Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

bad memory December 23, 2011

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:15 pm
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The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

I laughed when I read this.  I can report that it is completely true, as I enjoy books and music for the first time, though I have read them many times previously.  Sometimes I feel like I can’t hold a thought in my head.  It’s not really as bad as all that, but I feel often that memory is like an apple barrel.  The old memories are down deep in the barrel, still there, although perhaps not as pristine as they once were.  The memories on the top of the barrel, however, are balanced a trifle precariously, and are prone to rolling down the pile and off under a counter.

 

Solstice haiku December 22, 2011

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:21 pm
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Finally the days

are growing longer again

inching to summer.

 

standing stones at the solstice… December 21, 2011

Filed under: Commentary,OUTLANDERishness,Pondering,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 4:14 pm
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I’m spending a lot of time the last couple of months reading Diana Gabaldon novels. The Outlander series is about standing stones, and the opportunity to time travel on the sun and fire feasts of assorted solstices. When I realised the day, I posted this on the Diana Gabaldon Facebook site, but I thought I’d share it with you as well.

On this Winter Solstice Day, may the stones guarding your reality open to your dreams…

What are your dreams?

What is standing in the way of achieving them? If your desires are attainable, just as a little more light is added to each day from today onward to summer, take a few moments daily to take steps to fulfilling those dreams. Write a few words, learn a few things, work out a few minutes. Each small step leads closer to reality. Then the stones of your reality won’t be blocking you, they will be the doors to your destiny.

 

truth or reputation? December 19, 2011

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:44 pm
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I’m admiring my Christmas cactus and its green companions in my living room, and wondering if my reputation as a plant killer is truly deserved.  I recently received two plants- a red shamrock and a lemon geranium- they’re new and looking like gawky pubescent boys at the moment, but aside from those, the green things are looking rather healthy in the room at the moment.  There are a 5 year old African violet that has flowered beautifully for me three times, a ‘corn plant’ that is 8 feet hight, that I got in 1989, and very contented spider plant that is almost as old.  So.  I’m not a complete loser in the horticulture department if I can keep plants alive for over twenty years.

My mother can make anything live.  She brings plants back from death and has a garden that is the admiration of the neighbourhood.  Her basement is full of intriguing orchids.  Maybe I’m considered a bad plant person, next to her rather impressive talents.  Plants can survive at my house. They just have to be the right plants.

I would not venture to own something tender and finicky.  Plants at my house have to be like my children- tough and independent!  I provide the basics when I remember- water every week or two, fertilizer in the spring.  Usually.  The plants that make it here like to dry out completely between waterings.  That’s usually a given.  They have to be plants that don’t mind being ignored.  Independent plants that reward me by a show of flowers just as they’re dying are very helpful.  I understand that means they’re desperate.  I’m very good with the desperate.

.

This makes me ponder the essence of reputation.  If I am considered a black thumb, just because in comparison with my mother I’m rather pathetic, it’s kind of unfair.   Sometimes we get reputations we don’t deserve.  Sometimes, we’ve been given tasks (or plants) that simply don’t suit our skills.  If we had the right ones, we’d be quite successful with them.  We can’t be compared with anyone else.  We have to be assessed for our own abilities and given tasks that suit who we are.  If we want to change, we can learn, and take on larger tasks later.  Celebrate reality.  Make the task suit the skills and desires that exist now.

 

or not December 14, 2011

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:51 am
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Come.

They said.

The end is near.

Maybe not.

I said.

He’s tougher than he looks.

Not this time.

They said.

Come.

Hurry.

So we sat holding our breath

when his stopped.

Waiting.

But morning came.

And the next.

And the next.

He’s tougher than he looks.

Told you so.

 

tend the rose December 12, 2011

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:46 pm
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(more…)

 

vigil December 11, 2011

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 10:12 am
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We’re waiting

counting the space between breaths

that stretch the silence

before the next crackling,

static filled gasp

of a soul tuning toward

eternity.

 

re-adjusting… December 8, 2011

Filed under: Grace Awakening,OUTLANDERishness,Pondering,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:36 pm
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I was driving home while listening to the audio book of Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber. It’s a brisk December day, -3 Celsius.

At this point in the story, the narrator was discussing about how the day of the Battle of Culloden was bitterly cold. Immediately, in my mind, I envisioned a bitterly cold day. -20 or so. The next line was about how the bodies were stacked wet with blood and rain. Rain. Immediately, I adjusted my vision of the cold 21 degrees warmer…

Then I laughed. So much of the story is contained in the perspective of the reader. I know it intellectually, but it always seems to take me by surprise when I see it in action.

A couple of times I’ve had comments from readers of Grace Awakening that baffled me. Sometimes they’ve just misinterpreted something, or missed some detail, but often it is just that their life experience reveals a different view on the events. It’s interesting.

Bitter cold doesn’t need to be -20 of course. I spent a July in Vancouver one year, and the humidity of the city got into my bones and I was cold all the time. It was much worse than the -20 winter days! Living in the dry interior of BC, I don’t like humidity. Perhaps the weather at Culloden, not far from Inverness and the Channel, was that ‘get into your bones’ bitterness, even though it was above zero.

Adjust while reading.

Carry on.

 

sea sleep December 7, 2011

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:08 am
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Sleep is the sea

reaching out to you

embracing you in a wave

You collapse under it like a sand castle

dissolving into the depths.

 

future hope December 5, 2011

Filed under: Commentary,Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 5:11 pm
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All of his hope for his future was absolutely exploding into nothing. I think that just completely destroys somebody in a moment.   ~Richard Armitage

(from http://www.tv.com/people/richard-armitage/trivia/)

Armitage is referring in this quote to a character who must kill his beloved, so the observation is a bit of an understatement!  Taking the remarks out of that specific context, however, there is a bit of a message here.

When we do not have hope, we are destroyed.  In desperate situations–times of war, for example–those without hope have no strength to carry on.  They give up and are lost.   In contrast, those who hope that better days are coming, fight strength to live another day.

Proverbs 29:18 suggests that “Without vision, the people perish.”  Vision can be equated with hope in this situation.  You have to be able to imagine a better future, and if you can begin to actually formulate plans to improve the future, so much the better.  Vision is hope.

I know someone who is going through a bitter divorce at the moment.  Bitterness, agony, rejection and depression are sucking hope out of life, and there is no positive vision.  Unable to hear that he holds in his own hands the ability to create his own happiness, helplessness has overwhelmed him.

The second part of Proverbs 29:18 adds, “but he that keeps the law is happy.”  I’m not sure how vision fits with keeping the law.  How does do they relate to each other?  The idea of obedience bringing happiness fits with theocratic governance, of course, but vision and obedience seem somewhat at odds.   Those who take the vision and make it power have the joy of living in a spirit of grace, whether or not they’re happy with the law.