"I get knocked down but I get up again...and again and again..."

they went skiing for a day
and she decided to try snowboarding.
"it'll be such fun!" she enthused.

***

"so, how's it going?" he asked two hours later,
taking in her disheveled appearance and snow encrusted hair.

"well, it's going okay," she said.
"i just wish i had packed some knee pads and a ton of charmin, baby,
'cuz my tush hurts!"

and he giggled in spite of himself,
trying desperately to kiss all the tender spots away.

Pocket Proctector

"you know, baby," she said as they walked to their cars,

"i think i figured out why yesterday was a no good downright poopy day."

"why?" he asked.

"because i inadvertently left henry at home!" she replied,

quickly pulling her tiny owl talisman from her coat pocket.

"baby! i love the fact that you keep a little owl with you all day,"

he said with a chuckle. "it's so cute!"

she giggled.

"between you and me, i really don't think he minds

'cuz he can catch up on his z's and he only sends out a "hoot"

when i forget to let him out at night so he can stretch his wings."

The Year of the...Half-Chicken?

they were sitting in a chinese restaurant,
pointing out the animals of the chinese zodiac on the menu when
her three-and a-half year old asked, "momma, what animal am i?"

"well, let's see," replied her mother looking at the dates on the menu,
"since you were born in 2005, it looks like you're a rooster!"

and her daughter sat there thoughtfully, pondering this news and then said,
"so, momma, does that mean i'm half chicken and half chinese?"

and her mother smiled, knowing that the questions from here on out would only get harder.

Who's Afraid of Pale Pants?

"i dig seuss books," she said proudly,
"but i have a confession - i'm still afraid of the pale green pants, baby."

"really?" he exclaimed incredulously,
"surely not that pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them?!"

"yes!" she replied. "those pants! they're scary, baby!
i mean, what are they doing wandering around at night
through snide-fields and brickel bush patches and
rowing about for doubt-trout on roover river?

"i mean," she continued, "it's just all shades of creepiness if you ask me."

"well," he replied thoughtfully,
"maybe seuss was just trying to point out that the things we're most afraid of are
really quite silly when you meet 'em face to face."

she thought on this and replied with a grin,
"well, you have a point, baby.
so this probably means that i should return your green pajama bottoms
that i hid a while back, huh?"

Snow's Out for Summer

they were driving in a bit of a snowstorm,
watching the fat flakes push against the windshield and flurry past them.

"wow," she exclaimed to him as he drove into the white wall of snow,
"these flakes are in a hurry to get somewhere, aren't they?"

"you bet," he replied, "it's almost as if they know
that winter's just about over and have decided to have one last hurrah."

"hmm," she replied, "either that or they just
finished school for the year and are keen to get going on their vacations.
i mean, if i were a snowflake, i'd be on the first zephyr out of town, baby!"

he looked over at her and laughed and said,
"sweetheart, somehow i don't doubt that at all!"

Musing on Muses

A few days ago I was perusing my friend Leah's blog "Creative Every Day" and I came across a TED talk featuring Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love". In the talk, Gilbert shares her thoughts and fears about the writing process and she chats at length about inspiration and the unknowable place from which ideas come.

I like Gilbert and I respect her memoir for both its brutal emotional honesty and her grit in the face of great pain. (See my thoughts on it here.) Still, what struck me most about her talk was the way she described her encounter with American poet Ruth Stone. (if you linked over to the TEDTalk, go to 10:13 in the feed.) Even more inspirational is the way Ruth receives her poems. Gilbert describes:

"...while she was growing up in rural Virginia she would be out working in the fields and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. She said it was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape and when she felt it coming (because it would shake the earth under her feet) she knew that she only had one thing to do at that point and that was, in her words, to "run like hell" to the house...and she'd be getting chased by this poem and the whole deal was that she had to get to a paper and pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page.

"...and other times she wouldn't be fast enough so she'd be running and running and running and she wouldn't get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape looking, as she put it, for another poet.

"...and then there were these times...she said that there were moments when she'd almost miss it...she's running into the house and she's looking for paper and the poem passes through her and she said she grabs a pencil just as it's going through her and then she'd reach out with her other hand and she would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page and in these instances the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards from the last word to the first word."

(You can learn more about Stone and hear some of her poems read aloud in this 2004 NPR interview.)

I'm fascinated by Stone's life experience and the way the poems find her. Sometimes people ask me where I get some of my poems from and there's really no easy answer. I certainly don't experience a thunderous train like Stone, although I certainly welcome that into my life experience! My ideas usually come as small whispers; sometimes they are so subtle and quick that I now carry around a small journal to capture what I can when they find me.

Along these lines, I really believe that this can be everyone's experience. I believe that we all have access to this invisible place from which creativity comes and the trick is twofold: opening yourself up to the possibility that this is true and being ready for what finds you. Why not try it as an experiment? Think about it, you could be the receptacle for the world's next big something!

***UPDATE: This morning as I was driving into work, I glanced at the license plate of the car next to me. It read: "To Muse". I giggled and giggled and giggled. Synchronicities like this are such fun!***

A New Kind of Streaking

she looked up at the sky and
saw bright meteors skimming the skies.

"oh, what amazing journeys they have," she mused.
"i wonder what their frequent flier program looks like?"