Season After Cold

(photo: photobucket.com)

While some are ready to watch their land lay down under a sheet of snow, mine is stretching out under ever warming skies.

Spring reminds me of two things.

One.

There is always a season coming after the cold.

And two.

Dead things may indeed be merely dormant.

Here's to fragility. Life that breaks and then rebuild. Seasons that turn. And Spring. May it always follow winter.

What about you? What does Spring remind you of? If you write, what season are you in?

Beautiful

(photo by Tabitha Bird- Australian farming land)

The desert crept inside me dragging with it the stars from every night sky I have ever stood under so that when I looked up a hand of black was all I saw. It became the dry taste in my mouth and the desperate lack of words on the page. It was the brittle in my bones and the absence where good things once flowed.
Yet in my human wasteland I met someone.
I met myself. I met what I really cared about and what was worth the fight. I met things I'd been keeping long past there due date and I finally picked up others that wanted to be held.
This is why they say that the desert is a beautiful place. It is. All God's landscapes are. Every terrain has its purpose as does each person that walks through them.
I suspect the desert will always be a place inside me. Perhaps it's not a matter of walking out of deserts, but a matter of understanding as much as I can about dry places.

~

What about you? Where do you walk in life? ever felt the desert inside your words?

PS- I would like to thank everyone who came by while I was away to tell me they were thinking of me. Thank you for the emails, facebook messages and the tweets. (Karen Walker, Tamika, Donna, Patti and so many others) I read all your comments and went to many of your blogs even if I did not comment. I feel I am supported and cared about. It will be my greatest pleasure to visit your blogs and support you now. I am very happy to be BACK!

She Should Not

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

A thirty-four year old woman should not want.

She should not want to learn french more than she speaks her own language.

She should not want to run away from the suburbs to live in an apartment above some Parisian street.

She should not want to touch the Mona Lisa.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want to write more than she wants to have another baby.

She should not put her body on the line in a boxing ring.

She should not box.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not write more than she prays.

She should not want to publish a best selling novel.

She should not write to make herself be seen.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want her abusive father to love her.

She should not want her mother to ask what it was like.

She should not want her sister to cry for the little girls they were.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

A thirty-four year old woman should not want to run naked down the aisle of a church and scream, "I hate you all."

She should not say she has bipolar.

She should not expect that friends will understand.

She should not want to be friends with people who cannot be friends.

She should not embrace those who have broken her.

She should not.

And yet, she does.

This one thing she knows. The world does not favor those who want. It favors those who settle.

She was never good at settling. It's a tiresome thing this wanting. An irksome habit.

Lonely, in ways no one will ever understand.

I am a thirty-four year old woman who should not.

And yet, she does.

What about you? What do you want that society says you should not?

I am Marco Polo

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

I am Marco Polo.

Last night I woke to find myself.
I was the ghostly form that hovered like a reflection above the waters of possibility.
I was the slight rocking of a boat moored to its pontoon, knocking knees with the the one beside.

I am Marco Polo.

She stood in front of me setting up a tripod.
I was the void of inky sea in front of her. Calm on the surface but underneath I was pressing my face up against the boarders I'd created inside me. The ones that were suppose to make it hurt less. The ones that kept me behind a glass no one would ever see.

She invited me to step up behind my camera. It was ready. Photo composed. Shutter speed set. Lens wide opened. A 30 second exposure to make use of the low light. Did I want to press the button?

I am Marco Polo.

I took the body of my camera in my right hand. So unfamiliar. A foreign object in the foreign land of photography. Through the view finder, I checked. Am I in focus? Do I see?

She stood beside me. A still shadow.
My finger paused just above the button. Was I ready to take the shot? Then I remembered, is anyone really ready for that? And...

I am Marco Polo.

A tender salt wind moved past my cheek. I clamored over the gates of my heart looked back over the gullies of my soul left behind after an old friend that once walked away... but

I am Marco Polo.

Without disturbing the spirit of the night and its becalmed boats I took the shot. Titling my head, I waited for the image to process counting every second of the exposure. My breathing. And her breathing.
Then, there it was.
"So?" she said, "What do you think?"
I nodded my head. A quite contentment. I smiled at her. We talked about something. And I knew. I'd let her in. I'd pressed my face up against the boarders of my own heavily guarded territories and I'd let her in.

In the car on the way back to her place I whispered inside myself,

"I am Marco Polo."


What about you? Do you ever find yourself up against your own boundaries. To you dare to push and discover more? Are you Marco Polo in your life, in your writing, in your living?

(photo taken at Manly Harbor not far from where I live. The image and the company I was in were both beautiful. It's fun to think that there may be more photo nights.)

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave and close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Though wise me at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightening they

do not go gentle into that good night."

Dylan Thomas 1914-1953

My right in life is not to live, for even the grasses of the fields live and harvests are sewn and grow. My purpose is not to breathe in air, sucking gluttonously at mother nature's breast, for even swine can be found suckling. I am not the beast that grazes by sun and sleeps by moon. Nor the river that loses itself in the ocean. I am not that which washes up with the tide or expires with the orange death of Autumn never to see Spring. 

But do I rage?

I am humanity. Each one beginning with the premise that we are unique. Each one built for more than survival. 

But do I rage?

Never again will there be a 'Me' or a 'You' birthed into this world. Yet there I go, gently, gently. Stepping into each morning with slippered feet and a certainty I was never given. Eating of the fat of my land as if at any moment I might have it all again.

But do I rage?

As the light dies daily over every sea and behind every mountain there exists for each one question. There exists for me. One. Question.

Do I rage?

~

What about you? Well? Do you rage? Will you come to the end of your life knowing that your words have forked no lightening? 

A New Day Under a Washed Blue Sky

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

There is a plan. Even if there doesn't appear to be. Especially if their doesn't appear to be, there is a plan.
Lately I have been hanging on this though with a white knuckled grip.
Brisbane has flooded. No, I didn't loose my home. No I didn't loose my family. But I live in a city in morning. Matt and I lost thousands of dollars worth of exhibit stands that out company builds and stores in a warehouse in Rocklea. The warehouse was gutted. Literally. The owners of the warehouse are close friends of ours. They work in the exhibit design industry the same as our family. They have built their company from the ground up, the same way we are building ours. And they lost everything. There is no insurance because Brisbane flooded in 1974 and those areas that were affected then couldn't get flood insurance after. Rocklea was one of those areas.

Like everyone, we will carry on. You do. You just do. In all this I also have a book that I have queried. Not the best of times perhaps, but who knew my city was going to flood the very week I chose to send a query letter? So I wait. For life in Brisbane to begin again and for the pages of my own life to turn. And sometimes, just sometimes, in the quite of an afternoon, when the sky exhales and the sun lays its head on the horizon, I lay my head down too.

While I was away recently, stuck up the Sunshine Coast unable to get back to Brisbane because of road closers, I sat watching this man fishing. On the edge of a sand bag jetty covered with the murk of sea moss while the beach behind him swelled with he drift wood and debris of flood water now washed into the ocean waters he threw in a fishing line. I wondered if he had family he couldn't get back to. I wonder if he had a house in Brisbane currently going under. And if he did, why fish? With all this devastation around us, why try to catch anything?

Then last night I was watching this movie. The lead character is in the back of a Hummer with bombs turning the sky a burnt orange. the bridge they have to cross to escape is blown sky high. He laughs and turns to one of his mates and says. "There's always a plan. Even when there's doesn't appear to be, there is always a plan."

I sat in the unnatural flickering light of the TV and everything stopped for me. I asked myself what I believed.
Is there a plan? A being greater than myself who is in control? Is there a God? And if I believe that, which I do, then isn't He still in control even now? Even when there seems to be no plan?
Yeah. I know. It's probably not what everyone else watching the movie was thinking, but that's me. I'm seldom on the same thought plane as others anyway :)

I finally understood the point of fishing, even after a storm, even while Brisbane floods and a people grieve. There is a plan, even when I can't see it. And sometimes that's enough to know.
As long as there is still an ocean there is a chance a to throw your line in. To be apart of the living. And to see what might become of a new day under a washed blue sky.

So tonight I whisper to all the shaking parts inside me. "There is a plan. Even when there doesn't appear to be, there is always a plan."

What about you? Ever believed there was a plan even when there didn't appear to be one?

Last

(photo by Tabitha Bird)

As the sun fell from its throne in the sky it stretched its arms towards the horizon.
An attempt to catch itself?
Maybe.

It wove its fingers through the leaves of a Morten Bay Fig. The wind dappling the fingerprints of the last sunlight on the ground.
Last?
Maybe.

The grasses rose to meet the light like an animal arching it's back, eager for the stroking hand of a kind master. The sun breathed with the afternoon. I breathed too.
Stillness?
Maybe.

I wondered how many sunsets have morphed into the liquid dark of night without me seeing them. How many before this one?
An eternity?
Maybe.

As I my skin drank in the last light of the year, a new year crouching at the door of tomorrow, I opened my eyes and saw.  Not a last sunset. Not for me. For me, this was a first.
A beginning?
Maybe.

~

What about you? Happy New Year. How did you spend the last light of 2010? I went on a date with my camera. A new obsession. Photography.

If This is How God Paints

If this is how God paints.
If His brush strokes are the green carpet of moss on an Irish rock,
the velvet blue of butterfly wings that caress a tree,
and the liquid peaches of an afternoon sky preparing to sleep
If they are the silver dew clinging to a spider's web,
the fat grays of building storm clouds,
and the black of a starless night when my voice calls
Then it is here,
in the midnight colors,
that I see His hand most.

When I am alone with the chafe of a lonely heart,
and the sores inside that no one can see,
then I remember how stark an artist's canvas is before the painting.
How white a page is before I write upon it.
And I am full of hope. Because perhaps I am a color yet placed,
a word yet read...
and I wonder at the beauty of life yet to come,
If this is how God paints.

Between Sky and Sea.

There is a space between water and sky where we are neither swimming nor flying. We are neither floating nor soaring.
In these places we walk.

Our feet touch the earth and, if we are wise, we walk with footsteps that are aware of the purposefulness of their treading upon the ground. In this space between above and beneath we are apt to meet other creatures. For you see it is the gathering place for those who would fly and those who would swim. And if we walk with time enough to sit, and sit with time enough to listen, we may open our ears to stories of what is beneath the waves and what is above the clouds. We may learn that we have something to give and something to take away.

For the fringe of society sit upon the sands. Lost sea lions, gulls with broken wings, star fish washed up on the shore. Those who breathe, take space or slip outside their own worlds for a time are found along the shore. As one of Gods creatures great and small this walking in the betwixt and between is the most important walking we may ever do. We too may join the Sand Sitters for awhile and come away changed. A gull who shared her story of flying, a sea lion that told of his passion for diving. And for those lost souls who may well have forgotten they can indeed fly or swim, we may be blessed enough to led them again to the edge of their blueness and watch them take their own journey home.

If there is a greater place to live than on the edges of what we know then I am not aware of it. To come together and walk or sit is the gift of living, the gift of loving and the human part of humanity.

There is a space between water and sky... in these places we walk.

Ugly Fruit

"But if something is slightly bruised, speckled or dinged on the outside, we don't usually take the time to wonder if it might be ambrosial within."

~ Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune, August, 2010.

Around the blogosphere, I hear a lot of self-doubt. Writers are known to wade in a fair bit of the muck. I include myself here. If my words don't strut onto my page in high heels and Versace dress first time around I want to throw my computer off the balcony. You might say I expect a lot of myself and you'd be right. I want the divine. Red carpet all the way.

When my words clunk on in with torn checkered shirts and mud on their Ugg Boots (as they frequently do) I am not sure whether to attempt a makeover right there on the red carpet or throw myself on the floor and head bang. (Sheesh! Who do these words think they are anyway?)

Then I got to thinking, what if words are really more like fruit? (I know, from red carpet to fruit- work with me here) Ever grown tomatoes?  They start with a little flower. Pretty, but if you are only interested in the red fruit you'd miss that. If you didn't know something better was coming you wouldn't be excited when those first buds appeared. 

And avocado. Now there's an ugly fruit. The thing is black and wrinkled before it has flavor inside. 

What am I saying? (apart from the fact that I am obviously lovin my metaphors today) 

Embrace the ugly fruit. 

Enjoy the little flower. 

How can a fruit know how close to being ripe it is? 

Our job is to be where we are on the path to wherever we are going. Given time, our lives and words might also be ambrosial inside.

What about you? Red carpet glamorous? or Lover of the Ugly Fruit?

The Woman with Holes

There was a little girl whose world was full of holes. Big ones. Small ones. Ones that only tripped up her foot. A bit like protruding gnarled tree root. 

She fell. Maybe she scrapped her knee. But she got straight back up. 

Then there were other holes. Nasty ones with sharp teeth and big jaws that sucked her in and swallowed her up. 

Other people did not see the holes in her world. But she saw them. There was one next to her bed most mornings. It is hard to get out of bed when you are worried about falling into a hole. And sometimes it was hard to face the day when she knew there would be more holes everywhere she walked. 

So the little girl was scared a lot. Other people didn't understand that. They told her to smile. What was she afraid of? What could possibly happen? But the girl knew. She was scared of her holes. Scared that she wouldn't see them. Or that someone would say something, or do something that would push her into a hole. Or that she would see the hole, but only when it was too late and she was already falling.

Some holes were not so bad. They didn't scare the little girl so much. Those holes were shallow. The kind of holes that didn't block the sun, even at the bottom. Those were the holes the girl fell into when she couldn't run fast enough to win the race, or because she growled at someone she loved, or maybe just because it had been raining for days. She'd sit in those holes for a little while, but then she'd remember that not everyone is a fast runner. She could say sorry to the person she growled at. And if she waited just a little longer the sun's light would reach her again. Sometimes she even remembered how to enjoy the rain. Even rain that went on for days. Puddles were fun sometimes too.

But then there were other holes. Sink holes. There was no sun at the bottom of those holes. It was so dark the girl could not even see herself. She could hear things. Like her Mommy screaming. Or feel things. Things that hurt. But she was lost in her hole. Lost, even to herself.

Those holes scared the little girl so much she started pretending that bad things weren't happening. She told herself not to think about them. Ever. Then she wouldn't sit in holes, and that was just fine with her.

For a while that was okay. All the bad wolf holes were covered. Or she cover them when they appeared by pretending to be someone else or be somewhere else. She got very good at that game. Very good indeed.

Then the little girl grew up and became a woman. Because that is what Little Girl's do.

The Sink Holes started appearing again. No matter how hard she tried not to think about sad things, the  sad things came and found her. She thought about Little Sister. She used to tell her stories and make her laugh. That is what big sisters do. Little Sister's laughing always mad her laugh. Little Sister used to watch her eat ice-blocks, and then try to eat hers the exact same way. That is what Little Sister's do. 

You might think that sounds like a happy thing to think. It's not. Little sister grew up too. And she got sick. Too sick to hear the stories. And much to sick to eat ice-blocks. Maybe one day... see the woman was thinking sad things again.

When she thought sad things for too long, she cried. And when she cried the ground beneath her feet got soggy. That is when the holes opened up. The sadder the thing she was thinking, the more tears, and the more tears, the deeper the hole.

Those kind of holes scared the woman.  She worried about not being able to get out. Not ever. And having to live her life out at the bottom of a hole. Which would be dark. And cold. And very very lonely. No one would come looking for her, because no one saw the holes in her world.

One day she got brave. Or perhaps she was more scared of the sink holes than she was of telling someone about them. So she told. She told her Sink Hole stores until she cried and cried. 

The Listener was very good. Gifted even. She saw the holes. The big ones and the small ones.  Together The Listener and the Woman with Holes started talking about how to fill them in. How to build bridges. How to tell other people in her life about the holes. How to make paths. Safe paths. Paths that curved around Sink Holes. It didn't mean the woman didn't fall. It meant she was not alone. The Listener sat by the edge of those holes until the woman worked out how to climb up again.

Now days the woman is still scared of holes. It's becoming a healthy fear. One she uses to remember to look where she is going and where she is putting her feet. She still climbs out of holes. 

Maybe one day there won't be holes. But until then, she is not alone. She climbs. She talks. And she writes.

~

What about you? Do you have holes? Do you climb? Do you talk? Do you write?

(image credit: http://physicsworld.com/blog/2010/06/post_6.html)

If you Give a Girl an Edit

I thought I had nothing to say. My insides are a mash of soaking bits of my soul that need drying out and words that long since dried. Despite the mess, I have to admit, the words, such as they are, should probably be shared. What is a writer, after all, if they can't write even when the typing hurts?

So, many of you know I have written a memoir. After  receiving unexpected interest from agents and editors at a conference in May this year I gathered my dreams and started planting them in fertile soil.  Recently I have had spectacular advise from an agent on how to restructure the book along with an expressed desire to read my re-write. All of which is wonderful... and down right scary.

The thing about memoir is that in order to craft something worthy of seeping into other people's souls  the author must first open their own soul and cut to the bone of their life. Not easy. In fact, it's terrifying. And while I know I have this story within me, it takes guts to get ones head in a space to sit down again with nightmares of your past and ghosts of your hopes and re-write a memoir. Indeed  all writing, no matter the genre, takes such courage.

And that's the question. How much courage do I have? Enough for a simple re-write? Or enough to plunge deep into the Shadow Lands and emerge with a book that has truly changed me, and thus possesses the possibility of changing others?

Because I know what I want. I was never the girl who floated on the surface of life. Like I have said before, wanting hurts. Even holding hopes hurts sometimes. I guess that's where courage is birthed. On the edge of myself  I chose to both want and hope.

What about you? I am hopeful that this year will see something open up for my memoir. I am hopeful for your writing too, blogging friends. I know many of your dreams are the same as mine.
Hope with me?

X
Tab

Hold Belief

I believe in painted colors splashed across a post-storm sky.

I believe in beauty from junkyards, left overs and the overlooked.

I believe in cracked lives that aren't afraid of their imperfections.

I believe in holding your future, though it be water in your hands.

I believe in music even if you cannot hear.

I believe in whispers that reach you in the midnight hours and wrap themselves around your wounds.

I believe that could be you.

I believe in saving photos in your mind to keep you company in old age.

I believe in the thunder of togetherness, the healing in holding hands and kissing lips.

I believe in home being a place where you always are, not a building you live in.

I believe in the possibility of one drop becoming an ocean.

I believe in those we least expect doing the unexpected.

I believe that could be you.

I believe in the power of words to eclipse your life time.

I believe in stretching the dimensions of our thinking so we may never return to smallness again.

I believe in the greatness of Him to add to the littleness of me.

I believe in the unseen, the unprovable, the improbable.

I believe in finding when you are not looking and seeking when you think you've found.

And I believe in miracles.

I believe that could be you.

What about you? What do you believe in?

Do I matter?

This morning I woke with billions of others and breathed in the air they breathed out. My eyes opened at the same time yours did. I stood. You stood. They stood with the masses. Alone in my room, I hung my head.
Do I matter? I wondered out loud to the walls and millions echoed my question.

As I dressed and ate and went through my morning trillions of people passed by my window. They trawled through their day just as I trawled through mine.  We ate. We slept. We loved and lost and cried out. We died and we were born. Another soul. An endless sky of humanity. And all of us, every single one, were thinking the same thoughts that ticker-taped through mind.
Do I matter? I wondered out loud to the walls, and millions echoed my question.

The trouble is not that I only see me in the mirror. The trouble is that I see you, and you and you and you and... Where do I end? Where do you begin?  And as I stared into that mirror I further blurred that line of distinction.
Do I matter? I wondered and millions echoed my question.

I am afraid. As you are afraid. As they are. As we are. That I am not here for anything more than the space I occupy. That when the numbers are counted I won't have added to the sum. That nothing within me matters so much that I am the only one who could share it. Mothers wonder if their mothering matters. Career people if the jobs make a difference. Leaders wonder about there leadership. Followers about their following. Artists wonder about their creations, singers about their songs. And as a writer my question scared me senseless. Do my words matter? Will it ever matter?

Do. I. Matter? I wondered and millions echoes my question.

Today in my guttered silence I asked again,  and though it was only a lowly whisper, He heard.
This I know for sure. He is the One who has numbered the hairs on my head. We number many things. Who numbers hairs? He is the One who watched over my unformed being as I was knitted together in my mother's womb. Who has such vision?
And this is what my heart heard. "I think of you constantly. Though I hung the stars and turn the planets, I think of you. Though I set the foundations of the outer rings of this universe in place. I think of you.  You are mine. You matter. Do you hear me, child? You matter.  My thoughts towards you are greater than the sands on every beach. You are created for a purpose and day. An appointed hour and a time. A life and a living. Before all time, I thought of you. And my plans for you are perfect."
And I knew. Deep in that Little Girl place that cried out. I knew.

"Do you matter?" you asked. And millions echoed your question.

What about you? How do you answer that question? Do you matter? How do you know?

Step Off

"When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." ~ Barbara J. Winter

Step off... step out, step up, just don't step back. 
Back is where you have been. 
Forwards is where you are going. 
There is nothing so rewarding as a thundering forwards step. Even if the ground quakes. Even if you fall.


Write your way there. Be your life's ambition. And when you get to the last words of your book and type 'the end' think about how all endings are really beginnings. 


If writing is the breathing of your heart, be your own tomorrow. Imagine your future self and have her visit the self of today. Listen when she speaks the words you wish you could go back and tell yourself. 
"This will turn out so much better than you could ever have hoped. Hang in there."


And then, 
                step off.




What about you? When have you stepped off? Did you regret it?


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