Insights

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Michael was born on a cold and blustery day.  You could barely hear his cries above the howl of the wind as it echoed down the cold fireplace chimney.  His first breaths were evident in the little puffs above his face in the barren room as his sister quickly wrapped him in the scrap of blanket she’d washed for his coming. 

 A mere scrap of a child herself, she now took full responsibility for this child and her siblings as her mother lay dying in her bed.  Too many babies, too close together left her weak and malnourished.  She barely had the strength to name her new son before passing at the ripe old age of twenty-four.  Such had become the way of life here since the Passage.

 Svitlana laid the child in the basket she’d padded with old clothes.  It wasn’t much but it was all they had.  So much had been left behind during the Passage.  Family, friends, their home, or rather, what was left of their home.  Now with both her parents gone, she was all that stood between them and the camps.  What she could do she didn’t know, but she was all she and the other children had.  She would not let her parents down.

 Straightening her shoulders, she gathered the basin and rag and proceeded to gently wash her mother for burial.  She’d helped her mother prepare others over the years since the Passage.  There had been too many to remember in their trek across the barren wasteland that separated them from their former lives.  She’d sent her oldest brother to inform the counsel of her mother’s death.  The men would be along soon to collect her and she wanted to be done before they arrived. 

 As she bathed her, her mind went back to earlier times when they were all together in Gerron.  She remembered her mother’s laughter and her father’s smile as he watched her playing with her and her brothers in the open fields of their home.  Her grandparents lived on the homestead, too, and were a part of their every day life.  Her grandfather and father were carpenters and had built their homes and the furniture as well. 

 For her sixth birthday, she’d received her first bed that she didn’t have to share with her brothers.  It had been a surprise that they’d worked on during the cold months when she couldn’t master the snow.  Grandfather had carved a wood rose in her headboard and her father had made her a simple chest with leather bindings and a rose carved on its top.  They had been her prize possessions.  

 Now all she had were her memories.  The call to leave Gerron had come in the middle of the night and they’d left with what they could carry and the clothes on their backs.  Her grandparents hadn’t moved quick enough to satisfy the Garak soldiers and they’d been marched off in another direction.  Despite their pleas, she’d never been able to find out what had happened to them in the four years since the Passage.  She had to believe that if they were alive, they would have found them by now.

 Svitlana straightened from her work and gently swept the hair from her mother’s brow.  The tension and tiredness was now gone from her face and she slept the peaceful sleep of forever.  “Mother!” she cried.  “How am I to do this all alone?  How can I do this without you?”  She fell sobbing to her mother’s side, finally letting out the grief of a ten year old child who’s lost her mother.  Her poor, over-burdened shoulders heaved with sobs as she mourned for the loss of her life as she’d known it, her family, and her now role of caretaker of her siblings. 

 She was just catching her breath as she prayed for her mother when she heard her brother’s return with the men to take her mother for burial.  She got up off her knees and straightened her clothes.  She wiped her eyes and stood to her full height.  She was now the head of the house and as such, must be strong for her brothers.  She would not disappoint her parents.  They would not disappoint her parents.

 The sun went behind the clouds and suddenly she felt the cold whip through her.  She must get them all home before the night fell and the snow fell.  She needed to see if they could find any wood along the way so they could have a fire tonight.  The room was already too cold as it was and she would need the fire to fix what little there was to eat.  She would need to start thinking about these things from now on.  This was going to be her responsibility if they were going to stay out of the camps. 

 The camps.  She wasn’t sure of what they were exactly, but she’d heard the grownups talk about them in hushed tones.  They sounded horrid.  She’d heard it said that no one ever came back from the camps once they went there.  Though no one ever said the words, she knew that people died there and she was determined that she would keep them all out of there.

 With one final look at her mother’s grave, she called out to her brothers and turned to head back to their room.  The full weight of the day was beginning to hit home as the baby began to squirm in her arms.  She picked up her steps and told the boys to watch for firewood as she herded them back along the path.  It was now up to her.  She blinked back the stinging tears and swallowed the growing fear that threatened to overcome her.  “I won’t let you down mommy and poppy.  I won’t.  We will make it.  We’ll make you proud of us all.”

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With the NaNo fast approaching, I'm having trouble thinking of anything but that.  I'm trying to do the pre-event things so that when the day arrives I can do the average 1,666 words each day to make my goal of 50,000.  Fifty thousand, wow, doesn't that sound intimidating?

 

You are supposed to write the whole thing during the month of November.  I'm having trouble waiting until then.  My characters are talking up a storm and I want to write now!  It seems that all I can hear are their voices, saying little things that I need to catch on paper.  Have you ever tried to ignore the little voices in your head?  LOL!

 

I've got a Jane Doe who is speaking from the field she was found in.  I have two locales that seem to be involved.  I have a family who has problems of their own that are involved...or are they?  I have a retired homicide detective who just wants to get away from his demons and a local detective who seems to have too many bosses.  Add in your obligatory boyfriends, lovers, and amateur detectives, and you've got a story I'm having a hard time leaving alone.  Or should I say 'they' won't leave me alone.

 

You can't blame Jane Doe.  Poor girl is dead in a field and someone who knows her keeps denying her.  She's crying out for justice and she just may have someone on her side, but will he be able to identify the killer before the killer finds him?

 

 

About a week ago I was working on my computer when it crashed.  Not your simple fade to black type crash, but those one of those long, agonizing crashes that first closes programs and locks up causing you all kinds of heartburn.  After shutting down and restarting several times over a couple of days, it finally bit the dust.  Or so it seemed at the time.

 

I have bugged my ex on the phone trying to get help bringing it back to life.  He has patiently tried to get this computer dummy turned in the right direction and get me back up and running, hence off his phone.  The last he heard from me was that the chckdisk (sp?) had failed after three tries and that said hard drive was truly dead.  I doubt that he would admit it, but I swear I heard a sigh of relief.

 

I was lucky enough to have another hard drive on hand and had it up and running in a matter of minutes.  That old hard drive though had not seen the last of me though; I am very stubborn.  I just can't let something beat me, especially a machine!

 

All I want to say is never give up.  I tried one more time tonight.  I put the XP disk in the computer and started the machine up.  I didn't know if it would help or not.  It came up to the start of the install of XP!  I couldn't get that far before!  After talking to the ex, I decided I would click no, and let it reboot and see if it would come back up.  It did.  I let it chckdisk again and this time it worked!  I have my hard drive back...well for a little while anyway.  I'm not trusting it to stay up but I'm recovering my must-haves and putting them on the new hard drive.  I'm still in shock that it worked.

 

Stubbornness pays off sometimes.  I think I'll use it more often.

 

 

I've always wanted to write.  Ever since the first time I read a book about a girl with her own writing desk the thought of writing intrigued me.  The thought of creating my own stories and putting them down on paper has been like one of those dreams you have but never expect to accomplish.

 

I started writing several years ago with just a simple poem written for a friend's young grandson who was in the hospital.  It was just a little poem to make the scary hospital visit just a little less scary.  From there my friend suggested I try visiting a newsgroup that her aunt belonged to.  I've been there years now and they've encouraged my little fantasy of being a writer, mostly of poems and little stories.

 

Each year I've watched and listened as they've plowed through NaNoWriMo and wished I was up to such an undertaking.  Imagine, a month dedicated to writing 50,000 words on your way to writing a novel!  Now I have a hard time writing anything that would fill up two typed pages much less 50,000 words.  But somehow or another, I've managed to commit myself to doing this and before I could back out I signed up.  I honestly can't imagine what made me do this!  Insanity?  Glutton for punishment?

 

I just want to see if I have it in me to do this.  I have started many stories and never finished them.  For some of them it was the lack of time while I was working.  For others I think it was just not the right time to tackle the subject I'd chosen.  I think the most telling excuse was that I just didn't think I could do it and would look foolish if everyone else managed to get finished and I didn't.  Well, I probably have more time to write than anyone now and if I don't try, I'll never know, now will I?  Everyone is a writer until the words hit the paper.  Now I guess I'll find out for sure. 

 

 

Once more we have innocent lives being taken for unreal reasons.  This time it just seems to hit me harder than before.  This time it hit an Amish community.  The Amish have pretty much pulled away from the rest of us, which has made this even more heinous.  All they want to do is live in peace and the outside world intrudes with its violence.  It just proves that no one is safe in today's society.

 

What goes through a person's mind that makes all this right?  What reasoning do they use that makes it okay to take another person's life over some perceived wrong in the past?  And just what makes it okay to take a young, innocent child's life at any time?  There is no reason I know of that makes it right.  It must not have been a valid reason, even to himself, because he killed himself rather than face justice.

 

When are we going to do something?  This gun toting theory that we are entitled to have guns by constitutional right is bull.  Back when that was written, we were a new country just having won its independence after a long fight.  We did not have a large capable army, nor did we have an adequate police force capable of taking care of things.  We had not built up our government to withstand insurrection yet.  We are not that 1776 country!  We have aged, changed, and withstood that change.  We no longer have to fear being overthrown, except by the criminal element which thrives on its 'constitutional' rights.

 

I don't see anywhere in that constitutional right to bear arms that it says we have to have overwhelming firepower in our homes.  At the time this was written, it was speaking to the country's right to bear arms, not the individuals.  We, the country constituted of citizens, had a right to bear arms against those who would seek to overthrow us.  Self defense of this country, not as 'collector's of super-powered weapons' but as protectors of the country.  They had no knowledge of these new weapons with their multiple deaths per second capability.  I think that if they had known of them they would have written it differently.  But then again, they would probably be shocked at our inhumanity to our fellow citizens.

 

When are we going to do something?  When more innocents are taken?  After more weapons are in their hands?  When you become a victim?  When those you love perish because you didn't act?

 

 

Are we so spoiled or deficient that we can't handle stress or disappointment without using lethal methods?  Where has all our upbringing and instuction gone?  If someone ticks you off, grab a gun and kill him or molest or sexually assault them.  Can't get what you want or aren't part of the 'in-crowd'?  Takes some guns and show them how important you are. Teach them to dis you!

 

Now I admit, I grew up in the midwest in a small area that didn't even call itself a town.  I lived in a safe area where we didn't worry about crime.  Shoot, we slept on the porch on hot nights and never bothered to lock the doors.  Everyone knew everyone else and you didn't misbehave because every mother on the block would not only catch you, but also call your mother.  You'd get it from her, too, when you got home.  We were raised by the village long before it became a catch phrase for a book.

 

What I can't understand is that these people who have forced themselves into our consciousness with their crimes have lived in our midst all their lives.  People around them have said they were strange ducks.  Where did the system fail to catch them?  If everyone knew they were out there, why is it the proper authorities weren't notified?  In the latest episode where the boy killed the principal, he told others the principal would never make it to homecoming.  He said he would do something like this, but no one sounded the alarm.  What are we so afraid of?  Why don't we want to put ourselves out there to prevent this travesty from happening?  Are we programming our own demise by turning away?

 

 

 

A good friend and I spent time today on the computer laughing at some silliness.  We were playing around with AIM and the Expressions.  I'd never seen it before as I usually use Messenger.  We got to playing with the buddies and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard!  Just simple laughter and it changed my whole day.  I laughed so long and so hard that my face hurts.

 

I remember one other time I got silly with friends.  We'd gone to a convention together and we were following a friend's car.  Or at least we 'thought' we were following them.  It was dark and I'd never been in that town before so I was praying she knew where she was going.  Our hotel was outside of town a bit and it was so dark so basically I was following her tail lights.  She suddenly pulls off into a parking lot and I follow right along behind her. 

 

Well, it wasn't my girlfriend at all.  It was four tall, young, and good looking college boys!  I could hardly see as I quickly turned around and headed back the way I came.  We were laughing so hard that when we stopped at a stop light, the people in the next car looked at us strange.  The driver even locked his door!  That only made the laughter worse.

 

We get back to the hotel (finally).  As we're trying to climb the steps, we're having to sit down halfway up because we're laughing so hard.  The people in the lobby are looking at us like we've had too much to drink.  We finally make it back up to our rooms and the rest of the gang.  Telling what happened to us did not make it any easier to stop.

 

The whole thing that made it so funny was that I was the yougest one there at 39, and the rest of them were at least 60 and one was in her 80s.!  Here we were...chasing a carload of college boys!  I've always wondered what those young men thought about that carload of crazy ladies that was following them.

 

Today's memories are just as good.  Thank you Friend!

 

 

The other day I ran into one of the tenants from the complex I managed.  She hadn't been feeling very well, but managed to get out and do some errands that day.  She filled me in on all the news since she'd seen me last.

 

So many changes.  Too many changes.  The complex was for seniors and I had 74 apartments.  While I've kept in touch regularly, this last round of news was almost shocking.  So many had passed away or had life altering situations.  Even now I'm thinking I should have gone over more often.  In the next moment, I'm remembering some of those telling me that now is the moment to move on, never wait to do something because you may never get the chance otherwise.  They lived what they taught.  I am so grateful for having them in my life.

 

Two of them enjoyed my writing.  They were always asking me if I had anything new.  Too many times I had to tell them I didn't.  They loved the stories most of all and the poems I wrote for them about the building and the tenants.  I'm hoping that by remembering them it will provide a catalyst to get me writing again.

 

I really miss working there, but at least now I can talk to them without having to watch over my shoulder!

 

For a couple of years now I've just been here, letting things move around me.  I don't feel as though I've participated in my life much.  Things have happened and all I've done is move out of the way before something ran over me.  Sometimes I think I didn't move fast enough.

 

I've been sitting here tonight wondering where the time has gone.  I'm at that stage in my life where I should have something to show for everything I've been through.  What I see though is a worn out body and a lot of discontent with my life.  I'm not sure where I should be, but I'm sure it's not here.

 

How does one change where they're headed?  Especially when you've been headed this way for so long.  For a couple of years I was so content just writing and going to school but that ended when I moved and finished college.  I took a job I probably shouldn't have but yet, made so many friends that I couldn't leave.  I know, no one should base whether they stay somewhere on having made friends.  It was the dream job...except for the boss.  Never stay where the boss is not happy in her life because soon you will be too.

 

I have to find my joy again.  After almost 5 years of the job, I've somehow lost my joy.  I haven't written anything worth while in so long.  I miss the countryside, the creatures that entertained me, and the open skies that relaxed me.  I miss just listening to the world around me and having the time to think about what I'm hearing.  I miss the excitement of putting words to paper and never knowing what it's goning to be until I'm done.  I have to find my creativity again.  But how do I do that?

 

I am going to try to write something every night.  Sometimes the best way to get back into the habit of writing is just doing it.  Kind of like eating that elephant, one bite at a time.  You only choke if you bite off too big a bite at once, right?

 

Stay tuned, I may be back!