Personal Writings

Category

Exhausting, But Seemingly Necessary

How long would you–or could you–keep working diligently day by day without a clear indication of benefit and outcome? On Friday I delved into the process of retroactively creating YouTube videos of various gigs from the recent past, and have come to a pausing point today, Sunday, having put enough on yet another new business website I recently created called Creative Party Entertainment–Central PA. As part of this endeavor and wanting to scour, purge and otherwise continue organizing the plethora...

Souvenirs of Pain

I was up way too late last night, painfully engrossed in an unplanned activity which has now become number one on my list today to finish up. Like someone who opens a junk drawer searching for a couple small items and then starts putting their hands in and sifting through it all…deciding suddenly that now is the time to organize that drawer and discard clutter. They keep their eyes pealed for the end goal of what they were originally searching...

Trapped in Trauma 20/20

Tonight I needed to look through my camera photo files from 2020, and specifically, the months I was in Delaware temporarily–between my leaving Alabama and finally coming to Pennsylvania. I am trying to pull out a number of photos I took of art collage work during that time, for use in a YouTube Video in connection with some art I want to promote and sell. I pause to make a brief expression, for whatever it is worth. Sometimes, we need...

To Live a Peaceful Life

When I was in my younger, mid-twenties, I took a miniature embroidery hoop and stretched needlepoint cloth into it. On a paper, I plotted out a simple phrase, and a cross, that loosely came from the book of I Timothy. I say loosely because I expressed, essentially, “Ahhh, to live a peaceful life…” changing the tense of the verb, implying personal aspiration. In those days, I had the patience to do counted cross-stitch. These days, that kind of handiwork would...

Sorrow

Today, unexpectedly, I received a phone call late afternoon from a woman asking if I preserved flowers. I immediately said that I did, and asked if she had a wedding bouquet. And then, I felt the immediate sorrow of her response. She told me that she had funeral flowers from the death of her four-month old infant. All I could say in that moment, as I felt the grief hit me, was “I am so very sorry.” She thanked me...