This Whirlwind Called Life

On September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 By AnnIn books, In the Shadow of the Wind, Prairie tales, Sonata of Elsie Lenore, Sundrop SonataLeave a comment

Do you ever feel like we’re caught up in a whirlwind? Daily disasters headline every news source. Everyone feels like we’re doomed if “the other side” wins the coming election.

(And we are, aren’t we?)

I am overwhelmed with topics to consider for posts on my blog. Book reviews of memoirs written by significant characters in the 2020 dramas, highlights of critical climate situations, hopeful solutions to drawdown the carbon/greenhouse gas levels in our atmosphere, life issues, family issues—the list is so long, I am paralyzed with indecision about where to begin.

What’s a writer to do?

Maybe we need a breather. Let’s step back for a few precious moments and just think about something else. Indulge our frantic minds with something trivial and entertaining. Perhaps through perusing something unexpected, something less dire, we might actually come out with new ideas and readiness to continue onward with renewed hope and a glimmer of optimism. I hope so.

There is a weekend approaching that offers some refreshing diversion. The first days of October bring two opportunities to take a break, go a different way, rejuvenate and refresh with a bit of entertainment and social interaction of a different sort.

I refer on one hand to the annual Kansas Authors Club convention, often the first weekend in October, as it is this year. For the very first time ever, the 2020 convention was planned for District 7, out in Colby, Kansas. I was looking forward to that, since my childhood years were spent in Colby. I still have good friends there, not to mention many fond memories from my early life. But when COVID hit, the convention plans switched to an online format, another first for KAC. It’s not too late to register for this online convention. Check it out here: https://kansasauthors.org

While disappointing in one way, I am enthusiastic in another. Since online access to virtual events can be found anywhere, I can be in two places at once. The second place is the annual Art in the Park event in Winfield, which I have missed for several years. But this year, I plan to set up a table for my books.

The layout will be a little different this year due to the COVID restrictions. More space than usual will be allowed between booths. Though this is an outdoor event and the park is spacious, vendors and visitors will wear face masks. Amble among the booths, allowing plenty of space between families and small groups of art lovers. It will still be fun–and a much needed activity during this difficult time.

Come to Island Park on Saturday, October 3, to amble through the displays. Stop at my book table. Perhaps you are someone who needs a break from the disastrous news headlines. Look to find diversion through fictional stories. Lose yourself in a book, or two, or three.

In preparation for both events that celebrate the arts and literature, I will share the introductory chapters of my three books in the next few days. In blog posts, take a look at what you might find in the virtual KAC bookroom, or at my table in Island Park.

On that first Saturday in October, don your favorite facemask and head to the park. Drop by my table to say hello. Practice your smeyeling! Perhaps a mask contest for the most unique or artistic creation is in order. Details coming soon.

Building Bridges

On March 26, 2017 By AnnIn Activism, HealingLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about bridges. The schisms in this country seem to only get wider. Political storms intensify in parallel with extreme storms that our changing climate generates. Echoes of hopelessness in both instances bounce off canyon walls as the dire and increasingly hopeless conditions show no signs of abatement.

The latest foul suggestion of “liberal genocide” implies the answer to our differences is to kill those who disagree with you. Not a very pro-life sentiment, if you ask me. But you didn’t. And perhaps that is the problem. Still I can’t believe that the vast majority of those on the other side of the opinion world genuinely have a death wish for the rest of us. But the gap spreads. The rift grows. How do we turn the tide?

We desperately need a bridge or two across the raging storm current beneath.

What do I know about bridges?

Their purpose is to aid travel across chasms, canyons, or river channels.

They come in many sizes

and many different designs.

They can be a simple as a fallen log spanning a water-filled gully, or so complex they take years to build.

They can be artistic treasures, offering the best of humankind,

and are often sought by artists or photographers as worthy subjects.

Some draw tourists to unique examples of beauty merged with utility.

Bridges can be found almost anywhere.

They are built with the future in mind, to assist the travel of those who follow the bridge makers.

Sadly, bridges are often targeted for destruction during warfare.

Model of the A-bomb detonation found in the Hiroshima museum. The target was believed to be a t-shaped bridge.

But some are designed with strength enough to withstand unspeakable devastation.

The t-shaped bridge today. Unlike most of the rest of the city, it was not destroyed by the atomic bomb.

Others succumb to heavy flooding and raging water.

But they can be re-built. Some bridges have been re-built with pride multiple times by different generations. They endure for centuries.

Construction of bridges would be most efficient if started from both sides to meet in the middle. But they can be built from one side alone.

Many chasms are born when a trickle of rainwater starts to flow in a miniscule crack. When the rift is deep enough, travel across it is impossible.

But the stones to build a bridge often come from the same geologic formation on opposite sides, and the planks come from sister trees.

Though the views are mirrored from either side,

a traveler sees the world

differently from the middle of a bridge.

With scant leadership from our Capitol, the healing process may fall to us, the people. We need a few bridges to cross the growing chasms in our political and social landscapes.

Stone by stone.

Pile by pile.

Time’s wasting. Let’s get started.

The Creative Life

On October 18, 2012October 28, 2014 By AnnIn Writing1 Comment

I write my life. Since the age of ten when I wrote my first story and was instantly hooked, I have been infected with a mysterious contagion for which there is no cure. Writing stories, poems, novel manuscripts and memoirs has been part of my life ever since. Yet I don’t live to write. I live. And I write. I write my life.

Through young adulthood, curiosity led me to question things. Whether any purposeful meaning existed or not, I asked, “What does this mean? Why am I here? What am I to do with my life?”

The search for answers helped sharpen my powers of observation until nearly everything holds metaphorical parallels to some facet of the human condition. I watch a moose lunge exhausted through shoulder-deep snow and I learn the dangers of choosing an easy path.

I stand in a downpour and hear the rain plummet from heaven in one step of the water cycle. And it spoke to me of cycles in life.

I watch a family of ducks chase madly from one point to another and back again and I see human fads and opinions mirror the whimsical parade of a flock of ducks.

I watch my best friend waste away in a losing battle with cancer and I understand how the growing demands of humanity sap the vitality of our home planet in a similar fashion.

Meadowlarks leap into the wind so they might gain lift and fly away. And I learn I cannot hide from life. I must face my own torrential gale of events if I am ever to find the answers to my questions.

Messages from the universe arrive on the dust of a sun beam and the wings of the wind. As a writer, my task becomes one of interpretation, to paint in words the messages which I hear.

Too restless to be able to handle writing at my desk for hours at a time, I discovered that “The Writing Life” was not for me. Rather, “The Creative Life” seemed a better term. What is a creative life? Just as a blank page begs a poet to fill it with thoughts which will touch a heart, or a computer screen winks with invitation to a novelist, a canvas beckons an artist to paint images that will coax emotion from viewers. A chunk of granite calls a sculptor to release the figure trapped within. An ordinary scene invites a photographer to transform its image into beauty with a camera lens. A composer looks at a blank musical score and hears a new symphony. A plot of land begs management that will develop its natural beauty. An empty house is an opportunity for unique self-expression. And the minutes of each new day invite me to follow my heart and fill those minutes well so that at dusk, I can say, “I wrote my life well today.”

To answer any one of these invitations is to live The Creative Life. By filling empty spaces with an art form of our passions, we bridge the void from the rest of the universe to the human heart. So I write my life. I may take to the Flint Hills of Kansas with my camera strapped to my shoulder.

I may arrange a beautiful melody for the participation and enjoyment of a crowd of people. Or I may fill empty pages with metaphors. What emerges is truth. Or fiction. Or a combination of both. After all, someone may need the message delivered on this dawn’s breeze.

The Bridge

Tag: art