For Amberr, in solidarity.

☔

Web of Addiction

~ Journal entry, 1993

Each morning it beckons me.

Even as the deliverance of sleep is severed by daylights waking, It cries out my name. And I am impelled to answer. For I have allowed Its possession of my very existence.

The day evolves around It. It is the alpha and the omega and all that is between. It encircles my life, defining my friendships. It determines where I go and how long I stay, eluding all that I truly enjoy.

It defies the logic of any being, yet holds a devout following. It makes us ill, yet we crave It. We wish it away, yet fear its absence.

It is Satan’s tool. Methodically robbing one of life within life. Cunningly robbing ones potential. With each step, each breath, each heartbeat, we are incomplete.

What element exists within the mind which allows ones spirit to become so frail? To evoke the need for ill-health? Apathy…defiance? The source is still a mystery to me.

Once snared by the web of addiction, I held the erroneous belief that I could break free at will. But it will that it feeds upon, deadening the senses, overpowering its prey.

What was once a foolish action, will forever be, a lifelong battle.

☼ ☼ ☼

~ Good news – turns out it isn’t a lifelong battle. I smoked for 27 years … quit smoking now for ten years.

Quitting isn’t easy. I gained weight. I was angry for the first nine months, craved my “faithful” companion each and every day for two years. And to this day I still LOVE the smell, love to inhale second-hand smoke (love those casinos:) But I am so very thankful that I did quit.

I created this post in support of fellow blogger, Amberr Meadows, who’s going through the quitting (and to anyone else who needs to.) If you get a chance, drop by Amberr’s site and lend some support.

~ http://www.amberrisme.com/2012/01/25/smoking-callgirls-and-inspiration-from-yoda/

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise …

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to be free …

♩♫♪

The Beatles – Blackbird – YouTube

… to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.

~ George Kneller

Nope, she isn’t hissing or fighting her way out of the bag. No one is teasing her. This is a pic of

BAILEY’S BIG YAWN!

Saturday and Sunday unexpectedly turned into a leisurely weekend of movie watching for Leo and me. My favorite, the one that truly spoke to me, and the one I wish everyone in the entire world could watch is a 2011 documentary about the Horse Whisperer, “Buck.”

Buck Trailer

Buck Clip – She Knows

Make a joyful noise … ~ Psalm 100

☼ ☼ ☼

Top Ten Funny Baby Videos! You Tube

Last night I [virtually] attended a series of readings and lectures on writing fiction at Yale University, through a series of free Webcasts available at iTunes U. I also downloaded two MP3s produced by The Open University: Creative Writing and Start Writing Fiction.

That’s Yale baby! The real deal (kinda sorta.) What an amazing opportunity, but this is just the tip of the www. opportunity for learning iceberg. I also signed up for a six-week course at ed2go.com: A Writer’s Guide to Descriptive Settings.

Oops … bell’s about to ring, gotta run. See you in class?

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that pictures never lie. Both statements might be true, but can a photo mislead?

What caption would you write for this photo?

A New Chapter

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting behind the morning…  ~ Joseph Priestley (English Chemist and Clergyman, 1733-1804)

If the bad outweighed the good in 2011, we get to try it again … give it another shot. Re-think, re-work, and re-write … change the plot if need be, and shoot for a happier ending come December 2012.

Cheers to one more chance at finding a “bit of magic waiting behind the morning …”

Wishing a Safe, Happy and Magical New Year to you and your loved ones, each and every day of 2012!

☞ Paul Simon – “Rewrite” – Live at The Music Box – You Tube

… that is the question

The following is an excerpt of Ernest Hemingway’s acceptance speech for The Nobel Prize in Literature, 1954.

~~

As the Laureate was unable to be present at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1954, the speech was read by John C. Cabot, United States Ambassador.

–

«Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.»

~~

“Ernest Hemingway – Banquet Speech”. Nobelprize.org. 14 Dec 2010 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-speech.html

~~

More information about Hemingway and an audio recording of this speech (recorded by Hemingway at a later time) is available on the Nobel Prize web site at:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-speech.html