Growing Older

By Bob Chrisman

Last fall, determined to catch the color changes in the leaves, I watched them turn from green to yellow, orange, and red. I would sit on the window seat in the front room and write about the colors.
One day…suddenly it seemed…the leaves had all turned. When did it happen? I had been watching [...]

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PRACTICE: Birth Order - 15min

I’m trying to remember how it was. I see myself skinny on the concrete driveway, dirty knock knees, a striped t-shirt, tiny bumps for boobs. Not only the youngest, but a young youngest.
I didn’t develop until I was 17, didn’t know about Kotex or tampons, although my older sisters told me about starting periods and [...]

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PRACTICE - Birth Order - 15min

Yes, I’m a firstborn. With all the flaws, rights, privileges, and responsibilities that go with being a firstborn. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Hmmm. JFK? No, it was Peter Benjamin Parker. Spider-Man.
Maybe it should read, “With great responsibility comes great power.” Either way, there is an ethical piece, a balance between burden and privilege.
Firstborns [...]

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Growing Old

By Bo

Growing old? I can handle my getting older. I barely notice the days sneaking past. But then I barely noticed the days creeping past my mother, either — she lives 300 miles away and has always maintained her independence. Then there was a death in the family – a dear aunt who was the same [...]

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PRACTICE – Pink Frog Moon — 15min

I was torn. Pink Moon, Frog Moon, Moon of the Greening Grass. I liked Flower Moon and Broken Snowshoe Moon. I imagined fumbling out of a leather strap on an antique snowshoe, ice jamming the buckle, stepping out just long enough to sink knee-deep into what’s left of Winter. But it is the Frog Moon [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - BIRTH ORDER

                          
                                                      

Birth order. Does it matter?

That was the headline, more or less, of a CNN article that came out last fall, which said that birth order may, in fact, matter a lot. That same month TIME ran its own take on recent hard evidence demonstrating “The Power of Birth Order.”

For example, firstborns are more likely to go [...]

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PRACTICE – The 7 Deadly Sins – 10min

Of the 7 Deadly Sins, I find Lust and Wrath to be the most harmful to humanity. That may say more about me, than it does humanity. Lust to excess leads to unseemly, crass actions. I am stunned by news programs where a bait is placed on the Internet and some guy shows up at [...]

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Pablo Neruda’s Love Of Things

Oda a las cosas
by Pablo Neruda

Amo las cosas loca,
locamente.
Me gustan las tenazas,
las tijeras,
adoro las tazas,
las argollas,
las soperas,
sin hablar, por supuesto,
del sombrero.
Amo todas las cosas,
no sólo
las supremas,
sino
las
infinita-
mente
chicas,
el dedal,
las espuelas,
los platos,
los floreros.

Ay, alma mía,
hermoso
es el planeta,
lleno
de pipas
por la mano
conducidas
en el humo,
de llaves,
de saleros,
en fin,
todo
lo que se hizo
por la mano del hombre, toda cosa:
las curvas del zapato,
el tejido,
el [...]

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morada haiku

Morada Walk, Taos Mountain in the background, white
cross Georgia O’Keeffe painted, Taos, New Mexico,
January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo ©
2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

gusty April winds
ruffle brambled shoots of green
Spring bounds from behind

anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark

photosynthesis
through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world

-posted on red Ravine, [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - THE 7 DEADLY SINS

7, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Can you list the 7 Deadly Sins? I usually get to number 6 and fade out. I can never remember all 7. The 7 Deadly Sins began with Evagrius Ponticus as a list of 8 capital vices. A condensed version of the list [...]

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PRACTICE: Growing Older - 20min

I look in the mirror before I start writing but I can’t hold my own gaze. My nose is red from crying, eyes small. My skin is blotchy, and I am critical of my hair. It seems to get pulled straight by its own weight. I want my curls back.
Dad tells me this morning that [...]

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PRACTICE - Growing Older - 20min

I’m looking at my ruddy face in a small, round, silver mirror. I look older than I remember. Thick eyebrows, salt and pepper hair; it looks the grayest to me right after a haircut. There is something about the way it lays across the black plastic smock, and falls in shredded pieces on to the [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - GROWING OLDER

Sarah (Book of Genesis), gouache on wooden board retablo,
painting © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

You can’t stop it. The tick-tock of the clock.
Once I heard someone say that time doesn’t pass (as if we’re standing still and time flows on by); instead, we pass through time.
Perhaps you don’t want to stop the passage of time. [...]

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PRACTICE – Tools Of The Trade – 20min

Van Morrison is on in the background singing, They Sold Me Out. Later…Jools Holland. The sky is lit up at 7:51. A few months ago, dark by 4pm. I’m thinking about Mrs. Blume, my 4th grade teacher. She said her son, Jules had a crush on me. Why? Because my hair looked like Patty Duke. [...]

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flying back home haiku

Somewhere over Arizona, the flight home from California, photo (not taken with my cell phone camera) © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

how come the return
is shorter than departure?
finally, exhaling

-related to post: haiku (one-a-day)

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How I Spent My Spring Break Vacation (Day 1)

We buckled in Colby Jack.
(Monkey also came.
So did Wally the Platypus.)

We saw snow on the mountains.
(But where we were going,
there was no snow.)

It was down there somewhere.
Underneath all the smog.
   

Finally, we could see something.
Ah, yes, an airport parking lot.

We got our Ford Escape.
Look, the underside of a plane!

We drove our car to our [...]

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A 40-Year Love Affair

By Teri Blair

Parkway Marquee, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

In 1989 the Academy-Award winning Cinema Paradiso was released. The Italian film takes place in a post-World War II Sicilian village, and chronicles the friendship of a young boy, Toto, and the town’s gruff but lovable movie projectionist, Alfredo. Toto [...]

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PRACTICE - Everything I Know About Bugs - 15min

There is a lot I don’t know about insects, spiders, and bugs. I do know they are connected to memories, sometimes traumatic memories. I had no idea my family had so many connected memories about bugs and creepy crawlers until this Writing Topic was posted and I started reading their comments. Memories are part of [...]

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Piglet Bearing Gifts (red Ravine’s 2007 Guests)

Piglet Bearing Gifts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2007, photo © 2007 by SkyWire Alley. All rights reserved.

I’m afraid the photograph of Piglet gives me away — I’m a little late posting this piece. I had wanted to get it out in January. You know what they say about the best laid plans.
Still, it wouldn’t be right [...]

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PRACTICE: Mess - 25min

Something about Mess nags at me. I can’t put my finger on it, although I know it has to do with control, wanting a perfect life. Wanting nothing to get out of hand.
It’s not me, I’m not a tidy person. Although there is something there as I age. A desire to finally and at last [...]

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PRACTICE - Mess - 25min

The world is a messy place. My home? It is messy in spots, little corners, under the living room table, around the computer desk. It finds order when we clean. And returns to chaos again. I usually recognize an order to the chaos. I manage to find what I need. I’m staring out the window [...]

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The Name Game (What’s In A Name?)

I continue to pore through photographs and tapes of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina last summer.
“What’s taking you so long?” Monkey Mind yells from the wings (grabbing every opportunity to scratch his haunches).
“It’s a slow process, excavating the past,” I soberly reply. “Don’t rush me.”

Family history rises from the rich, black compost - memories, stories, [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - MESS

I Spy with My Little Eye, contents of Em’s backpack (find 1 pepperoni stick,
2 Gatorades, 3 sandwiches in various states of eaten, 8 pencils, 2 bobble-
heads, 1 sweater), photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

mess (mes), n. 1. a dirty or untidy mass or group of things;
dirty or untidy condition. 2. confusion; difficulty. 3. an
unpleasant or unsuccessful [...]

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PRACTICE - Tattoos - 20min

I thought about getting a tattoo. In my 40’s. I changed my mind at the last minute. It was going to be a lynx. Yeah, the puffy jowls that look like Kiev’s. When you brush her hair back, her face is thin and pointy like Chaco’s. But naturally, it’s wider at the edges than it [...]

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The Legacy Of Subway Worker & Artist Marvin Franklin

Self Portrait, by Marvin Franklin,
image from The New York Times slide show

An article in this week’s The New York Observer caught my eye, about Marvin Franklin’s first art show, at the New York Transit Museum.
Franklin was a Metropolitan Transportation Authority track worker who was killed by a train on April 29, 2007, at age 55 and [...]

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PRACTICE – Snow Moon (Total Lunar Eclipse) – 20min

The Full Snow Moon was bright, then blood red, the last Total Lunar Eclipse until 2012. There are many names for February’s Moon: Sleet Moon, Goose Moon, Coyote Moon. I even found a reference from the Sioux, Raccoon Moon. I thought of our resident raccoon. I bundled wool over exposed skin, stood outside in no [...]

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valentine haiku

Valentine Primroses, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

red primrose surprise
fluffy white valentine hearts
fall from the gray sky

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, February 14th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)

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PRACTICE - Hair - 15min

I can’t stand loose, grubby hair on the bottom of my socks. I either go barefoot, or wear slippers around the house. But I rarely go barefoot (tender feet). So we’re back to the slippers. My slippers are (were) Minnetonka Moccasins I had for the last, oh, probably, 20 years. They finally wore through at [...]

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PRACTICE - Martin Luther King - 15min

I don’t remember Martin Luther King in 1962 or ‘63 when I was 8 or 9 or 10. I don’t remember him when I lived in the South. I must have been sheltered from all the strife and unrest that was going on during those years. I would not have understood.
I do remember him in [...]

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PRACTICE - Wolf Moon - 10min

The January Wolf Moon was wide and full, smeared across the morning sky the way an artist rubs a chalky finger across gray charcoal on paper. It was Liz that pointed it out to me, half asleep in the kitchen making coffee. By the time I got to the window, she was already out the [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - MARTIN LUTHER KING

Planting The Seed, Lightpainting Series, stained glass window, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

When I walked out into the sub-zero temperatures yesterday to warm up my car, a piece by NPR’s Enrique Rivera poured out of the Alpine radio speakers. Rubbing my hands together, and pulling the end of [...]

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PRACTICE - No More Tears - 20min

There is a lost feeling that comes over me this time of year. In the gap between New Year’s and whatever happens next in my life. That’s not specific enough. Lost is a feeling. And a place.
Specifics. Next gains in employment. Which aspects of moneymaking do I add to the writing agenda? How do I [...]

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Josephine Dickinson - On Poetry & Silence

Writers Hands VI, Josephine Dickinson, Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Josephine Dickinson read her poetry at the Fitzgerald Theater last April, sharing the stage with her mentor, Galway Kinnell. She met Galway at a poetry reading at Morden Tower in Northumberland. She was drawn to [...]

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like daughter, like father riddle

 

What do you get when you cross
a rhino knot with an orangutan butt?

A rhino butt, says Em.

Peas in a Pod, Em and her dad watching TV.

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Do You Do Politics?

Viva Kennedy, detail of old political button given to me by my father, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Something happens to me every four years, right about now. I start to care about the presidential elections.
I start to get passionate and close in on who I want to win my party’s nomination. I [...]

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