BOGO Lead

Very well then, now,
It is what it is, always
It cannot be changed.

As, ever, you were,
Make yourself comfortable;
Your life is your own.

Carry on, doing
Things that facilitate joy
You deserve your best.

Our love is a door
Held open, a passage through
A step together
Into the present alive
Building futures, extreme dreams.

As a prompt, take a common phrase or several and use them as a starting point to create. Enliven the creations with meaning perhaps gained somewhere else.

I am grateful:

Alex had a safe trip and obtained his objective.
I finally got extra sleep last night.
I finished reading an eBook.
I may get a super birthday present. Depends.
All the blessings of my life, too many to count,

When the quiet haunts,
The doubts seem set-up to stay;
Christ wipes them away.

Believe in your dear held hopes and dreams, but move forward. Banish doubt, you are much stronger and more capable than you may think. Blessing to you all. I hope you found something of inspiration and you will find your way here again. Roaring 2020, be bold, brave, and excellent.

Recipe for Creating More

This is not meant to be definitive. The hope is to present some ideas. There is some background to draw upon.

As much as possible, put your internal critic in the dungeon, a nice one if you like. You can liberate the rascal when you begin to edit, and absence makes the findings sharper.
If you are stuck, do something else; a different style, media, genre, voice.
Do Morning Pages as instructed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.
Use a different method; notebooks and a variety of pens, computer, tablet, phone; acrylics, oils, watercolors, pencil, colored pencil, pen & ink, canvas, paper, wood, sculpture; color, monochrome, macro, zoom, panorama, varied lenses, day, night, indoor, outdoor.
Take a break and read something inspiring, or if you are more audio-visual, watch some how-to’s on YouTube or find some podcasts. Use music when you can, it can ease tension and promote imagination.
Work in a different location: Go to a cafe or restaurant, a picnic table in a park, a bench or table in a high traffic shopping center, a library, a ball game, a parade.
Give yourself permission to be an amateur. Everything does not have to be perfect. Even if something you do does not get glowing praise, it was an experiment in which you gain knowledge. There is no such thing as perfection. What you do at the moment is perfect in that it is an expression of yourself and was done courageously by you. Work, and in time you shall gain mastery.

This is brought to you by my son, Alex, saying he was having a hard time working on his novel. I thought it might be a topic worth my exploring since I consider myself a creativity expert.

Best Unknown

the things we sweep aside
burying horror deep inside
in the cursed ebony hours
when we beg for mercy, sleep;
for ourselves the secrets
becoming hungry ghouls feasting
upon our weakened minds
the guilty hauntings we cannot keep
can consume our nights
disturb our days, smuggle peace away,
yet we know we like other persons
must fight our way into the light
make a plea to God for help to win
our lives back from that which would
steal our breath, leaving us inert, end
disspirited and dead, a corpse alone
the past is tome we must place upon
a disused shelf and let it fade
not reopening it to inquire what
now we miss because there is nothing
it holds that can invade today
unless we give it power, let it stray
from the position, it has earned
retired, obsolete, bridges burned
some memory we may desire
but much is sheer agony, anger, pain
from such we well do to refrain.

Everything has its place. Those things that torture us, we should endeavor to expunge from our thought. At least, never linger over them. Our guilt and shame provide no benefit to us presently or going toward the future.

I cannot tell you where this poem came from. It just, as most do, took over my thoughts.

Be well. Express gratitude. Leave life better than you found it.

My Coffee Friends

My mom and I collected mugs for a while. She bought a lot more of them than I did because me being on Disability, the money did not go too far., I have some on my bookshelves and around.

There were some she had decorating the kitchen on hooks. When Alex came home, he kept breaking them, so I took some down.

This one I used last night was hers. I think I am amping up to do it again.

Sleep, who needs it?

Sometimes I dream of opening up a shop where coffee is served in mom’s mugs, and I pick a book after talking for a few minutes with the customer. If they sit down and decide, they want one or both the things I chose; I sell them. Otherwise, they return them, and all they are out is the cost of a coffee and maybe a pastry.

My son says it could work, but I have no money for space. I think, since I have been told, I can see into a person’s soul that I would be oftener right than mistaken.

Know anybody who would invest in such an idea? Yeah, me neither.

Welcome February

This is Goobi, my grand kitty. She believes she owns me, and I am a semi-obedient cat servant now, so maybe she is right.

There is a lot of material in the following pages, so please humor me and read it all. It has been a while since I have written much by hand, so my script is iffy at times. It will improve as I do this again.

I have mentioned I work slow, I have done all these since about 1 or 2 am, until minutes ago. The scanning process was a nightmare with the Dell. Do not get a Dell.

That last haiku is a tribute to Freddie Mercury, and someone, but no one.

I hope you are having an outstanding day. I have stayed busy. I may be back, but it depends.

There is a lot swirling around inside me right now, the thing is finding the right piece to begin assembling the puzzle and the proper color to paint it with.

God bless you! Create. Write your name bold across the globe. You are a masterpiece.

As a prompt, if you are brave – post a handwritten page or more.