of time. As pointed out, it appears that many of the random titles that reveal a flashy icon and catchy phrase became lost as a misplaced stranger to that once euphoric bookmarking moment. Therefore, with a firm smack on the back of the head (done out of random necessity), it is time to return to the banal purpose of disposable lists. It is time to surrender the self from the bonds of bookmarks and dog ear practices, let go and release the suffering medulla oblongata from the predictable prison of obsessive compulsive categorizing.  Catch the satellite and simply surf, dude, simply surf.

The Grasses are Calling Me

When eleventh grade rolled around,  my English teacher announced it was time to choose our subject for the final term paper and that we had had enough time to consider our choices.  Now it is my spirited recollection I was sitting in my seat rather passively without a single idea running through my mind.  I truly mean to say, yes, I honestly do remember that during that particular moment in time I was in a state of unwavering bliss with everything but a thought in my head.  I recall hearing the teacher's voice asking each student one by one to announce an American writer to do research on and write a lengthy paper for.  So in the same way, like taking attendance, names were called out and instead of the reply being "here," we were to say, 

"Herman Melville."  

"Edgar Allen Poe."

"Jack London."

"John Steinbeck." The match-up game continued and so on.  

Now it is again my recollection that while the names were being called out like the click of a gun's trigger, I felt a slight tinge of anxiety.  My eyes were darting around the room as I  tapped my pen, thinking very hard, because in my own mind I was much more interested in Seventeen Magazine, playing air guitar to Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused and occasionally escaping to the mall with friends to look for guys, I mean clothes.  Therefore, it is to me quite a mystery, and I am still in complete wonderment to this day, although by now I'm getting used to it, that when the teacher came to calling my name, and with her double sided classic red and blue teacher's pen poised in the air above her paper awaiting my reply, the answer rolled off of my tongue like soft ice cream streaming down a dreamy-eyed five year old hand on a warm summer day.  

"Walt Whitman." I said.

"Walt Whitman." She murmured as she wrote it down next to my name and nodded.  

How did that happen?  How did I know who Walt Whitman was?  How did his name arise in my head next to Leif Garret's?  There was a brief moment, I think, that during that momentary  exchange in that stuffy classroom I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I can look back on this event, and realize that this could have been the very starting point of cosmic, angelic, celestial, heavenly-Nicholas Cage intervention.  Someone in a higher place knew what was good for me and therefore put it before me, allowed me to taste it, follow it, reject it, thrive on it or hate it.  It could be a random book, an extraordinary thought, a bad dream, a helpful stranger, a distant friend, or an event that scoops me up and spits me back out.  I am sure there may be earlier accounts throughout my childhood I could wonder about and lean into, however, I believe, this was indeed one of those "look here" moments.

I still thank the forces that brought to me Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  The Song of Myself held more deeper meaning that I could ever know, and from that day I felt as if it were my own song as it spoke to me.

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Darker forces have been after ever since.

My Coffee is Waiting

Stillness and the new year arrives and beckons me to change into something extraordinary. Actually, I don't think I could actually change into anything. Haven't quite explored shapeshifting. Nor would I want to change into someone else. I am just fine the way I am. I am, however, learning to lower my expectations to avoid anxiety over fruitless moments. However, there is always room to change my way of daily thinking. So the momentous date stays ingrained in the brain. January one. New day. New year. I'm also hearing, "The start of a new decade." The dinosaurs could give a shit about a decade now that their contorted bones lye still in the earth. They continue on through lumbering dreams of tearing through flesh or picking up a ton of lake mud and grasses; chewing and pondering paradise. My paradise is here. Electrical fed momentum is my daily bread. There are no dangers here. At least not yet. Only good old fashion American want.

In this dirty and twisted world, to some people, I suppose, a new year is just another day for them to pick up a rifle, dig in and fight for instilled principles. To someone else the new year is just another day covered in bruises, a fat lip and maybe in a few months when the new year doesn't matter much, a broken arm. There are also some people who know the new year holds nothing more than business as usual in a foreign place that wants to see you naked and will pay for it.

My paradise is here. My coffee is waiting. Nothing needs to change, yet something needs to change.

Clouds

Clouds cover the moving canopy
and stir the memory of restful times.
Of Sitting in trees and following bees
through the dark and lime green grasses.

Cool air songs rest upon the shoulders of thought
and send dreams running from their prisons.
Escaping the noise and restless voices
from troubled memories and painful lessons.

This is the place where the comforts of gray
turn the inward light in motion.
It soothes the moment and quiets the claw
that cuts through the morning's closure.

Suspension is bearing its weight on the room
while the spirits are unwittingly twirling
Among the blue hue the longing will end
while captured thoughts continue their yearning.