on a collision course

A Sea of Words

2011-09-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

Check out Linda Collison's author blog, Sea of Words http:/www.lindacollison.com/blog

Tazmanian author blogs about Star-Crossed

2011-06-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.margaretmuirauthor.blogspot.com/

Is it just me, or is there a draft in here?

2011-05-05T14:44:00.000-07:00

The book is published, now comes the anxiety; how will your readers respond? It feels like one of those dreams when you discover you're somehow naked in the middle of a crowded room where everyone else is fully dressed.

I think you have to find a balance between accepting and learning from well-intended criticism and deflecting snipes from those readers who -- ZING!-- can take you out with one devastating remark. Praise too, can be hard to accept, though I'm not sure why.

Having written and published two novels and two nonfiction books, I now read with a more critical eye, yet a more empathetic understanding for fellow authors. Writing, like life, is a learn-as-you-go endeavour.

That said, I'm happy to share the first review of Surgeon's Mate, from David Hayes of Historic Naval Fiction, who recently interviewed me.

Interview with Astrodene's Historical Naval Fiction

2011-04-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

It was a little intimidating, being interviewed by David Hayes of Astrodene's Historical Naval Fiction, David being a Brit and all. To have Surgeon's Mate included on his site is a feather in this Yank's cap, for sure. Well it seems I have a series to write, so back to the 18th century I go...

Surgeon's Mate

2011-04-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Published by Fireship Press; April, 2011

Best Holiday Gifts Under $50!

2010-11-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

A cup of coffee and a sypathetic ear.

A walk down memory lane over a bottle of wine.

A book that changed the way you look at life.

A photograph that speaks a thousand words.

Music, in any format.

A meal made with love.

A heartfelt smile, the kind that lights up your whole face.

Time. Not a watch, but the extravagance of your time, freely given.

today the dog died

2010-09-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

I sit in the twilight alone
with my sorrow
silence like a kettle drum
creshendoing in my head
My thoughts run on and on
a rosary, mardi gras beads,
baubles on threads of memories my own and
those bequeathed to me
or imagined
invented
picked up like cheap souvenirs from
some former life
We are never alone we are
always alone
I can't decide
I want to cry
but can't afford
the luxury

-- lscollison 0/23/2010

deja vu

2010-08-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

Dreams are the poems of our old illiterate souls
twisted syntax of emotions
raw fear and desire
incomprehensible yet
understood

Created maybe by our monkey minds
cobbling bright bits and warnings gathered
from the debris of the day
They make no sense to our daytime minds
but are perceived in the marrow of our bones
recorded in the nucleus
of every cell, entwined in the DNA
or maybe the RNA, who knows
those twisted chromosomes, the squirming genes
carry more than we know

You don't forget your dreams
you carry them around, a bundle on your back
an invisible load balanced on your head
as did your Grandmother
as did Eve

-- lscollison

2010-07-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

I don't really care who you know
or where you are
having drinks with trendsters, hip hangers-on,
almost-celebs and would-be artist flaneurs
its who you are
that concerns me

Go on, bare me some soul
one true word, give me some hope
a flash of heart, one revealing sentence
or better yet, a provocative question
go on, shock me
indulge my fantasy

you haunt me still

2010-04-09T17:58:00.001-07:00

a smell of burning vanilla
drifting through the house
the movement of curtain
a far-off tinkle of glasses
raised in toast
to our happiness...
the way your eyes
find mine
from years past
you haunt me
still

life could be a pier

2009-09-21T23:56:00.000-07:00

so narrow, so limited
confined
converging lines
abrupt

it might be an island
narrow
a vantage point
or maybe a launch pad

this jetty life
a runway
into a greater, deeper
blue

for now
it's all i need
it's enough

Some of the best adventures I've ever had...

2009-08-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Linda talks with Michael Weir about sailing and wine tasting...

midsummer in Steamboat Springs

2009-08-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

where are those endless summer days of youth?
now days are abundant
fuller than ever
but fleeting
shorter
and time picks up the tempo

lscollison 8/2/09

do you twitter? i don't.

2009-07-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

remember how you held your hands
over your ears singing
"na, na, na i can't hear you"
to drown me out?

cacophony
that word once thrilled me
nowadays, it's awkward to text
way too many characters

size doesn't matter
but form does
it takes deliberation
to be brief

only the birds twitter meaningfully
me, i need depth
substance or silence
please

sometimes i hate the sound of my own voice
gobble gobble gobble
drivel rant babble
just shut the fuck up

so don't blow me a kiss in passing
i want to taste your lips
feel your tongue
or forget it

lscollison/2009

My grandmother Mary Virginia Leonard was a person I admired immensely. I like to think she had a profound influence on my life, she and her husband John W. We grandkids called our grandparents Bobo and Bebop. They were stalwart, resourceful, vital, wise.

Bobo lived to be 103, her mind pretty sharp until the end. She had a stroke, about five years before she died, which left her speechless. Nor was she able to write. When I visited her she would try to tell me something, and from the look in her eyes I knew it was important, but she couldn't articulate the words, and the tears spilled in frustration.

What if words were like money? A resource, a treasure? What if an evil fairy cast a spell, giving me only 50 words, after which I would fall mute forever? The equivalent of one tweet, what would I say? And to whom?

We spend our words like chump change, and so often the words are thoughtless, inane, cruel, or just clutter the air, rain down on the floor, devoid of any value.

I'd like to take a vow of silence, at least for a while. I'll start with 60 seconds. Beginning now.

june grasses

2009-07-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I
love
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.
Missing me one place search another
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

from Song of Myself
by Walt Whitman

happiness finds you, in prison or at sea...

2009-07-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've recently discovered the Roman writer and philosopher Boethius (480-524), who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while he was imprisoned, and before being executed. I seem to share many of his ideas of finding happiness within.

This morning, while trying to organize a heap of old journals, I came across some scribblings I made during a 3-week ocean crossing with Bob aboard Topaz. (If you've ever been to sea you can probably relate to the prison metaphor, and it was an 18th-century English author and wit, Samuel Johnson, who said What is a ship but a prison, with the chance of being drowned...)

June 5, 2001
At sea, somewhere near the equator…

Salty, damp, hot
as we pound our way through
glorious but brutal humps of
water. Feeling pretty dogged, both
of us. A long journey home.

I’m still at the wheel, Bob is
below, and I start singing. I sing
every song that comes to mind, every song I know.

This cheers me immensely and
gives me a burst of euphoria
and love of life. If you can’t
be happy when times are hard or
you are physically miserable,
what good is happiness?

2009-07-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

nothing stays the same
sands shift
memories morph

it all comes to this
and then this too
is gone

tomorrow someone else
will build a castle
of the very same sand

you'll be long gone
you'll forget your house of sand
but the sea remembers

embracing you
washing your feet, your hands
as you played

lscollison 7/11/09

Self-disclosure

2009-07-03T17:37:00.001-07:00

Asked by a fellow blogger (Not Rocket Science) to disclose ten things about myself, I nearly had a panic attack. What to confess to? I'm so fickle, things change, I'm hard to pin down. OK, feel the fear and do it. Here are ten random (subject to change) facts about me:

1.I sometimes take myself too seriously, except when I’m making light of myself. (OK, that doesn't count. Too evasive. How about this: I've been called aloof, a term that surprised me when I heard it, though I admit I do occasionally hide behind that persona...)

2.I admire green-thumbed people who like to garden but personally, I’m more of a hunter-gatherer.

3.My favorite color changes from hour to hour, but red and red-orange always rank right up there at the top.

4.I wish I had done LSD in my youth. "Just to see what the fuss was about" (Sheryl Crowe.)

5. If I were going to change my first name, I would probably choose Ann, Anne or Annie. So many of my favorite female writers have that name…

6. I love Wyoming and West Virginia; deserts, and the Ocean. On the other hand I love New York and Paris.

7. Dogs are cute but I kind of feel sorry for them. Cats, on the other hand, are to be emulated. And obeyed.

8. I quite often tear up when talking to people.

9. I hate politics and current events. I never read People Magazine, I don't care what or who the Personalities are doing. I try to avoid Trendy Hipsters.

10. I think I’m on the edge of discovering time travel, so if it seems like I'm not really all there, maybe I've gone..

Care to trade ten for ten? I'd love to know you better...

FEAR

2009-06-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

fear
has awakened me with a slap
even saved my life
once or twice
with a cry of alarm
a sweetjesus tingle
angel’s breath

but left alone
unexamined
unchallenged
fear
is nothing but a bad habit
a closed fist
a black hole in the center of my universe
-- lsc revised 6/28/09

Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of intimacy, fear of dying, fear of bordom... What are you afraid of? What am I afraid of?

Skydiving taught me much about fear. About facing it, feeling it, then letting go. It taught me the difference between healthy fear and deadly fear. But fear can be so insidious, so protean. I want to unmask it.

I was afraid to leave my first husband, then terrified after I left him. At first I feared for my freedom; then for my safety, then for my very life and the lives of my children. More than 30 years later I still have bad dreams. But hey, I got free and I survived. In fact, I thrived.

What are my fears right now? What is holding me back?

For so long I've been afraid of other people dying. My parents died early, my nephew died when he was seven, a boyfriend was killed... so I've always lived with the grim reaper over my shoulder, or so I thought. But actually I've been very fortunate since those early losses. To lose a child would be so much more devastating. Yet my sister, and my friends DJan, and Jean, and Debbie have met that tragedy, that grief -- and survived it.

What I fear about my loved ones dying is... what? Let me look at that right here, right now. I'm afraid that I haven't let them know how much they mean to me, how alive they are, how much I love them. THAT I WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH TO THEM, That my life without them can never be the same, yet I will somehow go on and continue to live without them. That I'm not in charge of the universe, that I'm sorry for all of my shortcomings and failures, that I loved them as best I could and will always love them. That I will mourn them, that I will feel guilty somehow, but that I will go on.

Another fear is a nagging one that I'm constantly swatting at. The fear that I'm frittering away time, that I'm not living up to what I'm supposed to be doing, that I'm not doing what only I can. And when the end comes I'll regret --- what? What will I regret? Not finishing that novel, that degree, not taking one more trip? The only thing to regret is not realizing I was alive, and realizing others are alive with me. I do waste time and I will die with unfinished business, unrealized dreams, dirty laundry in the hamper, dirty dishes in the sink. Just don't die without having lived, and realized you are alive, and sharing that spark of life with others.

Whew! That feels better. Not the post-adrenalin rush I used to feel after a skydive, or after climbing the mainmast, but a happy realization none-the-less. That I looked fear in the eye, said hello, then opened my fist and let it go.

Move on After a Life Changing Revelation - wikiHow

2009-06-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

Move on After a Life Changing Revelation - wikiHow

I was attracted to this article because in the past I've always responded impetuously to life-changing revelations, which was mostly a good course of action but not always. Yet I always feared beoming stuck, buried alive, if you will. As I mature I have learned there are a myriad of reactions and responses to such revelations. But by no means ignore them!

My Dad

2009-06-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

Harry Mansfield Collison, Jr. 1921-1975

Harry was a father to three lucky girls, husband to one wife, brother to one surviving sister, Clara ("Suze") Collison Leister. World War II Veteran, Mechanical engineer, country gentleman and weekend farmer. He was "Uncle Harry" to lots of nieces and nephews. He was a patient man with a sense of humor and a love of the simple pleasures of life. He could draw, ride a horse, play tennis, fix broken things, charm the ladies, and whistle the Tennessee Waltz. And lots of other things I never even knew.

My dad died at the age of 54. During the time I knew him he taught me this: Be glad for what you have and don't fret over what you don't have. Be a leader, not a follower. Do your best. Be kind and generous, whenever possible. Read a good book and tell a good story. Look for the adventure in life. Enjoy each day. If you can't enjoy it, get through it.

I miss my Dad, but he has become a part of me.

Late afternoon blast of light

2009-06-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

What is it called
is there a name for
that late afternoon illumination
that blast of light
that sets afire flecks of mica
morphing the rock
transforming trees, bushes
revealing the back of my hand
in a whole new way?

On the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere
I ponder light
dance in it
am transformed by it.

2009-06-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

Judeo-Christian teaching, if I remember my long-ago Sunday School lessons correctly, says a rainbow is God's promise never to destroy the world again. By flood. (Am I right on this?) Somehow that doesn't mean much, since the promise doesn't include other methods of destruction, like blazing comets and giant asteroids hurling through space... Also the promise probably doesn't mean much to the folks whose world was destroyed when Katrina hit a few years back.

Not that I'm knocking rainbows. And in my book God isn't a mean old white-haired geezer who schemes up ways to judge and punish us. But what is God? I don't know. Maybe God is still in the process of Becoming. Maybe God is Possibility, with no period behind it maybe God is Everything, including us

You gotta love a rainbow, that little magic trick that never fails to delight us. For revealing what is all around us, all the time. It seems we humans need the little misty water droplets suspended in the air to deconstruct sunlight into its component colors. To remember we don't know it all, we can't comprehend it all, and our lives are as fleeting as any one rainbow.

We are drenched, we are bathed in color, in light. The rainbow is always there, it just takes certain conditions for us to see it.

A rainbow is a flashlight in the darkness, a smile of color, a child's face, a portal, a path, the road not taken. A rainbow is an everyday miracle that can be explained by optics, by physics, but does that make it any less a miracle? What do people want?

Some days the most mundane thing seems miraculous. It's a trick of the light, or God's promise. In any case, don't miss it.

The next best thing to time travel

2009-06-14T10:09:00.001-07:00

In the space of a few hours I'm transported to Hawaii, and once again I'm driving the Kohala Mountain Road to Waimea to pick up some groceries at KTA. I had to pull over and take the photo above, to remind myself how feckin lucky I am.

Everybody bitches about airplane travel. Whine, whine, whine. Don't you remember what it was like, just a few centuries ago? Don't you remember traveling across mountain passes in Conestogas, crossing oceans on leaky frigates, traversing deserts on the backs of camels? In the space of six and a half hours, I have been transported to another place, another life, and in effect, another time.

Now I'm walking past the brown-skinned paniolo at the KTA shopping center in Waimea. (Photo above) Country music plays over the loudspeaker, as always. Because Waimea is upcountry, Waimea is Parker Ranch headquarters. Parker Ranch was once the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the world. And paniolos are Hawaiian cowboys, who first learned the trade back in the 1800's when the first cattle were introduced to the Hawaiian Islands by the British. Hawaiian cowboys kicked ass in the early 1900's, winning top honors at the rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. They would have had a two week sail to get from Hawaii to California, then a train ride from there to Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific Railroad (completed in 1869, a fact I just remembered from a Wyoming History course I took back in 1979...)

And we bitch about the discomforts of 21st century travel! It isn't so hard to stand in line, go through a scanner, sit in a crowded airplane for a few hours, or even half a day, and eat bad food at high prices, until you get to your destination. Your other life.

Here's a photo of the Spam section at KTA. If you don't understand Spam, you can't fully appreciate Hawaii. It ain't all palm trees, folks.

Aloha!

Road through time

2009-06-08T19:26:00.001-07:00

It’s a three-hour drive
from here to there
(luck and the weather both with you)

Longer still, if you dare slow down
or venture off the main route
into another century

Hours can turn into days
into years
getting lost in time this way

It’s a three-hour drive
From Denver to Steamboat
Today it took ages to arrive

My secret pleasure...

2009-05-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

There are other activities I enjoy doing in bed, but one of my favorite indulgences is being served my first fragrant cup of coffee by my loving husband while I'm still under the sheets, and staying there in my rumpled nest for as long as I desire, surrounded by a stack of books, and my computer. Reading, writing, reading until the pot of coffee is finished.

Growing old has its advantages; this is a pleasure I never knew during the child-rearing decades. And because I worked nights, mornings were for sleeping, not reading!

I’m usually reading half-a-dozen books or so, at more or less the same time. Very fickle that way. Right now I’m absorbed in an exhibition book I purchased in Bruges after visiting Charles the Bold and the “Booty of Burgundy” exhibit at the Groeninge Museum. Charles the Bold was Duke of Burgundy during the duchy’s hey-day in the mid-1400’s. This was a real renaissance festival and I'm lovin' it!

Also reading Tulipomania, by Mike Dash, which transports me to Holland in the mid 1600’s.

And Vincent Van Gogh’s letters, written in the 1880’s.

Also in the stack is a French book Bob got me, and a Western Civililization textbook for an online course I'm taking this summer.

Books are my time machine. So are paintings. I’m working on a time-travel story, and finishing up a ghost story.

Life is full and wide and we don’t know the half of it.

spring

2009-05-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

the river swells spilling over
sweeping me along
nearly drowning me
in a tumult
of ideas

street art

2009-05-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hey, I think I recognize Maude, one of my old trolls, on this guy's mobile sculpture! Dang, what happened to the rest of my troll collection? Probably gone to garage sales, everyone. (Makes me think of Woody and Buzz in Toy Story...)

My other question: How is this anonymous garage artist's creation any less valuable than, say the works of Mondrian, one of which recently sold for 9.2 million? It's all in the name, and people buy to impress, just as they name-drop to impress. Van Gogh only sold ONE painting in his life-time. Sure, everybody wants a piece of him now, but where were they when he was alive and struggling?

Art, like God, is living and breathing. As my mother used to say, open your eyes and look! Open your ears and hear! And take part of the ongoing creation. Pick up a brush, a piece of chalk, a pen, a piece of fabric, and create. Play the guitar, the cello. Sing! Dig in the dirt! Paint Elvis or Jesus on a piece of black velvet, take your childhood collection and make something of it.

Does art imitate life, or...

2009-05-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

Boy with Thorn, also called Fedele (Fedelino) or Spinario, is a Greco-Roman Hellenistic Bronze sculpture of a boy withdrawing a thorn from the sole of his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. A Roman marble of this subject from the Medici collections is in a corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. (from Wikipedia)

I had the pleasure of seeing these sculptures when Bob and I were in Rome a few years ago.

Yesterday I caught this photo of my grandson Liam, removing a thorn from his foot, while we were enjoying the sunshine and spring melt, sans shoes.

wild things

2009-05-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

wild things in my yard
feed on sugar water
and frozen popsicles
despite their small size
they are extremely fast
and make quite a racket

memories of 1637...

2009-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday
I saw tulips for sale
in the floral department of City Market
Reaching for a bouquet, I stepped
easily into 1637, the height of the tulip craze
when Andries, my lover
lost his fortune speculating
on tulip bulbs

Yesterday
I bought a bouquet of the white ones on a whim
to brighten my kitchen and remind me of
far more glorious tulips
flowers like champagne cups
translucent petals
more valuable than gold
Oh Andries, those were the days
We lived well, our purses bulging with optimism

You claim to have lost it all
but I lost nothing
having loved the flowers themselves

"Time is but the stream i go a-fishing in..." -- Henry David Thoreau

2009-05-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

57 degrees when Bob and I took a walk yesterday evening, chilly enough for a coat and hat, here it is the middle of May
Fish Creek is swollen, overflowing its banks and the sound it makes is at once soothing and stimulating
In spite of the chill, everything is greening up before our eyes
Oh, and look at this witch's broom, this dwarf mistletoe. Upon further research I find they might not be as devastating as they are made out to be, as animals eat them, nest in them, and if they kill their host, they too die.
We too are parasites of a sort. Let's live symbiotically.

Where was I?

2009-05-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

I sometimes dream I’ve forgotten
to feed the horses
all these years
they’re still waiting
wasting away in the barn
skin on bones
because of me

I sometimes dream I’ve forgotten
my children
they’re still waiting
to be picked up from school
or hiding under the bed
hoping I’ll find them
after all these years

I sometimes dream I’ve forgotten
a patient
and now it’s too late
I’m afraid
to go in the room at the end of the hall
afraid I’ll find Gabriel
holding the body in his strong angel arms
sheet and blanket in a tangle
IV tube dangling
Where were you, written
all over his shining
angel face

lsc 5/13/09

my left hand

2009-05-11T16:30:00.001-07:00

My left hand is a helping hand
a (mostly) willing partner
of the alpha appendage
loyal, unsung hero
distaff

but sister can grip a coffee cup
a steering wheel
she can lift a glass of wine
and so much more
if Right is otherwise
occupied

Other reflections:

It would be hard to pick up a baby without my left hand (and the attached arm)

My very own daughter is left-handed, yes!

When I was 10 I fell out of a tree and broke my right ulna and radius; when I was 32 I flared a borrowed parachute a tad too high and broke the same bones again, forcing the dominant hand to take a sabbatical. Helper hand had to take over all the duties; like writing, washing dishes, washing myself, washing others. I’m not quite sure how I drew up injections one-handed, or gave injections, or took blood pressures, or any of the other night-nurse duties that fell to me back then. But somehow I did.

Isn’t it amazing how bones mend all on their own?

Right hand, left brain; left hand, right brain -- no wonder the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing!

Five times, no less
the weaker hand led the way
pulled the reserve ripcord
on the left side of the harness
saving my life again

it’s the Left hand
who has worn the wedding band
happily
for more than 16 years now.

A record for me, I might add
and an honor
for the unsung sinister finger

"find a quiet place and use a humble pen"

2009-05-11T09:15:00.001-07:00

Look for this quiet place
within

Thanks, Paul Simon, for reminding me how to be a writer.

Vincent Van Gogh, Troubled Genius

2009-05-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

Vincent Van Gogh, Troubled Genius

Oh, Vincent!

This evening's roadside discovery

2009-05-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

true blue is rare
in flower
and friend

on a spring walk with Bob

2009-05-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

Fawn lilies are among the first
to remember
yellow

Desire

2009-05-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

See the pretty things in the window
I want them
Why?

In my younger days I wasn’t so materialistic
I was raw
ripening, rich in future, decorated in my own aplomb

My naked body was a perfect
idiot savant
beautiful in its awkwardness
as youthful bodies are
I needed no adornment
and my soul, that shining globe, filled me with light

More and more these days I find myself
window shopping
desiring
all those pretty things that dissolve in your hands
when the dream ends

My future shrinks as do my bones
I look for souvenirs of splendor
I’m becoming the Old Woman wandering the streets with her rusty shopping cart
looking for treasure

I realize the futility, the irony
of want
I know each breath I draw
sustains me
I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams
and spending time lavishly

Still, I look
Still, I desire
The pretty things in the window are other possibilities
Other lives I might have known

lsc 5/5/09

2009-05-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

I have a fascination for maritime culture and history. The wooden boats of the Netherlands are both beautiful and functional (but I wouldn't want to be the one to have to sand and varnish all that gorgeous wood... )

The Netherlands is laced with navigable canals and rivers. Note the sideboards, present on nearly every traditional vessel in this part of the world. Hinged bowsprits on sailboats were also common, to take up less space when docking in canals. Hinged masts allow for "easy" lowering to fit under old stone bridges.

Breakfast in Delft

2009-05-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

I am quite happy to stand at the sink and eat left-over pizza cold out of the refrigerator, and I am equally happy eating boat hash out of a pot on a bumpy ocean, but sometimes I like to get fussy and fancy and set a nice table. This morning I wanted to make soft boiled eggs with the cute little Delft egg cups hubby and I brought back from Holland. My grandmother Mary Leonard, whom we affectionately called "Bobo" taught me to set a nice table with whatever's on hand, and that's what I did this Sunday morning.

Growing up, I loved soft-boiled eggs; when I was pregnant I lived on them. But I needed a refresher on cooking them, so I googled "3 minute egg" and came up with Susan Keeping's directions on Howtodothings.com (Then I got side-tracked with Susan's other blogs, namely the Uninvited Writer http://www.uninvitedwriter.com/ (Will somebody please tell me how to make the links work so all you have to do is click on the high-lighted words?)

A three-minute egg is a three-minute egg, even at 7,000 feet, I discovered. I also discovered Bob likes his eggs cooked for 3-and-a-half minutes. Vive la difference!

storybook rooftops

2009-05-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

Called "stepped gabled", these charming roof lines are indicative of Belgium and the Netherlands. Are they purely decorative, or do they serve a more practical purpose?

Site of the Queen's Day car accident on a more peaceful day...

2009-05-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

April 30, Queen's Day in Holland, was marred this year by a crazed, suicidal driver who crashed into a crowd of bystanders watching Queen Beatrix and the royal family drive by near the Het Loo Palace.

When we were there, just a few days ago, the palace, garden and grounds were a peaceful, elegant place. The Stadholder William III built the Het Loo (pronounced hut-LOW) in 1692 as a hunting lodge. For generations, the Orange family used it as a summer residence. Called the "Versailles of the Netherlands" the palace is now a museum open to the public.

The town of Apeldoorn, where our guide was raised, is a very quiet, peaceful, orderly town. Four bystanders were killed in this unexplainable act of violence.

"get thee to a beguinage"

2009-04-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

The most peaceful place in Bruges might be the Beguinage of the Vineyard, founded in the first half of the 13th century. These beguines lived in peace and solitude, originally earning their keep by weaving, then making lace. They did not take vows but lived under strict rules. A beguinage was a place for poor, elderly, and otherwise dispossessed women to live safely and productively.

The last beguine at this particular beguinage died several decades ago, and now a community of Benedictine sisters inhabit this commune.

What is a Beguinage?
A Béguinage is a collection of small buildings used by Beguines, which were several lay sisterhoods of the Roman Catholic Church, founded in the 13th century in the Low Countries, of religious women who sought to serve God without retiring from the world.

A "Begijnhof" (as the Dutch name is) or Béguinage comprises a courtyard surrounded by small dwellings. It is often encircled by a wall and secluded from the town proper by one or two gates. Poor and elderly beguines were housed here by benefactors.

Béguinages are to be found in an area roughly corresponding with present-day Northern and North-Eastern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Western and North-Western Germany.

The beguines were a religious movement of women. Their success, according to the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, was due to a surplus of women occasioned by violence, war, military and semi-military operations, which took the lives of many men. Great numbers of women had no option but to unite and collectively secure the aid of rich benefactors.

Similarly, nuns' convents in the twelfth century enjoyed substantial initial success. Stricter rules within Cistercian and other abbeys, however, caused many women to seek less strict surroundings. Moreover, these abbeys' initial success necessitated the refusal of a great many applications for admission. As an additional obstacle, in several cases a certain degree of prosperity was required as a condition for admission to a regular nunnery.

(From Wikipedia)

reflections of Bruges

2009-04-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

Keep a quiet place in your heart and visit it often.

men at work

2009-04-29T16:03:00.001-07:00

They've been making roads this way in Bruges, and many old cities in Europe, since Roman times and I doubt they're going to change their ways or materials anytime soon. It must be a good business to be in, pretty recession proof.

if you were blind in bruges you'd know this music

2009-04-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

hooves on cobblestone
clop clop briskly
clop clop clop
closer now
you hear the ching ching
of harness rings
the rattle of wheel
on cobblestone

...and Brendan Gleeson does a base jump without parachute from the beltower in Bruges...

2009-04-29T02:54:00.001-07:00

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/movies/08brug.html

This movie was great until the end when all the characters seemed to be indistructable. I mean how many people can survive a freefall from three hundred feet,and he was already wounded before he jumped! Maybe that was part of the black humor.

Colin Farrell jumps from this hotel...

2009-04-29T02:44:00.001-07:00

In the movie In Bruges Colin Farrell jumps from this hotel and lands in a canal cruise boat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Bruges

by canal in the medieval city of Bruges

2009-04-29T02:37:00.000-07:00

Bob and Linda are back In Bruges

2009-04-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

More tulips!

2009-04-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Tulipmania!

2009-04-26T14:09:00.001-07:00

Springtime in Holland's Keukenhof Gardens is one of the seven wonders of the world.

2009-04-26T14:06:00.001-07:00

Impressions of Holland

the land a green pan
crisscrossed by canals
fringed with slender, delicate trees
hands waving
sky like a sponge mops up
water seeping through the cracks

Take a walk on the wild side...

2009-04-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

Twilight in Dordrecht

2009-04-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

Bob and I just had the strangest experience, like an episode of the Twilight Zone, like a dark video game.

The ship docked at Dordrecht for the night. Dordrecht is a very old port town, one of Holland’s oldest. Many of it’s street are still made of brick, and like many European towns, it has a gothic church. There is an 18th century (19th?) painting by Turner, of a ship in Dordrecht, which I like very much, and I felt compelled to walk about to get a feel for the place, a better sense of history.

After having dinner aboard ship, Bob and I went for a walk. It was about 9:30 at night, and the last of the late April light had left, leaving the sky a deep purple, then black. High clouds moved in to cover the moon.

We soon noticed we were the only ones in sight. No one else from the ship was walking the streets and more strangely, there didn’t seem to be any townspeople out and about. Nine-thirty on a Sunday night, and the town seemed to be deserted. Well-tended boats were moored in the canals, but nobody on them either.

Like so many towns in Holland, the streets are paved with brick, worn unevenly over the years. We walked toward the old church, the “Grote Kerk”, which dates from the 13th century. The iron gates were open so we walked into the courtyard and tried to go inside the church itself, but the doors were locked, so we went back out to the street.

It was there we saw, across the inky canal, to the next street. Somebody at last, moving. Maybe dancing. Round and round, bathed in light.

Drawn to the light like moths, we went to check it out. We soon discovered we were looking through a vacant room, like a bullet, through two sets of windows, across a deserted street into another window. On a dark, winding street, this window was lit up, as was the room behind it. In the window on a moving pedestal two manikins, lavishly dressed in flowing folds of aubergine material whirled around and around, as if dancing. They had long hair and their bodies were bent and twisted. Behind them in the room many other manikins, and parts of manikins, all with long tresses and singular expressions and odd, fanciful clothes, seemed to watch the dancers. These were not ordinary store manikins. And this was no ordinary street, no ordinary town. It seemed to be deserted. Where were the people?

I was fascinated by the twirling figures, the supporting cast of manikins watching them from the depths of the room. But they gave me the creeps. Was this a store? An artists workshop? A vampire’s ball? These manikins weren’t like store manikins. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. These manikins had personalities, they had intentions. They had past lives.

Further along, a few blocks down, I looked up and saw a manikin in a second story window, looking down on the street. By now we wanted to go back to the ship, as it was getting ready to leave. But we had lost our way. Where was the church steeple? We took an alley and saw a person, a man walking two black dogs. We came out on another street and found the canal, followed it to the church. The whole time I felt like we were being followed, I kept looking over my shoulder. Such a dark town, and where were the people?

The image of those manikins haunted me all night. The next day in Middleburg, some distance away, I saw another, in a second story window, looking out over the canal, the bustling street, this one filled with people. It was broad daylight and I snapped a photo. And now that I am aware of them, I will be on the look-out for more. And watching my back.

Masterpieces of Antwerp

2009-04-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

Peter Paul Reubens masterpieces (including The Descent from the Cross -- 1612) inside the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp's oldest church and the largest gothic church in the Low Countries. I love walking into these old cathedrals, you can smell the stone and you can feel the weight of the ages on your shoulders and if you listen closely you can hear the echo of voices long dead.

I loved Reubens' house and garden, second photo from top. Reubens was one of the few artists who enjoyed financial success in his lifetime.

Some other things I enjoyed in Antwerp were Belgium waffles, Belgium chocolate, Belgium beer, French wine, and my husband's company. He's the perfect travel companion.

giants in antwerp

2009-04-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

The hand is the symbol of Antwerp. There's a legend about a giant Antigoon, who ruled the river Schelde and cut off the hands of sailors who were reluctant to pay his exhorbitant tolls. But paybacks are hell and he eventually got what was coming to him!

Diamonds in Antwerp

2009-04-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

These mussels are gems from the nearby North Sea, enjoyed with Belgian beer. Lots to see and do here in Antwerp, the diamond capital of Europe. (Actually, I prefer pearls, which come from the sea...)

2009-04-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

I'd like to be resting my dogs right now like this person is doing (photo taken in The Hague, the Dutch seat of government and home of the International Court of Justice, or Peace Palace.)

At the moment we're sitting in one of the only wi-fi cafes in the entire country. We're in Maastricht, a university town in the south of Holland, and my favorite town. The connection is slow and I'm trying to catch up on my blog before the boat leaves. That's the problem of being on a tour or cruise, your time is not your own.

Several groups of students are doing homework around me. One young man is falling asleep over his coffee. Playing is "My Girl." Outside are head shops and the whiff of burning weed drifting down the street. Maastricht is very different in character from Amsterdam, Delft, and the other towns in the North. Many boutiques and stores here, and cafes amidst the Roman bridges and ramparts.

Bob and I plan to return here on our Burgundian tour...

windmills, wooden shoes and Delft toilet bowls...

2009-04-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

Scenes from small towns in north Holland: Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Delft and Kinderdyke.

40 percent of the country is below sea-level!

Inspired by the Masters...

2009-04-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

In Amsterdam we were in good company with Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, and others. I was inspired to do a little still life with camera.

Vampires in Dordrecht!

2009-04-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

More on this, later. Suffice to say, they haven't gotten us yet...

Bob and I don't have our bags yet -- but we're having a Heineken in Amsterdam, what more do we need?

2009-04-17T04:26:00.000-07:00

First impressions

Bicycles

Bicycles

Bicycles

Streaming along with the traffic

The smart cars, the little euro machines

Basic bikes, clunkers, nothing fancy

No gears, but no need,

Not a hill in Holland

Some with push carts on the front

Filled with kids, dogs, groceries

little minivans

a young woman pedals hard, three kids aboard

a businessman in a suit flies by, he’s texting with one hand

a guy carries his date on the back, she rides sidesaddle

dreaming of the night ahead

Bob and I, travel weary, but with a second wind

Are in a brasserie drinking Heinekens

Listening to a motley mix

From Van Morrison’s Brown-Eyed Girl to

Bollywood dance music

To a Dutch rendition of Girl from Ipanema

In front of us a young couple smartly dressed

Smoke and laugh, the air sparkles with their joy

Their excitement for one another

The waiters are Hollywood gorgeous

They flirt with the girl

While steps away in the street

Bikes whisk by

Look, there goes a woman in a party dress balancing a bouquet of fresh flowers

On the handlebars

We’re not in Rapid City anymore.

I love this city -- and we're not even out of the airport!

2009-04-17T00:07:00.001-07:00

row 56, E and F...

2009-04-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

Denver to Frankfurt to Amsterdam

On the long flight I read USA Today, three chapters of The Terror, (Dan Simmons), watched High School Musical III (again, I confess, and mostly for the fabulous choreography. In a parallel life I’m a dancer.)

I also watched Twilight for the first time. (My first husband was a vampire of sorts, so I related to Bella and I thought maybe the reason Edward can’t read her mind is because there’s not much to be read at this point in her life… I can see why teens love this film, and I confess I thought the vampires were all pretty hot, but this is a dangerous movie for girls. More on this, later.)

Bob and I were sitting across the aisle from one another, but knowing absence makes the heart grow fonder, we dealt with it. (We dated for six years before we married; I lived in Denver and he lived 30 miles away in Boulder, which almost counts as a long distance relationship.) Bob wasn’t too lonely, since he was sitting next to a beautiful young German girl, on his right hand side, though she was a sleeping beauty. Which he’d pick over a chatty cathy any day.

It was nearly a ten-hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt, our first stop and port of entry into the EU. Lufthansa treats you pretty good, even way back at the butt end of the bus. We were given the hot towels to wipe hands and faces, free drinks and two complementary hot meals. The flight attendants were all tall and striking; they transformed the aisle into a fashion runway each time they came striding down with a drink cart.

Bob set aside his study of optics for this vacation, and brought along some frivolous reading (The White Company, an obscure novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a young man raised in a monastery who ends up fighting in the Hundred Years War with France.) He also had his book of New York Times crosswords, which he carries around like the New Testament.

From Frankfurt it was a short hop to Amsterdam. Looking down from the plane, there sure is a lot of water in this country. Looks like they should be growing rice instead of tulips…

Twenty-one hours after leaving Adam’s house, we’re in Holland! I haven’t slept a wink, and I’m not about to now, baby!

our adventure -- day 1 -- we get as far as Rapid City...

2009-04-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Bob has a ton of "free miles" he's earned flying United Airlines, so we decided to cash some of them in on a "free" trip to Amsterdam. Well, you get what you pay for, I guess.

Because we were using miles, they routed us from Denver to Rapid City, South Dakota, to Chicago, to Amsterdam.

Well, here we sit in a bar in the Rapid City airport, our flight to Chicago was cancelled, and there' no more flights to Chicago until tomorrow. So we'll fly back to Denver, then to Frankfurt, then to Amsterdam.

We'll get there, eventually. Meanwhile, there's always something of interest, no matter where you find yourself. Check out those fossils from the Black Hills...

It's always an adventure with you, dear

2009-04-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Travels with Bob

Belem, Borneo, Bora-Bora

Oh, I'd go anywhere with you, dear

By sail, by silver wing, or hiking shoe

Road trip you say?

I'm ready, let's go

Let's pack it up

And light out again

lsc/4/13/07

Bob's 61st birthday and we're off to Amsterdam and Belgium for 2 weeks, our first trip in several years. The occasion? Bob's birthday, his health, and the one-year anniversary of our kidney transplant, coming up on April 24.

This is a Smithsonian Journeys tour, Waterways of Holland and Belgium, aboard the M.V. Casanova, (which is sure to be a far cry from Topaz, our 36 foot sloop in the picture... In the first place, aboard Topaz, I am the crew. First Mate, cook, ship surgeon, cabin girl, laundress, you name it. Yes, Captain Bob lends a hand with the menial chores.)

Compared to most of our travels in the past, this might sound like a rather staid, old-people's vacation, but traveling with Bob is always an adventure.

What am I most looking forward to? Rembrandt, Vermeer, spring tulip fields, port towns with their smell of the sea, and boats, ships from all over the world? Delftware, dikes, windmills, canals, coffee houses, really cool old buildings in medieval cities? Not cooking or cleaning up for two weeks?

There are an infinite number of ways to see and know a place, any place. Maybe I'll do a little time-traveling and write you from another era. Stay tuned. It's all about the discovery.

Come by for a piece of Aunt Suzie's yellow cake

2009-04-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Aunt Suzie's 1-2-3-4 cake

1 cup shortening (or butter) 1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups sugar 2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups flour 1 tsp. salt
4 eggs 1 cup milk

Mix flour and baking soda in bowl and set aside. Cream shortening, salt, and sugar. Add eggs. Add vanilla. Add flour and baking powder mixture. Add milk. Bake in greased and floured tube pan at 325. Bake for 1 hour, or until cake springs back when touched lightly.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about the yellow cake my Aunt Suzie used to make, and Shazam! Just like that, through the magic of the Internet I had the recipe! (Thanks to my cousins on Facebook...) Turns out, it's a 1-2-3-4 cake, which dates back to the 19th century, according to Susan G. Purdy, author of Pie in the Sky, a high altitude cookbook.

Today I made the cake in honor of Easter, Bob's upcoming birthday -- and in honor of Aunt Suzie, whose real name is Clara Collison Leister but everybody calls her Suzie, or just Suze. I hope to visit her and all my Maryland cousins, second and third cousins this summer. And if she knows I'm coming, she might make this cake...

When I think of Aunt Suzie's kitchen back in Pasadena, Maryland, I think of this yellow cake iced with chocolate, I think of a big bowl of homemade potato salad, and I think of a pitcher of sweetened iced tea in the refrigerator. They always had iced tea, year-round. Oh, and I remember her crab cakes, oh yeah. (We'll have to blog that one later.) I can hear her yelling at barking, tail-wagging Baron who always came crashing through the screen door behind us.

There are many variations to the 1-2-3-4 cake, and I adjusted mine for altitude, since I baked it at 7,000 feet. I was going to ice it with chocolate like I remember Aunt Suzie's cakes being iced. Then I found half a bag of coconut in the cupboard and half a package of cream cheese in the 'fridge, so I decided on a butter-cream cheese icing sprinkled with toasted coconut instead. And in the middle of the two layers I put raspberry jam that I made last year when raspberries were super cheap at City Market. (Not to get too Martha Stewart on you.) Actually, I have only made jam once in my life, not counting when my mother made me help her.

My mother used to make jams and jellies every year out of all kinds of fruits growing on our farm; like elderberry, blackberry, and rhubarb. Delicious, but so time consuming! I mean why make jam, right? It's so cheap to buy. And why bake cakes, especially from scratch?

Seriously, I'd rather be writing. Or reading. Or sailing. Or planning a trip to Paris. But once in a while I like to make something from scratch, the old-fashioned way, I don't know why. It's kind of like remembering with my hands. It feels like I'm honoring my forebears and the people in my life who mattered, and who still matter.

And then, I get to eat it. Which is how you can have your cake and eat it too.

Life is terminal

2009-04-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

(Bob and I with a level 3 AFF student, in the early 1990's, over Skydive Colorado.)

Let go of everything you think you know

Let go of your imagined self, watch it grow smaller

as it plummets toward the inevitable

Let go of life, yes, that too

Feel the air flowing between your fingers

Stretching the skin of your face

into a grin

Seconds left to live

All the time in the world

All you’ll ever need

fall
free
just
let

go

lsc/revised 4/8/09

not your father's loco moco...

2009-04-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

I call it Loco Florentine, and it's a fusion between comfort Hawaiian and classic Northern Italian. A little left-over spinach is the secret ingredient.
The question is, what beverage to marry with the rich beefy flavors, the soft, moist texture of white sticky rice, the earthiness of egg-over-easy? All suggestions appreciated...

Here's my recipe for Loco Florentine:

2 scoops left-over sticky rice
1 hamburger patty, grilled and seasoned to your taste
cover with low sodium chicken gravy from a jar
top with wilted spinach, peppered with a squeeze of lemon
top with egg fried in butter, over easy.

"Ono-delicious!" as we say in Hawaii.

For those uninitiated to loco mocos, here's a link to learn the history of, (but frankly I think my photo looks yummier.)

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/LocoMocoHistory.htm

Why men fish...

2009-04-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

Come on by for dinner...bring a bottle of wine

2009-04-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

Star-Crossed Tuna

1. penne pasta -- about 1/2 lb. cooked
2. olive oil -- about 1/4 cup
3. sundried tomatoes, julienned and packed in oil -- about 1/4 cup or more
4. minced or chopped garlic -- about 2 tsp.
5. fresh basil, snipped -- a handful
6. onion -- about 1/2 cup finely chopped
7. salt and pepper to taste
8. tuna -- one 6.4 oz. package or two small cans, drained
9. parmesan cheese

Open a bottle of cooking wine. This is for the cook to sip while performing the following steps: Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil, just until onion turns soft. Add sundried tomatoes and basil, stir. Add tuna, break up, stir and heat through. Add cooked, drained pasta, and more olive oil if too dry. Season to taste and sprinkle heavily with parmesan cheese.

Dinner Chez Nous is often something I throw together from what's in the cupboards. Star-Crossed Tuna is what we call "boat food" at our house because it's something I could prepare aboard Topaz while underway. (Topaz is our sailboat, and she doesn't have refrigeration.) With the exception of the basil, all of the ingredients can be stored at room temperature, at least for short periods of time, even the parmesan cheese although after a while it will mold. The basil you can keep growing in a pot on the windowsill or on deck, to use as needed.

If you have a refrigerator Star-Crossed Tuna is enhanced with a chilled bottle of crisp chardonnay. If not, it goes equally well with a bottle of red.

105 days on a bamboo raft...

2009-04-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in front of the fire, happy in the midst of a rubble of books; some borrowed from the library and some bought through Amazon.com (a great source for the obscure tomes that I seek, which definitely aren't on Oprah's list.) I'm researching for my novel-in-progress, a paranormal that takes place at sea. (Some scary shit happens on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I can tell you that...)

Here are a few of my new found treasures:

The China Voyage by Tim Severin
Zheng He; China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty by Edward L. Dreyer
Chinese Junks and other Native Craft by Ivon A. Donnelly
Chinese Mythology by Anthony Christie
1421 The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies
Chinese Junks on the Pacific by Hans K. Van Tilburg

Of these, The China Voyage is probably most compelling to the non-geek reader. The author Tim Severin and his crew set out to sail across the Pacific on a bamboo raft (kind of like Kon Tiki, but in reverse.) Their purpose was to test the theory that Asian sailors could have reached America 2,000 years ago.

OK, Tim and his crew didn't quite make it to California, and were rescued by a passing freighter about 3/4 the way across, but Severin kept me up late reading his story and brought me near to tears when they abandoned Hsu Fu, the humble bamboo raft that had served them well for so many months at sea.

If you have a soft spot in your heart for wanderlust types you might like to read The China Voyage -- or one of Tim Severin's other 12 books -- all of them accounts of re-created historical adventures. This crazy Irishman after-my-own-heart has sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic in the wake of St. Brendan, traveled on horseback with the nomads of Mongolia to explore the heritage of Genghis Khan, and written books about those experiences too.

When doing research, there's no substitute for first hand experience. Which makes me wonder how I'm going to get mine?

Here's to your memory, Mike

2009-04-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

It was a secret we shared
a fabulous truth
Living at terminal velocity
at light speed

We were the omnipotents of our time
and flying was all it needed to be
all it could possibly be
all we could imagine

Even now when I remember freefall
I feel the spaces cracking, expanding
I hear the frenzied molecules humming
Any louder and I blow apart

This close to the edge
I just might jump

lsc,1999; revised 4/1/09

This morning

2009-03-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

More snow!
Heaps and heaps of soft flakes balanced
on branches and buds
furry fingertips
reaching skyward each
to collect a soft white cap

A field of cotton bolls
a convention of miniature chefs
hundreds of vanilla ice cream cones hanging
outside our window
this morning

lsc/3/31/09

Today

2009-03-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

Aspen holds fresh snow
in her bare arms, on her buds
blizzard of lilies

lsc/2009

My old flame William Carlos Williams

2009-03-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

Love Song

SWEEP the house clean,
hang fresh curtains
in the windows
put on a new dress
and come with me!
The elm is scattering
its little loaves
of sweet smells
from a white sky!

Who shall hear of us
in the time to come?
Let him say there was
a burst of fragrance
from black branches.

William Carlos Williams

Yesterday
I loved a yellow tulip
took it home for my own pleasure
a burst of sunshine on our table

This morning Bob saw aspen buds
waving just outside our bedroom window
We put our skis on, followed Fish Creek trail
and heard redwing blackbirds calling
lsc/2009

Awakening

2009-03-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

Driving north from Kremmling on a March afternoon
riding through eroded snow fields
clumps of gray sage, dreary rabbit brush
dreaming of spring

I fly by a team of crows
facing each other across a ribcage
somber surgeons performing their slow
meticulous work

Ahead on the right
a herd of antelope springs to life
formed out of old snow and brown dirt
Illuminated by a rare light

The air sparkles
My heart skips
fluttering between death
and life

lsc/2009

House a-fire

2009-03-22T14:27:00.000-07:00
In my dream I see a woman
a younger woman than I
standing in the doorway
of a burning house

Her arms are filled with things she wants to save
shoe boxes stuffed with treasured photographs, grocery lists
plastic bags bulging with outgrown mittens
mismatched socks

From her arms a Raggedy Ann with red yarn hair
dangles by one leg
the other long missing
a casualty of war

The woman has only to cross the threshold to freedom
Just a few flaming steps
But she can’t fit through the door
She’s carrying too much
All those heavy old dreams and expectations
she’s trying to save

I call her name and she looks out hopefully
to the sound, the light
the gardens and the green fields
to the wide blue sky beyond the fire

She knows my voice
but I don't think she can see for the smoke
I’m afraid if she hesitates much longer
the burning lintel will crash down upon her

lsc/2009

Is your blog one of these?

2009-03-21T15:15:00.001-07:00
So many blogs I come across
are banners flapping in the wind
colorful pleas for attention
advertisements

Buy my book!
Join my team!
Aren't I right? (or Aren't I so Left!)
Think like I do!
Vote for my candidate!

I have wasted many words myself
and hours
touting my own projects, handing out opinions
like paper fliers stuck under windshield wipers

Here's what I want to know:
Who are you, really? Give me a glimpse
and I'll try to give you a peek at me
on a random day

Let's all pose the question,
Who am I?
Who are you?
Do we matter?
Why?

Write (do) what only you can...

2009-03-18T08:42:00.000-07:00
One piece of writing advice, as it has jack-hammered its way into my concrete skull, is this: Don’t chase the market, don’t try to write the next bestseller, or even what you think your readers want. Write only what you are immensely curious about, what you want to discover. Write what you love. Or fear. Or lust after. Even if it is hopelessly geeky compared to what you think others are writing. Write what only you can. Everything else is garbage, a complete waste of time. In fact, if you aren’t in love with your story, your characters, I doubt you’ll even finish the story.

Some of the best, truest things I’ve written you’ll never see on a library shelf. Ten years before Star-Crossed was published, I wrote my first y.a. novel called “With a Little Luck” and it won the 1996 Maui Writers Award. Jubilation! Yet sadly, “With a Little Luck” had no luck at all. I could not find a legitimate publisher on the face of the planet. Many of the rejection slips (enough to wallpaper a small room) had notes scrawled on them. Like, great writing, but not for us… Lyrical, and well-crafted, but we don’t think there’s a strong enough market for it. Beautiful story, but we’ll have to pass. Would love to see something else, something trendy and hot that’ll make us a bazillion dollars…

I gave “Luck” a proper burial and went on to write Star-Crossed, which the New York Public Library honored as one of the Books for the Teen Age – 2007. Jubilation! (But Star-Crossed is definitely not a book for the masses. You have to be a bit of a geek to enjoy it. It's definitely not making Random House any money, but then so few people know about it.)

The best reward is when someone reads what I have written and they get it. We connect! They can experience vicariously what I experienced, or imagined; oh my God, that’s the magic of writing! Amazingly, there are other geeks like me, I am not alone in the universe!

At best, writing is an ongoing discovery, a solitary life-long university. So write (or do) what you love -- even if the money doesn’t follow. Time is short and the water rises, so write what only you can!

Have words, will travel...

2009-03-11T16:49:00.000-07:00
I'm thinking about going back to work, part time. Not as a nurse, I don't think times is that hard and I've always said you should go forward, not backward. There has got to be some way to use my hodgepodge of skills (giving shots, plotting, starting IVs, developing believable characters, suctioning secretions, varying sentence structure)to bring in a more reliable paycheck than the royalty statement is currently providing.

Browsing through the help wanted in Routt County's Daily newspaper I'm getting some ideas: Wanted:

"Cowboy wanted; Steamboat/Dinosaur area. Fence and watch cattle."

"Open Range Calver... to perform duties principally on open range, attending to cows during calving season; observe cows health to determine delivery time; able to recognize birthing problems; assist calves with nursing...prevent cattle from eating poisonous plants, protect from predatory animals and theft..."
"Sheepherder with 3 months experience" Attends sheep grazing on range or pasture. Herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flock from predators and from eating poisonous plants..."

Hey, I could be like Anne Proulx! I could do this job, then write a story about it. Then my agent lands me a sweet movie deal and they turn my story into a movie like Brokeback Mountain!

Here's another one, sparse on details. "Weed Supervisor, Routt County." Weed supervisor??? Hmmmmmm....Interesting. Maybe while working this job I could write the sequel to Pineapple Express...

Oh! oh! Here it is, pick me! Pick me! Steamboat TV 18 needs a Morning Show Host to do our live morning show. "Enthusiastic, engaging, mature candidates that can conduct informative interviews need apply." That's me! Enthusiastic, yes! Engaging, uh huh! Mature? Yeah, baby! This so appeals to the Leo in me...

Ah, but the hours suck. I am not a morning person. I remember when Bob and I were on the world record attempt for the most people to jump out of a hot air balloon at one time record, which we achieved, and which if I were to apply for this morning talk show host job I would cite as part of my experience in the field of entertainment, since CNN did come to film us but because of weather we had to postpone the jump, and they were booked the day we did the re-jump. (Yes, I know that's a run-on sentence in the first degree, but this is a blog and I love the freedom of stream-of-consciouness writing!)

I found out during that world record breaking adventure why I am not into hot air ballooning. You have to get out of bed while its still dark. (All those years as a nurse, I mostly worked nights...)

OK, OK, I'll keep writing. Maybe the next novel will be a best-seller. Back to chapter four of Blue Milieu.

Or maybe I should take that cowboy job and write one called Greener Pastures...

You can't take it with you.

2009-03-01T17:56:00.000-08:00
I'm working on my talk for Donor Alliance, for which I'm a new volunteer. This Thursday I'm to present the talk to Jennifer Lange, the coordinator, for review. I'm going to print it here, for practice. Feel free to give me feedback. Here goes:

Hi, I'm Linda Collison, I'm a volunteer for Donor Alliance, Colorado's organ procurement organization. I'm here to share my personal story about how a transplanted kidney changed my life.

Memorial Day Weekend, 2006. On Friday, Bob, my 58 year old husband, has a check-up, a physical exam, in Denver. (His first complete exam in years.) Lately he hasn't been feeling well but his symptoms are kind of vague. He blames the fatigue, occasional nausea, and the chronic bad taste in his mouth to some dental problems he's been having. After the exam we go up to the mountains to Steamboat Springs for the weekend.

Saturday night the phone rings, kind of late. Bob picks up and by the look on his face, and I know it's bad news. His hand is shaking.

"Can you talk to my wife," Bob says. "She's a nurse." He hands me the phone.

Yes, I'm a registered nurse, retired, with many years experience in critical care and emergency medicine. I used to speak with doctors all the time, late at night. But this time the patient is my husband.

I take the phone. The doctor on call tells me, "Ma'am, your husband is in kidney failure. His lab values are critical. You need to take him to the nearest hospital immediately."

The bottom drops out of my stomach as she tells me what his lab results are. Bob is a train wreck. I had no idea he was so sick. If it hadn't been for the lab tests...

All my past experiences working nights in the ICU and ER come flooding back. Only this time I'm not the RN, I'm the wife, and I feel as afraid and as helpless as every wife of every patient I've ever cared for.

It turns out Bob's kidney failure was due to an unfortunate combination of benign prostatic hypertrophy and bladder stones. The combination prevented him from emptying his bladder completely. Over many months, possibly years, his bladder gradually distended and the urine backed up into his kidneys. Although the problem was fixed surgically with a TURP and a laser to dissolve the bladder stones, the damage to Bob's kidneys was irreparable. We were told he would need a transplant, and so Bob joined the more than 76,000 other people in this country, waiting for a kidney. The wait was estimated to be at least three years, here in Colorado.

I asked if I could be a living donor so he wouldn't have to wait, and because our blood types are the same, I could -- if I was healthy enough. But I had recently gone on a medication for my blood pressure which made me ineligible to be a living donor. But I was convinced that my recent blood pressure problems were due to Bob's problems! Duh! What wife wouldn't have high blood pressure? So I went on a mission to lower my blood pressure and get off the medication, so that I could be a living donor.

So I lost weight, did yoga, meditation, biofeedback, the whole nine yards. It took me nearly a year to pass the blood pressure test off medication, but I did it. And I passed all the other tests they threw at me. I could have joined the marines I was so (frigging) healthy!

Meanwhile, Bob went to dialysis three times a week. For 53 weeks and six days (not like we're counting!) Dialysis kept him alive, but it's very hard on the body, and it only filters about 10 percent as effectively as a kidney. And dialysis can't do any of the other marvelous things a real kidney does, such as play a role in making red blood cells and regulate the phosphorus-to-calcium ratio, which keeps the bones from deteriorating.

During that year Bob was on dialysis we learned more about the dire need for kidneys and other organs. Like livers, pancreas, lungs, and hearts. I began to think harder about what I can leave behind when I leave this world.

One organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people, and one tissue donor can help up to 100 others. Amazing! What a legacy one person can leave!

But it wasn't until April 24, 2008, the day Bob got his new kidney (my left one!) that I saw first hand what a difference a transplant makes. Bob's new kidney started doing its job, making urine, even before the incision was closed! (Atta girl!) And my remaining kidney started taking over, doing the job that two kidneys had shared for 55 years. It's a beautiful thing.

The difference the transplant made in our lives is phenomenal. Bob has his health and energy back. For us it's a miracle, a miracle I will know and appreciate every day for the rest of my life. I'm so thankful I was healthy enough to give a kidney, and I'm thankful to have my husband back.

Not everyone is healthy enough to be a living donor, but if we were all registered organ donors, if we all chose to pass on our much-needed organs and tissues after we die, so many more people like Bob could be helped.

You can't take it with you, but you can give it away.

www.donatelife.net Just by going to that website and registering to be an organ donor, and talking about your wishes with your family and friends, you can be the difference, you can give the gift of life and health. I thank you for your compassion and generosity.

Thank you for hearing my story.

Nothing left to lose?

2008-10-10T13:58:00.000-07:00
My cinderella story has taken a turn, but I learned years ago this nugget of wisdom:
If you can't be happy when you have nothing, you'll never know happiness no matter how much you have.

This knowledge came to me almost vision-like, one evening 26 years ago, as I was taking out the trash from the tiny two-bedroom trailer I was living in, with two of my three kids and a borrowed cat (to catch the brazen little mouse that had moved in from the Wyoming prairie to raid our supply of cereal and flour. Those days we were living on breakfast cereal and homemade sopapillas, as I was a twice-divorced mother of three, going to school full time and working (at one point) three part time jobs. No trust fund, no living parents, no alimony, no child support. We lived on my small paychecks, my tip money, my student loans.

For relaxation I took up skydiving, paying for my first jump course with a LEAP grant meant to pay utility bills. I guess we were a little cold that winter, I don't really remember. But skydiving was my religion. Stepping out of the door of an airplane at 11,000 feet above the ground, gives you a great appreciation for life, and what's important. At least, for me it did.

My life changed, for the better. I graduated with a degree in Nursing, I went to work, and I continued to skydive. I wrote articles and stories, and had some success getting them published. I met new people and made new friends, among them my future husband, RSR. I saw my three kids beginning to become good people with talents, interests and victories of their own.

Flash forward twenty years or so, I'm living the dream. My husband is well-off (OK, he's rich)and I'm writing and publishing, we're having the time of our lives. My kids are grown, have interesting careers, and kids of their own. I'm a grandma! We own two houses! We have a sailboat! We travel! Life is good! There are problems, yes. My grandchildren have medical issues, challenges. But we're seeing it through. It could be worse.

RSR's kidneys fail, my husband nearly dies. He goes on dialysis, fucking reality shock! Then, the transplant. (More on that, later.) Life restored.

Meanwhile, I'm taking the wealth for granted. Spending like there is no tomorrow. And bam, we didn't get out, we've seen our worth plummet, and like Cinderella I'm sweeping the floor again. But the prince is with me, so we'll see it through. It's been rags to riches, to rags. I'm hoping it'll cycle back again, but if not, we'll carry on. We'll live. (Skydiving taught me you can live deeply, intensely, you can live more than some people do their entire lives in one fifty second freefall.)

As I took out the trash that afternoon 26 years ago, it was sunset. The Wyoming sky was exhilarating with its color, its clarity; the chill wind in my face felt like the relative wind of freefall, and I was filled with an absurd, unexplainable joy. Joy for life. And that's when the knowledge filled me, as sure as God speaking. Happiness isn't something you earn or can save up. It's fleeting, but it's as real and as life-giving as the breath you take.

If you can be happy for fleeting moments when you have little, you have discovered the secret. It's yours, it's mine, it's ours for the taking and there is plenty enough for all.