Honestly?

First of all, an apology to Peggy, who granted me this award. I wasn’t very gracious when accepting the gift, because I didn’t think I deserved an award of any kind. Let me say now what I could have said then, had my discomfiture been less: Thank you, Peggy, for this award. Your kindness is greatly appreciated. I am humbled by your thoughtfulness to the point that I don’t know what else to say.

As I said to Peggy in the comments to her award-giving post, I’m not good at following the rules, and this award comes with rules, which I’ll list at the end of this essay. Rule three states the recipient must choose at least ”seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.”

I thought about that, and about the name of the award, “Honest Scrap,” which, if read aloud rapidly, sounds like Honest Crap. (Sort of like fellow New Orleanian Pete Fountain’s jazz group that used to march in Mardi Gras parades, called the Half-Fast Marching Band. Say the name three times, as fast as you can. See how the words blur and slur together?) This award is intended for bloggers who write honestly, then.

Hmmm…honest is not always pretty or funny or even comfortable. That opens the field from which to choose.

I’ve chosen bloggers whose work keeps me returning to see what’s next.

And the Honest Scrap award goes to:

Field

Golden Girl
June

Maria
Mary

TAP

Zhoen


I add Peggy onto the list, too. There is no rule that tells me I cannot, so I’m doing it.



There is an element of Truth or Dare game-playing with this award, in that the recipient is supposed to tell ten things about themselves, presumably that other bloggers don't already know. (Look, peoples, I'm not even this honest with myself, so I'm going to have a hard time coming up with 10 things I feel good about posting!)

1. I am the firstborn of my father's second family, the first of my mother's pregnancies to make it to full term. (No parental expectation pressures there, eh?!) We don't know for sure just how many children Daddy sired; he loved the ladies and they loved him in return...a lot!


2. Isaac Asimov and I used to belong to the same organization.


3. One of President Lyndon Johnson's Secret Service men stepped (HARD!) on my foot in New Orleans as the Prez was leaving the building after a speech. Guess I got a little too close.


4. I've lived in 12 states in my lifetime (averaging 5 years per state, though I didn't spend that much time in every one of them.)


5. One ear sits lower and farther back on my head than the other one.


6. I am terribly uncomfortable about digging any deeper than I am doing so far for this part of the award. (You guessed that already, though, didn't you?)


7. I am intelligent. (Well, I don't know that that aspect of my personality comes across so clearly, okay, so I thought I might have to spell it out, okay? Lots of people don't see it in me, you know, because they can't get past my blinding beauty - how's that for crap?)


8. I've been taking care of other people since I was four-and-a-half years old, and I don't want to do it anymore! (Crikey, where did that come from? No self-editing on this one, BB: I'll let it stand.)


9. (Only two more to go, thank ya, Jayzus!) I can (do) curse (sometimes...too often, really...in my sleep...uh, don't tell my mother, all right [whole shi*load of expletives deleted]) like the proverbial sailor upon rare occasions, should the situation warrant it.


10. I've never hated any one, but I have wanted to maim, torture, mutilate and leave-for-dead a great many of the people I have encountered in my lifetime. (And you know who your are, you [insert my favorite curse], so keep looking behind you. That screaming banshee from hell you hear in your nightmares is me, comin' to get ya!)

I’m listing the rules, but I do not expect anyone to follow them, or follow them precisely, or even acknowledge they have received an award.

These are the rules:

• You must brag about the award


• You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger


• You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.


• Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.


• List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself.

Then pass it on with the instructions!
...
Remember, Awardees, you do not have to participate in this award-giving venture, and I apologize in advance if I have annoyed you.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

Afterthought: I'm afraid I left out some writers whose blogs I follow and who are as honest in their writing as any, and more deserving than I am. Know this: I wouldn't follow you if you were dishonest in your writing.

Paint

In my post, Passion, I mentioned a sonnet on watching paint dry. Friend BB took that as a challenge and declared he would write one on that very subject. His sonnet arrived in this morning's email, which I now present here.

...

WORLD FIRST

In a panegyric about good writing, Crow said she was prepared to read a sonnet about watching paint dry. Since this is only the fifth poem I have ever written it would be optimistic to claim the first half of her assertion, but at least the subject matter rises to the challenge of the second part. On reading this it may rapidly become apparent that my blog is devoted to the joys of technology.

Barrett Bonden.

Sonnet – Paint Drying

These colors were not ours. Too bright? Too fair?
Another family’s concealment needs
Barring our quick possession of their bare
Regressive record of domestic deeds.
Our brush implies a tyrant’s power – a blade
To cut away unwanted otherness
To scour, excise, delete or amputate
Interring then remaining evidence.
A hand-swept wave of green stops up the eyes
And throats of calling, drowning memories
Creates a hardening seal to authorize
Our ownership of coloured histories.

We watch, paint dries, a thickness evident
In years, decades, a time-based insulant.



Dear Friend BB, you have lived up to your promise. I can do no less, and now live up to mine. Well done! Very well done!

...
You can - and do! - write poetry, despite your protestations otherwise, and your modesty. I'm afraid if I had written about paint drying, it would have been a pale, shabby cousin of an Ogden Nash ditty, not a sonnet, and certainly not as thoughtful as is this beautiful creation. (That was not intended as a slap at Ogden Nash, because I love his work.)

Sonnet, (c) 2009 by Barrett Bonden (RR)
Other (c) 2009 Martha McLemore

Steamy Things

(c) 2007 Tony Rath www.trphoto.com

I follow two writers (whose works I enjoy immensely), Lucy Kempton and Joe Hyam, through their individual blogs, and through Questions, their poetry collaboration. A line in Joe's response to Lucy's first question, "What do you know, that I don't know," prompted my Passion post.

...

I began reading Joe's response, and was beguiled by his writing in a woman's voice, talking of long, thin wrists with such intimacy it was almost seductive. He/she spoke of bracelets - bangles, actually - marking her days of exile, creating in me a sadness from which sprang an empathy for this forlorn soul. I am moving along with this image, this emotional connection (for I know about exile) through his explanation of how he knows so much and can paint her picture so well. He writes it "...came to me from your memory, drawn out through time," words that allude to a long-lived, personal relationship with his correspondent.

...

His woman-in-exile speaks of memories of ordinary things - "shopping precincts and motorways" - and I saunter along on a word-stroll, meandering through the poem, soaking up the words. Breathing in and out in gentle measures, drifting with the sway of Joe's words and the images they conjured, I was unprepared for the departure the next line takes. It felt as if I had stepped off the sidewalk into thin air and could not regain my footing. Seven words, that's all; seven ordinary words.

..

"And swamps that steam in every heart."

...

Everything I know about swamps, from experience of the real to understanding the metaphorical, flashed through my brain so fast it left my thoughts spinning. Those words took my breath away.

...

Summertime in south Louisiana; in Mobile, Alabama, and southern Florida. Steamy landscapes of soggy, spongy land; moss bedraggled trees; tea-colored waterways, the surfaces of which moved and swirled with the submerged passing of the unseen. Crystal clear streams and lakes where one could see the alligators and moccasins trailing the boat, Death incarnate stalking every paddle dip, every blink of your eyes against the overbearing sun. The morass of plants, their stalks and roots entwined, forming a near solid mat so dense one could walk across the swampland on it. Heat and moisture, mugginess and sweat. Thirst you dare not slake by putting your face to the water, because of what lurks beneath. The surreal beauty of plants and animals found nowhere else on earth. The perfume and colors of the bayou in spring.

...

The tangle of emotions, the heartache of passion that cannot be consummated, the longing for that which remains unattainable. The jealousies and envy, fears and pains one conceals within the heart's swamp. The memories of loves found and lost, of childhood trauma and nightmares. All the things we dare not raise to the surface, let alone call by name. The wild, the uncontrollable; the wicked and depraved. Those bits of us that give off steam, that soak our dreams, that fuel our tears.

...

All that and more, brought out by seven words.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

Here, Just Take It All, Dammit!

Picture found here.

These lads sum it up nicely for me today.

Passion

Kreutzer Sonata

I have a passion for words, and for wordsmiths. Well-crafted writing, whether personal, hand-scrawled notes on the inside of dime-store greeting cards; or twenty-page sonnets on watching paint dry; or above-the-fold, front page reporting; or 800-page tomes on anything that would take me a month to get through - do it well and I will be your word-slut for the rest of my life.
...

Good writing, a well-turned phrase, the seductive arrangement of three or four words (it takes so little sometimes) and I quiver, I shiver, I swoon, I melt. My pupils dilate and contract rhythmically, my pulse quickens and becomes visible at that hollow at the base of my neck and I open my soul to the writer. Reading becomes a sensual experience for me. (I'm not talking pornography, here, although there sometimes is good writing to be found in [some] pornography.)
...

Sometimes words are put together in such a fashion as to make me gasp for air. They thrust themselves inside my brain and pulsate, resonate and harmonize with my synapses so ardently that I have to stop reading until I can regain control of my emotions, my senses.
...

I find good writing in essays, in novels, in poems, in newspaper/magazine articles, in humor...in the oddest of places, sometimes, even in advertising.
...

Usually, I savor the moments silently. Rarely do I try to share my experiences because I don't express myself well enough to convey the effect the words had.
...

Good writing produces a sort of music in me, paints images in colors and intensities that overwhelm me at times; creates a longing in my heart for something I don't know how to explain. The closest I can come is to say it makes me want to meld with the words, as if I were the platen on which the words had been struck, forever captured in its core, held and revisited forever after.
...

I treasure good writing. I am in awe of their creators, several of whom I have found on the Internet and follow every day.
(c) 2009 All rights reserved. Martha McLemore

Arguing with God

Stumbled across a book yesterday titled The Shack. It's the story (fiction) of one man's struggle with his perceptions of God after the abduction and murder of his youngest child. Written by William Paul Young.

I've been arguing with the book for the last 24+ hours: not finished yet.

Guess I'm arguing with God, too.

About the Dream Postings:

I've removed the three posts about the dream. Thanks for visiting and commenting.