Deep night pulls at the cords

Holding the curtains open to the empty street and pale yellow street lamps

No owls or slinking cats hovering in the shadows, waiting

Chance ticks off another point in the corner

Just beyond where the bulb throws itself around

We have something to lose in the spaces

The cracks and dipping floors

Something like the pieces

That we let fall there

We have something to lose in the remembering

Unclear and half forgotten

Too painful to hold onto

And to precious to let go

We have something to lose in the living

Something to love in the dying

Something to share in the being

Something to live in the sighing

And whispering of another morning

Before dawn fills the pavement and concrete

And low clouds mingle with the rising sun

Sitting here in the darkness

watching, listening to the evening stories

The clock tell its tale once again

~

Feb 2012

One of my stories, Pieces of Me was published today in a new literary journal for flash fiction called Slice of Life. I am just so happy. What a wonderful birthday gift (and my first published piece ever).

la

41 things

1. Love unconditionally even if it seems impossible to do so.

2. Practice kindness always

3. When things go sideways remember, it is no different than if you were in an airplane emergency – you must put your oxygen mask on first before looking after anyone else.

4. Its ok to say no when your plate is full. People may not like it but it is good to know your limits.

5. Slow food is delicious.

6. Always try something new whenever you can. Doing something for the first time is a great feeling.

7. Move your body every day.

8. Make time to do nothing every day.

9. Write letters by hand sometimes – even if you never send them.

10. Just write.

11. Chocolate is good for you.

12. Dance when no one is looking even if there is the smallest possibility someone might see you.

13. Practice true random acts of kindness whenever you can.

14. People are going to judge you and think whatever they are going to think of you – thats none of your business.

15. Ask for help when you need it

16. There is always time for a snowball fight

17. Sing along to the music playing in your car or wherever you are. Singing is good even if people fall to the ground clutching their ears.

18. Find a balance between work, home and personal life.

19. Try something you never thought you could do. You never know.

20. Do something you were told you could never do. You never know.

21. Dont take yourself too seriously

22. Find the beauty in everything. It doesnt mean seeing the world through rose coloured glasses – just let yourself see.

23. Meditate daily.

23. Be patient

24. Healing takes time whether it is a paper cut or a broken heart and that’s ok.

25. Focus on what you have more than on what you don’t

26. Anything is possible.

27. Breathe (always remember that).

28. Cold pancakes and corn syrup are not meant to be slapped on the bottom of bare feet but it makes for a story that never stops being funny even 50 years later. Remember the good stories from the past, especially when they make you smile.

29. Help those most in need around you.

30. Give responsibly.

31. If your neck hurts make sure it’s not because you think you’ve got the entire universe revolving around your head – that’s just wrong. Otherwise, treat yourself to a massage.

32. Eating the last piece of chocolate without offering a piece to someone sitting nearby is also wrong unless it is my chocolate to begin with, then hands off.

33. Gravity and humour help a person get through the darkest times. If you dont get the joke dont blame the person who told it (within reason of course!)

34. Treat yourself once in awhile.

35. Everything changes.

36. Ice cream does not solve all problems but it still tastes good on a crappy day.

37. Imagine

38. Create

39. Become

40. Accept and let go

41. Make a list of what you want for your life and go back to it from time to time- make changes on the list if you want to. It’s not like you carved it in stone.

“Please, God, help me.” She cried out. It made my heart heavy to hear the pain in her voice. The despair. She lay on her back while the wind arranged the branches to let the sunlight pass to her cheeks. When the first shaft of warm sunshine touched her, she saw me. I watched her scramble to her knees, and clutched her hands together, knuckles white and stretched.

“Please, I am no one special,” she sobbed, ‘but if you could please help me just this one time, I will make my life different. My name is Anne Marie, and if you help me, save me from this, I will change, I promise that I will.” Anne Marie ran the words together, losing breath at the last. She sat back and wiped her face with the heels of her hands. She cried for two hours. Speaking between the teardrops. She told me the story. I listened to the river that poured out of her. Fragments tumbling in the currents of daily life; her husband left her after sixteen years for a girl half her age. He left her humiliated, doubting everything she thought she knew to be true. Her job didn’t pay enough for her to support her daughters, buy food and pay the rent. Some days she went without eating because she was afraid there would not be enough for her daughters to eat properly. She had no family in town. It wasn’t even her town to begin with. It was his. She knew no one. Her mother died a year ago of cancer. Anne Marie’s brothers and sisters, father scattered, no longer speaking to each other. They spoke to her, making her the hub of the wheel. Alone and in the center. Helpless to do anything except be there when they need her. Her heart so thoroughly broken she lost faith, wandering aimlessly, hollow empty. She felt ugly, weak, useless. She could never be enough for someone. They always leave. Please, just one miracle, not for her, but for her children. She needed to know, to be reassured that there is meaning behind everything that happened. A reason, some hope. When the words stopped, she sat and listened to the wind and the trees singing. I was tied with a rusted wire around a branch that had been snapped off in a storm some time ago; rocking gently with the swaying wood. Blue-green eyes, rimmed red and full still of tears watched me. She looked into my face, and I saw her change. A ripple of recognition, then the ecstatic smile.

Anne Marie did not return for three days. She didn’t come any closer than the outer edge of the crowds. Always watching, she kneeled by the clusters of white and purple violets growing around me and bowed her head in prayer. I heard her voice mingling with others. One voice in the ocean. She was asking questions on the third day. What had she done to lead herself to where she was right now? What had she done wrong? What had she misunderstood about her path? What should she do next? She never used to mind about money. She never had much, but it never worried her. No matter what happened, they worked it out, but now that she was alone, with no one to help, she was paralyzed by fear.

“Should I let go? How do I do that? I can give up and give over to you everything that I am, let you guide me again. I did that, and everything fell apart. Do I need to do that again? Give up and die again and again. How many deaths? What comes next? I am afraid.” She whispered. I listened.

It was not long after she left that the others came. They came, prayed, touched my feet as they passed by. Their stories make the violets grow. Sickness, heart break, worries, sorrow, asking for forgiveness, for healing, no story the same, no story any different. Two sparrows greeted the day with me to begin the second week. The crowds grew as they do. It was no long before the pine needles gave way to mud. Still people crouched to kneel on the hard roots and exposed granite. Some wondered how I came to be attached to the tree, dangling so high above the others. The rusted wire had begun to seep through the cracks in the wood and old brittle pain, staining my face. The sparrows hopped from branch to branch around me, chattering to themselves and eating the seeds from the pine cones. Once in a while a seed would fall loose and drift to the forest floor. Anne Marie held her vigil while the priests came and went. The Diocese came to evaluate. They could not determine the how or why either. It seemed I just appeared from their vantage point down below. Red cords and brass poles pushed the faithful back further. Ladders and magnifying glasses revealed the embedded wire. The tree had claimed it and me years ago.

The first day I found my home in the branches was not unlike this day. The sun was shining. Small white clouds dotted the open sky; an invitation for a pause. Sparrows and chipmunks scurried on the ground. Penelope was nine when she wrapped the wire around the trunk. Pine sap ran over her fingers. She tasted it hoping that it was sweet, but it was not. She stood, hard faced staring at me.

“I don’t feel you.” She said finally. “I am supposed to, I think. Emma said that if you stare at your statue long enough you start to feel. I feel nothing.” Penelope stepped back and kicked at the ground. She looked me in the eye again; fierce blue from behind a veil of blond hair that had fallen across her face.

“Is it because I am not Cath-o-lic?” she demanded. She touched the blue painted shawl covering my head, her finger rested in the palm of my hand.

“I am sorry for that. I don’t know what I am. Emma’ s mother picks me up on Sundays to go with them. They say it is to be closer to God. I don’t know about him. I like your face, the way that you look in the stained glass windows and the big tall statue in the corner of the church. The priest talks in Latin. I can’t understand but it makes me sleepy. I am afraid to sleep anywhere else. I pretend to pray so that I can close my eyes and listen.” Penelope said to me in a small voice. “It’s not safe to sleep at my house. Not when she’s still there.” Every day after that, Penelope came to talk to me. There were no houses then around the trees. As the tree grew taller, I went with it. Penelope stopped coming when the snow fell. She came back in the spring with flowers she pulled out of the ditch.

“These are for you.” She said holding up her fist. Roots and dirt dangled from her wrist.

“I don’t even know if you like flowers, but I thought they were pretty.” She said dropping to her knees. “I am going away and won’t be back for a long time. Maybe never. The police came and took her. She tried to take me first. My dad says we’ll be safe now. I hope he’s right.” That was the last time I saw her.

Thirty years later, the clutch of pine trees were a parkette behind the Wendy’s on Fifth Avenue. The crowds were spilling onto the asphalt. It was good business for the fast food restaurant. Even the faithful get hungry sometimes.

Three young boys stood in front of me in the late afternoon sun. Two of the boys had stones. They threw them one by one towards me, trying to hit me in a game.

“Oh! That one hit her on the side of the head. Did you see that?” one boy with red hair shouted. The other two shouted in unison that they had and that he should try it again. The crowds left two days ago when the officials from St. Peter’s church confirmed that there was nothing extraordinary about me. There were those who milled about for a while. Some did not want to leave. One or two lay down on the ground among the piles of garbage left from dinners at the fast food restaurant. Take out wrappers and empty drink cups blown and torn in the lowest branches of the pine grove. Anne Marie stayed longest. She picked up the garbage and took it to the dumpster at the back of the restaurant. There were those who laughed at her.

“Why bother? It’s a fake anyway. No miracles here. Just a hunk of wood stuck up in a pine tree. Go home Anne Marie.” Mrs. Wilson told her. Anne Marie ignored them. When the forest floor was finally cleared of debris, she went home to cook dinner for her daughters.

The second boy stood forward and took aim. He held a bigger rock in his pudgy hand. After a few practice swings he threw it. The rock landed short and the other two laughed.

“See guys, I told you this would come in handy.” The third boy said. He unhooked the strap of the bee bee gun from his shoulder and leveled the gun at me. The cold black barrel pointed squarely at my chest. He cocked the gun, took aim and squeezed the trigger in a single breath. The pellets hurtled towards me and in seconds shattered bits of wood flew everywhere.

“That was for my dad.” The boy said. He spat on the ground and walked away. The other two boys burst out in a sudden fit of laughter. I hung partially held by the pine tree that had grown around me after all of those years. Head, shoulders and part of one arm remained after the rest fell away.

They would forget that I was there. Some would remember when the time was right. Anne Marie would never forget. Penelope surprised herself. She lived twenty miles away. The news found her huddled in the corner apartment over the convenience store, Penelope told me. She arrived just in time to hear the gunshot. Penelope picked up the large splinters of wood and cupped them in her hands gently. She found my feet at the base of the tree, lodged in the crook of a branch. She stood underneath looking up as the rain started to fall.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I thought today I would have a wander back a year and see what I wrote about for the new year last year. I still am not a big fan of making resolutions  but I do like the idea of finding solutions to problems that continue to dog me. I am happy to say that I have reconnected with my writing and even managed to send a story off for publication a few weeks ago. I also entered a few writing competitions, finished the first draft of two novels, published a small book of poetry and am currently working on another flash fiction submission. This might not seem like much, especially to someone who is a writer, and well established, but for me, it’s a huge leap forward. I feel good about my writing and the direction I am moving in.

Today, I stumbled across a nice article in the Huffington Post about making resolutions .

I like the idea of making a list of 100 things you want to do in the next year. Not a to do list but an “I’d like to do” list. Small things, big things, doesn’t matter, but a list of things that you would like to happen, arrive in your life at some point in the next 365 days. It makes me think. What would I like? It’s actually a question I don’t often ask myself. I usually ask what would they like (my daughters, my boyfriend, my family, my friends). Luckily, I have a few days left to write down 100 things.. maybe it will be more than 100, who knows.  I’ll check back when I have my list together and see what came up for me.

The first thing on my list right now though is to find a pair of socks. The temperature dropped dramatically in the past 24 hours and I can no longer go around in just bare feet…  boo.

~ la

~

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly

and without fear for newer and richer experience.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

]]> http://quietlaughter.com/2011/11/14/the-purpose-of-life/feed/ 0 quietlaughter walk on and live http://quietlaughter.com/2011/10/27/2922/ http://quietlaughter.com/2011/10/27/2922/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:19:53 +0000 Leigh-Anne Fraser http://quietlaughter.com/?p=2922 Continue reading »]]> I need to write

I need to write

I need to write

It is true. Finally. Finally I am feeling the need to write. The urge is back. The pushing surge that is not explainable has arrived and dugs its way into the nail beds of my fingers, ready. The question is what should I write about? That is the crucial question. I have not written anything in almost three months maybe longer. Actually probably it is closer to four or five months, but I will still with three months because that popped into my head first. I have been only writing one line at a time for the past two months – and although I am pleased with those lines and the residue of a story that they have created in a hindsight kind of way, I still have not been able to sit down, as I have done so many times over the past five years + and let the flood gates open. In five days I will have to write. Truth be told maybe it has been a year even that I have written like that. I am just not sure.
I should be thinking about what I need to do in order to be ready to write in five days. I don’t like think about that sort of thing though. It involves knee buckling mundane things like cleaning off my desk. I really should do that. I will do that. If anything, I just want to see a clean desk. I may not sit at it, but at least I can look at it. I keep strange things on my desk. Old notes, drawings, scraps of paper with quotes written on them, board games, doodads, half made/ upcycled jewelry, wires and beads, rubber stamps and ink, toys and paper. They all need to find a better home now.
Already I have managed to derail my thinking about what I should write about with what I should be doing otherwise. I know, I know… I am going to wait and freefall the entire thing – because that is how I roll as a writer. Whatever comes up the moment the clock strikes midnight, my heart, brain and fingers will take off on their own journey. The rest of me will just tag along for the ride.
But what do I do in the meantime? I need to write and I am not sure I am going to be able to wait.
What to do what to do….