A Better Piece

I have been working on a better piece

I have been working on a longer piece; a bigger, sweeping piece about bigger, sweeping stuff.  What I have to say is important and I need to make a point of telling it to you.  But, the words aren't doing it right.  It keeps coming out awkward or foolish or angry or disingenuous or bloggy or self-centered or any comic combination of them all.

I was going to quote people and "pay-it-forward" and have lots of color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph about each one.  But, the pictures aren't doing it right.

In a fit of embarrassing arrogance, I was trying to get the words and images to say what I wanted them to say.  That never works for me, and yet I forget that and, I try.  So, to the gods and the trinity and inspiration and the muses; to the hearts of boys and the playgrounds of childhood; to the sea of energy, the stream of life; to whatever, whomever, spawns creativity:  I apologize.  I know better.  Forgive me.

So, forget my brain, this is what made my soul sing today:

Why yes, yes, this is a scene from The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.  Zack drew it in his classroom  from a bigger image projected on the screen as his beautiful, dear, sweet teacher read it aloud to them.  I am not sure about the wall of blue there on the right.  A waterfall? A sideways sky?  I'll be damned it just hit me, it's an unfinished sky.  An unfinished sky... wow, that's so lovely and appropriate and metaphorical and philosophical and metaphysical and sad and melancholy and hopeful and dreamy.  And it was just dumped on me like a bucket of blue Gatorade.

This little detail from the book is slightly different:

In the book it says m.e. + t in the heart, as in the little boy and the tree.  Zack's says, I think, "Z" + and he's left the other side blank, not unlike an unfinished sky.  He somehow knows, even though he's only eight, he somehow knows there is oh-so-very much in front of him, in front of you, in front of me, in front of us; so very much more to come.  Our unfinished stories unfold in front of us.  And, here is what I need to remember: that's a good thing.  To look forward in hope is what we have, it's what we do, it's who we are.


On a more serious and urgent note, something is amiss in Nick's bed and it scares me.  I went into their room to open the blinds and when I turned around, this scene confronted me:

This Skylander thug, "Eruptor," of the Fire Element (or so he says)...

... is holding these dudes hostage.  The rainbow pill-bug, that's "Gumdrop" and he's the leader of the whole bed-pal posse and he is all, dare I say it, legs-up.

Nothing good can come of this.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear form the backseat...'

"Don't startle Jesus!"

That strikes me as good advice...