Category: Sparks

  • Time . . . Too Much, Too Little

    By Cheryl Moore

    In the many years of a working life, time is too little.

              Too little to be with family and friends

              Too little to pursue creative activities

              Too little to just sit back and enjoy its passage.

    Since retirement there has been time. What have I done with this time?

              Walk to the river

              Scribble in a journal

              Mix up paint on a canvas

              Invent a story from memories

              Settle on the porch with a book and watch the birds at the feeder,

                        crows chasing a hawk high in the sky

              Watch the sun rise and set as it slowly arcs across the sky

              Watch the tide’s ebb and flow pulled by the distant moon

              Watch the blooming and fading of the garden’s flowers

              And the creatures who visit

    Too much time or too little?

              It depends on the day, my energy, my mood and my desire.

    When Cheryl Moore came to California in the early 1960’s, she realized she’d found her home. Moving to Petaluma in the 70’s, she was as close to paradise as she’d ever get. Travel has taken her to Europe and the Middle East. She has written on these memories as well as on the flora and fauna of the local river and her own garden. 

    Marlene C

  • Be more, do less.

    By Camille Sherman

    This advice was first shared in a Master Class-style opera workshop where my classmates and I would sing for each other, beginning the long process of working out the kinks in our presentation. The purpose of the vice was to help organize the inner monologue: the running mental news banner that presses into every young performance or audition. 

    Here’s how it goes: standing in front of a dozen peers, preparing to perform the aria you’ve been overthinking all morning, the mind runs wild. Sound good, remember the words, give a compelling performance, impress everyone or face clumsy embarrassment. The music starts and as you stare at a point on the back wall just above the heads of your classmates, your mental tornado flurrying, a thought freezes you into place: what do I do with my hands? Do I move or gesture? You realize as you sing the first lines thaThis advice t you are just standing there, petrified, giving the most uncomfortable and boring performance of your life, and the best thing you can think of to fix it is to take an awkward shuffle forward and maybe raise your arms in some generic, meaningless “singer” gesture, and try to play it off as if everything you’re doing is intentional. Polite applause follows, and then the professor, a veteran opera director, will graciously take you back to the beginning of the piece for a second shot.

    I remember standing there in the crook of the piano, the surreal scene as my professor approached to begin the work. My mind was still racing: the high note was ok. I had some tension in the passaggio, though, and my base of tongue keeps clamping down on my E vowel. The performance was not a catastrophe but I’m glad there weren’t that many people in the room. All of the criticism and comments flowed forth from my own brain before my professor could open his mouth.

    Then the advice came: be more, do less. Try it again, he encouraged me, but don’t worry about what your body or face are doing and don’t worry about how it sounds. Be more, do less.

    This advice came back around throughout my training. Don’t be a singer doing a performance. Be an artist performing. Do less “delivering” of the art through busy gesturing and instead choose to be something that we don’t just see and hear, but we feel. Try to focus on allowing what is in your heart and body to shine out of your face and voice. Over time and experience, the other aspects of performing strengthen and grow under this authenticity.

    Years after that course, after that degree, I sit here in Portland on top of my wealth of elite training. I consider how curious my life is: no gainful employment, an uncertain future in an uncertain industry, a highly flexible day to day with little structure and no guarantees. Why am I not panicking? Why do I not fret, morning to night, on what to do. What do I do with my time? What do I do with my talent? What do I do with my brain, body, skills? These questions brought me back to my 19-year-old self, worrying every moment about what to do, on stage and off. I sit back now as a professional artist and I answer my own questions: I am being.

    Camille Sherman is a professional opera singer from the Bay Area. She trained at The Boston Conservatory and the San Francisco Conservatory of music, and served as an Artist in Residence at Pensacola Opera and Portland Opera. She currently lives in Portland, where she continues to sing and develop artistic projects with local artists.

    Marlene C

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  • Turtle Regains The Pond

    By Lakin Khan

    Layers of mud kept Turtle warm and secluded all through the winter hibernation. Occasionally a bubble escaped to the top of the pond, but usually, no.

    A spring sun glanced across the serene surface of the pond, riling up the water insects, generating a small current that brought fresh smells to Turtle’s blunt, beaky nose. Cinnamon, he thought, and hot cross buns, he considered, the memories of days kept at a house weaving into his rising consciousness. Time for business, he thought, and scrabbled against the twigs and leaves that the mud held against him, claws working to free him up out of his encasement and into the cold bottom water and then up, up, up into the gradually warming surface, into the feral spring.

    Two months ago, wild horses couldn’t have dragged him out of the bottom of the muck, but now Spring itself was galloping toward the yin-yang tipping point, when equal parts sunlight and shadelight split the hours. His blood surged and expanded, he was greedy for the light, for the bugs, for the feel of marsh grass against his scaly legs. He was greedy to breathe and gulped his way to the surface of the pond.

    Note: “Turtle Regains The Pond” was inspired by two prompts: Five Random Words: glare, serenity, feral, turtle, layer, cinnamon and the prompt wild horses.

    Lakin Khan writes and walks in the North Bay, enjoying the woods and the ocean, the mountains and the marsh-trails of Marin and Sonoma Counties. She leads Jumpstart Workshops online and posts on occasion to her blog, Rhymes with Bacon. 

    Currently, she is working on a collection of nature and animal essays titled Home Turf, A Beastiary of Sonoma State, illustrated by well-known printmaker Shane Weare. Her essays have been published in Tiny Lights, a Journal of Personal Essay, her fiction in the anthology Zebulon Nights, and various poems in online forums. She is always surprised by the stories that arise out of the fermentation of random words or images.

    Marlene C

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  • History Lesson

    By Susan Bono

    I’ve been rummaging around in already full closets lately, trying to find space for all the stuff I brought home when I emptied my parents’ house last May. It’s been rough going, but I stopped wondering why when I realized Mom and Dad lived in their house for thirty-seven years, only eight years longer than we’ve lived in ours.

    Our youngest son often encounters me staring into space clutching a quilt, wood carving, or photograph. I think my uncharacteristic attempts at organization are making him nervous. “What are you doing? What’s that?” he asks.

    “Oh, this is some of your Great Aunt Emily’s needlepoint,” I tell him a little too eagerly. “These are my Barbie clothes, and here are the baby rompers your great grandmother made for your grandfather back in 1925. You wore them once yourself.”

    I give him these family history updates knowing full well it’s all drifting into one ear on its way out the other. At twenty-two, he doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. But as long as he keeps asking, I continue to supply the disregarded answers.

    Telling these stories is a kind of test. I’m trying to figure out how much I actually know about the Scotty dog napkin ring, the china baby doll, the anniversary clock, the piece of Native American pottery. If I don’t remember what my parents told me about these things, what can they really mean to me?

    “It’s just stuff,” I heard myself say as I watched people carry off Christmas decorations, books, camping gear, and clothing from the garage sale I organized to clear my parents’ attic. But I might as well have said, “It’s just stories.” Stories that connect me by an ever-thinning thread to a world that is disappearing.

    I remember asking my own mother, “What’s that?” and “Who are those people?” when I caught her sorting drawers or photographs. I thought I was listening to her explanations, but I didn’t retain much. The tiny, mirrored powder box with the ostrich puff, that silver thimble—I know they were her mother’s, but what about the rest of the story? I’m sure she told me more than once, each time straining to remember what her own mother, dead before I was born, had told her. It’s only now that I understand how the story of an object becomes more precious than the thing itself when there’s no one left to ask about it.

    Susan Bono, a California-born teacher, freelance editor, and short-form memoirist, has facilitated writing workshops since 1993, helping hundreds of writers find and develop their voices. Her work has appeared online, on stage, in anthologies, newspapers, and on the radio.

    From 1995-2015, she edited and published a small press magazine called Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, as well as the online component that included quarterly postings of micro essays and a monthly forum dedicated to craft and process.

    She was on the board of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference for more than a decade and was editor-in-chief of their journal, the Noyo River Review, for eight years. Susan often writes about domestic life set in her small town of Petaluma.

    This essay can be found in her book, What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home. Find out more at susanbono.com.

    Originally published in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, Editor’s Notes, Contest 2009 issue

    Marlene C

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  • Calm

    By Kathleen Haynie

    I drive by her turn-out, roll down the passenger car window to greet her with my best whinny. I can see her whinny ripple through the flesh of her sorrel and white soft muzzle. That muzzle will soon be buried in the red wheat bran she knows is coming. This time it is laced with bute to ease her pain from her sprained right knee. I hope the alfalfa sprinkles camouflage the taste of bute.*

    She is not too distracted with the hay and grain to lift each foot in turn so I can clean out the V ruts of each frog. After seventeen years, we know the drill. The curry comb pulls off twigs of the white winter coat on her back and haunches.

    Somehow the earth tells her body that it’s time to start letting go as the days grow longer. Yet the nights are still so very cold. Her new coat is a little whiter, a little redder, a little softer to touch. I have to lean down to nuzzle in that soft dipped curve between her shoulder and neck in order to take in the smell of sweet salty horse sweat. At nine years of age my nose was at the same level of that spot.

    Now I look up at the open blue sky and see a few puffs of white cumulus, and feel on my face the crisp ocean air coming across the valley. The constant rhythm of her teeth grinding the grain soothes the time. A desperately needed calming moment.

    *Phenylbutazone, often referred to as “bute, “is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug for the short-term treatment of pain and fever in animals. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylbutazone)

    Kathleen Haynie. This City Girl turned into a Sonoma County Horse Girl, and then retired from decades as a professional in health care. She is now acting out a latent inclination for the dramatic arts as a drama student and cast member of Off the Page Readers Theater. Surprisingly, the journey continues into the newly found delight discovered in written expression. Kathleen felt honored to have her work, What They Did to Alice, performed at the 6th Street Playhouse 2020 Women’s Festival. She has decided that dark chocolate is perfect with a full-bodied red wine.

    Marlene C

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  • A Patch of Joy

    By Christine Renaudin

    Slowly the idea grew from seemingly random pickings at the local thrift store a month or two ago, to design a painting along the seams of a small piece of patchwork discovered in the sewing notions section. Bold colors and markings drew me in, sharp contrasts, black acting as prevailing background: yellow on black, and vice versa, bright colors in between, the kind I have dreamed of playing with but never dared throwing first thing together on canvas. Circles and crosses, stars and stripes, straight and curvy, thin and think, flowers, abstracted and not, leaves, pink and red, bees and dragonflies, plain black on white: all patterns placed side by side in surprising, shockingly daring ways that made my mind bubble with joy, and my heart dance with the desire to play along.

    I bought the small rectangle of motley fabric and brought it home, where it sat abandoned in my grandmother’s wicker basket for a few weeks, thrown half folded with its price tag hanging over the brim, not so much forgotten as left to gather worth under the dust, each glance adding to the marvel of a whooping four dollars for a treasure— a steal, really— before making it to the empty wall of the study, where it suddenly hung, secured by three wooden push pins, for me to see, absorb its charm, and succumb to the second calling. 

    “Yes, beautiful, clever, and curious one,” it said in a soft, almost childlike voice. “Don’t you be so shy,” coaxing me, “there, not so shy. Come closer. Closer still. Linger with me here by the wall under the slanted western light. Let me talk to you silently and sprinkle fairy dust in your brain so it may grow fireworks worth writing home about.”  Instantly, I was a child again, bursting out in protest.

    “I don’t believe in fairy dust, and I do not have a home left where to send letters. Nobody sends those anymore anyway.” The patchwork bit seemed to shrivel for a moment under the pinch of the three pins, flat and mute against the wall in the declining light, as a passing cloud shaded the sunset glow. Sadness hung where joy had bubbled before. I felt the urge to leave the room, go cook dinner in the kitchen. 

    At dawn, I saw the piece wake up, unfold its colors like wings under the oblique and cooler eastern light flooding through the study, my breath a mist of everyday magic blowing a warmer drift into the frigid room. I wanted to apologize, but felt timid and did not. But the strip of patchwork heard me just the same and said in a voice that felt slightly older: 

    “No need. There is no need to apologize, my sweet. Fairy dust is not for everyone, especially when you’ve grown up without a television. I should have guessed by your wrinkles and graying hair, but I was fooled by your curious appreciation, and the exuberance of your heart.” 

    “Now this is a phrase I do not often hear.”

    “Because you don’t listen properly. What do you think I hang here for, if not for your eyes and yours only. You picked me up out of a dusty crate and absolute oblivion. You gave me a place on your wall, like a mirror, to send you back a new life. You, who are starting to listen at last, and smile a little, I see. Don’t be shy. Don’t hoard the joy inside, or it will choke you. Believe me, you do not want to drown in a few inches of bliss at the edge of the lake. You want to let it move your brain down to your heart and follow the odd bedfellows with pen and brush, or both, and dance with them until you have something to . . .” 

    “. . . write home about?” I heard myself interrupt in a voice that didn’t quite sound familiar. “I told you there is no one left there to care about the miracle of my life. No one to . . .” 

     . . .   read and listen?” I swallowed the bitter end of my remark and paid attention. “ You, older younger person, need to listen again, harder. Home is wider, way stranger than you think. Home is here, under your nose and feet. Writing is not overrated, nor is care. You chant and cultivate the miracle of your life, you take it out there, and move forward what you have to give to the world. I see you want to share the joy that I give you. Go do it. I’ll stay and watch from this wall in the empty study. I’ll hold the fort for you. Go send your letter out into the world.”

    Christine Renaudin’s writing has been published in various publications from The Sitting Room, as well as in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, available on Amazon in print and as an e-reader.

    Christine lives, writes, and paints in Petaluma. She is also a dancer and performs occasionally in the Bay Area—last seen on Halloween sweeping the entrance of the De Young Museum with a pride of witches. She likes to mix art forms, see what comes out, and share.

    Marlene C

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  • Fruit Tree

    By Camille Sherman

    I will plant a fruit tree and she will be my legacy. The neighborhood children will recognize her stature, her fullness, as a landmark. They’ll traipse over her fallen blossoms in the spring, ride past her on their bikes, see her from their windows. They will think she has been there forever, like the houses and street signs watching over their restless afternoons and summer evenings. They won’t know she was planted by someone who was once a child too. They will stand at her base and look up at her, thinking that she, like their mothers and fathers, has always been this tall.

    Camille Sherman is a professional opera singer from the Bay Area. She trained at The Boston Conservatory and the San Francisco Conservatory of music, and served as an Artist in Residence at Pensacola Opera and Portland Opera. She currently lives in Portland, where she continues to sing and develop projects with local artists.

    Marlene C

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  • Humor

    By Karen Handyside Ely

    When the day is dark

    humor will light my way.

     

    When the world crumbles

    humor will shore me up.

     

    Tears will flow, not from sorrow,

    but born of laugher.

     

    Nothing is so bad that

    humor cannot soften it.

     

    Nothing is so sacred that

    humor cannot humanize it.

     

    When the only way “through”

    is a walk of fire,

     

    humor will insulate my path.

    As long as we can laugh

     

    at the absurdities of life,

    we can persevere.

     

    Humor cannot change our challenges,

    but it can grease the skids,

     

    shepherd us along,

    help us to survive.

     

    I will face each day with humor and the grace it provides.

    As long as I can laugh, I can breathe.

     

    Humor is my lifeboat,

    my safe space,

     

    the fuel my soul runs on.

     

    Karen Handyside Ely

    Karen was born and raised in Petaluma, California. Upon graduating from UC Davis, she worked in San Francisco and New York City in corporate finance. After a 30-year career as a mom and “professional” volunteer in Scottsdale, AZ, Karen returned to her beloved hometown in Sonoma County.

    She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with  her husband (of 35 years) James.

    Karen has been published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections, The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.  (all available on Amazon).

    “Humor” is featured in the newly published The Write Spot:Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, available at Amazon.

    Marlene C

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  • The Sound of Wind

    By Su Shafer

    The sound of wind is cold – gray waves, frigid and broken, 

    rushing up a Northern shore.

    It’s a hollow sound, like a flute without music.

    An echo undying. Emptiness longing to be filled.

    A mournful wail unanswered. The despairing lamentation 

    of invisible hands searching, sweeping ahead blindly.

    Dry leaves scuttle sideways like old crabs on stick legs.

    They rattle their empty claws at its passing,

    then lay still.

    Su Shafer is a creative writer and sometime poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest, where flannel shirts are acceptable as formal wear and strong coffee is a way of life. There, in a small Baba Yaga house perched near the entrance to The Hidden Forest, odd characters are brewing with the morning cup, and a strange new world is beginning to take shape . . .

    Marlene C

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  • A Life Not Unencumbered

    By Ken Delpit

    A life without encumbrances, now that would be something. Can there possibly be such a thing? Among mortal human beings, it is hard to see how. Living encourages encumbrances. Living entails encumbrances. To live is to be encumbered. Encumbrances are the baggage fees that we pay for our journey.

    Encumbrance-free living for most ordinary humans is a foreign concept. For some, it may be a distant dream. For many or most, though, it is beside the point. For these folks, navigating the encumbrances is what life is about. “Next,” as a primal motivating force. Where to go next, what to do next, what to think next.

    The trouble with navigating head-down from a mental map, however detailed or vague the map, is that it necessitates a removal of self from the process. You are not the observant traveler. You are the bus driver. You transport yourself here and there, mentally as well as physically. You check boxes in your mind as “Done.” You relax when you’ve accomplished something, but just for a couple of seconds. Then, you close the bus doors and it’s on to the next stop.

    Periodically, we celebrate people who have taken a different path. Gandhi, Thoreau, Buddha, Jesus, they speak to us of shedding encumbrances. They advocate not just leaving the luggage behind, but not even packing in the first place. They teach us to trust what is within. They preach that the self is wise, if only we would listen.

    I’ll have to take their word for it. I’ll think about all of this later. Meanwhile, I’ve got a hundred things to do before 4:00 o’clock.

    Ken Delpit has been writing for quite a while, that is if you count computer programming and technical documentation as “writing.” Since leaving those professions behind, Ken has discovered an exciting new world of creative writing. He is now giddily exploring new devices, such as adjectives, subtlety, mystery, and humans with emotions and feelings.

    Marlene C