Gifts
of kindness,
listening ear,
patience.
She has grace,
amid what some exclaim disgrace.
June thankfulness June 5, 2013
Skies bluer than sapphires
Sun glowing, turned the world into High Definition.
Birds calling, trilling, chirping, clicking, singing
Swooping, sailing on a sky sea
Warm breeze a caress,
blowing sultry scents into nostrils.
Barbeque sauce tangoing on the tongue.
With friends, in fellowship,
we celebrate service above ourselves.
There is a lot to be thankful for in June.
.
June is Rotary Fellowships month. Fellowships are Rotarians who share a passion, like chess, travel, puzzles, etc.
So, whatcha writin’ in that NaNoWriMo thing, anyway? November 6, 2012
Thought you might like to see what’s coming along. Ben is now at University of Calgary with his friends Paul and Ryan. (Craigie Hall is the music building). Grace is living in the Shuswap with her Auntie Bright. If you’re new to the story, you should know that Grace and Ben are connected telepathically. Ben is the earthly realm form of the demi-god Orpheus. He’s narrating.
—————————————————————–
I was walking down a corridor in Craigie Hall when a stab of pain crashed into my head. I staggered into the wall, and grabbed for support.
A girl rushed over to me, “Are you okay?”
I shook my head, gasping, and she guided me to a bench. I dropped my head between my knees. “I’ll be okay. It’s fine.” The pain wasn’t mine, it was reverberating from Grace. She didn’t know yet how to completely control her side of our connection. Her calls to me were generally hesitant and gentle. I had to be fully open to catch her tentative yearnings in my direction. This time, her anguish exploded with her full power. Without any guards up against it, she had blown me over with the image that was filling her head: a girl with brightly coloured hair, twisted into dreadlocks in the hallway of her school.
“Grace!” I shouted back into her mind.
“Everything is okay, Ben,” she thought in reply.
“Who was that?” or what was that? It was something from the Other Realm, that was clear enough, but what was it doing in Grace’s new school? Had they followed her and sent something evil to attack her there? It was supposed to be safe there!
“I don’t know. What are you worried about, Ben?”
“Nothing,” I spit out. I needed help. Grace needed help. Right now. I’ll talk to you later.”
I pushed into the men’s washroom. Thankfully it was empty. I spun into the Other Realm igniting the room with light as I vanished. In the flashing glow, I didn’t notice that someone had pushed through the door.
“Mars!” I shouted into the Other Realm. “Where are you!”
Alexandros sauntered out from the foggy gloom. “He’s busy.”
“What do you mean busy? He’s needed. Something is wrong in the Shuswap. Grace is in trouble.”
Xandros nodded, pursing his lips. “Ah yes. We figured that would happen.”
“What do you mean?” I snarled at him, nostrils flaring. “You knew?”
“Calm down. This is exactly why you make such a terrible guardian. You lose all sense when there’s danger. You have to be cool and cautious when there’s trouble. You can’t go all wild and hysterical.” He shook his head at me.
“Well, I’m not a guardian anymore, am I? Mars is. And he’s missing!”
Xandros punched me, hard in the bicep.
I raised my fist to return a shot, but his guard was up, and he caught it easily in his fist. “You’re such an idiot,” he said, holding my fist tightly in his. “Where do you think Mars is?”
“What?” I loosened the tension in my arm, and he let my fist go. “Is he at Grace’s school?”
Xandros rolled his eyes. “He’s doing his job, O. Now it’s time for you to leave Grace in our hands. You go back to Earth and do your job. Go back to your nest of musicians and make pretty melodies.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“He’s guarding her?”
He nodded. “She’s in good hands.”
“Better than mine, you mean?”
He smirked. “You said it, I didn’t. Go on. It’s under control.”
I studied his face. He was an irritating, obnoxious ass, but he was reliable in a fight. Between Mars and Alexandros, Grace was in better hands than she’d been when I was her guardian. It just wasn’t easy to trust the girl I loved out of my sight, though. Not when either of them would happily take her from me for themselves.
I nodded. “All right then. Thank you.”
I spun back into the washroom, narrowly missing landing with my foot in an unflushed toilet. As I stepped off the rim a voice greeted me.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell that’s about?”
I snapped my head to the speaker and sighed, “Hi, Paul.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Hello. Don’t change the subject.”
“Is there a subject?”
“Well, apparently my best friend can vanish in flashes of light and reappear in toilets like some kind of janitorial Superman. I’d say that’s a pretty interesting subject.”
I swallowed. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…” I intoned in a hypnotic voice, “You didn’t see anything…”
“Bullshit,” he said conversationally.
“Paul.”
“We’ve been friends for what? Four years? We’ve been there for each other. You help me out. I help you out. Never once did you ever mention that you had magical powers.”
“You believe in magical powers? I could have sworn you were more sensible than that. Do you believe in fairies, too?”
“Nope. But I saw you come into this room. When I opened the door, I saw that weird light. You were glowing and then it…swallowed you. You were no longer in the room. I looked. I even lifted up the lid on the damned toilet tank, Ben! You were not here. Then there’s another flash, and there you are, pulling your foot out of a toilet bowl like you were visiting the Ministry of Magic or something . I know what I saw, bro.” He crossed his arms across his chest and watched me. His face showed confusion, irritation, and just a little bit of fear. “You weren’t at the Ministry of Magic, were you?”
I sighed. “I can’t explain, Paul.”
“Is it something to do with Grace?”
Wasn’t everything to do with Grace? I took a deep breath. “You have to trust me, Paul. I can’t tell you anything about this. It’s not safe for you to know anything.”
“So Ryan was right? We are in danger around you?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here. It makes no sense. No one should be after me. They’re still after Grace, that’s for certain. You should be safe with me, but you might not be if you know everything. Like who I am.”
He studied me, reading my eyes to see if I was lying to him. “Who you are or what you are?”
I raised my hands is silent appeal.
Finally, he nodded, and unfolded his arms. “We’re late for [ subject ] class. Come on.” He pushed open the door.
“Thanks.”
He nodded. “We’ve been friends for four years, after all. That’s got to be worth something.”
I smiled. “It is. I’ve never lied to you Paul. I’m not starting now.”
“Good.”
——————————————————-
NaNoWriMo total for day 6: 589 words (November total: 9013)
pinterest May 7, 2012
I’ve been hearing about Pinterest, so I decided to take a look. It seems like fun, so I’ve got a profile going there. My boards are about the places and spaces that I love (like my own backyard), people I admire (so far only authors, but if I think, I know I’ll come up with more. At the moment I am so obsessed with Diana Gabaldon I’m having trouble seeing past her! lol), and books I love.
After that, I jumped into author mode, and Grace has a board, as well as Ben and Auntie Bright.
Have a look around at Pinterest.com/ShawnLBird. Feel free to offer some suggestions!
death and time January 3, 2012
I’ve been pondering time lately. I once heard a theory that while time is linear to us, that it could also be a circle. I envision this as a tight coil, circle upon circle, so that everything is really happening simultaneously, in different components of the coil.
This concept works well with my notion of Other Realms, such as exist in Grace Awakening. This makes the past that Ben is obsessed with and that Grace is dreaming about is all really concurrent with their modern high school experience. The memories of 3000 years are as close as the present.
This sort of fits with the experience of Jamie and Claire in the time travelling Outlander series. It changes the concepts of death and love.
18th century Jamie expresses it well to Claire who has crossed through the standing stones in the 1960s to return to him in the past. She is remembering his grave seen in her own time, and she is afraid for him. He is not worried:
“But do you not see how verra small a thing is the notion of death, between us two, Claire?” he whispered.
“All the time after ye left me, after Culloden—I was dead then, was I not?…Two hundred years from now, I shall most certainly be dead, Sassenach… Be it Indians, wild beasts, a plague, the hangman’s rope, or only the blessing of auld age—I will be dead. … And while you were there—in your own time—I was dead, no?… I was dead, my Sassenach—and yet all that time, I loved you. … So long as my body lives, and yours—we are one flesh,” he whispered. His fingers touched me, hair and chin and neck and breast, and I breathed his breath and felt him solid under my hand. Then I lay with my head on his shoulder, the strength of his supporting me, the words deep and soft in his chest. “And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be your’s Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you. … Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.”
“That’s the first law of thermodynamics,” I said, wiping my nose.
“No,” he said. “That’s faith.” (Drums of Autumn p.321-22)
It makes my heart ache a bit to think of such faith in love. That’s a good thing too. I think Ben feels the same way about Grace, so long as she will choose him, and survive the attacks of those meant to destroy her. There’s that finger of doubt chasing him, though. Will she stay this time?
Death doesn’t stop the love. The loss of a person physically doesn’t mean the warmth of feeling disappears. Scents or memories can drop in and collapse the time between in an instant. Dreams seem like a very logical way to cross the divide. Visitations can be close in the territory of Morpheus. I wonder if he’s worked out some arrangement with Chronos? Hmmm.
hourglass September 25, 2011
I belong to a YA reading group on Goodreads.com that had Hourglass by Myra McEntire as its monthly book in August. I really enjoyed this story of a teen who is fresh out of the psych hospital for hallucinating. She wasn’t hallucinating though, she was seeing through time bubbles. I love Emerson the protagonist- she’s sarcastic, feisty, and tortured. I enjoyed the time travelling component that came up toward the end of the book.
The characters in this book were well crafted and became very real for me. In fact, they became so real that as I read Hourglass, I had a new experience. I kept hearing echoes of my own characters, and I kept thinking how well Grace and Ben would love to hang out with Emerson and Michael. I could see them all taking on the bad dudes together. How cool would it be for Emerson and Michael to go back and visit Grace and Ben in one of their past lives? (There’s a project for some fan-fic writer).
I had never had that experience before, and it was quite fascinating. Emerson is tougher than Grace, but she shares the same bent for sarcasm and healthy doubt about the male in her world.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I am looking forward to the next book in the series. Very entertaining read, Myra McEntire! Thanks a lot!
THE DAY! July 19, 2011
Well, today is the day!
After years of writing, editing, compiling, collaborating, waiting and abating, Grace Awakening is finally greeting the world! Today Lintusen Press uploaded Grace Awakening to BookBaby.com for formatting and distribution to the e-book outlets around the world. Whether you have a Sony e-reader, a Nook, an iPad, an iPhone, or a Kindle you will be able to download Book one: Awakening Dreams for the remarkable introductory price of 99c.
I have a niece who is 2 weeks from her due date today, and as it happens, now so am I. Bookbaby says it takes 5-10 days for the file to be prepared and sent off to the various e-stores. Those e-stores take from 2 to 14 days to get the files onto their sites and ready to sell. That means my baby could be ready for the world in 7 days or 21 days- just like my niece’s baby.
We’re in the longest waiting period.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
((sigh))
Keep your eyes open!
(PS. On the Facebook fan page there’s a contest for the first sighting on a sales site. Feel free to join the watch and win a prize!)
Grace February 28, 2011
In Grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word …grace has something triumphant in it. ~Yrjö Kallinen
I found this quote on the Facebook status of friend who works at the UN. Aside from the concept of grace which is so beautifully explored here, I am fascinated that it was written by a Finn. If Yrjö Kallinen was writing this in Finnish, it opens up another interesting language exploration, as there isn’t a single word for ‘grace’ in Finnish. Perhaps Kallinen was thinking of gratia as there is a bit of the wealth of gratia gratium parit reflected here.
I want to know more about this. If you know where this quote is from, please leave a comment so I can explore more.
Kiitos Yrjö!
Addendum: March 1, 2011
I found this clip of Kallinen. He’s speaking Finnish, and so the majority of you will have to read the sub-titles, but if you’re curious to hear his lovely clear enunciation that even I can make sense of have a listen. Apparently Kallinen was a pacifist and conscientious objector who nonetheless was Finland’s Minister of Defence from 1946-48. He is speaking about life and dreams and how to revolutionize thinking. Quite apropos to what is happening in the Middle East at the moment.
Elämmekö unessa? (Are we living in a dream) pt 2 – 1 Translation(s) | dotSUB.
Shawn L. Bird 
Quatrain August 4, 2011
Tags: awakening dreams, grace, Grace Awakening, poetry, postaday2011, quatrain, reality, truth, wisdom
Reality is a dream awoken
Truth is perception spoken
Wisdom is a lifetime’s token
Grace is long love unbroken
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