I Am Gemini

 

 "Astrology is a language. 

 If you understand this language,

the sky speaks to you." 

 ~Dane Rudhyar

 

 

 

 I am Gemini third sign of the zodiac.  I am ruled by Mercury and my element is air.  My mind is open and there is a smile upon my face.  I am versatile and expressive as I have a brilliant listening ear.  The gemstone I wear is emerald and my feet long to take me to the east.  My polarity is positive and my season is always spring.  I am a social creature and a wordsmith as I communicate with the world.  Wednesday is my day of refuge, and 3 and 7 are the numbers that hold my luck.  I am loose with a pocket book, but I grip tight the hand that I hold dear.  I see both sides of the coin with a certain ease, and I shall mediate two views and make the fighting cease. 

Yes, I am Gemini two people rolled into one lump sum. .

 

 This week I turned 51.  I don't feel that old.  In my heart and mind I feel 25, but time keeps marching on whether I need a break or not.  Life is a journey that provides no directions nor map for your destination.   I have come to realize that no matter how old I get, I always have so much to learn in the process.  Life is a constant pop quiz and my lesson is to remember what happened on the prior questions and do better on the multiple choice that lies ahead.  When I think back on my father's life, his happiest years were after 50.   So I know the best is yet to come.  The 20's held too many errors.  The 30's were full of red marks on the test.  Then 40's were a complete revision of the whole exam.  So the 50's hopefully will be a passing grade.  Whatever happens on my future tests, I know it will be full of fascinating questions to discover, ponder, and eventually answer.

Looking Up

When we are down

we can look up...

 

when we are in the valley

of need we can look up...

 

and when we need guidance from God

we can look up...

 

 

 

 It seems our gaze in life tends to stay at our own steps.  We do not look to God until we need His help.  Maybe our struggles and the trials that come our way are part of God's plan to steer us closer and make us learn to lean upon his sturdy strength, like a redwood tree that reaches towards the heavens. 

I just wanted to take the time to thank you all for your prayers for Jennifer.  She is off life support and was moved into a regular room on Monday.  She will be going home in the next couple of days.

Things are looking up for her.

 

Ten Thousand New Shoes

"If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes."

  ~The Houghton Line, November 1965

Change can be uncomfortable like a new pair of high healed shoes.  It presses in too hard on the toes and makes you want to just stop moving forward, sit down, and pull off them suckers to make the pain stop.  The last year or so has been like ten thousand new shoes that I can't take back and I must cram on my feet and wear whether I like it or not.  Uncomfortable does not even begin to describe it accurately.  It is more like misery in red with heals too high trying to take steps on a slippery walkway, and sometimes I am falling on my face.

One of the changes that has taken place is my name.  I am no longer Carrie Burtt.  Now I am Carrie Van Horn.  A woman that obviously should not be married, having done so twice and unable to stick with the contract.

It has been over a year now since I left the man I had been with for 15 years and  packed up my things I could not live without,  headed to a friend's house, and never looked back.  Since then I have rented an apartment, joined a dating site, gone on a million dates, and last but not least changed my name.  It has been a grueling yet rejuvenating process, like getting a new pair of shoes that both make you feel good about yourself, yet hurt your old bunion at the same time.

What changes are you facing in 2014?



Holding On To Hope

Courtesy Google Images

 

 

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."

~Havelock Ellis

 

 

When you hold on to the hand of someone on life support, it really makes you think about what holding on really means.  So much of the time in life we are told to just let go.  It could be resentment, un-forgiveness towards a family member, or a box that is too heavy for our strength to attempt carrying.  Whatever it may be, we are instructed to let go, but standing here in the ICU of the hospital, I am overwhelmed with the helpless feeling of the need to hold on for dear life.  Each time I reach out to this weak hand, she still squeezes with a strong grip, as if saying “don’t let me go, please don’t let me go.”  Life is such a fragile thing.  When our life is healthy and whole we tend to take it for granted and let it loose like a dog with no leash through an open gate.  Yet when it is no longer completely within our grasp we want to protect it and hold on to its leash securely and never let go.  As I stand here beside this bed with tubes and devices all over the place, I hold on to a precious hand, and I can only think about just that, holding on tenderly and never letting go.   A once vibrant young woman is now reliant on a machine for air to live, and everything is uncertain.  I only know that she does not want me to let go of her hand, and I do not want her to let go of the will to survive.

Please pray for Jennifer.

 

The Poet and the Thief

image by Martin Stranka

 

 

The Mag #219

 

 

 

 

 

"The poet and the thief are very distant cousins yet close in one regard

the poet takes from your life his ideas, and the thief just takes your car."

~me

 

 

 

My pockets are full with tokens you have left upon the way

your wishes, your tears, your regrets and all the words you say.

 

Every part of your life that spills out I pick up and then hold tight.

The experiences with each memory are embezzled without a fight.

 

I hoard your actions like antiques that age before my eyes

considering each a luxury to relish as a prize.

 

For I steal your hopes, your sighs, with what you feel and see

I store them in my thoughts waiting for a muse to set them free.

 

 

 

 

 

Over the years I have found that the world around me is a museum, and I a spectator of every artifact.  Every thing that happens and all the people along my path become ideas that form in my mind.  As I take it all in it is almost as if I actually take do take...I take, steal, rob, and hijack everyone and all their situations around me.  I guess people watching is just what writers do.

My favorite place is the mall.

 

What is your favorite place to watch the world?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the Deep and Distant Sea

Courtesy Google Images

 

 

 

 "The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." ~Elisabeth Foley

 

 

Linking with Poetry Jam for the "Friends Prompt"
 

 

 

Once my dear friend and I were like a sailboat upon the open sea.

we drifted close and constant towards the horizon in symmetry.

 

The days were long and beautiful with adventures around each bend

but in time the nights grew shorter and our comradery would soon end.

 

Now my sails have shifted and her seas are distant beyond my view.

We travel different harbors though we still stare at the same moon.

 

Yet the absence and the gap that has divided us to different shores
serves only to magnify the deep love that we share at our heart's core.


Dedicated to a dear friend that was my first best friend.  We have spent most of our friendship far apart from each other, but every time we come back to each others shore it is like we never parted, and the relationship that we share has only grown deeper with time, like the great waters within the sea.

 

 

He Laces the Moon

Courtesy Google Images

 

 

Linking with Imaginary Gardens

 

(This was for the Lace Prompt, but I tried to link from my other blog and it would not work so....here we go again...days late and a dollar or two short....:-)...)

 

 

 

"God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars." ~Author unknown

 

 

 

 

He laces the moon with winter trees
across a purple sky
bringing forth a cool night breeze
that beckons hopeful eyes.


The majesty of God's own craft
is a beauty beyond compare
a miracle for all to have
and a gift that always shares.


No hands of man can make this art
that God has painted ever true
each brilliant stroke He does impart
creates an original for all to view.

Yes, He laces the moon with winter trees
across a purple sky
etching beauty for all to see
that beckons hopeful eyes.

 

What the Heart Shall See

Chair With the Wings of a Vulture, 1960, Salvador Dali

 

The Mag #218

 

"When love is not madness, it is not love."

  ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I am not what you think I should be

I am a lover of the unlovable

a hunter of wild things

 

I see the beauty in the mongrel heart

I rip to shreds the rules that

this world imparts

 

I perch upon the unsturdy limb

and caress the bark

whether it break or just bend

 

I drift with ease into captive lands

and fly with a flock

that is ridiculed by man

 

I disregard the laws of earthly eyes

I take chains off the guilty

and adorn what others despise

 

 Perhaps I am crazy with a deadly disease

but what if I hold the cure

to hate's ignorance and grief.

 

 

 

 

Having been labeled a classic enabler at the young age of 23 and made aware of the fact that my "picker is broken", by sponsors and loved ones, I have been all too aware of the fact that my tolerance level of what is acceptable to deal with in boundaries and behavior is bent to a crippling point.  If mental pain could be compared to physical, well then I can withstand a fall from a 20 story building, or walk away from a head on collision and just brush off the dust ready to pull the others out as well.  I am not completely trying to defend my behavior or what I believe about people and situations, but sometimes I feel like the view this world has puts such a major constraint on love and relationships.  I know that you can say a chair is blue even if it is red and that does not make it true, but I don't always regret the crazy things I have done over the years.  Sometimes there are grey areas that just cannot be explained nor made beautiful like a sunrise.  It is just a storm and storms are part of nature and a peice of this life that gives balance.  Maybe my need to nurture beyond the level of what is acceptable does stunt the growth of others along the way, but every facet of this journey does not bring only an over grown waisted garden.  There is a deeper experience that settles beneath the surface.  The roots of love are mighty and have a gentle strength that cannot be measured in the yards and rules of man.  Some sacrifices as painful as they may be, just cannot be a true regret in the end.  They are all tied together like twigs for a bigger place, and the strong twigs support the weak ones within the nest. I guess what I am trying to say is this, comfort is a bird that flies both ways.  It is recieved at the point where it is given.  At least that is how it is for me.  I don't believe that any kind act is ever truly waisted.  It serves a purpose and it plants a seed of hope in someone else's heart, and that is good enough for me.  Yes maybe I am not what this world thinks looks right, but I know what my heart sees, and that is what guides me through each sunny day and each storm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Story of My Life

The Mag #217

 

 

"Forever is composed of nows."  ~Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

The story is this, I have always wanted to know the ending at the beginning.  It's a weakness that I have clasped on to tightly, like an alcoholic and a bottle of gin.  Uncertainty is a double edged sword of dicing truths.  Either you learn to have faith in something greater than yourself or find yourself working hard to prevent the inevitable as if you are the greater power which proves to be a big mistake. However, both sides of the road hold the power to make you a little bit tougher, like a slab of meat that needs preparation for the grill.  I want to know that everything is going to be okay. That the last part of the story has a comfortable feel like a cozy room and a loving companion, but that part of the story is not yet ready to be told.  There are lines in between that must be written upon the page.  Experiences that must happen, like roads and highways make paths to destinations that people want to go.  My road is not yet paved all the way, it is an awkward gravel path, and the journey's end is not yet in sight.  It is a pilgrimage of schooling that no one graduates from with honors, only scars, and a little more wisdom that on the first page.  Faith is an acquired art like cigarettes, coffee, or gin and tonic on the rocks.  You don't begin the process with ease nor grace.  There will be some coughing and you may choke before you get the first couple swallows down.  And yet after all my ramblings about the "why's" of life, certainty,  and the journey I still struggle with the need to know what I cannot yet know.  There is an excerpt that eloquently speaks of this from the famous book "The Hiding Place"  by Corrie Ten Boom that goes like this:

 

“And so seated next to my father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, "Father, what is sexsin?"
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case off the floor and set it on the floor.
Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?" he said.
I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
It's too heavy," I said.
Yes," he said, "and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”
~Corrie Ten Boom

 

 

So I guess the story is this:  I am still trying to pick up baggage that I am not yet strong enough to hold.

The End.