I took this photo last night. It’s not the best photo of a starry sky but not too shabby for an iPhone either.
Well we mixed things up a little bit this year. We are skipping Christmas celebrations entirely and roadtripping instead.
There are a few that will miss having the traditional country Christmas at the Hill house and I regret that. But, our friend/family unit is large so I know they will still have a happy Christmas; at least I pray they do.
As for myself I need this for a number of reasons. I think it will be good for the hubby too.
You know it is not healthy to stew in your own miseries. God did not intend for us to be unhappy but… somehow we find misery. Misery might not even have us on her radar but we’ll jump up, waving like a fool yelling, “Yo, misery, here I am. You forgot about me.” Yep, we are a sottish lot!
So now, my spirit and my flesh feel distressed along the hatefulness of winter approaching…. I don’t love it. It worsens the feeling of despair.
The harshness. The coldness. The dying of everything around me…
Misery and Winter are soul sisters and all I have to say to either of them is, “I do not love you. Either of you! So f*<k off!!”
Sooo, instead of stewing in all the woes I cannot fix I talked to God, said my prayers and then… I said fuck it.
I know that word offends some people- it use to offend me too. Now…
I say it a lot. Fuck it.
Thank God my mother cannot hear me.
Ahhh. With all of that out of the way let me share a bit of poetry that has become a tradition for the winter solstice.
Torn from the pages of GettingMe Back (The Voices Within) my poetic biography in a senseTher latest cover
Keep an eye out for misery and do not invite her in. Guard your hearts, keep them warm my friends. Brighter days await.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I didn’t have time to post my annual Pilgrim’s Prayer as I was up to my arse in dinner preparation and then a bunch of celebration. Whew! I am grateful.
It was another Thursday and another Thanksgiving holiday in the USA. So the earth has not quite spun off her axis; some of her inhabitants may have but a lot of us are here today so let’s make the most of it.
I have shared the following bit of prose in one form or another for … I don’t know… decades maybe?
Occasionally I vary the wording but the sentiment is always the same, so without further ado, here we go…
A Pilgrim’s Prayer
Once upon a time – a long, long time ago (before Black Friday) Thanksgiving was a celebration of harvest and a time to give thanks. Hence the name thanksgiving.
I don’t think the early pilgrims had a Super Walmart, a Sears or a Best Buy. They had never heard of an indie distributor called Smashwords (yikes, imagine how scary that might have sounded)
I’m sure they didn’t have the www to answer all of you questions or a beastly giant named Amazon— yet somehow they managed.
Can you imagine having to grow your own food and prepare it without the help of of a search engine like google?
When did they have time? Where did they get their Stove Top stuffing and who canned the yams and plucked the turkeys? How did those crazy pilgrims do it?
I didn’t really know any of those pilgrims but I did see a John Wayne movie once. John knew a pilgrim when he saw one. He seemed to know a lot of pilgrims but that was a long time ago too.
I propose we are all pilgrims, each one of us on a journey of sorts. Our own personal pilgrimage…
Aren’t we are all looking for something? Be it a quest for self-confirmation, truth, a cure, enrichment, comfort, a friend, a lover, a job, a meal or a place to lay our weary head at the end of another day.
I believe life is a journey, or at least it should be. It would be terrible to think we were just flailing through this experience; killing time on this giant floating gumball while waiting for the next Black Friday specials.
I believe we all have one destination though we travel different roads and I trust that we have choices.
Hopefully we will choose well. On the occasion we do take a wrong turn [and we will from time to time] I pray we have enough sense and humility to stop and seek direction… to reassess our route and to be considerate in our voyage.
So here’s wishing all of you pilgrims a Happy, Happy Thanksgiving from the Hill house and may we all, whatever road we’re on, take time to look ahead, pause and bow our head in thanks.
My personal prayer:
I pray our good seeds of hope, humility, toil and courage produce abundantly; that love and kindness grow wild like the weeds of early spring – fruitful and undeterred. And may our harvest be rich with wisdom and discernment.
Thank you Father, The Creator of all things, for this day and all it holds. Thank you for the days past, and Father forgive me for my wrong turns. Thank you for the day to come and guide me to make better choices. Thank you for all the pilgrims in my life – for those who’ve gone ahead and the ones that come behind and for those who read this prayer. And Thank You Father for the beacon that lights my way.
Art imitates life, life imitates art…. Either way.
Below is the gruesome photograph that inspired the title [and first book cover] for Once Upon a Dead Gull. That was roughly a decade ago.
Once Upon a Dead Gull is an odd – nay peculiar short story anthology, but in my defense it was written for the horror genre. Even more peculiar is that none of these stories are about a dead gull.
I know, right?!
The poor seagull’s parting gift to mankind… to me, was simply to give life to a book title and cover I had been struggling with.
Fast forward more years and tada. The dead gull was resurrected and a new cover was born.
I have kinda sucked at posting for some time now; I’ve even sucked at sharing poetry for National Poetry Month. And I feel like I should feel bad about that – but I don’t.
Does that make me a pitiful poet? An absent author? A bad blogger?
Hold on, I need a moment of affirmation.
Alrighty. I feel better.
It’s a hazy, damp day here in Texas so I feel like something a little—
Have you ever noticed how much people talk about how the feel? Lawd!!
Anywho, here’s a NPM contribution from Getting Me Back (The Voices Within).
The Real Janna Hill in 