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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
 Posted - 10/19/2008 : 11:35:53
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Ailinn, your Marcella Delight segment is among
the best I've read of your writing.
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 11:39:11
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| This place, this road, this patch of ground / One bird alone is singing / You're gone and yet you're still around / And all the good you gave me / Moves inside my body now / A bell that goes on ringing / One bird alone, a loving sound / You're gone, but here, you're still around... |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 17:25:10
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| Doug, Thank you for the kind words...and the light you bring to this fire. We've been together a long time sharing the song and the story. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/24/2008 : 19:22:32
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"He was a photographer," Marcella said tonight. We were standing on the wide veranda after sunset. The staff has it decorated with autumn leaves and straw people in patch-work clothes. When she said his name I knew it. "The Gallery was young then," she said. "His portfolio was- Lonliness alive. It took my breath away. It disturbed me." She stood at the railing watching the sky grow dark. Then she waved her hand dismissively. "Closure! I hate that word! It's the way of those who want things to go smoothly in spite of in spite of! An idea for fools!" I'd never seen her so angry. Her hands trembled when she drew her shawl around her shoulders.
She invited me to view her "Hobo Album." His work. She has a pass for breakfast tomorrow morning. There's a Broken Yolk on the corner of El Camino Real. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 10/24/2008 : 23:48:52
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He didn't think it was something to share with others.
As if that private relationship would be lessened by
too much contact with people. Sundays, he'd stay home,
wake up with the bells already clanging. Some other day,
a Tuesday afternoon perhaps when the cathedral was empty,
he'd go and sit near the back and listen to the stone,
the echoes in the air, feel the quiet, and reflect on
his life and the lives it had been touched by. Coming
outside again, the light made him lift his hand to shield
his eyes. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2008 : 06:30:13
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It was 1960, so I must have been around nine.
Coming out of some famous hall in Philadelphia
having just heard Billy Graham preach about
Heaven and Hell.
A large very black lady was coming
down the stairs to our left,
just one of the many in the crowd,
when she started screaming a high
piercing scream and bright red blood
began pouring from her nose and mouth.
I remember she fell down on her back
on the stairs and the blood was everywhere and
then we were outside.
I remember thinking about what the preacher
had said about Heaven and Hell and
hoping that the lady had been listening
better than me and gotten it right.
I don't remember much of anything else
from that year, but I always remembered
that and wondered when in my life it
was going to happen to me.
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2008 : 10:02:16
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A bright October Sunday morning
after days of rain.
A 9/11 blue sky brings out
the bursting of colors on
the mountain behind my house.
Even after eighteen months of
waking up without a hangover,
the nerve endings that control
intimacy and relationships are
still stunted a bit...
The Giants and Jets are on today,
got Michael Connelly's new mystery
and a good cup of coffee.
Now, even tho I am not yet a total fool,
I know that this is not as good as it gets.
But, all things considered,
I'll take it, today. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2008 : 11:51:22
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What am I afraid of pausing to look at?
The old Irish poet wrote to me, asking this
of himself, encouraging me to ask it, too.
He wrote that the last time he came to America
he went mad, had a nervous breakdown in Philadelphia.
"I sobbed and could no longer speak," he said.
I wanted to write, "That happens to everybody who
goes to Philadelphia," but caught myself.
Instead, I looked at my own scattered family.
My mother and father, sister and brother, all
much louder now in their silence, each secret
about to grab a bullhorn and howl.
DL
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aussiedave
Rocker
Australia
472 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2008 : 23:40:04
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one day
I will do a doug and alice
and just stephen bishop
into the future
I will disappear
by stealing the stars
from the sky
put on Newbury
and begin to cry
on and on.
AD
]I'm just fine ailinn,and you?[ |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 10/27/2008 : 00:58:30
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Lorelei stepped from, no..- she fell from the darkness at the top
of the winding staircase. Looking up, she cried out in pain. What was wrong with her? She had only had that one drink just before
she went to bed. Or, had it been two? Johnny had mixed it for
her, and insisted that she drink it straight down. It usually
calmed her and helped her to sleep -- like a baby. The baby.
Where was Elizabeth? Lorelei couldn't remember putting her
baby to bed for the night, which was something she always did.
She had to get up from the floor. But, she couldn't move her
legs. "Johnny !!!!!!! John !!! Help me !!" Silence. Only
silence. The silence in the house was deafening, even in the
midst of Lorelei's screams. Elizabeth wasn't crying, and Johnny
wasn't there.... Was he ??? |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/27/2008 : 18:16:03
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| Melancholy time in the tule fog, AD. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/27/2008 : 18:20:57
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| One night he shows her where the boat is hidden. Their shoulders touching in the starry dark. A large boat for one man to handle. But he's inventive...and mechanically inclined. He tells her this river leads to the sea. That three-masted schooners once sailed this far inland. She's not sure if this is true or just something he believes. He believes many things she's never seen proof of. |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3707 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2008 : 18:39:50
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it curls first and then succumbs to a stirring of dread sleep
like a coven of doubtless nightmares
needle fingertips solely rocking slow cradles
what whining isnt deafening
when whimpering screams dampen the sheets
shifting into the transparent dimensions of gossamer lullabies
~ naga |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 11/01/2008 : 17:28:00
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| Marcella Delight with her hallowed "Hobo Album", and now Clotilda, a small bird with dark eyes and silver hair. Silver feathers easily ruffled. She lights the forbidden cigarette and smokes with her chin defiantly lifted. "It was this same night many years ago..." she says watching the torch-bearing skeletons dancing down El Camino Real. "I haven't spoken of him for years. Who was there to speak to? I'm not ungrateful for our years together, I'm just impatient for this part to end," she sweeps her hand across the star-lit panorama. "He was the one true man," she says. And I think... These women... So much inside and so little time! Are their hearts grief-riven, or are they the fortunate ones? To live eighty years...and to remember? |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 11/01/2008 : 17:35:50
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| This is the weekend of skulls and candles. Dias De Los Muertos. Cemeteries with thousands of votives flickering in ruby jars. Huge arches of marigolds decorated with photographs and mementos of the departed. Strolling Mariachis and local Priests stopping at each decorated gravesite. All-night vigils. Families offering food and drink. And always the Pan de Muerto. An egg bread with dough-shaped bones on top sprinkled with sugar or anise seed. To welcome the returning spirits of the dead. "It gets very crowded," Mirella says. |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 11/02/2008 : 01:07:10
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She jumped from Heaven into my life just a little
over four years ago. Her name is Ashlyn. She is
my granddaughter. I adore her. I absolutely adore
her!!! She has Scandinavian blonde hair, sky blue
eyes, fair skin, full pink lips that are smiling
or laughing out loud a lot of the time. Her
mischievous ways are infectious. The last time I
visited her, I was in her bed with her and we were
talking. I asked her if she had come from Heaven.
She said, "Yes". I asked her if Jesus said anything
to her when she was there. She didn't even hesitate.
She said, "Yes. He told me to leave!" I said,
"Leave?"... Ashlyn said, "Yes, and come to this house!!"
I thought back to when it was first found out that Ashlyn
was to be a girl and not a boy. Her dad was so upset
about it that his anger filtered down to the rest of the
family, and made life miserable as Ashlyn's mother
carried her under her heart awaiting her birth. What a
horrible thing to do to his family. What a horrible
impression to leave in their hearts. Ashlyn doesn't
know it and she doesn't have to. She loves him. He's
her dad ... But, when she told me that Jesus told her
to leave Heaven and ....... come ... to this house......
her answer wasn't fed to her in any way. The things
my two granddaughters have said to me concerning Heaven
and Jesus are astounding to me. Wonderfully and scarily ..
astounding. My first granddaugher, Kristyn, told me
when she was about three that .... "when I was in Heaven,
Nanu, I was a angel." (never forgot that one, either)
BGee
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Edited by - BarbraG on 11/02/2008 01:09:41 |
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aussiedave
Rocker
Australia
472 Posts |
Posted - 11/02/2008 : 01:23:49
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Melancholy:
dejection,depression,despondency,gloom,gloominess,sadness,sorrow,dejected,depressed,despondent,disconsolate,dismal,dispirited,doleful,downcast,downhearted,gloomy,glum,lowspirited,lugubrious,miserable,moody,sad,sorrowul,unhappy.
~but the fog clears~
I am in heaven...........where melancholic contentment is a natural high.
AD |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 11/02/2008 : 06:39:23
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In the end the early departed no longer have
need of us. One is gently weaned from things
of this world as a child outgrows the need
of its mother's breast. But we who have need
of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is
so often the source of spiritual growth,
could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning
in the midst of the mourning for Linos?
the daring first sounds of song piercing
the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,
the emptiness felt for the first time
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture
and comfort and help us.
Rilke |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 11/02/2008 : 07:40:22
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The Death of the Flowers
By William Cullen Bryant
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit?s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and
stood
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! They all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on
men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade, and glen.
And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests casts the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 11/02/2008 : 16:15:57
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"Hard country," he says the last time they cross the border.
Little pillows of dust where his bots touch the ground. A hot
wind licking their sunburned shoulders. He believes in the
consequence of choices. Cataclysmic and profound. The sky
overhead lowering like molten glass. Nature's apocalyptic portfolio.
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The Nightly Vigil