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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Pardon the Interruption

Please pardon the interruption in blog posts. Okay, and honestly, it's not like I do one a week anyway. Or one a month. Although that is the goal in my head. In my head I do one a month and am working toward one a week. In my head.

In reality, my full time paid gig is not as a writer (ah, to dream!). And although my heart aches daily at leaving my newly started MG hanging, I have a family and life and all the stuff that goes with it, as do most of us. I switched schools mid-year and there has been an adjustment period, my family has needed me more (which is fine), and now I am buying a home and moving as well as wrapping up the school year. If you are teacher, you know what that last thingy means.

Yes, they are all excuses. But still, please pardon the interruption in blog posts.

Because now all I can think about is moving into my cute new house! A little less than 3 weeks to go. I have discovered the addiction of pinning ALL THE THINGS to a new Pinterest board.

And the crazy-making of tying up all the loose ends of utilities, movers, loan & legal stuff.


I can't wait to get in there and get settled.

And after that? Look out. Because I'm pounding in the hours all summer working on that MG! 

I will ignore the laundry and the dust bunnies, eat frozen pizzas and peanut m & ms all summer if I have to (oh darn) and even not let myself be sidetracked by my usual activism. I'm going to get that first draft D.O.N.E. And maybe even a revision round. And people, the premise is GOOD. Really, really GOOD. I'll leave you hanging. 






Monday, May 2, 2016

Poetry Break, Fantasy vs Reality

I'm a few days late for National Poetry Month. But poetry endures.

Fantasy
It doesn’t matter now.
It never really mattered anyway.

It was a fantasy.
A ten year fantasy
in which I struggled to be
your
reality
and you steadfastly held us to
fantasy,
always separating your worlds
so they wouldn’t
collide,
always carefully replacing me in my own
little velvet box
and gently closing the deep, quiet lid
when you left
so that you didn’t hear me and
I didn’t intrude in your
daily life,
bleed into your friends,
spill into your family,
erupt unbidden into your thoughts
at work.

And I breathed life incessantly into
my fantasy
that your heart held me as
mine held you,
and convinced myself that I was okay with
fantasy instead of reality,
that because I enjoyed you,
I enjoyed the fantasy.
My reality was fearful
and you were safe. 

CPR for an imaginary world.
Reality

Reality
would have our lives
 converge,
making me
integral to your daily life
and you to mine –
not limited to flurried intersections
of escape from
wiping faces, folding laundry, and
trips to the grocery store when the milk
runs out,
but fastened to them.

Somehow the fantasy has gasped its last
and now
it is nakedly clear
that it never really mattered.

And

that what mattered in the end
is
I learned the difference between
fantasy and reality,
that you can’t force yourself
uninvited
into another’s reality.
I learned to trust myself,
learned that fantasy
- no matter how seductively wonderful -
in the end
is no more than
smoke and mirrors
that disappear
when the lights come on.

- Kara Stewart, 2008