Corinne Bailey Rae – Like A Star

This song makes me feel good.
SW

A Habit

“We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle said. “Excellence … is not an act, but a habit.”

I have no plans for New Years eve this year. Well, no social plans. My mother used to always say that what ever you do as the new year rings in, you’ll be doing through out the year. I’ve always made it a point not to be crying. Wouldn’t mind starting out the New Year having sex…

But seriously, over the years, I’ve tried to end my old year and start my new year writing. I don’t know if my mother’s little superstition is true or not but if it is I’d like to end/start it off on the write foot. I’ve tried the New Year’s eve parties that never quite live up to the hype and the expenditure. I’ve tried the clubs and the dinners and the crappy ‘free’ glass of champagne that is worse than drinking baby duck or gasoline.

I also like to write up a letter from my new self in a year from now discussing how I spent the new year. Something like, Dear Silent Warrior, what a great year 2007 has been. I completed my novel, fell in love… and in it include all the goals I’d like to realize. All that I want to be, do and have.

But my main thing is to do some creative writing. Hit that zone, that flow where I lose track of time and am transported on to the clouds of inspiration. I’m engulfed into the Super consciousness where we all have the ability to tap into the ideas and create.

What are you going to do to ring in the New Year?

Hmm, sex and body painting… Body painting’s a form of writing! ha ha

SW

Memorial – My Mother

7Dec06 Thursday 6:07am

Well it’s today. My mother passed away 10 years ago today. I’ve lit some candles in her honour.

My mother would be 64 years old. Still very young. Still younger than most of my friends parents. My mother would love the Internet and digital cameras and itunes.

My mother had a grade 6 education having been kicked out of school for hitting a kid in the head with an ink bottle after he’d called her a nigger. When she got home and told her father he’d beat her for being a trouble maker and only after he’d beat her got the whole story and went back to the school to tell off the teacher who’d sided with the boy. My mother who won all the singing contests and wanted to be a Country singer. Her first contest , she’d lost, because she was too shy and kept looking down at the stage. Her father beat that shyness out of her. His answer to everything was a beating. My mother who didn’t have a belly button because she was born sickly and all the operations she’d had as a baby left without one. She was a sickly baby and cried a lot and her mother couldn’t take it so she gave my mother to her father who was married to someone else. Yeah my mother had stories for sure. It’s any wonder that I like to write.

My mother was a charismatic person and made friends with every one including my step father’s ex wife. She could go to a store twice and end up having the salespeople loving her so much that they’d give her merchandise for free. I don’t have those qualities or patience. She honestly believed that there was good in every one and if you gave someone enough chances he’d become that good person that she could picture in her mind’s eye. She would let anyone in her house, people that weren’t particularly nice to her, women that were after her man. I had no patience for it. “It’s your house mom, you don’t have to be nice to people like that in your own house,” I’d say.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” she’d tell me. That has yet to happen.

My mother was a runner, living most of her adult life incognito, after we ran from my father who was a violent alcoholic. She endured violence and pain and humiliation and she still managed to wake up each morning with a smile on her face. Some of our best laughs were the first thing in the morning. She was superstitious, believing such things like, “If you laugh all day, you’ll cry all night” and “everything comes in threes.”

She was zany and would change the words to sweet songs into sex songs. One of my favorite past times. Our big thing was to come up with a song that matched the words that one of us just spoke and if we couldn’t we’d make up a song.

With my mother, I went to night clubs at 13 years old. I hung out with adults. We smoked joints and played frisbee on the Mountain.
We had drink nights at home, just the two of us, where we listened to music and tried all kinds of wines and even did tequila shots. We were the envy of all mothers. She was the first person that knew when I was ready to have my first sexual experience with my boyfriend of 4 years. She was the first person that I told what I was thinking.

My mother made so many mistakes in life and endured so many failures and believed and loved and loved some more. She picked the runt of the litter every single time. She rescued strays (animals and humans). She was allergic to everything in her house (cats, dogs, birds, carpeting) and refused to give them up or get the shots. She survived with bottles of Otrivin strategically placed around the house. She was a music lover and we always had the latest music and a state of the art music system despite my step father’s complaints that spending money on music was frivolous. She’d sneak the new records in the house when he wasn’t looking. She was a plant fanatic and had exotic plants from all over the world. Plants that she’d have to soak in water for 24 hours and all sorts of craziness. She couldn’t walk past a plant store without staying in there for at least an hour. That’s me with book stores.

She had a grade 6 education and was the smartest person I knew. My step father mocked her for her lack of University degree and she had self esteem issues and yet when ever he needed to understand something, it was my mother he asked for the explanation. I knew because of my mother that you can educate yourself without school. She absorbed everything and when she decided she wanted to know how to do something she’d immerse herself in the books and she’d learn how to do it. a Grade 6 education! I have yet to meet anyone that I feel was as smart as my mother.

She knew people from all walks of life, from drug dealers, pimps, bank robbers, doctors, club owners and right on up and she never judged anyone for who they decided to be and what they decided to do.

Yeah she was my mommy, my sister, my best friend. She was the person I fought with the most and the person I turned to to cry and the person I told everything and the person I’d give my youth to if it were possible. She was the person that I’d kill for and the person I protected, much to my Step dad’s fear. There will never be another person whose death will be harder on me than losing my mother.

Ten years is a long time for so many things like being at a job or studying and yet such a short time for mourning the death of my mother. Alice Patricia Norville… Pisces Horse.

EY

White Wishes

Writertopia.com

Words on the page

Writing Challenge – Upper A Riffing
Pick 5 random words out of a dictionary or thesaurus and write a piece using those words. Don’t think, just write! This isn’t supposed to be a work of art, it’s just practice to get you to write without editing.

The Words:
compact, stiff, chair, refresh, spectacular

The Piece:
I sit stiff in my chair
squashing my fears into a compact
willing my brain to refresh
until I see that spectacular screen in my mind’s eye
that screen that guides my words on to the page.

SW

First Writing Class

A warm up mentioned in The Weekend Novelist by Robert J Ray is to write for ten minutes using the start line, “I remember…”

I remember when I took my first writing class in the 1980’s that Michael Zizis wrote on the board, Write to Disturb.
I remember that I found a good rhythm and was able to write a short story a week. I’d come up with the story idea that I wanted to write about. Name a character and think about her as much as possible. I’d think about what she wanted, the predicament she was in, how she could possibly get out of it. I’d think about it until I’d feel almost a silent click in my head that told me, that’s it! Then I’d sit down and write it from beginning to end. No stopping until the story was complete. Once the story was complete, I’d go back and revise it.
It’s so much easier to revise something after it’s been written rather than revising as it’s written, for me anyway.

SW