I am writing.
Doggone.
I can’t seem to stop…
Words keep pouring.
January 6, 2014
writing
I can’t make you
I can’t make you
I wish I could
you’re bigger than me
I can’t stop you
you won’t listen
I won’t beg
do what you have to do
the door closes
I cry then
my eyes are dry now
no longer tired
I wonder
when you will come home
knowing that you will
I won’t call
you know the way
when you’re ready
come home
even though
I can’t make you
© 2011 Turquoise Tangles
That feeling when someone suddenly “Tumblr loves” something you wrote a few years ago. You reread it. Sigh deeply and cuss (just in your head). Somehow you nearly forgot. Does anyone else tag real life personal drama as, “creative writing” and hope the outer facade of reality doesn’t crack? No, me either. After tagging that way a few times my husband “called me on it” so I stopped. Stopped writing quite so honestly. Stopped tagging anything “creative writing.” Started talking about the dog, Blue, then just a puppy. A lot. Time flies. Speed varies. I’ve logged nearly 1,000 posts here at Tumblr since joining in November 2011. Poems. Photographs. Stories. Quotes. Reblogs. All tweeted too, if you’re counting. The best, most interesting, jaw dropping, heart aching, twisting, tugging, wrenching, soaring writing from the past several years has all been done behind the scenes. Just in case you’re wondering, this poem, written on a long ago night, was foreshadowing. I’m glad I was brave enough to write it and say it at the time. I still remember the fight. Faded. Fading. Letting go. We were fire and fire, fire and ice, hot and cold. Yet, we ended “just right.” We came through the fire, all pride set aside, and we loved with our walls down for the very first time.
January 6, 2014
like a river
My words. They are pouring out of me right now. Pouring forth at all hours of the day and night. I need to channel them, like water flowing between the banks of a river, but mostly, I just have to write them.
January 3, 2014
Excerpt from an email I sent earlier this morning. Here is the email time stamp, stating date and time, “On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:07 AM.”
Time to play, “The Matching Game.” It was my husband who collected Hallmark ornaments. First Star Trek and then later, when they were released, Star Wars. He always said they were worth more if we kept the boxes too. Unpacking boxes and unwrapping from bubble wrap to hang them on the tree. Then, less than a month later, pairing up the ornament with the picture on the box and wrapping them up in plastic bubble protection once more. Love. His for space movies and their universe of collectibles. Mine for him. Our sons share his love of SciFi. I’m boxing them up carefully because someday this collection will be divided between my boys and hang in their respective homes. When that day comes there will be room on my tree for different ornaments. You know, all the non-SciFi ones.
January 1, 2014
2:35pm
I’m still procrastinating by writing, but at least I started AND I’m standing up!
I’m sitting on the living room love seat, dressed half in pajamas, and half in clothes (jeans pulled on top of the long underwear pants I slept in).
Blue dog is wedged against my hip on the left, in his favorite living room love seat spot.
I’ve been playing on my phone.
Writing.
Tweeting.
Just picked A RAINBOW RIBBON up off the ground!
I kid you not!
I even thought of, “Over the Rainbow,” and sung a few bars, as Blue and I stepped on the sidewalk beside Luna’s fence.
Right after that musical moment we turned a corner and spied this bit o’color.
I took a picture.
I picked up the piece of rainbow ribbon.
A rainbow, in an unlikely place.
Found it looking down, not up.
Evidently today is A Writing Day.
January 1, 2014
(Excerpt from a New Year’s afternoon email reply to my sister. She knows the significance of my mentioning, “Over the Rainbow” too.)
Cheers
Last day of 2013 today.
It all happened.
You saw me through.
Faith, and the prayers of many.
Thankful for unconditional love of family and friends who know me best, better than I know myself.
Joy, Peace and Love are ahead.
In abundance!
Hope is the Light that doesn’t extinguish even in the darkest Dark.
Here’s to making art and writing for real in 2014.
I’m walking toward it, in cowgirl boots!
Happy New Year!
LOVE,
*sparkly heart kind*
Janean
December 31, 2013
Western Wisdom
I’m in the midst of typesettin’ two more of my grandfather’s Western Tales. Yesterday I caught myself readin’ instead of movin’ fast, flowin’ type, applyin’ style sheets, and fixin’ up his wonderful words for bein’ self published and bound into yet another family and friends book. Perhaps his last, as at 97, we know his body is wearin’ out.
Certain phrases and plot twist moments, keep jumping off my computer screen as I work, that make me grin and guffaw. Then there are others that make my heart squeeze in empathy.
The line of dialogue speaking to me right now is after the sheriff received a letter from concerned parents, asking after their hastily married off daughter who was sent away, “in trouble.” Instead of replying that she’d had her baby, and a few days later her worthless, no good varmint, rat of a husband was dead – murdered – Sheriff Wells simply said where they could reach their daughter. His mentor, John Wade, replied after readin’ the communique in progress, “Good shot. Let her tell her own story.”
Indeed. Yes. The other bit of advice I keep readin’ is to keep your head up high, no matter what the circumstances in your life. Lots of horse talk too. How I love that!
I’m completely charmed by my grandfather’s writing. Stories. Songs. Poetry. I have been since childhood. It’s more poignant now. Readin’ with a woman’s heart.
He’s a marvel. Still alive and kickin’, atop a bluff overlookin’ the mighty Mississippi River where he’s lived since he was nine months old, other than those years he was needed to serve his country in WWII. He began writing stories while recovering from night patrol injuries in a hospital in England. The Red Cross gave him paper. He mailed the stories home. All because he’d read everything he could get his hands on, and figured he could do as well or better. Once he started writing, he never stopped. That is a lesson for me, and all the aspiring authors I know. Writers write. A lot.
~ Janean Marie Thompson Baird
April 10, 2013
Quote from, “The Invincible Three” by Erwin A. Thompson.
5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, added two quarts of oil to my wonderful old gal, Lola the Corolla. There is now more than the merest smidge of oil on the end of the dipstick. Last Friday afternoon, as I drove around town with my sons, my empty fuel light AND my oil light were coming on as a WARNING. Thankfully the fuel fill up was in a nick of time and we didn’t run all the way out of gas. Bought oil at the grocery store last night. I’m sure I paid too much, but it was my last chance to see to it for a few days time and it needed to be done. I’m so glad my dad saw fit to teach me how to check and add oil to my car. I remembered to use a funnel this time, so the garage floor doesn’t have an oil puddle. He taught me other cool stuff too like how to bait a hook, cast a line, shoot a gun, gas weld, fry an egg, cook a burger, sew a button on and drive. The two lessons that were obvious at the time, and not veiled in conversation, are:
1. Don’t speed in small towns.
2. Seek the good and shun the bad.
The second was uttered, as we were left the house I grew up in, on the way to college for my freshman year. That was when his dad shared it with him too. My grandpa heard it from his uncle when he left home to serve in WWII. My children have heard it already. More than once. I’m not waiting until they are eighteen to pass it on. They need now. We all do. All this to say, Dads are special. Oil Pouring Writing About Random Stuff Moms are too, even if we do have to say so ourselves. It’s 5:55 a.m. now. Time to make lunches, pack snacks for testing and write a schedule for today because it’s Mom’s Day Off. Granted, I have to go to the hospital to get one. You see, I’m running on empty and need some TLC, just like my old Corolla. I’ll be OK. Just need to be flat and still after the procedure so I’m off work until tomorrow morning when Blue says, “Woof”, or I wake up on my own. Whichever comes first.
Happy 1st Birthday, Turquoise Tangles!
Just Say It
I’ve always been a chatterbox. Since I was a child. At least when I write my mouth isn’t moving. Though I can still simultaneously “step in it”, and put my foot in my mouth, which tastes like sh*t. I am not feeling very bloggerific today, I am a grouchy, surly mess.
I love to write. I love it. It sets me free. It feels so good To Just Say It.
A book IS a dream of mine. More than one, as any author/Writer worth his/her salt would dream for. We shall see. Believe me I’ll shout about it from all over when that day comes. My mother, sister and aunt, are three of my champions, who encourage me to Keep Going and not stop. That I’m on to something.
I am not writing today though. Today I am making art.
~ Janean
© 2011 Turquoise Tangles
Turquoise Tangles 