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Saturday 5 April 2008
Change In The Wind
There is a change in the wind.
Who feels it?
Here in the Sonoran Desert we’re in full spring. Citrus trees have blossomed and the scent is exquisite.
Sweet and intoxicating to breathe.
The wind is changing now, coming from the north. It still is cool, belying the desperate hot summer that surely will descend. Another spring soon turns to summer.
Feel it now, this, change in the wind.
Filed under: poetry & fiction, creativity
Posted by: Molly | 4:10 pm | Comments (9)
Monday 24 March 2008
For the Love of Maps (where to go from here)
Since childhood, maps have captured me. It’s not a unique conquest - many of us love to study maps.
Maybe it was my father beside me, driving along and asking where next? I was always the best at maps, and my dad liked me for it.
It could be that travel is so important to me for my love of maps, but I know so many other people who’ve expressed this same passion.
For the Love of Maps!
Now we should figure out where we go from here.
Filed under: faith(less), pop culture, poetry & fiction, nmby
Posted by: Molly | 3:32 pm | Comments (36)
Saturday 15 March 2008
Your Best Pop, Your Worst
NEEDING TO GET AWAY FROM STANDARDS and browsers and conferences, I’m interested in a conversation about the best and worst pop culture right now.
Whether journalism, fiction, television, film, photography, illustration, diaries or mixes thereof, I really need your help expanding my horizons.
It can only help!
I’ve been watching “Ashes to Ashes” and waiting for a new episode of the “Big Bang Theory.”
What are you following? Reading? Watching? Doing?
Share your worst, your best!
Filed under: faith(less), humor, blogging, pop culture, poetry & fiction, society, creativity, molly asks you, community, nmby
Posted by: Molly | 7:23 pm | Comments (70)
Sunday 9 March 2008
A Jewish Girl’s Thoughts on The Seven Deadly Sins
- Lust: Not a sin.
- Gluttony: Not a sin. Unless you don’t share what you have!
- Greed: A sin.
- Sloth: Rest only when weary.
- Wrath: It happens sometimes.
- Envy: Only that the health of our youth is not equivalent to the wisdom of a greater age.
- Pride: a sin only if truly misplaced.
Filed under: faith(less), humor, poetry & fiction, society, religion
Posted by: Molly | 10:49 pm | Comments (42)
Saturday 19 January 2008
I Used to Have a Guitar
Many years ago, sitting on the front step of my dead grandma’s house, I knew I should make myself play a song. The voice I had been given was a good one, and my ear good too. Nothing great, but I could sing and harmonize.
Things happen in life. You’re walking down the road and a person walks up to you - it changes you forever. Or maybe nothing happens in life. Maybe you’re destined to be huddled up in the back of the Starbucks in your grey and black coat. Coffee, brewed too hot, burns.
I used to have a guitar. I used to sing, write songs.
I used to sit on the front step of my grandma’s house. Playing a guitar, remembering how beautiful she was and that she, too
used to have a guitar.
Filed under: poetry & fiction, creativity, family
Posted by: Molly | 5:20 pm | Comments (31)
Monday 2 July 2007
Creativity Jam Session: Tell the Story of this Photo
From this photo, tell a story. You have my permission to modify the photo for the purposes of this activity if it will enhance your story.
You can post your story here in comments and link to any image modifications via Flickr, or your own blog of choice, of course.
Filed under: poetry & fiction, photos, creativity
Posted by: Molly | 10:16 am | Comments (40)
Sunday 22 April 2007
The Online Tribe : Three Commitments
Lately, things have been so busy, and so difficult in many ways.
I still believe in my online tribe. Are you with me? Here are my commitments:
- I will not give up.
- I will not stop blogging.
- I made mistakes and I shall steady on.
Are you with me? I need you. Claim your truth in comments below.
Filed under: professional, faith(less), policies, blogging, pop culture, poetry & fiction, society, Blogroll, creativity, innovation, family
Posted by: Molly | 4:15 pm | Comments (90)
Tuesday 23 January 2007
No, I Am Not Fire (Aquarius)
No, I am not fire
I am air in disguise
using my own breath as fuel
Is it because you delight in the gossip
or did the tequila loosen your tongue
separate it from your mind or heart?
Yes, I appear as fire
often frenzied, hungry, intense
but I am not fire, no.
If all for talk it would be a sad waste
to spend my thoughts now wondering
what is it I did or did not do
what I have or have not to give
that brings a warm, sweet air
without a searing flame.
I can answer you with no touch
that I promise. It’s not and never has been
what I think you think I think it ever was.
No, I am not the flame
you believe me to be
and never would knowingly burn
such a friend beloved.
Filed under: poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 11:30 pm | Comments Off
Friday 1 September 2006
As She Tries To Run
Cecilia has great legs. All the girls on the floor say so. We sit in wonder at this woman in her sixties as she runs up and down the hospital corridor, her tight calves and bare feet belying the illness inside her head.
As best they can, the techs try to stay on her. Kevin used to play for the Seattle Seahawks, no joke. He’s a mountain of a handsome man and one serious dude to behold. But, money is tight and there are a lot of crazies to deal with, so attention gets diverted at times.
Cecilia is so insane no matter what they feed her with, the chemicals aren’t enough. She’s agitated all the time, and she sees fictions where most agree there’s um, you know - that thing called reality. This morning Cecilia thought our friend Carm was her daughter and that a nurse tried to hurt her, and the next you know Ceclia is up and screaming at the top of her lungs “Voy a matarte! Voy a matarte” and chopping the air so fiercely you could hear the wind being sliced.
Everyone knew she was escalating in her violence. The week before, she bit one of the sweetest ward nurses square on the arm. Today? She tackled a woman tech in her late 40s and get this - full bite into the poor woman’s cheek.
A human bite to the cheek. Pretty freaky to me.
I think of Cecilia and it rips me up to think this woman once so beautiful and in some ways still so perfect will soon be led away from this little corner of Tucson where people try to mend what’s left of their lives the best they can. But when there is failure - and whose failure is is that we can’t properly find treatment for the lost souls of this world, pray tell - the results will likely be that she spends the rest of her life in the state hospital up in Phoenix. Out there on 24th Street and Van Buren, you know.
Though my legs aren’t beautiful, I dream I am with Cecilia as she tries to run.
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 1:45 pm | Comments (12)
Thursday 22 June 2006
Cellular Memory
I know a man, a friend for life, who reads this blog regularly and who has long been present though we’ve not seen each other for some 15 years.
My friend was a U.S. navy medic who became a prisoner of war in Cambodia. I have heard many stories from my friend, things that horrified me when I met him so many years ago.
Have you ever noticed how one day, one minute even, shared between people can change you? Anger, harm, enrage and humble you?
I witnessed a moment with my friend that I cannot explain. I was sitting on the couch in a bad apartment where a little girl’s murder had gone unsolved and I watched a guy get shot in the foot.
So my friend’s sitting there on that couch, that filthy old red couch that some folks who remember me from back then will recall. Faux red suede, sucked up stains until saturation point.
Something started to happen to my friend, he became unable to speak and became very flushed, breathing rapidly, very confused.
There’s nothing like witnessing a man’s past appear on his flesh in the form of welts from the lashings of the whips that beat him. My friend began to recount what was happening to him, and with each wound he described, the welts on his flesh became deeper and more profound.
I was terribly confused. How is this possible? He’s telling me about a story that happened twenty years prior and his wounds are now reappearing in front of me. I rush to find ice, towels, anything. I whisper words of comfort and my own fears flee in the face of this strange and never-seen before phenomenon.
Cellular memory, is what they tell me now.
Cellular memory, the idea that what happens to us is so deeply imprinted upon our psyches that when we relive those memories, the actual, real physical responses reappear.
I know a man, a friend for life. He reads my blog regularly and though I have not seen him for at least 15 years, I remember always because of him.
I remember, and I always shall, how live cells bear witness, and whisper their secrets until they finally find a place for the truth to rest.
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 6:59 pm | Comments (34)
Friday 24 March 2006
Myth of the White Knight
Once upon a time
In a room of pink and green
A sweet and lonely girl
Dreamt of better things
A man who’d come riding
Upon a white horse so proud
Take her away to a beautiful land
Where on bended knee he’d ask for her hand
She’d wear a pure white gown
And flowers in her hair
Her friends and family would gather around
And treat her with love and care
Her handsome father would take her arm
And walk her down the aisle
As those who loved her cried salt tears
But all the while still smiled
And after some happy years
There’d be a child born, then another
Laughter would fill their beautiful home
With each new sister or brother
With a family all around
And her handsome man so true
The girl would be fulfilled
And the future always seem new
But we all know that the dreams
of a teenage girl are trite
That illness, abuse and life’s plain sorrows
Make a myth of that white knight
So the girl will do the best she can
To build a life worth living
Despite disappointment and hurt
be generous and giving
Yet inside her lives the dream
And she can’t help at times but feel sad
That the fantasy in which she once believed
Will never be had
Get on with it they say to her
Let it go now for it was only a fantasy
She knows that’s true but still pretends
That the myth and dream will come to be.
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 7:41 pm | Comments (24)
Monday 18 July 2005
Piece I Cannot Find
When I was a child I climbed high in a tree
watched towers be built across a river
when I was a woman I climbed higher than I should have
watched towers be obliterated by god and his devils.
My metaphors mix in an empty Seattle night
I love and I grieve and I sorrow
You held me in a too brief moment of time
So I thought I’d survive if I just held on tight.
Life is not competition nor is it a battle
not ethics, not morals or all that is right
You do what you have to
Peace I cannot find.
When I was a child I believed in a dream
thought love was something that was a given
As a woman I have climbed higher than I should have
having lost myself to man and his devils.
Filed under: poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 2:08 am | Comments (14)
Wednesday 18 May 2005
Selfish Selfish Selfish Girl
To be loved by so many but not by one
to know so much beauty
but be tired of the sun
to try much too hard
knowing I’m going to fall
how damned selfish
to want anything at all
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 10:07 pm | Comments (31)
Sunday 17 April 2005
Cheap Trash Stars and a Mistaken Moon
Hey, the other night I looked up and I know I saw Venus. Brilliant, pulsating, bright. You’ve long looked like a constellation of cheap trash stars instead of a real star or planet. So that’s how I knew it was Venus and not you.
I’m throwing thoughts around corners, here. Am I once again mistaking my muses? Thinking the devils I dance with are angels instead? But I knew the truth about you long ago anyway, you did the one good deed of telling me. So perhaps I’m not mistaking muses again, rather just pretending that I have angels.
I do have angels, don’t I?
I wake up dreaming we don’t hurt each other any more. You know how it is, how everything in life and love and perception changes. If you look up at the sky and see Venus you might think you’re watching MTV. The natural and inventive lines of life are getting crossed. The goodness of our souls gets tainted by time and judgment and fatigue.
If happiness were a mask, it would be known as mine. You know it’s true, you’ve seen me wear it. I dress up in enthusiasm and joy as if it were a precious garment. I show it off, I keep it beautiful, at least in the light. It’s fortunate I’m usually hidden at night. I can wrestle with you and pretend no obvious blood is left behind.
Right now, I am looking closely at a handful of tomato seeds. I’m counting them and wondering whether the procreation potential of a tomato is predefined?
As in: This is how many other tomatoes you will potentially give life to, this is how many seeds will dry up and fall to earth.
As in: Here are fresh new tomatoes, crisp and bright and almost sweet.
As in: We talked about it and did nothing for so long the sweet grew mellow and the seeds did not grow.
When I get too nervous I look for the edges of things. I am looking to see if the edges are still hard and that reality is in sharp focus. When the edges start to waver, I know I’m either dreaming or reality is being distorted by pain or medication. Or I’m hearing voices of the misguided muse and devil and angel and forgetting my own voice.
I want the simple seed I played with in my hand these past years. I want what is new and fresh and contains potential. This is how I knew it was Venus I saw, and not some moon. Everything else is cheap trash stars and there is a star or perphaps a planet here that shines very bright.
I’m sorry, but I knew it wasn’t you this time. It can’t be you this time. It is not you. This time.
I do have angels, don’t I?
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 1:01 pm | Comments (23)
Tuesday 29 March 2005
Trains Matter Much
On blue sheets twist and turn
Smell the tide the sweet and burn
Suddenly, the Erie rattles through
Shake the house
Shake the house
On the lower side
Rich, adorned
No smell just sterile
It’s prattle and then some
Suddenly, the Erie comes through
Shakes the house
Shakes it all over you
The hill is higher
Than at first you deduce
Stop at your wayside
Find not too much
Shake the house, shake it with force
I don’t care that you hate me
Trains matter more.
Filed under: poetry & fiction, travel
Posted by: Molly | 6:46 pm | Comments (42)