3 Days, 3 Quotes (Last one)

Last day of the challenge,

See my Previous Posts  for details and rules.

 

The dangerous thing about monsters, is we picture them as these grotesque mutant looking beings shuffling over the earth.

But they are in us, they are us.

They are the people who commit atrocities, and those who stand idly by and watch it happen. They are the ones who would rather cling to hate then be swathed in love and understanding. They are the voices in and outside your head telling you bad things about yourself, that you aren’t enough.

Those are the monsters you should be fighting.

 

Intuition doesn’t lie to you. It has no reason to.

 

 

 

Rumi is by far my favorite writer. He is the original punk poet. He was honest, and at times brutal.

We all cling to our facades and hope they eventually become us. But remember–Cinderella didn’t ask for a Prince. All she wanted was a night off, a dress, and a sick pair of heels.

 

 

 

I Tag:

 

Ana Linden

 

Recollections At Fall

 

Kaavyarth

 

Day 2 (Quote Challenge)

These are the rules of the challenge:

1.Three quote for three days.
2.Three nominees each day(no repetition).
3.Thank the person who nominated you.
4.Inform the nominees.

Thank you autistix  for this challenge!

 

 

 

On my baser days I can barely contain or handle myself with the unraveled yarn rattling in my head, and the Twizzler strings I have for muscles underneath my skin.

Its the miracle of being a human being replete in her own ordered chaos

 

It’s okay to not be able to put everything down in words- though i know that terrifies the writer in us all….sometimes you just have to live your poetry

 

 

I could fill hundreds of blogs, writing about the wisdom in Tolkien writings, but today is a rough day and its important on these days to remember that every little step you take, is still a step, and its getting you somewhere…

 

 

Challenge to:

 

COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES

 

MY SWEETPAINTEDDREAMS

 

thenewleaf2016

 

 

 

 

 

Time to Travel

To my fellow book-lovers out there…

THE BOOKISH TIME TRAVEL TAG

Thanks to English Lit Geek for sharing this. I wasn’t tagged, but I couldn’t help but throw my twopence in.

Rules:

•Answer as many of the questions as you can/want.
•Tag other people – as many as you like. Share the love!
•Please leave a link to this post/blog.
•Tag the post as “Bookish Time Travel”.
•Feel free to leave a link to your post in the contact form!
•Explore! Try and visit other people’s Bookish Time Travel posts and leave a comment.

1. What is your favorite historical setting for a book?

12th century. The Catholic Church was consolidating its power and is becoming more intolerant of any beliefs outside its standard. Western Europe is a collection of small towns and royal warlords, the far east is essentially the production capital of the world. The Middle East is the center of culture and learning. A fascinating complex time!

 

 

 

2. What writer/s would you like to travel back in time to meet?

Homer- The Odyssey was such a seminal work for me. It encompassed so much feeling, and morality, lessons wrapped in adventure. It is the original adventure story of history. I would love to just listen to his stories, which are half speech, have poetry reading, with a sprinkling of diatribe.

T.H. White— The Once and Future King opened my eyes to the humor in a life changing adventure, and how important it is to add life to your drama, no matter how simple or complex. He took a tried and true story, and wove it into a tapestry. Beautiful work. I feel like talking with him would be like having drinks with an old friend who tells tall tales in the most interesting way.

 

3. What book/s would you travel back in time and give to your younger self?

I don’t think there are any books I’ve read at a “wrong time” in my life. Every book i’ve read along the way had affected me where I was. Hindsight would tell me maybe to not waste my youth on so many Goosebumps books, but it was essential for the creation of my super creepy imaginary friends…. So I think I’d leave my younger self alone, her nose was always buried in a book and I’m satisfied with that.

4. What book/s would you travel forward in time and give to your older self?

Kelsey’s Raven by Sylvia Peck- I hope to re-visit that when I’m older

5. What is your favorite futuristic setting from a book?

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel is an incredible book (the first in a series) set in a steampunk-esque future with airships, and dragon-like creatures that roam the skies. It is a look at a future without the dystopian leaning.

6. What is your favorite book that is set in a different time period (can be historical or futuristic)?

Can’t do it… i can’t narrow down. Historical Fiction is my favorite genre so I can’t pick a favorite.

7. Spoiler Time: Do you ever skip ahead to the end of a book just to see what happens?

No.  But sometimes I won’t read the end if I think I can’t handle the loss.

8. If you had a Time Turner, where would you go and what would you do?

I would go into the future, maybe 200 years, and do a social study on how people interact, have the various ethnicity’s and religions finally reached a point of peace? How does society function? It would be neat to see a world where hate and ignorance aren’t constant obstacles, and I would hope to travel to a time where that happens.

9. Favorite book (if you have one) that includes time travel or takes place in multiple time periods?

Caroline B Cooney  wrote a series of young adult books The Time Travelers Quartet that I read because my sister had them on her bookshelf and I had already read everything on mine. They were sentimental and romantic, which drew me in.

I don’t typically enjoy time traveling novels, because to me there is so much to work with withing one period of time, and sometimes the plot gets too convoluted…and with the breadth there seems a loss of depth.

10. What book/series do you wish you could go back and read again for the first time?

Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud- It was such a dark, twisting book where for the first time a main character doesn’t grow to become a hero, but a villain of sorts, and the story is told from the perspective of an unwilling hero. Set in an alternate history with magical oligarchs, it imitates 18th century Europe.  I can’t remember reading the books, because I felt as if I was there. 

 

 

The best part of any challenge is the people you get to tag, and the following are great blogs that I enjoy reading

Tagged Challengers:

PHILESSATRY

MOTHER WILLOW

MY VALIANT SOUL

MY ENDURING BONES

~ A Writer’s Notebook

3 Days, 3 Quotes– Challenge Accepted

 

Thanks to Autistix for this great challenge!

I am in love with quotes, because I am in love with reading and the arrangement of words in my mind. Visit her challenge page (hyperlinked above) to participate!–

 

I am not very loud and boisterous, but when people ask me whats inside my head, they are often surprised at the fiery intensity that comes out. I think the meek shall inherit the earth because we are patient and quietly conniving enough to wait while others destroy themselves…

–Midsummer nights dream

 

 

I don’t have kids, and I may never. But I know if I had a little girl, when I make up fairy-tales to whisper to her at night, she’s going to want to be the fearsome dragon. She won’t be afraid to speak up and take the limelight, and to be a knight in shining armor for anyone who needs it.

 

And of course, enough said….I’m attracted to the burning, strange, wanderers who spend life adventuring, discovering, and chasing their curiosity. Not settling for the porridge placed in front of them.

 

I think my favorite part of this challenge will be naming all the blogs that I follow and read to keep my tenuous sanity—The following blogs I love to read for inspiration.

I nominate:

Zelda Reville

MANVSLONELINESS

JORDAN REYNOLDS

 

 

 

 

A Map to the Stars

I stood on the balcony
breathing in the mist,
hovering on the cusp of stepping
back into that
stuffy hotel room.

The air in there was too
pale and stale.

The beauty of being
on the road again
after so long with my feet buried in
fertile soil, had
filled me with
such apprehensive joy.

Charting a new path for yourself
is like being given
a map to the stars
endless boundless opportunities
to explore
jumping from exploding white dwarf
to the next
metallic blue mass.

As soon as I am comfortable
gravity pulls at my
soul
and I have to pound pavement
for solace

But in that stuffy hotel room
with my traveling comrade

I felt a longing
for the one who
knows my heart

at home.

Go On

What is the real difference between “should” and “shouldn’t”?

How guilty do you feel.

Finding stories

Most of my story ideas are just too long and complex

so I like to troll tumblr for inspiration.

It’s amazing what little visions people come up with unkowningly and drop them
like breadcrumbs
for people like me.

When you are a writer of stories, you have to bury that information under
layers of self.
Because when people find out, they are full of off the cuff ideas and tidbits,
they are
sure you can turn into a great novel.

What they don’t understand is,

you noticed the casual way they snubbed the server
and how the server rubbed her temples slowly
at her station in the back of the cafe.

(And I have a world weary worker bee, who spends her nights walking around the bare bones of her red dirt town)

or

you watched them nervously smooth the wrinkles in
their pencil skirt when someone complemented their appearance.

(There I have a wary introvert who has been abused in her past, and is trying to make good in the real world).

I could make a story out of the way J wakes up in the morning,
just having heard the even-ness of his breathing, and the small sigh
he heaves when pushing himself upright…..

So I troll Tumblr for short story ideas, that don’t require a character to be complete, to be understood.

I think I found a winner in the snippet I’ve posted above.

Stay tuned……

Spare some Change

She wasn’t listening again.
To me
or the TV

She was mired in
her own thoughts
creating a haven of pain
and anger
to cocoon herself in
safely

She relishes
that anger

It separates her from me
so she need not
interact
or react
when I reach a
hesitant hand out to touch her.

She recoils like a
vexed snake
when I speak to her.

“What are you doing for work
these days? Anything you enjoy”.

She mumbles indistinguishable
syllables that slip through my mind
and are instantly forgotten

then she snaps
“change the channel”.

It takes all the effort I have left
in me
to not walk out
on this flesh and blood being
I used to call friend

A shell of the person
I love so dearly

Synecdoche

You must reject acclaim
it doubles as a masked criticism

and what is criticism?

It’s foreign thoughts filtering through you
masked in cold transparency.

They soak in your coarse grounds
absorbing the round flavor
and dulling the stark acidity

until

they come out the other side
changed and mutated
into something else
entirely

an opinion
cloaked in your ideas
reflecting your work

But take a sip
and you’ll still taste
yourself

Rear Window

There is a curious orange tabby that sits in the bay window of the house across the street.
He’s perched on the back of what appears to be a beige love-seat.

I am eternally grateful that no human can speak his language because the stories
he could sing on me would make any modest being blush.

I don’t close my blinds much, I’ve never felt the need.
My true north home, back in Colorado had a large maple tree with flaking bark guarding my window from one direction and overgrown evergreen bushes flanking the other.
I was safe in a cocoon of invisibility, even with the blinds flung wide open.

Besides that, I am regrettably a sunflower(and moon-flower) I wither when either isn’t shining its glory down on me.

So little tabby in the window knows all about the tattoo on the skin stretching over my rib,that my mother has yet to see.
And the scars on my back from skin infections of my youth.

He’s seen drunken stupor passion and sober fights between me and my sometimes live-in partner.

He has seen me collapse in tears on my plush little sofa, and dance wildly to the songs that scream my heart….

He’s seen so much with his perceptive cat eyes.

Yesterday I passed by him outside lounging in the sun. He didn’t move,or open his eyes.

He doesn’t know me at all.

4 am

There is a miniature ghost
trapped in my apartment
and he carries a syringe.

At night he slips through
the worn wooden floorboards
and injects me with a serum

so that I wake up at that
bewitched hour–
4am
paralyzed with guilt

for all the things I didn’t do
that previous day.
For all the perfect moments,
wasted
the missed phone-calls I left
un-returned
the sweet kisses I neglected to give

I can’t move under the weight of
the undone.

The ones who hurt us the most

I don’t need you to harden me
to the realities of this world.

You think your arbitrary rudeness
and withholding of love or respect
teaches me?

You peck and pry at me
ignore my pleas for
understanding
and think our shared blood
covers all methods
for your sins

Don’t stab me
only to muffle my scream
tsk at my tears
smother my pain
for my own good

There is melody in your meanness
that I know.
There are lessons to be taught
in gentle application
of wounds

But you are not it
not my tormentor
not my teacher
not my enemy

Melody