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| | Seafood Salad | | | Saturday, July 12, 2008 (9:29 PM)
(I'm feeling creative) | | Holly (callmehol) composed a story using five words, inspired by Syd’s (LVbianSynic's) teaching methods. She then posed a challenge to LV bloggers to compose a story using five new words. Those words are:
chimerical, confession, linguini, salamander, and trampoline
This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Seafood Salad
Spent and nearly lifeless after a long day on the trampoline, Jason wondered how he would make it back to the house for dinner. Sore and aching, the muscles in his legs felt like linguini. The short distance to the house seemed like miles. If only his mother would bring his dinner out to him, but he knew the chances of that happening were very slim. As he lay on his back, staring into the spinning sky, he closed his eyes and thought back to the last time he’d eaten outside.
*****
Stray bread crumbs and scattered bits of potato chips on the paper plate beside him on the porch were all that remained of his lunch. That was when he remembered the prize held in the plastic cup, sitting in the shade at his feet.
It had been a fun morning, playing in the shaded creek at the edge of the woods behind his house. Turning rocks to find crayfish, it wasn’t long before he had a matched pair of these critters. He proceeded to hold them out before him, moving them from side to side, weaving and dodging as they dueled claw to claw. Chimerical thoughts of giant lobsters, standing tail to tail as they rose out of the ocean, drove his fancy.
After a half-hour of this titanic battle, a rumble in his stomach told him it was time for lunch. He returned the tiny crustaceans to the creek bed and spotted a salamander in the wet leaves on the bank, as he stepped from the water. He scooped it up into the plastic cup he had been using to collect rocks, and ran to the house to eat.
Lunch now finished, he reached for the cup and tipped the salamander into his hand. Gently, he lowered it to his plate. What animal in its right mind wouldn’t want to eat potato chips?!
It was at that moment that Jason’s mother stepped out onto the porch, holding a plate of cookies for dessert. As she leaned down to place the cookies next to him, she glanced at his empty plate. With a shriek, she spotted his lunch mate, and the plateful of cookies flew into the air. Before she could run into the house and slam the screen door behind her, the salamander had dashed over the edge of the porch, seeking shelter in the shade below.
*****
Reluctantly, Jason sat up and flipped off the edge of the trampoline. As he slowly made his way to the house, he knew it would be a long time before his mother would let him eat outside.
He had a confession to make about the seafood salad that she made for dinner.
| | | 29 Views | 10  Thumbs Up | 5 Comments |  |
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| | Layers of Commitment | | | | Wednesday, May 14, 2008 (9:57 PM) | | Where is my commitment taking me?
Days that seem long fly by, five-to-six hour periods visiting, attending, or simply conversing, become more taxing than the ten hour work days I left behind two years ago. Two months of hospital stays over the first five months of this year, with another month likely before June is over, are taking a toll on her health and diminished abilities as well as my own emotions and frame of mind. Compensating by turning my mind “off” at other times, as an escape, has short-changed other equally important commitments.
Even before the current situation, it became apparent that long-term nursing is the only solution, but gaining acceptance at a favorable facility is a process of time in itself: a process that should have been started much sooner, but for my stubbornness at doing the “right thing”. Staff and doctors have commended me for my dedication over the last two years, but many others have persevered longer, making me wish I could do more. But it's time.
The fact that her health will soon become a matter of dignity has become the overriding factor, forcing my hand. That I have been reluctant to follow the proper course sooner, perhaps by a year, has been at the expense of my personal life, outside of this singular relationship. The question soon will be whether it is possible to repair that damage. While this is a major concern to me, I still am not able to wrap my mind around it. Once the concern for long-term care is resolved, I can put my mind where it should have been all along, a place it should have been long before this ordeal started.
TANSTAAFL | | | | 37 Views | 4 Thumbs Up | 2 Comments | |
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| | Train of Thought at Night | | | | Tuesday, May 13, 2008 (11:02 PM) | |
I hear a train in the distance, a low rumble from a half-mile away. It might seem an unwanted sound, breaking the silence as it does this time of night, but it’s not.
I can be perfectly content lying on my back in the countryside, the silence broken only by the sound of crickets and the hoot of an owl, as I stare into the night sky and feel myself swallowed by the Milky Way. The thought of crowds of people or heavy traffic, the signs of progress or commerce… any of that, far from my mind.
But sitting at home, the sound of that rumble, growing steadily then receding, and the train’s horn as it passes crossings are comforting, in a way. Maybe it’s the feeling of strength passing by (even at a distance), standing out as it does against the night’s silence, sending me a message of assurance. Is it, perhaps, breaking my reverie, drawing me from my thoughts and reminding me of the world outside?
At other times the sound may not even register in my mind, but sometimes I hear it, and I find it reassuring.
| | | | 30 Views | 4 Thumbs Up | 2 Comments | |
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| | Holidays | | | | Sunday, May 11, 2008 (2:43 AM) | | It being Mother's Day, the thought comes to me about the meaning behind certain holidays. The marketing actually. As anotherbrianne says in the CollectiveSoul video project for May, Mother's Day has become a cliché of Hallmark, flowers and brunch. I know I've done my share to perpetuate that some years, myself.
My parents have always lived within five miles of my house, except for a five year period when they lived seventy miles away. Over the years, I saw them often enough - sometimes a couple of times a week – and always on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. But as time went on, those visits became less and less, even when they moved back closer to my home, three or four years before my father died. That’s when I realized, too late, that Father’s Day should be more than one day a year, at least in thought. He lived five miles away, and I probably hadn’t seen him in two months, and hadn’t given him too much thought in that time, either.
After that, I made a point of visiting my mother more often – not two or three times a week, but at least not once every two months. I made a greater effort as her health declined, and these days she’s a major part of my life.
Life is too short to devalue the gifts that come to us naturally. Under certain circumstances, I know that parents may not be considered a gift, but take that gift away and see what value it now holds for you. I learned the hard way. I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.
The video I uploaded a couple of hours ago included a one minute segment at the end. It’s a one minute video I made last year, of a poem I wrote for my mother. LiveVideo caught my indiscretion of uploading content already on the server, and they cut that one minute and three second clip off the end.
Here it is. |
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| | | | 40 Views | 4 Thumbs Up | 2 Comments | |
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| | LivePorn | | | | Sunday, April 20, 2008 (10:06 PM) | | Anyone who knows me also knows I have no use for porn on this site (or any other, for that matter).
For anyone who doesn't know me, I have no use for porn on this site (or any other, for that matter).
That said, please take the following with a grain of salt (except for the last verse).
Ken
LivePorn
Wanna make a name?
Make ’em glad they came?
Define front page, be all the rage
and guarantee your fame?
You wanna pull ’em in,
so flash ’em with your skin
If they protest, you’ve passed the test
and done it for the win
No jive – Go Live
Grab your shaft with all five
Let ’em know you wanna show
the joy some would deprive
Flash ’em with your boobs
in their little cubes
They wanna watch your wild debauch,
their eyes glued to the tube
Show ’em all your class
you stupid little ass
Now go away, you’ve had your day
and make this show your last |
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30andout | | | | 56 Views | 8 Thumbs Up | 4 Comments | |
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| | Water. Again. | | | | Thursday, April 17, 2008 (11:10 PM) | | I'm compelled to write about water. The reason is not clear, but water seems to be filling the crevices in my cranium. The distraction is welcome, but if I'm not careful I'll soon be wanting a new distraction. I need to learn moderation if I don't want to OD on H2O.
It was beautiful out today, with temperatures in the seventies. I took the opportunity to walk on the Bird Island pier, a breakwall that separates the Niagara River from the Blackrock Canal. I walked as far as the point that passes under the Peace Bridge (about 1/4 mile). The ice boom across the mouth of the Niagara River at Lake Erie is in its final stages of removal for the season (two weeks later than scheduled), so the river was filled with masses of ice, great and small, playing bumper cars in the swift current at this point of the river. I videoed for no particular reason, other than to have it on hand if needed. (I already posted a video last April about the river ice.)
There's no real current in the canal, so that ice was fairly motionless. The speed of the river's current was all the more evident, in contrast. Sometimes it's the raw power of the river that draws me; other times it's the serenity it provides. Perhaps it's the subconscious need for both that brings me back so often. I may return tomorrow. That would be three times in four days, but I've done the same with the Falls and the Lower Rapids. I've done the same at some of the parks where the current isn't as swift. But this particular section of the river, with less turbulence, but just as much speed, than the Upper Rapids at Niagara Falls, is so compelling this time of year. I think I will return tomorrow (today already, as it's now after 2am).
| | | | 55 Views | 8 Thumbs Up | 4 Comments | |
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