October 16, 2011

Hey!

I know.

 I haven't been here in awhile.

Why?

I got busy doing other things.

Summer.

Thinking.

What about you?

I promise I'll write something soon.

Are you two or three people still out there who actually read this blog??!!

Good.

Here's a picture I took one foggy night of a barn in the country.

Kitty Bensonhurst

Noone could believe that Kitty died so suddenly. Without warning. But here they were, practically the whole town, at Kitty's graveside service, huddled together under a blanket of emotionally stitched together umbrellas to bid her farewell. They mourned for her in the same way in which she lived. Quietly. That's not to say that she didn't live deeply, for Kitty touched every single person's life in this small town. She was only fourteen. So sad.

Virginia Woodley let out a sigh as she thought of the depths to which Kitty would go in order to save someone's life from the isolation of depression. Her own dear Charlie had died only a year previously. Just at the right moment, Kitty would show up at her window and tap lightly on the screen to let Virginia know she was there if Virginia needed to talk to someone. She would invariably let Kitty in through her back door and Kitty would come in, sit down and listen. She was such a good listener even for someone so young.

Everyone in town vaguely remembered Kitty's mother but no one knew her father. He slipped into town one night and left by the next morning like a breath of cold air caught momentarily under some blooming hydrangeas only to be released by the warming of the morning sun. But on that rainy night when Felicity James found Kitty, abandoned on the back doorstep of her neighbor's "under renovation" bungalow, the town never said a word. Felicity James was a childless widow and the good Lord knew she needed someone to love within her solitary existence. Everyone seemed to see it as another mysterious way God worked, smiled, and took it for granted that it was meant to be.

That night when it all began Felicity had gotten up from her regular Thursday night TV programs to fix herself a cup of tea when she somehow felt an overwhelming urge to go outside. Puzzled at herself, she put on her raincoat. If there was one thing she had learned during her difficult period of new loneliness and unwanted freedom was that it paid to follow her instincts. So when that little voice said, "Put on your raincoat, Felicity, and go outside . . . " she didn't question it.

"It may change your life", the voice added as an afterthought.

The backyard was muddy, and the silent dark structure next door loomed black against the strangely iridescent rainy sky. The rain was soft but relentless, and there was, for a brief moment, no wind. Felicity paused on her back deck acclimatizing her ears to the outside noises. What was that? A sound from next door? She gathered her raincoat close around her neck and shone the flashlight she had picked up off the dryer as she went through the back porch in the direction of the soft whisper. Taking a step around a puddle, she gingerly found her footing along the small path leading to the back door of the silent house. Was that a bundle? Felicity reached out to touch it, and she felt a slight movement. Picking it up she saw little blue eyes staring at her and her heart melted. She knew she wasn’t going to be alone. Felicity named her Kitty Bensonhurst because one of the new characters on General Hospital came from Bensonhurst and it just sounded right to put them together.

Pearl took off her raincoat and hung it on the simple knob on her back porch. The knob was special because Kitty brought it to her one day when Pearl was weeding her small vegetable garden out back near the clothesline. Kitty had just shown up out of the blue and dropped it in her lap. Kitty had never given her anything material before, so Pearl nailed the knob up by her back door while Kitty watched. “This is going to be my special knob, Kitty. Thank you.”

Inside the screened porch where she’d let her apple pies cooldown on the shelf next to her garden gloves, she could hang her wet raincoat on that knob and the drips of life could fall upon the wooden floor. Pearl would look at their descent and wish it were the tears her therapist said would be good for her to shed. Her therapist told her that “some people are so sad that they prayed they could cry. If they could cry maybe they would feel better.” After that session, Pearl prayed fervently every night and every morning that she would be the one person whom God would answer, and she would finally be able to cry all the dried-up tears she kept hidden in her shriveled heart.

Pearl stared at the drops now as they made a small puddle on the peeling porch grey paint thinking of Kitty’s funeral she just attended and for the first time in ten years, her eyes were wet. Reaching up to touch them she realized her prayer had been answered. Why did it have to be answered this way?

(c) nancy 6.4.2011

MOON

I am reading a very interesting book at this moment, The Book of the Moon by Steven Forrest, and I am finding it to be magical. Magical? What do I mean by that . . . I mean that it explains the moon in its shrouded mystery and how it may affect us Earthlings.

Have you ever looked up at the moon and wondered what other generations of humans were thinking as well? When you see a Full Moon in all its glory you realize why people worshipped the shining orb. It is like a parent silently watching over us in the night, bathing us in a protective light, peering out from behind clouds. We like staring at it. Wolves like to raise their noses and howl toward it. The Moon is curiously comforting, thought-provoking, and mysterious . . .  like a Rubik's Cube in the sky that we must turn this way and that in our minds yet it remains puzzling, fascinating, hypnotizing.

Have you ever looked up into the clouds on a warm summer night, laying on your back with your arms under your head? The dark sky dotted with a billion stars that twinkled like so many fireflies? The Moon was shielded by a bank of wispy, gossamer clouds that twirled in front of the light like a belly dancer, gracefully but purposefully moving in front of the glowing sphere, flirting. And then the fabric of the cloud moved on and the Moon was revealed, naked, and its beauty mesmerized you into thought, captivated you with its luminescence and you couldn't look away as you wondered what it was trying to tell you.

Okay, so you may not have done any of that and you were just looking up at the Moon as the clouds parted and thought . . . hmmm . . .  the moon is full again . . . awesome . . .  and then you turned away and moved on. But for some of us, the Full Moon wakes us up in the middle of the night and pulls us out of bed with our heads throbbing as if the Moon's magnetism is drawing the tides of our brain as much as it draws the ocean's waters. It isn't pleasant but the Moon is letting us know that it is there and it will be noticed. It is that powerful.

Why else do you think that God placed it to watch over us brilliantly by night and sometimes transparently during the day? He put it there for a reason to navigate in space around and around the Earth day after day, eon after eon. The Earth and its Moon are like eternal soul mates forever staying within spatial reach and being there for one another as they revolve purposefully around the warming Sun.

As the Earth and the Moon go through life together so to this book says that we have lunar bonds to people on this blue planet. Who are your lunar bonds?

As I continue to read this book I may find out more revealing aspects of the Moon and some about myself. After all, I am only on page 31. I have just under 300 more pages to go. I can't wait!!

(c) nancy 3.10.2011

image courtesy of online search

Massage School 911

Help!!!

If at first you don't succeed . . . try, try again, right?

And thank goodness that's the motto at my school. In fact, if you do pass the final the first time, they (the school, that is) suggests you take the other three finals as well just so you can know it all for the state boards.

Yay! I get to take the final three or more times just for the heck of it!? Even when I do pass!?

Yep . . . don't count your answers before they are scored, preppie.

With 200 questions to answer at .5 per question, I figured a person could miss 50 and still make that glorious score of 75. But I had to change a few and then they went from right to wrong in a single stroke. Okay, so I changed some others that went from wrong to right, but why couldn't I leave well enough alone? I ask you!!

I missed passing my first try by .5 points. Yep, that's right. But there's no use crying over spilled chromosomes. At this point you ask yourself . . . is the cup half full or half empty? That is the question . . .  or is it the answer? Perhaps it's 'none of the above'.

I chose to see the cup almost full because the cup only lacketh a snippet of correct info to be filled. Two more right answers would have made the cup runneth over . . . slightly. Oh joy!!

So it is I find myself at the threshold of another day which may bring, with my second try, correct answers spilling all over the school table whereupon I have laboured for three hours over alpha beta cells which produce glucagon, the posterior tibialis muscle which inverts the foot or plantar flexes it if the peroneus muscles don't get to it first and dorsi flex the foot in order to kick a football.

Ah . . .  to pass with flying colors and then be able to sit on my gluteus maximus while my buccinator coordinates the popcorn in my mouth while the rods in my eyes see black and white from my HDTV! As I hold my forearm out in supination I will click the remote using my thenar muscles, abduct it back to my lap where my cat purrs perched on my rectus femoris reaching up the length of my rectus abdominus with her paw to touch my sternoclavicular joint which is the only upper connection my axial skeleton has with my appendicular skeleton.

But let's not get all yin and yang about it or crawl all over someone's chi because dosha know that's messing with NRG.


Okay, so I got carried away. But you get the picture. Or if you haven't you can go to http://www.wikipedia.com/ and get all the info you desire about the human body and all its muscles, nerves, and systems.

We are awesomely and wonderfully made!!! And those words are right out of the mouth of God.

(P.S.  I passed the second school final with an "A". Plus I passed the Boards on my first try. Yay!)

(c) nancy 2.24.2011

ACHOO !!!

So . . . 2011 started out with a huge cold, and I don't mean the weather, although it has snowed here a lot compared to the past ten years, and we all know that a cold front gripped New York.

But . . .  the forecast here was stuffy with a chance of sinus infection. It began with sneezing and my nose running in a marathon of tissue usage. And then the next morning . . . 

Achoo!!!

I heard once that whatever you do on New Year's Day is what you will do all year. Does that mean I will be in bed all year, with Tissue as my best friend, and nothing decent to help me pass the time on my back-to-the-antenna-because-cablevision-is-too-high T.V. viewing at night? Of course, I'll admit, if the only channel I can receive through the airwaves is ABC so that I can watch 'General Hospital', then I am Okay. It helps that I can also watch 'Brothers and Sisters' as well as 'Desperate Housewives'. Yes . . . I still watch it. I am a Terri Hatcher fan, that's why I began watching it anyway. I can't stop now, right?

So, what did you do on the first day of 2011? Shoveled snow? Fell in love? Began writing a blog? Whatever it was I hope it was good so you can look forward to doing that all year.

Me, on the other hand? I am taking the positive thinking route and telling myself that it has to be all uphill from that first day . . .  AchOO !!
 

Bless Me!

(c) nancy 1.7.2011