For the New Year: a new leaf. Any thoughts? Happy New Year!

Bridget walked away from the bonfire and other New Year’s Eve revelers with a small smile on her face. Even the promise of a perfect summer’s evening to welcome the new year couldn’t lure her from the tradition she’d kept since she was a little girl.

She wandered amongst the trees for a while, her path lit by the full moon. For the first time in over ninety years, a blue moon was happening on New Year’s Eve with a partial eclipse. She couldn’t remember if it was a blue moon for Australians, but it made the night special all the same.

Feeling for the permanent marker in her pocket, she began to slow down and look at the leaves more closely. All were free from dew, as the dry Australian sun had seen to a clear, nearly cloudless day. As she touched some of the tree trunks, she discovered many still carried the warms of the day on one side.

Ah, there.

A perfect new green leaf, not cracked or torn. Not pecked at by birds or pests. Simply perfect and large enough for her ritual.

She plucked the leaf from the tree at the leaf’s root as gently as she could, thanking the tree and leaf for the sacrifice. She then sat down and leaned against the tree’s trunk to reflect upon the year that had passed.

The past year had been filled with mistakes, discoveries, heartbreaks and true joys, just as all years were. Had this year been better that the ones before it? Worse? She chose not to compare. Instead, she she thought about the things that were good, that she wanted to carry on, as well as the things she wanted to change.

How could she better her life and the lives of others this year? How could she make new connections and deepen the ones that already existed? How could she encompass all of the goals of the years before and make them even richer?

As the chanted countdown began in the distance, she thought and then smiled once more.

Writing just a single word upon the leaf with her marker, she then stood up and nodded. As the chanting finally reached ‘one’ and then turned to cheers, she turned with her back against the breeze and lifted her hand.

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” she whispered.

She released the leaf to the summer night breeze, her intention going with it. Once it had drifted out of sight, she nodded and then walked back to the fire.

Hi all! Apologies for the delay! My beloved MAC is suffering this weekend. Until my husband comes home to (fingers crossed) save it, I am having to use his computer. (And in a strange sidenote, for some reason there is no number sign anywhere on his keyboard! Do they not need number signs in England? Weird.) So this week, prompt number 192 is going to be: weird.

People thought I was a weird little girl when I became adamant that I didn’t belong where I was living.

People thought I was weird when I started telling stories.

People thought I was weird when I started writing fan fiction.

People thought I was weird when I started writing my first novel as a teenager.

People thought I was weird as they watched the play I had written being performed on stage.

People thought I was weird when they found out the man I loved lived on a different continent.

People thought I was weird when I tried to hint that things weren’t right in my home life and I had to leave.

…

People now think I am brave and amazing to have moved to Australia all by myself, pursued my great love, pursued my passion for writing and built a completely new life for myself from scratch.

So much for weird.

I read once that there’s only one emotion that is just as powerful in recollection as it is on the spot. You know, when you remember an instance of being happy or sad, you don’t re-experience the full happiness or sadness you were feeling then, but when you remember feeling shame, you have a physical reaction and it’s just as powerful as when it was fresh. Crazy.

So, write something about shame.

Jane had always been a good little girl. She tried to make everyone happy, tried to be kind to everyone and even remember the golden rule enough to apply it to her tiny life.

She happily attended Sunday School nearly every Sunday at the family church. She didn’t know many people there, but that was okay; she knew friendship would come.

One day, as a class project, they each got a piece of paper with about a dozen words on it. They were to circle the words that meant good things and cross out the things that were sinful. Jane, smiling, finished the assignment quickly and handed her paper over.

The teacher looked at Jane’s paper and frowned, making Jane feel uneasy. What had she done wrong?

“Jane, you circled pride,” the teacher said. The teacher then looked directly at Jane. “Pride is not a good thing! Pride is sinful and wrong! Where did you get the idea that pride is a good thing?”

The disgust on the teacher’s face both confused and terrified young Jane. She didn’t understand what she had done or why she had incurred such wrath with a wrong answer. All she knew in that moment was that she’d been a very, very bad little girl and that to take pride in anything was shameful and sinful.

“Pride is sinful!”

With shame flooding her very being, Jane hung her head and then nodded. She’d always been told that being proud of the good things you do is good, but maybe the other adults had it wrong…

From that moment on, Jane made it a point to never take pride in any of her accomplishments. She got rid of pride by always telling herself that nothing was ever good enough. If nothing was good enough, she couldn’t possibly take pride in it, could she?

She had a few ‘moments of weakness’, as she called them. The times when she didn’t have a firm grip on her feelings and a little bit of pride over a good grade or a project done well slipped through. Her memories took care of those, though.

Whenever she had even a moment’s feeling of pride, all the shame and embarrassment from her childhood experience flooded through her, sometimes driving her to tears.

Later in her teenage years, Jane learned the true difference between boastful pride and good pride. Even so, it was too late for Jane. Logic couldn’t overcome emotions and long-learned responses.

No matter what she did, no matter what anyone said to her, she never truly took pride in her accomplishments. She accepted compliments graciously, as she had been taught, but she never let them past the hard shell that no one could ever see.

High school and then university graduation with great grades and honours did nothing to change her feelings. Medals and certificates for arts and community accomplishments were kept but stowed away in boxes in her attic. Living independently, paying off her university loans, having a stable and secure job…

…meeting and marrying the love of her life…

She never let herself take any pride in even the smallest detail.

At twenty-eight years old, Jane gave birth to her daughter Eliza, a healthy baby with a head full of blond hair like her daddy. As Jane looked at her daughter for the first time, knowing that this was the baby she had cared for as best she could for just over eight and a half months, she felt the most pride she’d ever felt in her life. The feeling swelled within her, making her eyes tear up and her heart feel as if it would burst out of her chest.

Like in all the other times in her life, the shame followed the pride and threatened to tear down all the positive feelings within her. All the cruel whispers within her rallied to knock her away from the warmth she now felt coursing through her. The triggers had been well placed and the response was well-trained, as it was always the same.

Yet, this time…

Little Eliza opened her eyes and squeaked a little before settling back against her mother’s breast. Jane gently bit her bottom lip and smiled, the tears falling to her cheeks.

Finally, for the first time since childhood, she shoved the shame aside. Though she had always been convinced her accomplishments were nothing to be proud of, no one – not even the programming of her youth – could convince her that tiny Eliza was anything to be ashamed about.

The prompt this week is “hungry.” Interpret it how you will. My inspiration came from feeding an skinny, abandoned cat today, but there are other kinds of hunger than that. What comes to mind?

Oooh, okay. Instant inspiration is always good.

*****

She knows it’s wrong – the tightening in her stomach and the pressure in her chest tell her that over and over again. And yet…

Oh, God. I don’t know if I can handle this much longer.

Sometimes she nearly gets tears in her eyes over her internal struggle. The want, the need, nearly consumes her along with the pounding of her heart. Her skin tingles in anticipation of the want she is so desperately trying to fight off.

She wonders why she feels this way. Her moral compass points her straight away, and yet she looks forever back over her shoulder, just wishing for some kind of whisper of permission so she can give into her primal urges.

No! It’s wrong. I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.

Biting her lip does little to distract her, yet she does it again trying to get some sort of relief from the desperate urge.

Tired now, it seems to much easier to her to just give in and slake her hunger. There will be consequences. Oh yes, she knows that. But she will be contented. Satisfied. Perhaps even blissful for a time.

Her resolve weakens even further, the guilt for her wrong thoughts no longer enough to keep her walking on the right path. She turns back to the place she had struggled so hard to get away from, giving in to the love she knows is truly lust. The ‘love’ she knows will regret in the morning.

But for this moment, for this time, tomorrow doesn’t matter. The hunger is all that matters.

But she’ll take it slowly. Even the primal urges can’t erase the fact that she knows this must be the only time she gives in. She can’t do it again, so this moment has to be perfect…

She pours a glass of milk to go with her triple chocolate brownie and, for a moment, she knows what true bliss is.

Tell a true story about a tattoo or make one up. Do you have one? If so, what of? If not, what would you get if you had to get one? Best one you ever saw? Worst? Tell your tattoo stories!

I am the happy owner of two tattoos – one on each wrist. My first tattoo, which I got at the age of eighteen, is on my left wrist. It’s a simple Chinese character that means ‘night’. I don’t have a picture of it, but I do have a picture of…

This lovely Celtic knot style butterfly is on my right wrist. I got it when I was nineteen years old and it took about four hours to do the whole thing – one sitting.

I took a long, long time choosing each one of my tattoos and they both are significant reminders of certain times of my life as well as life lessons learned. Nothing pisses me off more than people who get tattoos because ‘it’s cool’ or ‘it’s pretty’. Call me a tattoo snob, but I think if you are going to permanently mark your body, it should mean something.

I know what I want for my third tattoo. (Yep, they’re addictive.) I’m just deciding where I want to put it…

“The prompt this week is: key. What is the key to your problem? The key to your heart? Who is the key member of your group? What key on your ring is the most important? What key does the music in your head play in? What is the key issue that is the problem today? Do keys jingle? Do you lose your keys? What do you think of: key.”

The key to life is paying attention.

The key to good brownies is thick batter and lots of choc chips.

The key to feeling at home anywhere is to have your own coffee mug.

The keys to not getting depressed when working at home are having green plants on your desk and a window the the sun can shine through onto you.

The key to ‘what’s wrong with the world today’ is that we’re letting politicians and the media tell us what’s going on in the world.

The key to inner peace is defining it.

*I apologize for the technical difficulties we’ve had lately. They seem to come and go, and they also seem to only affect certain people at certain times. Weird stuff, but hopefully it’s all sorted now.

I have just come back from attending a poetry reading in Bath. Sharon Olds held the room spellbound as she read her poetry and talked about writing. (I highly recommend a poetry reading if you’ve never been. It makes poetry into something completely different!)

For some, the word poetry conjures up terror; other people’s mouths begin to water in anticipation. Very few people feel nothing about it. Either way, your assignment this week is to write some – whether you like it or not!

Oh wow. I used to write poetry – most of it fairly angsty stuff, really. For this impromptu occasion, I think I’ll go with a limerick.

I am rather fond of the trees
and the way they capture the breeze.
They sway and they sigh
as I’m walking by
and always act such the tease.

Yeah, I know. Not so good. Let me try again.

I married a man from down under,
who was not a man who could plunder.
He fumbled and foiled,
his crimes were all spoiled,
but at least he never did chunder.

A little bit better, but not by much.

To make up for those, just for your reading pleasure, here is a poem that was selected to be in The Oddville Press.

Coffee Shop Poet Wannabe

Door stalked, admired, cursed
from across the tar and cracked pavement.
Should I? Could I? Dare I? Oh, yes,
for today, my sweet coffee shop,
today is the day of reckoning.

Jingle-jingle, jingle-jingle of the door.
Ah, a new girl, just a little bit of something,
perhaps sweet or perhaps spice
for the usual, eccentric pot.

“Um, I’d like a bottle of water please,”
as if the purchase of water
is a sensible action rather than
a dollar twelve for a plastic bottle.

“And the turkey…” mumbling ‘sandwich.’
“The turkey panini with the gouda?”
Go with the gouda! Go with the gouda!
Don’t break code! Possible emergency evacuation!

“Yes please,” and with no voice wobble,
no long stares, just glances and whispers.
Thank the benevolent coffee shop deities
for their small yet wondrous favors.

Order filled? Empty table? Affirmative.
Sitting down slowly, laser beam stares.
‘Flannel shirt, blue jeans, foreign body accepted,’
and a return to muffled conversation.

Put down my water, sandwich, and notebook.
A notebook? Ah. Acceptance melting into welcome.
Losing myself in the words, objective completed,
writing, wondering what the hell a panini is.

“What are your thoughts on adulthood? What do you want to be when you grow up? Are you scared of being an adult? Have you been forced to be the adult in a relationship? Do you have an adult child who won’t grow up? Are you glad to finally be an adult? What do you think?”

First off, I’m very happy to be participating in my first Sunday Scribblings here at InkyBlots.

Ah, adulthood.

Adulthood has been weird for me. I was forced to be an adult with the events of my parents’ marriage. It’s not what you’re thinking, but I don’t care to go into it. Anywho, I learned at an early age that my biological age was to be used to my advantage. I learned that I needed to enjoy the time I had to play, watch television, enjoy what I could without having a job, etc.

A weird thing for a kid to know, but I knew it…

Now that I’m technically an adult, my opinion hasn’t changed much. ‘Adulthood’ is just a label and we should take advantage of whatever is available given our biological age.

I guess I have seen too many children ‘grow up’ too early and too many adults who act like children. Just like maturity, true adulthood is not a given; it’s simply a label we assign that, more often than not, never really fits anyway.

That being said, my adulthood has shaped up to being something infinitely more wonderful and amazing than I ever could have imagined.

I’m loving every minute. Except the bill-paying ones…