Tag: WITR

Let’s get the terms straight.

THEY::: those who want to exploit the masses expressly and exclusively for their own self-interests.

YOU::: the one they have believing this is about somebody else: the foreclosures. the job loss. the fascism.  

In a Country with Strange Taboos

by dharmasyd

For rusty1776 in gratitude for his

“Writing in the Raw: Valentine Confessions”

I remember when you brought me hyacinths

We walked the path under pepper trees

Laughed our way to the beach

To play in the surf like yearling seals

And when you kissed me, your salt wet curls

Dripped ocean on my face

I was a virgin then, and you a married man

In a country with strange taboos

^{Camille Claudel}

Yes, that’s correct, I’m one of those anal retentive writers who believe in spelling and capitalization and punctuation and grammar.  Links lend credibility and context.

Sometimes people mistake my style for stream of consciousness.  They would be surprised to learn that almost everything is outlined and constructed.  What I do is tell stories, like Garrison Keillor or Mark Twain or Dashiell Hammett.  Because most of them do in fact come from personal experience while they have a middle, they seldom have a firm beginning or end; though I am always trying to make a point.

In the beginning.  Where is that exactly?  First the Earth was formed, then the dinosaurs came and Jesus rode them like ponies.  Homer started his poems in medias res and at the beginning we are on the shores of Troy or Ithaca and have the great relief for the rest of the tedious tale that our hero makes it that far at least, so we have no serious concerns for his welfare.

Much of the rest may seem mere wandering flashbacks but because the reader has peeked ahead they are assured they will eventually get somewhere.

So every essay is also all about process as long as you learn from it.

Here I’ve been experimenting with form, trying to write shorter, and more political, and shorter AND more political.  An ideal Front Page piece will have 200 to 500 words and at least one graphic or blockquote for visual interest. That’s about 4 or five paragraphs.  Not much time to get to the point.

Although I had lived, and hiked, and backpacked in the Southwest for twenty or so years, encounters with rattlesnakes were pretty rare. If one sees snakes at all, they’re usually stretched across a trail or road.  I had sure never encountered one where it posed a problem, like crawling into someones sleeping bag. The closest anyone I knew ever came was when I was hiking with my nephew, he once sat on a large large rock that had a rattler underneath.  When it rattled, he moved.  This is generally considered appropriate behavior.  He might have been maybe a little too excited,  and ran much farther than he needed to, but the move-away–leave-it-alone strategy is all one really needs to do in most cases.  The people that do get bitten are usually young, drunk, and male.  

Most people in rural areas with great hideouts like barns and woodpiles, will usually handle rattlesnake encounters with matter-of-fact blowing them away with a shotgun.

I somehow got a job at a nature sanctuary near a small town and moved there from Tucson.  I had been a volunteer for a few years and Jerry, the manager, finally had the funding to hire some help.   Meetings with rattlesnakes increased.

_________________________________________________________________________________

“What is a LEADER?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“A LEADER isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It’s realizing that every experience develops some latent force within you.¹ You begin to understand that vision is the art of seeing the invisible² so that when you want to build a wagon, you don’t gather the other toys to collect wood or assign them tasks, but rather you teach them to long for ways to traverse the endless immensity of the backyard.³ Then you become a LEADER.”

there are times for anger. and action. there are times for confusion and catastrophe. there used to be… time for love.

yet is seems much of my time has been spent feeling overcome by the weight of so many bad things happening all at once that it….

… makes me forget why i’m so angry… because i love.

or why i feel this need to fight against changing winds, rising seas, cultural hatred, and eve_vree_thing else that darkens the sun… because i love