Stay focused. If you want to be healthier stay focused on healthy choices, if you want to stop worring stay focused on the good stuff, if you want more love stay focused on receiving, if you want peace stay focused on your inner calm....stay focused. Your soul knows what to do, its your mind you have to watch out for.

The Lure of the Lights

It was a cold holiday evening. I pulled into a small Louisiana bar on my way home. The bar was a shack of a place perched content on the rivers edge. The boating docks were silent now from the summers activities with only the cold river water caressing the sun bleached boards.
It wasn't my nature to go into a bar and I had never ventured in alone.The warm glow of the Christmas lights haphazardly draped over the entrance seemed inviting, like an old friend.
When I opened the door the music from the band poured out into the cold air and enveloped me as I entered. I noticed a few people sitting at the bar and several couples sitting at scattered tables.
There was a kerosene heater sitting near the unused dance floor, competing against the chill coming from the many doors leading out to the decks and the docks.
I quickly decided I would say I was waiting for someone should anyone approach me, but as quickly as my alibi appeared it vanished. Who would inquire. It had been a long time since anyone noticed me , a long time since I had turned any heads. My beauty had faded with too many regrets, and my body was heavy with retreat.
I pulled my coat together and wrapped my arms around myself with the false pretense that it would make me less conspicuous.
I sat a comfortable distance from two old women who appeared motionless until they took a deep slow drag off their cigarette or raised their bourbon to their lips. They were staring off in different directions and looked very familiar to the stuffed toad mounted on the wall over their heads.
I leaned into the wobbly table and turned my attention to the band to keep from making eye contact with anyone, only glancing quickly around the room in short intervals.
The girl behind the bar was closely keeping watch on the level of beer in every bottle as they were turned up and sat back down. She was quick to replace each empty with a full cold one, like little amber soldiers scattered down the length of the bar. Her hair was over bleached and her laughter was overly loud.
A waitress noticed me and started walking my way she had on tight jeans and huge thighs that it made look as if it was difficult for her to walk. Her heavy musk perfume reached me before she was close enough to speak. She stopped in front of the table and propped all her weight on one hip and asked "what can I bring you honey?" I ordered a cajun eggnog that was commonly served this time of year. By the time the waitress had trudged her way back to my table with my drink several groups of people had filtered in and filled what was left of the remaining tables.
That was about the time I noticed him. The man sitting at the bar.
He was turned so he could prop his arm on the bar and rest some of the weight he was carrying around his waist. Weight that was making the buttons on his shirt appear to be desperate for release. His face seemed tired. His eyes drooped like a sad faced bull dog. I tried to imagine him with a younger face, with strong shoulders that were ready for any defense. His shoes were shined, his clothes were pressed and his hair was carefully combed.
I imagined him getting dressed in the morning as his wife sat on the bed watching him and I imagined her thinking of him now wondering if he would make it home safe after another night out. But then again maybe there was no one at home, no one who cared about his safe return. Maybe it had been years since he had been in a bar and he found himself pulled in by the warm lights like myself.
My thoughts were suddenly broken by a voice at my shoulder, a tall thin man who smelled like beer. He had stringy hair falling out from under a ball cap and sheet rock mud on his jeans and shoes. He grinned a toothless grin and asked if id like to dance. I said " no thank you I'm waiting on someone."
The eggnog was making me feel warm inside and a lot more relaxed. The band was playing a slow flowing song. I thought of how nice it would be to move slowly to the music with someone that I enjoyed being close to.
I saw the man at the bar gazing past me and I slowly turned my head to see what had his attention.
It was a painfully thin woman with large red hair, too much jewelry, and a satin blouse that exposed her boney chest where cleavage should have been.
He heaved his weight down from the bar stool and stood for a few seconds as if to balance himself from sitting too long or to gauge the effects from the booze.
He approached the large haired woman and eased his arm half way around her boney shoulders as if to escort her from her chair if she would agree to dance, With a quick rejection he slowly walked back to the bar and resumed his position. propped up and weary.
I wondered when the last time was that he laughed a good hardy laugh. I wondered if he had experienced many trials in life or had life been mundane,  uneventful. Did every day seem the same and every years seem like the year before. Did he have a gentle spirit or was he quick to anger. Did he enjoy the food that had become a burden to his bones or did he shove each mouthful down like memories he was trying to forget.
The band announced they were taking a break and each musician stepped quickly away from their positions and headed for the bar like bugs drawn to a light.
The juke box came to life as if it were being aroused from a deep sleep.
My glass had long been empty, the kerosene heater had lost the battle with the increasing cold and I was without conversation or dancing to keep me warm so I gathered myself up and headed for the door.
No one missed my presence except the large thighed waitress and possibly the beer breath construction worker.
I settled into the comfort of my car. I turned the defroster on and waited for the warmth to take effect on the groaning engine.
The bar room door swung open and spilled light out on my windshield making the ice crystals sparkled like diamond dust. The heat had melted away two circles on the windshield. As I looked through them I saw the man from the bar walking to his car.
I felt something in my heart. Was it sympathy, was it more curiosity, or was it just the glow from the christmas lights that encouraged me to contemplate someone else's well being. Regardless of what it was,  I watched him walk into the darkness and a soft "Merry Christmas" escaped my lips and drifted off in a smokey winter misty breath.

I drove home slow and easy through the stillness of that cold winter night , sure that I would never return. The familiar glow from the holiday lights had pulled me in but my desire was not for anything that the shack of a bar could offer me , what I needed , what I wanted, was something I had lost a long time ago. Something that felt like home.

Beneath the Wing

photo by COHolley

 

 

Beneath the wings is a silent warmth and the pulse of a small heart beating and occasionally the vibration from song.

 Beneath the wing, a sanctuary all its on.The wing opens with only the intent to soar. Then returns to the simple existence of warmth, and of life,  and of song. It returns to sanctuary.

The magnolias are gone for the season. The summer falling leaves that drift to the ground brown and speckled with shades of golden and amber, curled up just enough to hold the summer rain for a good part of the day, have ceased to fall and what remains will be for the winters retreat.
I can imagine the new blooms of spring already laying dormant in the massive branches of the majestic southern lady of a tree, hiding from the chill of a December breeze and the cold rain of a february morning.
The large white blooms will come again in summer and embellish the branches like frills and bows on Scarlett O'Hara's own full crinoline dress.
The magnolias are gone for the season, but they will bloom again...for the magnolia lives in a constant state of hope, and renewal, as we do ourselves with our own seasons of life, our own Decembers to hold fast through and our own springtime of new beginnings.

The Steps

 

I get a bit sentimental in a wonderment kind of way when I look at stairs that are worn down from travel, steps that have been transformed by people with a destination. Some people need a step up and some just need to step down to level ground.
The steps seem to carry a trace of what was, and this is where my wonderment comes in.
I can envision a young child running up the steps ahead of his parents eager to get to the shops and the smells of the market that are pulling him along. Then perhaps later in life, the same child, now weary with age, an unacknowledged soul, with slumped shoulders and hurting hips, walking slowly up one step at a time, trying to be sure-footed so as not to fall, and pausing for a brief moment before making it to the top.
I wonder if a young man dashed up the stairs on his way to meet a new lover that has him in a whirlwind -- he has been thinking about her all day and is determined not to be late.
I imagine a woman carrying a grocery bag, a look on her face that has become familiar as she wonders how the contents of the bag will feed her small children at home and if her husband will come back and if her life will ever be the same as it was.
A teenager walking home way past his curfew with slower steps than usual trying to give himself time to rehearse his response for when he is confronted by worried and demanding parents;
while behind him walks a man who lifts up his collar to smell for any hint of perfume as he rehearses his response for when he is confronted by a worried and demanding wife.
Maybe someone walked these steps that had no where to go, who wandered through the town as the night chill began to creep over the sidewalks and store fronts. He's lived this way for years now and the sidewalks know the sound of his shuffling shoes; and the alley ways know the smell of his clothes and the sound of his breathing when he sleeps.
A young lady with the light dimmed in her eyes places her hand on her abdomen and feels her body move as she takes one step at a time, her mind is consumed with the child in her that she is yet to tell her husband about. Her husband who has been out of work for months and who's face has changed more than her very own to a look of despair and hopelessness.
Step by step, story by story, some foot steps were heavy laden, some were swift with joy, they all joined the footsteps that were before them and left there's behind to be connected to those that were to come. The worn down steps, a gentle reminder of many lives that have passed along the way. All with traveling minds, traveling to memories from the past, or traveling to hopeful dreams and what if's of the future. All with hope that each step, the swift ones and the heavy ones, will lead them to a destination that will serve them well.
We all have something in common with the worn steps... the patterns life its self leaves on us, the changing that occurs with steps going up, and some going down, and from the choices we make when we step off to level ground, and those choices become the answer to our life's journey. Choose how you travel the stairways. It will make a difference that only time will reveal, for each traveler always leaves an imprint. And life's steps always leaves an impression on the soul.

My son is going to a viewing of Rembrandt today. I am envious of his opportunity. I would love to view some of the famous artist paintings, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso and one of my favorites Monet.
When you view a work of art think about where it came from. How it rose up from deep inside a soul as a thought, a vision, a feeling, a passion, and from there it appears on a canvas only a whisper of what existed moments before in the most private shadow of their souls sanctuary , in a place that never has words. Drifting to their finger tips where the movement begins to flow and move and create and then there it is laid out before you. From there you welcome it in and it begins to create emotions that stir within your own shadows, from that place that whispers things to your very own passions, those things that you never have words for. Viewing a painting is like reaching into the center of someone's unspoken dwelling place, finding their heart, holding it in your hand and claiming it for your own.

Grace

There were many times in my life I wish I would have been braver, stood stronger, had more courage. I survived, but through no stance of my own. I was carried by grace. And still, I am not as brave as I would like to be, and my courage fades when situations appear grim. Grace is my companion, ever present, forever carrying me along, until one day I will cross over the river Jordan. I will no longer need courage or strength, I will become the grace.

Read...
Read about history and philosophy and prose.
Read mysteries, novels, fiction and who knows
you may love this reading and all that it holds
good things for your mind
great things for your soul.
Read sonnets and love poems and
give them away to people you love on a random day.
Read in the spring in a warm sunny place,
on a bench by a lake ,
on the beach,
or in a swing.
Read in the winter when there's not much to do,
grab a book and a blanket and coffee fresh brewed.
Read to the children famous nursery rhymes
and to the elderly in nursing homes who have too much silent time.
Read things that inspire and stir up your heart read stories of courage when yours falls apart.
Read scripture and prayers,
read of faith and hold on.
Read of truth and endurance when the whole world seems wrong.
Read of love that survives and strength that prevails.
Let your dreams take flight let your thoughts set sail.
You may love this reading
and all that it holds
good things for your mind
great things for your soul.
by COHolley

 

When I went to the Library to check out the book "Moby Dick" the librarian walked me over to the book shelf and pulled out a tiny paperback book and said " this one was donated, there is no return date on it, keep it until you are through with it" I don't suppose I looked like a "real" reader...someone who is passionate about books.
Who would except such a classic in a tiny paperback form? Its like asking a true southerner if they would like plain tea or sweet tea, at which point I gave her just such a look ...and asked don't you have a larger volume? She handed me the wonderfully large hardback book that made my passion for books smile like Sunday Morning. I would have never chosen this book had it not been for my son and we are both enjoying reading it. The writer Herman Melville is genius. It is a real adventure that you can step away from the computer with and hold in your hands and turn the pages anxiously awaiting what is to come. Reading the classics is a gift to yourself.

Books and Roses. Two different venuse but they both are like a melody to the heart. One is like a gentle warm Bass that gathers you up and rocks you like a front porch swing and the other is like a melody that dances on a gentle breeze and comes to rest on your cheek like a kiss from someone that you love.