Road Trip Girl

September

2008-09-19T13:46:00.001-05:00

Project Blog-It

30 days hath September
And where it’s gone
I can’t remember
I have been to the desert
I have been to the sea
I roam without boundaries
I long to be free
Nine is not lucky
What does it mean
Nueve Nueve
paradas aquí

Next week’s prompt: "Love is an art you learn degree by degree." I Want a Long Time Daddy – Bea Foote

Baby, it’s cold outside

2008-09-12T05:00:00.001-05:00

Project Blog-It

There is a hurricane sweeping away the sandy beach
Oil wells won’t fit in my hip pockets
The quintessential cadillac doesn’t get good gas mileage anyway
I am the Ruby in a mountain of rocks
I am the Cracker Jack stuck inside the box
Even though the hour of departure is dark
Even though it is cold outside
Even though the way is hard
There ain’t no way I’m ever going to love you
It is Time
And if tomorrow ever comes
It promises to be sunny and bright

Next week’s prompt: September

Road Trip Girl Rides Again

2008-09-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

Project Blog-It

I am moving southwest with the Monarchs now. I wonder how long it takes them to get from point C to point M and back again. In eight days, I have traveled from point TX, to point MS, to point AL, to point NC, to point DE, to point NJ, and then back, but in a very different way. After sitting still in primarily a single position for so long, I feel my body more. The horizontal morning stretch releasing sleep from all my joints. The rest stops where my hands are above my head joined and reaching for the sky, and then arching my back popping the sediment from my spine. Pulling my shoulders forward and pushing them back until I feel the air flows more freely into my lungs. Pointing my toes until passers-by think I am a giraffe. Hopping back into the car, I once again fling my spirit down the highway; my mind in perpetual motion.

Next week's prompt: It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hourwhich the night fastens to all the timetables. Pablo Neruda, "A Song of Despair"

Damn Skippy

2008-08-29T17:39:00.002-05:00

Project Blog-It

Be always sure you’re right—THEN GO AHEAD! – Davy Crockett

Right is subjective. Right is non-existent. And yet, there are times I possess this certitude in life. Unexplored and under quoted is the outcome of the action I feel so absolutely I must make. I knew I must defy my father, leave my husband, educate myself, challenge my charges, and make love, not war – all the time not knowing where it would lead. As long as I never look beyond the action, certitude is mine.

Next week's prompt: movement

Art functions as lungs allowing my mind to breathe.

2008-08-22T16:07:00.002-05:00

Project Blog-It

To list, describe, or even know all the functions of art would be as an exhaustive a task as counting the raindrops in a summer storm. Art functions as a way to communicate when language and structure fails me. I am so grateful to be artistically multi-lingual – to send and receive messages through the many mediums, colors, and textures of art. I feel blessed; at once, humbled and superior. Art functions as a bridge across classes, cultures, and civilizations. Art functions as a binder and compels participants to use their senses to reach a higher level of consciousness and existence by touching the ethereal through the tangible.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that art is the tap that will open up the source of power within me that I have so long been afraid to let loose. If I allow it, the function of art is to free me and let me be.

Laugh * Dance * Sing * Paint * Draw * Build * Grow * Cook * Design * Compose * Play * Be

Write on, Sister, write on.

Next week’s prompt: certitude

Shayne Larango and the seven other dwarfs

2008-08-15T16:27:00.002-05:00

Project Blog It

If I were Snow White, I would have never run away from the wood cutter or the wicked queen. I would own that bitch.
I would buy my own beautiful cabin in the mountain forest with expansive vaulted ceilings, so there would be room for my hair.
I would have first pick of all the jewels coming out of the mine for my personal bling.
I would finance clandestine pharmaceuticals that would make the seven dwarfs giant and life sized, and then I would do a talent search and cast the roles of Hottie, Lovey, Tidy, Funny, Cookie, Smarty, and Yummy with men like Josh Holloway, Ralph Fiennes, Ming Tsai, Kidd Rock, Henry Ian Cusick, Gary Allan, and Zack Efron.
And live happily ….. for a while.

Next week’s prompt: What is the function of art?

Strawberries

2008-08-08T13:11:00.004-05:00

Project Blog-It

I have always been a chocolate milkshake kind of girl, so strawberry stories really stand out throughout my life. The only strawberry story I have from my childhood came from a book about a little blind boy. He grew a strawberry as an offering to the child princess who planned to visit his village. He asked the sun for help, and she sent her sun rays to warm the earth. He asked for the clouds to help, and they sent raindrops. The thirsty strawberry grew fat and juicy. When the day arrived, the little blind boy plucked the ruby red ripe strawberry. The princess with her eyes closed popped the strawberry into her mouth, and it was scrumpdelicious.

I can’t remember if I had told the boy that story. One day when I knocked on his door, he opened it, told me to close my eyes, and popped a most delicious strawberry in my mouth.

One summer a friend’s husband had died. On a warm sunny afternoon several weeks later our families were together, and we went to pick strawberries in the narrow three tiered strawberry beds that stretched across her backyard. We picked and talked and remembered and laughed and cried and ate all the strawberries we picked. We lay back on the grass, our bellies full, and were happy we were together in that moment.

The first time I remember drinking a strawberry daiquiri was at DFW International Airport with Deniessa. We were sixteen and concocted this elaborate ruse to get the bar to serve us alcohol. We pretended like we didn’t speak English, pointed to picture of the strawberry daiquiri, and pulled money out. Every time the waiter asked us for our identification to prove we weren’t underage, we pulled out more money, smiled, and pointed fervently to the picture of the strawberry daiquiri. I can’t remember if we drank two or three before our flight, but I do remember we felt very proud of our accomplishment.

This year, I received a basket of strawberries from Susan and ate them with the lemon curd and cheesecake Shmonkey made me for my birthday. I also received the very first strawberry from the very first strawberry plants Deniessa ever grew. I wondered why she had saved it for me. She told me she knew that I would love it, and for her it wasn’t so much about the edible strawberry. She just loved to watch them grow. And with that, I remembered why we are friends. We compliment each other.

As I look back across these remembrances, I realize strawberries are associated with some of my most important friendships. Amazing that a fruit can do that.

Next week’s prompt: Make up names for Seven Other Dwarfs
The Seven Dwarfs' original names are Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc, Happy, and Sneezy.

Pure and utter nonsense

2008-08-01T16:28:00.000-05:00

COTTON CANDY

“I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not til death.” Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

2008-07-25T17:47:00.004-05:00

Project Blog It

Shayne Shayne Shayne

Official biographers claim that her birth at Enchanted Rock was foretold by a howler monkey, and heralded by the appearance of a triple rainbow over the pink granite monolith and new stars in the sky.

The song of myself
Is played on a guitar
With no strings attached

The song of myself
Is written in the empty space
Between the treble and the bass clef

The song of myself
Is denoted on a register so low
It can only be felt
Like earth moans

The song of myself
Will never be a free itunes download
Given out a Starbucks

The song of myself
Is an impromptu concert, an experience
Like that time so many years ago…
It is feels like a dream
But never quite too good to be true

Next week’s prompt: pure and utter nonsense

describe your god

2008-07-18T12:00:00.003-05:00

Project Blog It

Did you hear about the anorexic, dyslexic, agnostic insomniac?
He couldn’t eat or sleep wondering if there was a dog.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, is so revered by his countrymen that every year on November 10, at 09:05 a.m. (the exact time of his death), the entire country comes to a complete stop and everyone stands stock still and quiet for one full minute. His picture is on all the Turkish banknotes. Shmonkey said upon returning from his trip to Istanbul, “Atatürk looks like Béla Lugosi.” Shmonkey and Skajlab and I just went to a Peter Murphy concert. Someone sat by me who had cigarettes, but no lighter. I had a lighter, but no cigarettes. As we smoked, she said she hoped Peter Murphy, who currently lives in Turkey, performed Béla Lugosi’s Dead as an encore. Everybody danced.

god is a circle

Next week's prompt: "I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death." Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Be sure to read the companion post at Shmonkey's Jungle. Past participants in Project Blog It have been Crash Course, Fire Flower, and Vox Minerva.

Bliss

2008-07-11T10:45:00.008-05:00

Project Blog It

The first thing that came into my mind when I saw the topic Bliss was the sky. I am mesmerized by the blue that I can only begin to understand through the word azule. I can spend hours watching the creativity of the clouds, and must stop to look every time the air, water, and light paint the sky at sunset. I am in utter amazement and bliss at these moments. As the days passed, I began to recall other moments in time when I felt that pure, secure, and joyful feeling. This is the list that began to form:

Lying on a quilt palette in my grandmother’s living room barely awake smelling brewed coffee and buttered toast hearing my mother’s and grandmother’s voice, but not being able to make out the words.
Touching the blue velvet pillow that my grandmother forbade us to touch.
Dissipating clouds with the power of my mind at the end of my teen-age years with a boy that changed my life.
Piling up on the couch with my daughter and my dog watching Winnie-the-Pooh.
Morning naps.
Rainy Saturday afternoons with a delicious book and nothing else to do.
Shmonkey’s lemon curd with fresh strawberries.
My mother’s banana pudding.

On Wednesday 9 July 2008, two events happened that made me realize my ultimate feeling of bliss. Separately, they were important events. Together they were significant, if only to me. First, my friend gave birth to beautiful baby boy. Second, there was an attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. My daughter is in Istanbul for six weeks this summer. After I knew she was completely safe (as if we can ever know that), I began to think about what ifs, what I would do, how much I love her, and about the day she was born.

When I was pregnant, I knew I was going to be a terrible mother. The joke at the time was “the only thing domestic about me was that I lived in a house.” I worried, I wondered, I had this crazy dream that the doctor handed me my baby, I put it in my purse, and forgot about her. Still in the dream, someone would ask me about my visit to the doctor, and I would say, “Oh, I had a baby. She is in my purse somewhere.” I would dig around, find her, and she would have this look on her face that really made me feel like a terrible mother. I would feed her something, put her back in my purse, and forget about her until the next person asked me questions. This happened several times in my dream, and the dream still haunts me.

In real life, when she was born – with no epidural like I was promised – my doctor put her into my arms, and I was overwhelmed with bliss. I experienced such a feeling of peace, security, and joy. I knew no matter what happened over the course of our lives that between us everything would always be okay. That is the way I feel when I see the sky, touch something beautiful, smell the rain, taste affection, and hear a lullaby.

Next week's prompt: describe your god

Please visit the companion piece over at Shmonkey's Jungle. In addition, Skajlab has written a piece on this week's topic at Crash Course, and so has Daisy over at Fire Flower.

The Politics of Writing: Come Dance with Me

2008-07-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

Project Blog It

A Disclaimer: I will always think of politics as power that is usually used for good or evil, but rarely used for truth. Writing is power. A tool some believe can transcend good and evil and land squarely on truth. But truth, like a moment, is always a fleeting memory or an anticipation. So as I wield my weapon across the page, the always unattainable goal is truth. The reality is among my readers there will be casualties and baskers, most unintended. Just remember the writing isn’t about you.

My oldest friend believes she has the power to kill and maim with her prayers. She can cite several examples that can be very convincing even if you only believe in positive and negative energy in the universe. I have now convinced myself in my ability to derail a USA Presidential candidate’s political career by the mere whisper of my personal endorsement. This may carry over into major league sports teams and play-off games, as well. I will admit it is just a theory, but it feels so true. It seems this is the butterfly wing-beat that collapses civilizations. Because I believe in my power, I find myself through this life hesitating to explore it. I am unsure about my potential role as a conqueror even on the most personal level. Who am I not to let this under-achieving observer be? Therefore, I do not write. I do not meditate. I do not let go of other’s expectations. I do not allow myself to be.

So now, as I wield my weapon across the page, I know there will be casualties and baskers, but there is one intended victim – the fear – of power, potential, and letting go. And I will bask in the glory of being me.

Write on, sister. Write on.

* In 2008, I offer my sincerest and deepest apologies to Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton.

Please be sure to see the companion piece over at Shmonkey.

Next week's prompt: Bliss

Project Blog It

2008-07-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

Shmonkey and I have begun a project in an attempt to get us back to our lives as they were meant to be. We're both creative, intelligent people. However, we both work highly demanding, stressful jobs, and we both have personalities that lead us to give those jobs all we have. The result is a huge personal cost. We've not made time to continue to embrace the kind of life that truly fits the unique individuals were are. We spend most of the day making others people’s lives the way they want them to be, and I firmly believe this is not as it is intended.

In an attempt to move us back to a place of balance, and to try to jump start better introspection, thinking, and perhaps most importantly, creativity, Shmonkey and I have started a blog project. The rules are fairly simple. Every Friday we each make a post on our respective blogs: Shmonkey's Jungle, and TravelWithRoadTripGirl. The posting is based on a prompt assigned by one of us in the week before posting day. There are really no other rules. Shmonkey and I can discuss our writing or not. We can brainstorm together or not. We can critique one another's writing or not. The point is to always post something on Friday, and to create a mutually supportive and encouraging situation that fosters the development of our individual writing skills.

Looking forward into the future from my position in the present, I think our weekly writings will be very diverse; sometimes creative fiction, sometimes creative non-fiction, sometimes personal, sometimes philosophical, sometimes academic, and all of the other possibilities in between. As long as we write and push beyond the narrow frames that have been imposed upon our lives and our minds by our environment.

We welcome you to stop by every Friday. Read both Shmonkey's Jungle and TravelWithRoadTripGirl. See how each of us tackles a topic differently. Engage us by commenting, please. Consider joining our project by picking up the weekly prompt and making your own posting on Fridays.

Written by Shmonkey; tweaked by RoadTripGirl.