Quote

Be brave enough to live creatively.
—Alan Alda

Poem by Paige

Barely Sleep
Paige Ponder Monaghan

I can barely sleep

without you

anymore.

A feeling I’ve never had before, that is

each time you walk out the door.

Oh the days are bliss and

Solitude my other lover.

Nonetheless the days have changed and

my love for you blooms in color

a place in me

I did not know I could share.


Now Forever more

I can barely sleep

without you

anymore.

Quote

"I think I should have no other mortal wants if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music."
--George Eliot

Vingnettes by Paige

Just as I was not taking my own advice from prior post 20 August, a hummingbird came to the feeder outside my office to which I had just returned. Flapping his wings as hard as I had been since 5 this morning, my heart racing, excitement of all there is to do, to do, to do...(such as, prepare for potential tropical storm?). That bird took 8 seconds of his sweet time to remind me: slow down and smell the roses. It is lunch time. Thanks, Birdie.

Non-Fiction Vignette by Paige

I have been reading a book my whole life. No, not the same book. That would get old. It might be titled, “Go Dog Go.” Yes, ever since I could identify letters on a page, I have been reading one book after another for some-38 years or so.

I do not recall the moment letters became words to me.
I do not remember when the words became sentences.
No clue when sentences became paragraphs which became stories from which I began to decipher meaning. Nonetheless, all those things did happen somewhere on the road, and I have been forever since smitten with stories.

Still, my book list, that is to say, the books I want to read once I finish the 3 novels on my nightstand, the 2 non-fiction works in the living room and the book of poetry in my office; my book list is 30-miles long and growing like a tape worm but book worm sounds much nicer. What is one to do? All given the same 24-hours in a day, why are some left wanting more... needing more time?

I must beat dawn to do it but, I do it...some solitary writing, reading and time permitting, a lil’ a’rithmaticing (playing guitar)…every day. I will finish 1/10th of the books on my list only if I live long enough. If medical science deciphers a way for me to read while I am dead, bump the book list numbers up to half-done at best.

Reading is not all I do of course.

I have a husband, a child, pets, plants, family, friends; I built a home and a business and a grocery list and a get-done* list and a crick in my neck, and well, it just makes one of socks fall down thinking of it. The abundance of my blessings!
The abundance of all the things there are to do. [*get-done list is Randolph-speak for to-do list; pretty clever methinks].

Those mentioned are but a thimble-full of what a day provides time for doing, doing, doing, so I make lists of my lists sometimes. Some days they seem to grow, as if just shy of the 30-mile long and lengthening book list.

And that, my friends, is when the lists get chucked in the bin!

Yet what is one to do then? Keep reading? Keep doing?

Why yeeees...but especially important is to remember each day to do NOTHING.

At least one opportunity should present itself? Or are you too important for that?

Rare are the moments indeed, for all of us. But pray thee, get thyself some nada-time, if just 10 minutes, daily please. I meeeeeeean...

shut that reeling mind OFF and watch-the-clouds-from-your-back-on-the-grass-do-nothing nada.

Nike says: Just Do It! I learned the hard way that is the easy part.

Well, try this: Just Don’t Do It!

Did not happen, did it?

Pose that suggestion to someone you know; observe the response. Do you think ‘do-nothing’ was on their list? Did they add it to the-ever-prevailing-list that is our lives? Or, have they moved 2 towns away and you have not heard from them since?

Do you think the planets stopped spinning on their axes when I chucked my list of lists? No. I am just not all that important, not enough to stop the planets. A huge relief really.
Given that, think I will read Rumpelstiltskin again. Wait! Better yet, I could take 10 minutes [who cares I am wearing a dress] to lie on my back in the grass and do nada.
I do not know much about anything (besides how to find out what I want to know) but I do know that now, I do not know, after all this mono-tribe, whether doing nothing is doing something then? Ahhhhhhhhhhhg. !!!! The chicken or the egg? Who cares!!!!!!!!

To quote a character from the late, great A. A. Milne:

"It is a long story, even longer when I tell it," says Pooh.

Quote

"Stories are medicine...They have such power; they do not require we do, be, act anything -- we need only listen."

--Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Link List

http://www.tievelaneywest.blogspot.com/

http://www.ebookmall.com/

http://search.ebookmall.com/advanced-search/search-results-header.cfm

http://www.canoekayak.com/destinations/southernus/bartramcanoetrail

http://dennisholt.com/files/bookreview_1.pdf

http://www.gulfcoast.org/articles/index.cfm?action=View&ArticleID=373

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phrostart

http://www.holmanphotography.biz/

http://www.southernsolitude.blogspot.com/

http://www.westholmepublishing.com/

http://ttatomagazine.com/

Quote

"Ever tried? Ever Failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." --Samuel Beckett

Loveable Quotes

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
-- Agatha Christie

Paige's vignette morning thunderstorm

Have you ever looked at photos of a person? Cover the right half of a front-facing view and the sad side appears. Cover the left half, see the happy face.

Those Mardi-Gras masks took on much greater meaning once I started doing this and noticed consistently the same thing, on everyone. It started by noticing it on myself.

This is not the case with children. Also, there is one photograph exception. It is a photo of my husband holding my newborn daughter. No matter which side or portion of his face is visible, they are all true bliss and dimples.

So I got to wondering?

Is this universal or only an observation of my small perspective in this world?

Poems by Paige (these will appear often)

On Poems
by Paige
18 January 2008 one rainy morning

A poem
is not always meant
to
rock your world in some way.

Sometimes a poem only
wants
to give you a lil’ moment, to sit still,

not to consume your entire day!

Fiction Vignettes by Paige

By Paige P. Monaghan
1 Feb 2008

They say Edison got his best ideas while on the toilet. Helena got hers when she vacuumed. It was a task she loathed but only because of the cord. Like a junebug on a string. That is how she felt when she was vacuuming, wanting to go just that extra inch for a dust bunny juuuuuuuuuuuuust there, just out of reach……

But she could not reach it. She needed to change the cord from one outlet to another, then and only then, she could reach it. Until she unhooked that cord, she and that vacuum where going NO where, not one inch closer to that bunny. Not until that cord was unhooked.

Or... the dust bunny could stay right where it seemed so happily ensconced in the first place.

Yes, that was ok. Or she could change outlets right. No big. Was there, now here. Hmphf.

Ordinary Extraordinary Days

Hello and thank you for visiting my interests.