Semblance of Sapience

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more."
-yes, I quoted Poe again

Ahh, the constant beating at my door for a fleeting moment, is silenced. 

I put the period at the end of my first chapter today. Of course that is far from it being complete. But it is, in its own way, an accomplishment. The first chapter of the story itself is written. However, punctuation it seems will be a very consistent thorn in my side. A big, angry, bossy arrogant thorn. I do not like it. Not punctuation itself...but not knowing how to do it in a way that expresses perfectly what I am trying to say, While still being accurate and acceptable in novel form.

I want to write a good book with good ideas. But I am not a great, educated or experienced writer. My strong-suit is more in the category of concepts, ideas and scene building. But connecting the dots is literally, painful. If I am to try to do something that professionals do then I have to perform professionally. Pretty funny considering I am someone who claims to be doing this for me and me alone. This whole dreaded book thing (my apologies, Mortimer) started because I've spent my life starting books but never completing them. Dozens.  Dozens of great and not-so-great  ideas never came to fruition.  Laziness, busyness, tiredness, excuses, excuses, excuses. This book is a personal challenge. I may finish the book and never even attempt to publish. But that does not mean that I can do it halfheartedly. If I don't do it right, then technically all I did was plot some ideas down on paper. Having a beginning middle and end does not constitute a Novel. Rather it remains a collection of ideas, sequenced scenes and characters that will never take their first breath.

Like it or not I have to write something that resembles a coherent focused representation of something real. I am fabricating a story that needs to convince the reader to believe it. A story that the reader accepts as, and even wants to be real. Even if that reader, is just me. The suspension of reality. Its not actually that hard, until you screw up. I think we all love superman. I am borderline obsessed. He lives in our world and we accept that. Some long for it. Until that is, they deviate from the mythos...then suddenly something that is unbelievable but believed, becomes unbelieved, far fetched, lost or worse, really annoying and disappointing.

So, how do I do this? How does someone like me, write in a way that resembles someone who actually knows what they are doing? And how do I stay sane while doing it? How to I keep violent "head meeting keyboard" episodes from occurring and reoccurring?  How do I stop getting so overwhelmed that I walk away for days at a time too frustrated to sit back down and just write?  I am not sure that I can. Something has to give. Ultimately, what I do know is that I should. That giving up diminishes me as a person and discredits me as a writer (something I cannot even claim to be...sigh, this is exhausting).  Will I, once again prove that "I can't" when I know that I can...I think.

I hesitate to say that I am a writer. I feel that that is presumptuous, pretentious, and inaccurate. Sure, I am a person who likes to write. But that certainly doesn't make me a writer. Perhaps hobbyist would be the correct term? An aspiring writer may be better. So what makes a writer a writer? Does one wake up one day, decide they want to write, start a blog and call themselves a writer? I feel there is in some way, a degree of disrespect to great writers in that thinking. Will I have to be accomplished in some way to call my self a writer? Be published? Win an award? Honestly, I am not sure I will ever feel like a real writer...Truth is I still don't feel like a grown up. Sure the law says I've been one for nearly 20 years. But wasn't a light suppose to turn on or something? I never got a badge or official license, nothing. I ask myself...why do I need something official to tell me who or what I am? Why is it I always wait for reassurance, I need it, yet when I get it, I find it far from convincing? Is it crippling insecurity? Or do I just know myself better than anyone? Am I unwilling to accept complements because I am a realist who knows they are not true and that I am factually unworthy? Or is it because I simply cannot except that I might, in fact, be good at something? Is that the artist in me? The one who is  never 100% satisfied with my work. Or the classic self-deprecating me that keeps me in my perceived place? How long will I have to endure myself? Will me and myself ever not be such completely different entities? And is there a magic pill for that? (straight jacket, padded room?) And while I'm asking all these questions, is it really a bad thing that criticism holds more weight with me than praise?

I am not sure certainty will ever play a leading role in my life. But there are few things I am certain of. My belief in God. My devotion to family and my love for country. To me, these things are as natural at the color of my hair or my very average height. But they have little to do with my aforementioned capabilities. The ones that live behind the silken curtain. Rustling uncertainty their only lifelong companion. Longing for the assured fortitude that comes with experience and the legitimate reassurance that comes not from a loved one, but from a critic, or someone with a badge or a license of some kind. The one that believes her ideas are worthy of the ink on the paper, of being brought to life, while still believing she is unworthy of giving breath to the very life she created.

For now, I will enjoy this first feeling of accomplishment that will, I pray, precede many.

Hmmm, It seems the visitor is knocking again. I will try to ignore it for a short while and just enjoy my first chapter. But it will persist. It will persist until I succumb. Until fingers meet keyboard or pen meets paper again.  Until then, I hope it doesn't kill me....

~Raven-Don't come to me for clarity-Cloud. Because a cloud cannot exist in clear skies...

Gratuitous Gratitude

 So, I said I would do this once a week. Probably on the weekends. But given the holiday, I decided to slip an extra one in....Its Thanksgiving in America and I have much to be thankful for.

Its the time of year to show gratitude. Its not easy for everyone. Knowing that it can always be worse doesn't bring much comfort, but it is most certainly still true. A few years ago I was having a mini tantrum because once again, the moment I had built a little "nest egg" for myself, or received some form of extra or "free" money....well, I bet you can guess. Something of course had to go wrong. This has happened, quite literally, every time I have ever had extra (bulk) money in my life. It seemed cash was a bad omen for catastrophe of equal or greater value.
During this mini tantrum I vented to my mother in typical woe-is-me fashion. Every time I have some money...BOOM...something has to happen so I can't even enjoy it. I can't have fun with it, or save it, or pay off a stupid bill! No, nothing <insert Charlie Brown Ugh here>
My wise mother then said something that changed my outlook on everything...forever. She said, "Why is it that you say, whenever you have money, suddenly something bad takes it away? Instead of, whenever something bad happens, suddenly you have money to pay for it?" Well didn't I feel like a schmuck. What has happened in our society of plenty that we (namely ME) can no longer see the bright side of anything, when we are living directly inside, the bright side. I have a lot to be grateful for. The list starts with God, country and family and ends with my last breath. I will not forget that again.

Today, I wish to express gratitude on simpler scale. It starts with the kindness of a stranger...

I love pictures. Love to look at them. Love to take them. But Im not that great at it. Remember the whole attention span issue? I have a great digital SLR that I keep on  IA (intelligent auto) all the time. What a waste. Photography is yet another passion that I love but neglect. I am such a slacker. I'm below par for my own course....sigh. That said, some people are just gifted and what they have cannot be taught.

I troll the net sometimes looking for inspiration. I usually know what I need to see. I will look up a color, like orange or a subject like "Moss" or "Clouds" and search until I find the one that satisfies whatever it was my brain was looking for. I often wondered what it meant, that people are my least favorite subject. There are some, that without an individual perfectly placed, the symmetry would be lost, or the point ineffectual. Not to mention how often looking in the the wide open eyes of a very young child or infant is your door into an unwritten world. But still, they bottom out my list

Photographers, the good ones. The dedicated ones. The ones that see art in the strangest places and smallest details. The ones who always have their camera ready, they way I always have a pencil and paper hidden somewhere...I have great respect for. They express what I am thinking, without even trying. They know what I was trying to say, without words.

Besides being part of my name, I relate to clouds in many ways. A clouds lifespan is about that of my attention span. They can be beautiful and cheery. Or dark and ominous. They can look like a teddy bear or a raving lunatic Crocogator. Oh yea, they exist. They tell you things without a word...hows the weather outside? Ask a cloud! They are common. Always around in some form. I think most people forget them. As pretty as they are, people cherish clear blue skies. I have never ever understood that.  A cloudless sky to me, looks empty. Lonely. Its like a salt-less dish. I appreciate them. I enjoy the ever-changing sky. Its like...my mirror twin. I feel a strange bond when I look up. Day or night, she is always there. A new print every time I look. Why have so many stopped looking up? I can't even speculate.

So, back to my point. I found a picture recently that resonated with me in many ways. This picture to me, was art. It was on flickr from an Italian photographer named Andrea Cucconi. While I got stalled on his albums for a while..this one picture burned itself into my mind...it was like a self portrait...of my mirror twin, ha! The photo, titled "Nuvola nera" (black cloud) is just stunning. It is a photo of the Italian sky...but is so much more. It seems to almost fade from some perfect oil painting, into nature. A bright illuminated sky, with a rogue raven cloud passing through. I am posting the link below with permission from Mr. Cucconi. But he went a step further and gave me, a complete stranger and amateur rambler in every way, permission to actually use the photo on this blog. The photo is below and is one of the new loves of  my life. I thank you very kindly Andrea Cucconi! And to you, I offer my gratitude today!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreacucconi/508643366/in/faves-88361884@N00/

It will become my main photo as soon as I figure out HOW to do that...it seems I am not so fast a learner!

It is now the very end of my day. I am tired and more stuffed than any old turkey could be. Now that I am three blogs in and I feel like its something I can do, I will get back to what was supposed to be my original point this weekend. I will begin to verbally walk through my attempt at writing this novel. Probably while still avoiding proper punctuation. (Its a blog! Thats like dressing up to go to walmart!) This will be my outlet, good bad and ugly. And I hope that it will help me track growth as a writer and progress toward my goal. And to anyone who takes this journey with me, I pray I neither bore you to death or drive you insane. And if I take the walk alone, well, I hope I don't bore myself to death or drive me insane! Unless bored insane people write good books....

Once again, out to the open air I say, goodnight. If the sun rises on your tomorrow, say thank you. Or, say thank you for no reason at all, or for every reason in the world. And when a black cloud passes though...don't be so quick to think that there is not some small reason that even it, deserves your gratitude. It was one passing black cloud that inspired me. And its photographer made that possible. He stopped to take a picture of the darkness in his Italian sky. And years later someone who found it beautiful took it home. Even if home is just right here. It was not darkness I saw. But a stroke of Gods brush, and a photographer who knew divine art was just passing through...

~A Raven Cloud is a happy cloud

To be or not to be? Stop avoiding the question!

Ok, so now that I'm here (again) and I took the first leap on to the 2nd step...am I a blogger? Is it real yet? I'm going to do my best not to abandon myself now that the blog is officially made. But is this really, real?

My whole point in finally taking step one was to find an outlet for all the static in my mind. To put all the little things that really don't lead to a bigger thing, in one place. Maybe if I give the words a place to live they will stop living in my head. They are after all, pretty crappy neighbors. Noisy, heavy footed busy bodies. Sometimes what pops into my head is a simple idea or quote, other times a poem. Often its a realization. I do know that in the past there were things that I would write down thinking it turned out ok, just to misplace it. Or things I thought up and convinced myself there was no way I'd forget it. Its just too good! Of course, the next day or by the time I got home, I just couldn't piece it back together quite the same way. Is this the cure? A collection of moments like a photo album for words? A viable collaboration between then inner and outer me? I recently bought myself a voice recorder. I often lose thoughts simply because I cannot write as fact as I can think. Perhaps I am finally taking writing seriously? I hope so. I really hope so. Its in my heart. And I have neglected it for a long time.

This is, I hope, like exercise. As I attempt to actually complete the dreaded book, I will see this as baby steps to gradually increasing my attention span. And as I clear my mind writing all the "extras" here I hope to make room for the bigger ideas I need to put into this book. The ideas that will take more than 5 minutes to type. The ones that have no real end, unlike my moments here. The book excites me. But it overwhelms me. When you have so many ideas, and so many very large scenes to write, where do you start? And can I ever make them look they way they do in my minds eye. Can I do my characters, who I already love dearly, the justice they deserve? Or will this end up in a heap of chicken scratch tucked away in a box somewhere, never to come to life. If I truly love them, I shouldn't let that happen right? Or, like most dreams are they better off dwelling where they were born? Sometimes I feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third kind...remember the terrible scene where he was making the mashed potato plateau? I still recall the stress I felt even as a child from his extra-terrestrial haunting. But will I ever find that fantastical realization that he did? That moment when I stand face to face with the words I gave a home outside my gut? Will I ever know that I was right all along?

My thoughts have been hijacked. My quiet moments, gone. My former thoughtless videogaming/TVwatching/internettrolling moments squashed under the weight of...I just decided I will call Mr.Dreaded book, Mortimer. And Mortimer is not petite. I am eating, but the story is floating around in my head. I do not think I actually sleep anymore. I lie awake thinking of who, how and when. When I do sleep, I dream the scenes as if they are real. I relive them again and again. I don't wake feeling rested. I simply close my eyes to one world, and open them to another. No matter what I am doing, my mind is always, at least partially elsewhere. The only way to stop it, is to allow it to live outside of me. And so, I write.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote at the start of "The Raven"

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

This was me tonight. The gentle rapping on this dreary day is simply the desire to tap a keyboard or pick up a pen. It calls to me. Its funny though, unlike all the other stories I've always wanted to write, this one leaves me no choice. It used to be that I thought up an idea that I liked and wanted to write about it. I thought of a scene and wanted to build around it. I thought of a character and wanted to create them a world that fit them. But this one...It is demanding and noisy. The story is telling me what needs to be written. The concept was not something carefully developed and thought out. Something born of creativity. It came to me, like the vision of a memory of something real. Something I'd seen before. I did not create it. It is living inside of a crowded & distracted mind and it wants out. It is rapping at my chamber door.

So. To be or not to be? I fear my sanity shall not retain its composure if I give up on the dreaded book. And, I do think I am enjoying this whole blogging bologna. Though I by far prefer salami or roast beef...blogging bologna, is an aquired taste I think I can get used to. As for the book, the dreaded thorn in my side...I will continue to call him Mortimer. I should hate to give him a complex with the repeated title of dreaded.

So, this is blog two. I did not give up...yet? I am not generally a pessimist. More like an optimistic realist. And, I would rather not set myself up for failure, but...again I ramble, incessantly....

This will be my last blog about blogging indecisiveness...promise :-) My goal is to get here at least once per week. Kinda like the gym....

Quoth the Raven...I'll be back, once upon a bloggers query....

Is this blog haunted?

One giant leap (compared to a few small steps)

For many years I toyed with the idea of a blog. Besides the fact that I found it quite presumptuous that anyone would want to read anything that I had to say, I doubted my ability to say anything consistently. What is the point of a blog, if you do it once then show up a year later to maybe do it again? Then again, can this be the perfect tool for someone with great big ideas, but a very not so great, little attention span?

So, time and time again I revisited the idea of maybe, possibly doing slightly more than simply considering  the conception of a blog. And, time and time again, the idea of a blog revisited me and considered doing something different, with this preconceived idea of a writer. It seemed...I was haunted. I would hear the haunting whispers of the blogging I should do while at the store. The little green ghost called envy would woooo, its way through the room whenever I read someone elses very crafty quip filled blog about whatever. I would hear the creaking of the dried up floorboards I called imagination lying unpolished in my head. And I even heard the squeaky hinges of half thought out ideas restlessly waiting in the thresholds of daydreams...their doors remaining unshut, yet not really satisfactorily opened either. The haunting remained in the cobweb filled forgotten, yet always there attic of my unwritten mind.

When most of us think of attics, we think dust and cobwebs and even spooky haunted things. But we also think lost treasures and memories. A safe and fun place to hide and play where old and tattered items fuel imagination. We find forgotten keepsakes hidden in old dusty chests that we were just a little afraid to open seconds before. This kinda sums me up. I am, by nature an extremist. Not by principle or in a behavioral or political or even emotionally reactive way. But sitting beside my gray and rational self is the eclectic wildly over analytical artist in me. One that generally lives, not in the warm center of my mind, but in the outskirts or the depths. This....is maddening. Yet, it is a great place to escape the walls of this very limited, unlimited world.

So, after pondering the idea of my blog being haunted I realized that I could not figure this one little detail out...Was it me who was haunting my attic, or was my attic haunting me? I will be sure to let you know as soon as I figure that out. But for right now I will begin to end right where I began to start....

I realized today, that at least for me, a blog was not actually about writing anything that anyone wants to read. It is about writing out loud, just because I can. Caging the words that often escape me. I decided this will be my therapy. Though I am not sure if it is writing me, or I am writing it. Unlike shouting from the rooftops, anyone who trips over my benign little blog still has absolute control over their free will. I simply cannot force myself on anyone. It is as invasive as noninvasive can be. A crazy hack screaming from a roof top can only send a voice as far as the nearest ear. But this...this can end up down the road, or in Japan. Being so comfortable in extremism, I find these points both comforting and disconcerting. The fact that people can find me by accident and stay....or hit that little boxed-in X to the top right, or backspace into the next parking lot means I can talk to the whole world...and no one has to listen. Or they can all listen, whatever. Too bad that does not apply to my singing at home....

So here I am. If you choose to stay a while you will notice a few things. I ramble...semi-coherently or brilliantly. I apologize in advance to both myself and you the reader (which may also be me). I write, the way I speak. Natural and unpunctuated. Confused and concise. I do not try to sound educated. I am not. I will not go out of my way to "smarten up" my marginal musings. You great writers out there may want to stop reading now...before you learn to hate me, if you haven't already.  I will not drag you into the depths of my soul or launch into elaborate diatribes about life or the world or the people in it. My soul is neither deep nor shallow for it has no limits. How do you begin to discuss something like that? I will not be pondering the mysteries of the universe or the human mind...I have yet to figure out my own as their mysteries also seem without limit. You won't find  intellectualism's because my intellectual mind is constantly being interrupted by my artistic mind. This little spot here is simply my creative refuse. Brain trash if you will. A place to store all my incomplete thoughts. My yet unwritten wild ideas that no one ever gets but me. A place to express all the things I seem to need to express, without actually having to see all the usual looks others seem to need to express back. (run-on sentences? yea, guilty). They cannot see what I can see. And that is ok.  My mind is unfenced. For some that creates chaos and for others freedom. Personally, I like to sit where the fence would be if I had one. Grateful to be unlimited, yet as is typical for the extremist in me, creating an invisible fence. A self-limiting barrier to my goals, my dreams, my capabilities. A not quite closed door. One you want to see out of, but do not want to walk through. I either dread the idea of starting a project or I'm so excited I can't contain myself. I am ambitious but lazy. I start and if I have to work three days straight, I will. I won't stop to eat or sleep and will let things fall apart around me. They can wait. Because once I stop, I may never return to finish. I am exuberant but stifled. I am complex but simple. I am an artist without outlet. A writer with an ever blank page. Who I am on the inside is not reflected on the outside. Or am I not who I think I am? Exactly which "me" are we talking about here?

I am a Raven Cloud. Alter-ego. An illusion like any other cloud. Seen only from afar not within. The Reverie Muse, extremist extraordinaire. An artist without a niche. A writer with nothing worth reading. A full deck missing all her cards. A typo queen & punctuationophobe. You can love me and stay a while or hate me and run. Personally I believe that if you both love me and hate me, you will learn to like me a little, you'll find my flaws annoyingly charming and we will get along just fine....In that love to hate me, hate that you love me kinda way...I hope...ish.

Until you decide, I (we?) will be here, writing...or not.

Like a dark cloud in your blue sky...I too shall pass.
~A Raven Cloud without rain