TToT: Snow In April – That’s Disgusting! #10Thankful

Besides being an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life,

an aspect of Japanese cultural tradition that is often associated with Buddhist influence

and which is embodied in the concept of:

Mono no aware

The transience of the blossoms, the exquisite beauty and volatility, has often associated with mortality

and graceful and readily acceptance of destiny and karma; for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic

I’ve been obsessed lately with cherry blossoms, which I hear are popping up in many spots around the world, from the west coast of Canada, to D.C. USA, to Japan of course.

Sakura

I found several songs (Japanese folk songs) about cherry blossoms. I found, through further investigation and coincidence, that they have a meaning closely related to one not-so-thankful thing that did happen this week, along with the colder weather around here.

Here in Ontario, Canada it has been bitterly cold this weekend. Here’s my list of thankfuls, in spite of the weather, which I hope will improve very soon.

TEN THINGS OF THANKFUL

For a chance Facebook Messenger chat last Sunday evening, after months of a developing online writing relationship, and suddenly I had myself a writing mentor.

I wasn’t altogether happy with where I was with my writing and she saw that in me, rightly so. She volunteered and I eagerly reached out for her offered help.

For a return to my violin lessons.

Finally, there was no more interrupted holidays or illnesses. I couldn’t get by with only one lesson, if I were ever going to become even halfway decent.

For one hour, I go into a small practice room, on a university campus, and I funnel all my energy, all my mental power, into what my fingers are doing, holding the bow, how my arm is held to have a proper reach on the notes, and all the while making sure I don’t raise my right shoulder. It all takes incredible focus for me. I think nothing but violin, often forgetting many other basic facts and details about my life.

Sound dramatic? Well, it’s all true.

🙂

For the 100 year celebration of a life.

A master at work. Powerful performance.

Gregory Peck would have turned one hundred and I thought it worth mentioning the performance of a lifetime he gave. It makes me tear up when I watch, every time.

I like his reaction when he asks Scout if she knows what a compromise means. When she answers with “bending the law” as her guess, his reaction is priceless, not to mention the part about how “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view”.

For the sense of bonding with those who understand.

It’s just nice, even when I’m not feeling always up to going, to get out and spend a few hours, one evening every few weeks, at my favourite place: the library.

We may all be of different ages and have a wide array of writing interests, but we all are there because we love writing/storytelling in some capacity.

For a wide open release of our song.

And now…I present to you…

DON’T LOOK BACK

If you listen to one song today, make it THIS ONE! Lyrics written by – THIS GIRL!

🙂

For a dinner with my parents, after an afternoon where it was brought home to me how lucky I am to have them both.

We went to pay our respects, to an old family friend, someone who means so much to so many. He was a wonderful family man: husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend.

He fought hard, battling the cancer, that would eventually take his life.

I thought harder still about the cherry blossom, once I learned its meaning, the only actual flowers I saw (with the weather being as it is) this week was what I could detect the scent of, as people send flowers as a condolence to the grieving family.

For a history of 90s music remembered with a legend.

You Know You’re Right – Nirvana

Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain died, twenty-two years ago, but he will always be what the nineties were for my brothers, who introduced the grunge world and this band in particular, to me. It was a kind of music none of us had ever heard at the time.

For the first voice-to-face meeting with my new writing mentor.

What would we do without the invention of a little thing called Skype?

It was nice, though I was nervous originally, to finally hear her voice, after months of online interaction.

We had a beneficial first meeting, discussing writing and nothing but, for more than an hour. She told me some things I needed to hear, things about my abilities as a writer. She let me learn from her and the road she has traveled into the world of mostly literary travel writing.

I left the call, by the end, feeling highly energized and hopeful.

For another extremely enjoyable family gathering.

For my siblings.

It’s Siblings Day today and I celebrated yesterday: had some excellent discussions with my sisters, have enjoyed collaborating on a song with my younger brother, and had my older brother do what he does best and that’s take photographs. This, however, means he is rarely, if ever, actually featured in any of our photos himself.

I would not be the person I am today without these guys.

And so, all and all, it was an overall success of a week. Big things are happening. I can feel it.

While, at the same time, life isn’t always easy and things happen we’re never going to be ready for.

Seasons in the Sun – Terry Jacks

Traveling to pay our respects, driving through the old neighbourhood of the deceased and his family, my mom talked about the people and the history of the area.

The past felt so long back, to me, but it all felt very present just then, and I was left wondering about the future.

***

Goodbye Michelle, my little one

You gave me love and helped me find the sun

And every time I was down

You would always come around

And get my feet back on the ground

Goodbye Michelle it’s hard to die

When all the birds are singing in the sky

Now that the spring is in the air

With the flowers everywhere

I wish that we could both be there

We had joy we had fun

We had seasons in the sun

But the wine and the song like the seasons

Have all gone

All our lives we had fun

We had seasons in the sun

But the hills that we climbed were just seasons

Out of time

***

http://www.metrolyrics.com/seasons-in-the-sun-lyrics-terry-jacks.html

Love Is In Da Blog:Intro to Wordless Wednesday with a Special Kind of Love, #LoIsInDaBl

Today is a first for my blog, other than the quote I posted once when I was dealing with a serious family matter and couldn’t find the words, but on every other day I’ve been blogging I never run out of words.

Without words I have very little because I can’t see images now, but this doesn’t mean I don’t like photographs. I love them in fact. My brother takes them professionally and as his artistic gift.

Today’s prompt for

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

is simply

WORDLESS LOVE,

Here’s what I love most.

I love seeing my nephews or niece with my parents, their grandparents. I am not wordless because I myself really appreciate captions on photos.

In My Mind’s Eye, #SoCS

Sometimes, when I get to the end of the week, I am so excited for Friday. I can’t wait to log onto Linda’s website, to find out what the prompt is for the week.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY

Then, as Friday makes way for Saturday, well I become hesitant. I start wondering what I should write and if I could possibly have anything to say, using the letters or word she has chosen.

That’s not the point though. If I wait and then, Saturday comes, I get writing and the words begin to flow.

***

You know that well-known belief that people who are blind can hear better than everyone else?

Well, I listen hard and voices and music are some of my favourite things, so I hope I always hear them both.

I have a keen sense of smell. Just ask my family.

I have an excellent set of taste buds, if I do say so myself. Again, ask those closest to me and they will tell you I can drive them crazy with these talents.

🙂

I use all this and touch to navigate my world, all because I can hardly see.

But yet…I believe I am a sighted person, even still.

This may sound strange. Please, allow me to elaborate.

I used to see so much more and I miss it, along with forgetting just what it was like, as the years pass me by.

In my mind I can see.

My mind threatens to burst, sometimes, from the strain of all that I see with my mind’s eye. As the memories fade, I cling to them all the more tightly, as my mind’s eye begins its work.

The seeing eye is alive and well in there.

There’s fire and a roving eye up there, but I’m not evil like that guy.

Yeah, I’m trying really hard not to imagine The Great Eye.

🙂

Not exactly appropriate for what I’m getting at here, if you are following me anyway.

It’s just that the phrase “in my mind’s eye” says just one eye and then I naturally go to Lord of the Rings because, well, I just do. Can’t help myself really.

Anyway, back to what I was saying…this is stream of consciousness writing, after all.

I get headaches and I sometimes like to tell myself the story, to at least frame that in a somewhat positive light, if headaches can be light at all, by saying I started getting them in the immediate years that followed my original vision loss.

This is true.

This goes for so many things: letters and cursive writing, colours, the faces of my family, the ever-disappearing television screen, even the numbers on an alarm clock or my old dialysis machine. I used to see those in the dark, but now I picture them in the darkness of my mind.

Those things are aided by my memory and so I have an easier time re-picturing them in my mind.

It’s the things I have not seen and will never really see that cause the pain in my head, my mind clattering and thudding up against my skull in desperation.

In my mind, I’m staring at a computer screen, like I did those first times, when the Internet was new.

I am seeing, in my mind’s eye, the faces of my sweet niece and nephews, of which I will never get a fully defined idea of that sweetness in their little faces.

In my mind, I am picturing every beautiful thing in nature and on the travels I have gone on and hope to go on. I can’t complain. Since having all the vision I did have, at one time, this allows me to have a little help in guessing what things might look like, giving my mind less of a workout, but it’s still a challenge.

I see the long lost words on the page.

But back to reality, and the voices on my phone and laptop keep speaking to me, as my mind runs on and on and on. My mind’s eye is where I really want to be.

I now must see more and more of the things I used to see with my eyes, with my mind’s eye. I try and my head aches, because I just can’t stop seeing all the loveliness of the world in that space between my ears.

I wish I could stop, not care, not bother to even try. I wish I could sleep at night, without hundreds of images flashing through in there, like one of those programs that provides a slideshow of photographs, like the one on my mom’s computer.

I can’t stop. I can’t rest. This slideshow runs through, again and again, ceaselessly, but in some strange and painful way, I don’t want it any other way. I can’t make it stop, but deep down, I guess I never want it to.

Thanks, Linda, for this weekly writing prompt:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2215/

I am thankful for the opportunity to have an open-ended window of pure creative writing time, which is different and separate from everything else I do with my blog.