Familiarity (Written several years ago)

The sun settles in for the night behind me as I listen to the silence. Before, the surroundings were full of light, life and sound. The voice in my head is mute. My soul still, my heart quiet. The bubbling brook's roaring flow has dimmed to a rumble as if to ready for the night. I look calm, placid, you'd never guess the rolling emotion I feel inside me. I wish I were at peace, that's always seemed to elude me. I've never decided if I seek peace because I've never had it or if the peace is seeking me because it senses it's need in me. As the day pushes on, I fear it shall escape me again.

I don't like losing. I can't remember a time that I have been defeated, yet, I feel like I'm losing something important in my life. I wish I could put a finger on it. Somehow pinpoint the exact thing I'm letting slip away from me. I know what mourning feels like and that is how this seems. Like something is dying and I can't revive it. A need, a desire, a want I will miss so terribly it is even hard to put it to word. It's as though my heart is melting and in it's place dwells a deep, sullen pool of sunken memories.

A broken bridge is all that's available to leave the pain behind. Does it lead to the peace that I seek or is it another dead-end to a sadness that seems to overwhelm me of late. Is this the crossroads I've heard about? The turning point that you either take the left or the right, one leading to bliss and the other to isolation? Is it the stillness that wraps around me now? Perhaps I've already taken the path and this is the result.

Braving the darkness around me, I take a peek off the bridge into the churning, cool waters below. The stones challenging the smooth flow of the current as it bends and rolls it's way home, instinctively knowing the way to it's destination. Maybe we are like the waters that flow over the river bottoms, smoothing the rocks by day after day after day of doing what we were intended to do until we mold the world around us to fit. What is to "fit" me? Will I know it when I see it? Do I already have it? Is that what I'm losing now? The peace I'm lacking, is it in my grasp?

Story of Reincarnaton...Maybe? (Written several years ago)

Do you believe in reincarnation? I've always been sorta wishy-washy about it because I just wasn't sure if some of the things I was seeing in my "dreams" were only dreams or visions from a past I lived before. I have early memories of "remembering" little clips and fragments of another time, places I've been, yet never been in this life and seeing "me" as a totally different person all together.

I can remember when I was a child, I asked my mom if she remembered the time the boy "rang" the neck of a chicken while I was sweeping a cabin out in a blue and white checkered gingham dress, I'd even threatened his life if he got chicken blood in the house, since I'd spent most of the morning cleaning up. I, of course, was met with a blank stare and later told I never owned a gingham dress and that I must have been dreaming. So, I learned quickly that odd little questions like that would only land me a fast ticket to the looney bin, so I tried not to mention too many "visions" to anyone that would have full authority to admit me into Eastern State Sanitarium. Still, for the record, the full vision was this...

I was wearing a blue and white checkered gingham dress that came down to my odd slipper type shoes. My hair was long and black because I can see it as I look down at the broom sweeping the bare, plank floor below me. This cabin was small, yet, had more than one room and a loft above. The planked floor ran the length of the cabin and straight out onto the porch as if the house was just plopped down onto a large wooden base and the small porch area was the same flooring as the inside of the cabin, it just continued out the door. There was a large, rectangle table in the center of the room where I'm sweeping, which I know to be the main room. I have a wooden chair propping open the front door because I'm sweeping the dirt out onto the porch and off. Looking at the door, I see a yard that is mostly dirt, but there are places of grass, but you can tell it has definitely been worn down.

In the dirt, a barefooted little boy with bowl-cut hair is standing there with a chicken in his hands and he is, literally, holding the chicken by the neck and swinging the bird in circles waiting for it's head to pop off. I'm assuming the meal that night was going to be poultry. This little boy is handsome (much like my son) with deep brown hair and large brown eyes that are shining with happiness because, I have no idea why I know this, but this is the first chicken this little boy had prepared for a meal. His pants were a rough brown fabric that he'd rolled up to just below the knees and his shirt was a creamy beige, long sleeved shirt that he'd rolled the sleeves up to mid-arm, also, he was wearing brownish looking suspenders that looked as though they were made into the waistband of the pants.

As I'm sweeping the floor, I look out to him and I yell "Don't get blood in the house!" because I felt that he was ringing the chicken's neck too close to the front door and I'm not sure if you know this or why I know this, but a chicken will run around with it's head cut off until it bleeds to death and I was concerned the bird would make a hasty trip into my, recently cleaned, cabin.

That is the entire vision and I've had it since as early back as I can remember. I tried to play it off as a visit to my Great Aunt Myrtle's farm up in the mountains of Kentucky when I would go with my Mamow to visit her sister, yet, that theory was shot down as well. So, it wasn't a memory of this life, so, was it a memory of another? I do know it happened to me because I have strong feelings for this little boy. It isn't like watching a dream play out that is just what you see is what you get. I felt love for this little boy. The memory of looking out at him and the smile on his face filled me with love because I knew he was feeling pride for being "old enough" to be asked to kill our dinner for the table.

I can remember the room smelling of sunshine, like fresh laundry being hung outside - that type of sunshine fresh. The other three chairs in the room matched the one propping the front door open, but in order to have the floor clear to sweep, the chairs were hung upon large pegs that jutted out from the wall about 3 or 4 foot up from the floor. There is a lamp in the center of the table, an oil lamp I would imagine because there are no wires or cords running from it and a huge, creek rock stone, unlit fireplace was to the left of the table.

Tumbling Down... (Written several years ago)

There's this place that I love and although I'd never been there (at least not in this lifetime), it gives me such a wonderful feeling when I see it. Down in Valley View, across from a big stream, there was a large, two-story, creek rock house. I have a book that celebrates all the old homes, buildings and land in this area and they have an actual picture of this home..back in it's day. Breathtaking! I love it, but before I'd seen this photo, I was in love with this property.

When I first came across the land, the first thing that drew me to it was the small family cemetery behind it. The fields were overgrown with wild flowers and brambles, but you could still see the beauty of it all. To the left of the property is a large creek rock chimney and one wall of what used to be the main house, a far cry from the photo, but a glimmer of it's former grander is still recognizable. In the front of the property is a narrow, broken down, country road that I always felt was misplaced. I can close my eyes and picture this home in my head, but the road is never there, just a large front lawn that leads straight to the large creek in front of it. I always want to "gather water" when I see it. Another reason I, sometimes, have to question the existence of reincarnation because in this life, I've never gathered anything, including water.

The land was vacant, I'm sure someone owned it, but you couldn't tell. Nothing was up-kept. Even the cemetery was overgrown, but it didn't keep me out of it. I've strolled through it several times. The markers are just so aged, you can't really read anything. It's times like that, I wish I had my Mamow here because she always had a story about all the older homes, the lands, the buildings, she just knew many things about the region we live in. I do know that I had much family that came from that little community. Mamow told me many times about the characters that came out of Valley View. Apparently, the ones she knew were pretty wild. Unfortunately, all the family that would know about this subject, are all gone now. Well, back to the story...

I would pull into the old weed infested driveway and just sit there, listening to music, taking the familiar atmosphere in. Many lazy spring and summer afternoons were spent there, looking over the property, taking in the sweet jasmine and honeysuckle scent carrying through the breeze. To, there was this old creek rock well that looked as though it had been added to the land after several years of "creek" living. I'm sure that was a blessing to whomever resided in the home. It must have been back-breaking work carrying water across the fields daily for use of washing, cleaning, drinking, cooking and bathing. I could only imagine the troubles of that time. Funny how, even though that was some hard living back in the days, there are still many things from that time that would be lovely if they'd carried over to now. It just seems to have been a much slower paced lifestyle. People were friendlier too. Now, everyone is so busy, so stressed, so stuck in their own troubles and issues that they don't really have the time or patience to worry about someone else's needs.

I haven't been there for awhile because I've been fairly busy the last few months and also, I don't drive around that much in the country anymore, again with the "things to do". I decided the other day, to take a quick peek at it - I've been missing it. I go by and the sole creek rock wall and chimney have been torn down! The land has been cleared and the well, filled in, fitted with plants and was rewalled with red brick!! I swear, I just couldn't believe my eyes!

After the initial shock and horror, I began looking around & the creek-bed rocks from the remains of the house have been stacked into two entrance posts and a mailbox slot. A house is being built on the land, a red brick one, standard Ranch style, nothing fancy, nothing like what formerly stood in it's place years earlier. My heart ached. Literally ached for what used to be. Even the hills behind the home had been touched. Mowed, a few less attractive trees, bushes and flower shrubs torn down and discarded. The cemetery was mowed, weeded, an old wreath tossed away and several old flower pots disposed of. Granted, it did look better, but the land had been violated, touched by someone that seemed to not have cared that at one time, these things meant something to the person that placed it on the grave of a loved one.

I know that once I pulled over and got out of my car, I just stood there in agony and took in all the destruction. I swear, if I'd known the land was purchasable, I would have tried to buy it in an instant. Sure, I would have cleaned the place up, but not taken that wall and chimney down! Why? It wasn't appealing? Come on! Turns out, the new inhabitance of the property are distant relatives of the people that had the land previously. Obviously, their love of history is non-existent.

I turned my back to the house and took in the familiar creek that was bubbling and flowing. At least they couldn't harm it, but for the first time, I noticed that broken down road. The one you have to cross from the house to get to the creek. The one I always thought was out of place and was never meant to be there. It was there! It was ugly and it was in the way and it wasn't apart of what this land was at all. Now, the land was nothing more than a commercial property - red brick, asphalt, metal, lumber and polish. Nothing really was the same. I wanted to walk over to the creek, take my shoes off, roll up my pant legs and wade in the cold clear waters like I had so many times before, but I just couldn't. None of it felt like it was mine anymore. I felt like I'd lost something, although, technically, I'd never had it to begin with, but, oh, how it felt like it had been mine. For years. I actually mourned the land.

I took one last look around and got back into my car, cranked up my music and left it all behind. I felt sad. Moody. Cranky. Even when I think of it now, I can only sigh and shake my head. I can't see how anyone can disregard such beauty and blow it off as a "fixer-upper" when so much of a former time had been laid bare there, just waiting and hoping for someone to come along and see it, protect it. I feel like I let something down, but, I can't dwell on it because nothing can be changed now. Even if I could purchase the land, the damage has been done. The wall had already came tumbling down and not even Humpty Dumpty could put it back together again.

The Tale of Bloody Mary

She lived deep in the forest in a tiny cottage and sold herbal remedies for a living. Folks living in the town nearby called her Bloody Mary, and said she was a witch. None dared cross the old crone for fear that their cows would go dry, their food-stores rot away before winter, their children take sick of fever, or any number of terrible things that an angry witch could do to her neighbors.
Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one. No one could find out where they had gone. Grief-stricken families searched the woods, the local buildings, and all the houses and barns, but there was no sign of the missing girls. A few brave souls even went to Bloody Mary's home in the woods to see if the witch had taken the girls, but she denied any knowledge of the disappearances. Still, it was noted that her haggard appearance had changed. She looked younger, more attractive. The neighbors were suspicious, but they could find no proof that the witch had taken their young ones.
Then came the night when the daughter of the miller rose from her bed and walked outside, following an enchanted sound no one else could hear. The miller's wife had a toothache and was sitting up in the kitchen treating the tooth with an herbal remedy when her daughter left the house. She screamed for her husband and followed the girl out of the door. The miller came running in his nightshirt. Together, they tried to restrain the girl, but she kept breaking away from them and heading out of town.
The desperate cries of the miller and his wife woke the neighbors. They came to assist the frantic couple. Suddenly, a sharp-eyed farmer gave a shout and pointed towards a strange light at the edge of the woods. A few townsmen followed him out into the field and saw Bloody Mary standing beside a large oak tree, holding a magic wand that was pointed towards the miller's house. She was glowing with an unearthly light as she set her evil spell upon the miller's daughter.

The townsmen grabbed their guns and their pitchforks and ran toward the witch. When she heard the commotion, Bloody Mary broke off her spell and fled back into the woods. The far-sighted farmer had loaded his gun with silver bullets in case the witch ever came after his daughter. Now he took aim and shot at her. The bullet hit Bloody Mary in the hip and she fell to the ground. The angry townsmen leapt upon her and carried her back into the field, where they built a huge bonfire and burned her at the stake.

As she burned, Bloody Mary screamed a curse at the villagers. If anyone mentioned her name aloud before a mirror, she would send her spirit to revenge herself upon them for her terrible death. When she was dead, the villagers went to the house in the wood and found the unmarked graves of the little girls the evil witch had murdered. She had used their blood to make her young again.

From that day to this, anyone foolish enough to chant Bloody Mary's name three times before a darkened mirror will summon the vengeful spirit of the witch. It is said that she will tear their bodies to pieces and rip their souls from their mutilated bodies. The souls of these unfortunate ones will burn in torment as Bloody Mary once was burned, and they will be trapped forever in the mirror.

Inspirational Author's Quotes

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." - Walter Wellesley Smith

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." - Ray Bradbury

"So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say and so often, one regrets having marred it." - Harold Acton

"The role of the writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anais Nin

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our eqilibrium." - Norbet Platt

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emtily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. that is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop." - Vita Sackville

"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say." - Sharon O'Brien

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be as it should be." - Mark Twain

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm a very good rewriter." - James Michener

"The wastebasket is the writer's best friend." - Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Don't be too harsh to these poems until their typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction." - Dylan Thomas

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." - William Wordsworth

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." - Vladimir Nabakov

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." - Anton Chekhov
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister and occasionally mortal enemies." - Emme Woodhull-Bache

"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." - Orson Scott Card

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug." - Mark Twain

"The story I am writing exists, written an absolutely perfect fashion, some place in the air. All I must do is find it and copy it." - Jules Renard

"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer." - Karl Kraus

"A prose writer gets tired of writing prose and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter and keeps on writing prose." - Samuel McChord

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions." - James Michener

"Writing is my time machine, takes me to the precise time and place I belong." - Jeb Dickerson

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." - Isaac Asimov

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork." - Peter De Vries
"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote." - Mignon McLaughlin

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in the mirror which waits always before or behind." - Catherine Drinker Bowen

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is now what it's about, but the inner music the words make." - Truman Capote

"Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum." - Graycie Harmon

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By the time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." - Mark Twain

"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." - Charles Peguy

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath

"I would hurl into this darkness and wait for an echo and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." - Richard Wright

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." - Elmore Leonard

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." - Logan Pearsall Smith

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." - Oscar Wilde

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow..." - Lawrence Clark Powell

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about. - Oscar Wilde

"Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish. - John Jakes

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. - E. L. Doctorow
"Write without pay until someone offers to pay." - Mark Twain

"Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else." - Ivern Ball

"Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area." - Nadine Gordimer

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some under-culture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals. - Don Delillo

"I lived to write and wrote to live." - Samuel Rogers

"I don't like to write, but I love to have written." - Michael Kanin

"Writing eases my suffering...writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence." - Gao Xingjian

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." - Joan Didion

"What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call." - Liz Carpenter

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him out to the public." - Winston Churchill

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." - E.L. Doctorow

"I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend time looking for the paper I wrote it down on." - Beryl Pfizer

"The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn out word - but astonish." - Terry Southern

"Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public and get paid for it." - Octavia Butler

"Writing is thinking on paper." - William Zinsser

"If you know what you are going to write when writing a poem, then it is going to be average." - Derek Walcott
"Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble." - Benjamin Franklin

"Writing is easy; all you have to do is sit and staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." - Gene Fowler

"Writing only leads to more writing." - Sidonie Gabrielle

"The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadows of the past where time hovers ghostlike." - Ralph Emerson

"The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people and they come after you with machettes." - Dave Barry

"Writing is a prostitution. First you do it for love and then for a few close friends and then for money." - Moliere

"Don't get it right, just get it written." - James Thurber

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord Byron

"I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes..." - Philip Dusenberry

"Whether or not you write well, write bravely." - Bill Stout

"One writes to make a home for oneself on paper, in time and in others' minds." - Alfred Kazin

"The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis." - William Styron

"Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators." - Olin Miller

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melanchoolia, the panic fear, which is inherit of human condition." - Graham Greene

"Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon." - Henry Louis Mencken

"I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living." - Anne Morrow Lindgergh

"Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness." - Georges Simenon

"You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also; Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through." - Vincent van Gogh