Where to Begin


Two concrete rectangles, steel and wood
Call one bed, the other, living room
A door in or out, a middle partition
White walls breathe and bend
The black and white floors tiles flex to feet,
The large windows let in light
A turquoise chair is married to a red desk
A white telephone has divorced a black stand
A computer is running out to shop
There is nothing but what days bring
They bring little for weeks.
One day, the visions ease
Into a pleasant unawareness and rising
One sage morning sitting with tea
Time unravels your head like a ball of twine:
A black tile lifts from the floor
Floats slowly round the room and another
A white one, begins to ascend, joining
Yet another and another, black and white tiles
Moving 'round to a secret order, a song

Fascinating, fantastic, hypnotic

A white tile holds an eye socket and one eye
Rolls out your head to fill it
A black tile has a nose pulsing and you note
One missing from your face
Ears are wings flapping in another
Fingers detached from hands
Slither into black and white,
Your body like always but lighter
Limb by limb, organ by organ
Bone upon bone coming apart without pain
The entire network of nerve, flesh, feces,
Fingernail, brain, heart, genitals
Circles the room, turning in slow motion
A wind-chime of body parts
United yet distinctly unique and alone—and then
A window to the world opens
Everything sucked out into the air, into sky, vanishes.
There is no one now where the lights burn
And the air-conditioning runs day and night, no one
To say where to look; nor where to even begin



Rayn Roberts 09

The Midday Cowboy

Hi all, thought I would add a story I wrote to get the ball rolling, it is one of the first stories I added to my blog, the Chronicles of Sharnia (back when I had no readers haha) So I thought I'd give it a re-run!!

It gives you a bit more of an idea about who I am...

- I wrote this pre-baby when I just moved from Sydney to my one horse town, it is funny I feel like a different person from when I wrote this to now - amazing : falling in love, going overseas and finding out you are 'expecting' to having a baby can make you grow up quickly - I'll add something newer soon to see if you can notice a maturity in my current style (maybe I am imagining this??!! possible!)

Thought this might be a good way to get you up to date with why I'm living in the country now from a Sydney girl working for a major newspaper to now... love your thoughts

The Midday Cowboy

Flashback!

It is one am on a Saturday Morning. I am on the dance floor in the Midnight Shift - one of Oxford Streets busiest clubs. My dancing partner could have easily have passed for a member of the Village people.

He was dressed in jodphurs, big black boots and a cowboy hat. He was topless, and he was gorgeous! We shimmied the wee hours away to Kylie, Britney and Wham.

And then the Oxford Street Cowboy suddenly shimmied off with a policeman in hot pants!

At that point I realised the only "Man Drought" that existed in Sydney was for the women.

All the gorgeous men were dancing for the other team!

How was I going to meet the man for me if I continued spending my partying time with fake Cowboys in a gay club on Oxford St?

I left the club en route to my Darlinghurst apartment. On the way I passed an array of drunk and souped-up party people screaming down the street. I was chased up the road for money by a homeless lady and was nearly run over by an irate bus driver.

For years I was convinced that dining in fancy restaurants, spending half my wage on taxis, partying all night and sleeping all day was the lifestyle for me.

I was convinced if I led a highly social existence I would meet Mr. Right on the way. It was not the centre of my universe to find him, but secretly I was getting frustrated he wasn't appearing before me.

I envisaged he would be a funky man from one of the "cool" suburbs in a creative line of work. We'd meet for cocktails after work on Thursdays, buy a shoebox flat in the Eastern Suburbs; jog through Centennial Park on Saturdays before cooling off at Bondi Beach; we would race dragon boats under the Glebe Point Bridge; attend fancy gallery and museum openings and every second Sunday we would meet our friends at a groovy cafe for brunch.

Perhaps I had watched one too many episodes of Sex and the City.

I was beelining towards my 30's and although I was having fun, I was not at peace with my place in the world.

For me, Sydney had become all about spending, looking good, being at the coolest venues and always striving for more, more, more. Quite frankly, I was exhausted.

Increasingly, the people that I met were on the same treadmill and it was hard to get off.

Something had to give, and it probably had to be me. Perhaps I needed to find my place and my man somewhere else, outside Sydney?

Fast forward one year.

It is seven am on Monday morning, on a property 10kms from Hay in South-West NSW sitting opposite a real Cowboy.

A world away from the vibrant and sleep deprived charms of Oxford Street. The only sound on the farm is the distant snorting of an angry bull.

THe air is clean and the only beggars in sight are the trees thirsty for rain.

The only Cowboy hat in this scene is an old akubra used for deterring the sun.

I look over his shoulder to the vast flat landscape and realise the drought that exists here is the real thing, not the city whinge of "man drought".

Out here in the country it is dry, it is hot - and when the men wear wide brimmed hats it is practical. They keep their shirts on to protect themselves from the burning sun.

NO longer for me the Oxford Street brasseriel I am having a cup of coffee on a porch with the real cowboy I have managed to snag!

He possesses al the qualities I have been scoping out in Sydney all those years ago - but what the Sydney men appeared to be, my Country Cowboy really is, inside and out.

So now I find myself in the country with a man. I'm living with limited access to fine restaurants and the closest thing to designer shopping is at Go-Lo and little in the way of commercialised entertainment has allowed us to find creative ways to "date". I've swapped dining in the fine eateries of Crown Street for a picnic on the Murrumbidgee River or 'paddock bashing' in the ute! I've been taught the differences between Rams and Ewes, and have learnt first hand how stupid sheep really can be.

The Cowboy keeps telling me that it is time to swap the stilettos for a pair of practical farm boots. I can handle the quiet life, the hot weather, the lack of ocean and life without a cinema. But the day I start wearing farm boots is the day I hope the Village people will come to Hay and whisk me back to Oxford Street.

FROM SUFFERING TO GRATITUDE

I feel so much gratitude these days it's hard to contain. Even when everything goes wrong, like today. (Actually, nothing goes wrong really...it just goes wrong in our own little heads. Everything is as it is.) After the craziness of the day today, I came home, put on my tennis shoes and hopped in my car and zoomed over to Carkeek Park near my house. This beach can wash away anything that ails you, I swear. Today, I arrived just in time for sunset.




A train screeched by hugging the coastline. I grabbed my down jacket and took the ramp down to stretch of sand below. The Olympic mountains shot out of the sky like seated Buddhas. They seemed to be screaming peacefully, if that's possible. Each mountain called for me to "WAKE UP." I felt the wind on my face and the wild waves crash on the shore. The sun started to fall and was so brilliant I thought it might catch the earth on fire. I closed my eyes and took in the last rays of the sun before it was swallowed up by the snow-capped mountains. A tiny circular afterglow seemed to rest in the spot where the sun had been. I felt peace. It was there all along, really...it just got covered up by the drama of the day.

I truly LOVE my job. I am an ESL teacher. It's the best job in the world because IT IS the world in my classroom. I work with immigrants and refugees from all over the world. I love them ALL. Most of the time I am in awe in my classroom. My students are my greatest teachers. I learn from them constantly.

Today, I had to meet with each one of them individually, about 30 students, to help them register for next quarter. On Tuesday night, I also met with 30 students. One by one they would filter into my classroom and sit down. I thought, "Registration, piece of cake..I'm almost done with the quarter." I set up a couple of chairs and as the students came in, they sat down across from me...many of them completely opened up, broke down, revealed secrets, whispered of divorce and pills and unemployment and pain in the head and neck and back, etc. I sat nodding my head for two hours. Sometimes the drama was so close, the chaos so strong, the pain and suffering so real, that I was not sure I could bare it. After each one would finish, they would thank me. When I came home from work, I asked my husband, "Why is there so much suffering in the world?" He kissed me and hugged me and calmed me down and then went to teach his yoga class. I felt drained, but walking along Puget Sound renewed me. I am grateful...so grateful. Grateful to everyone and everything that crosses my path. Pleasure or pain, all are my teachers.


This is literally where I stopped typing. I am not making this up. There was a knock at the door. No one ever knocks on my door. The knock was loud and hard. I looked through the peep hole and saw my neighbor. I opened the door and saw that she looked a bit panicked. She said, "Kathy, can I come in? I cut my finger and it's really bad." There was blood running out of her finger and I got a towel from the cabinet and we wrapped her finger and I told her to raise her arm over her head. We rushed out to my car and I drove her to the emergency room. They asked my neighbor, who was bleeding, to fill out two pages of medical information. Mind you, this woman just cut off most of the nail on her index finger and was bleeding profusely into the towel. I filled out part of it and she filled out as much as she could. Then we waited. Finally, they called us into the room. My neighbor laid down the gurney and we waited again. Thankfully, we got to share time together as neighbors, otherwise that time would have been long, painful and lonely if she had gone by herself. Finally, Dr. Hook (no kidding) arrived. He took the towel off and she was bleeding on the gurney as he sauntered over to the another room to see if there was any gauze. He came back with scissors, gauze, a very long needle, and cauterizing equipment. He said, "I'm going to have to put your finger to sleep." I thought, that's what they say when your pet is sick and suddenly I was reminded of all my childhood cats. He tied the finger tightly to stop the bleeding. My neighbor breathed deeply as Dr. Hook stuck the needle in to numb the finger. Then, he started cauterizing her finger. Smoke came out and it sort of smelled like something was burning on the stove. Dave with the tube gauze came in and dressed the finger. He let us know that tube gauze is very rare..it's from the 70s and you can't find it anymore. We decided we were going to get bumper stickers that said TUBE GAUZE RULES. While we waited for the nurse to check us out we stuffed my purse full of surgical gloves so that she could shower without getting her finger wet. The full moon was shining very brightly as we walked to the car. We passed the cemetery on the way out. My neighbor said, "I guess if you don't make it, they can throw you over the fence." That's how close the cemetery was.

I'm happy my neighbor came to my door and I was there. We had a very nice conversation about her job, my job, the neighborhood, winterizing her pea patch, memories, stories, life. We haven't talked in awhile..other than the wave every now and then. We talked more when the weather was hot and the neighbors were out on their porches and doorsteps. Last summer we had a block party and there were a few rounds of badminton in the backyard. There were also lots of barbecues.

The winter is long and cold and it can be hard. My neighbor is another teacher. She reminded me that we all live so close, but we don't. We can get sucked into our own little worlds and forget about the people around us. We can get sucked into the computer world and forget that there are living, breathing, BLEEDING people out there! She woke me up, just like my students woke me up.

I am so grateful for that.

Pleased to Meet You...What You Want My Name?

RASPBERRIES!!! Thoroughly Modern Millie was my favorite movie as a child. Though looking back on it, I often wondered why I was allowed to watch a movie that had the adult world so entrenched in the story line. You have white slavery, prostitution, jazz babies, and thingees popping out of bras. Perhaps I loved the way Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore had to tap dance in the elevator to get the damn thing to move. At the heart of the story for me was the lovely, raspy voice of Carol Channing. I wanted to be HER, because she was comfortable being HER. My first life lesson at the tender age of seven, was to be ME. Carol had a voice that exuded confidence, not beauty. She had a strength acquired through love. She loved to perform and she loved people...in character and out of character.

So, here's the deal. Katherine and I have been corresponding, reading each others blogs during this past year. She is aspiring to write her story (yes folks...if I may be a little Palin Folksy right now) about her life lessons...love lessons, about the Buddhist monk she married. Love is a thing of beauty that is often imitated, yet rarely lived for most people. Katharine has endured enough of my private prodding...and invited me to be a contributor on this wonderful venture. I am a bit of an anti-heroine, a rebel...because the bottom line is what the publishing industry seems to have evolved to. The goal is to write, to read wonderful stories, differing genres, and please hope for ORIGINAL THOUGHT, which is a concept I feel has been L O S T in this world that has become so driven by currency. My views darling...and not meant to be taken as gospel...a Dharma...a chapter. I have published four works, because well, writers do that sort of thing...and I am not adverse to self publishing...MOST of the writers I have venerated HAVE. However, my reasons for publishing are not the SAME reasons MOST publish. MOST publish with dollar signs in their eyes. They wear the title of author and disband the title of HUMAN. The reality is, when you are striking out there, the goal should be to improve your craft. You can read a million books about how to do something, but like religion, you have to find what works for you. The publishing world is changing and the industry is horrified that more writers are taking control of their art. YES...ART. This is an art and not everyone has the gift to do what we as writers do, and that is to tell our stories...in whatever way it is presented.

If you are like I am...you are not afraid of these blank pages. You get excited about them and realize that anything...absolutely anything is possible, so you pick up your favorite writing implement and you get to work; notebooks, laptops, CPUs, or on a highly coveted MacBook. One of the HUGE mistakes I would make would be to try to copy someones writing style, and try to make it my own. WRONG. You can learn from many writers, but what most need is their own voice, signature...something that is the missing note to enhance what is yours. What seems to eat away at writers is the direction the market goes...the celebrity 'author' who employs a ghost writer to ink their story. Perhaps the list books get to you. Perhaps it is the number of books you have picked up and you shake your head and wonder WHY it is so popular with the masses.
I had to stop doing that myself because what happens is this thinking gets writers to reinvent the wheel. Come on people...what we need to do is to stop rehashing the latest vampire love scenes and write our blessed little hearts out to capture what we want to feel and see...and just maybe an audience will find you or you will find the audience. The first audience that has to be happy is YOU.

OK, a little about me. This is my vision board, collage, collection of odd pictures...whatever you want to call it that I look at. It kind of reminded me of Henry Miller's bathroom, but the reason I put it up was for my personal inspiration so I take action in my life. I am a 43 year old woman who still runs around like I am in my 20s. Most people can't believe my age. GOOD. I wouldn't want them to think I had cashed my chips in and decided to die in front of a television. Unfortunately, this has been the legacy for most in my age group, and they have the extra large seating to confirm their death wish. I am unforgiving about laziness and attitudes that are suicidal. I see this precious gift called LIFE...and baby it is worth living. "That's good for you, but not for me." really is a reason for people to continue doing the same thing. Change is UNCOMFORTABLE. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting change...does not work.

I close with my hands extended out...and a picture, of a what I have dubbed a fire horse (which I am one). This image I captured at the Daegu Arboratoreum. It is one of the oldest pieces of surviving art in South Korea. I loved it because I personally related to it. That is what it takes for your art to succeed. Not everyone will love you. So get over that and get to work. I look forward to seeing all of us come together to make this blog not just what will help us, but how we can help others along the way.

Marilyn Campiz

Greetings!

I'd like to thank Katherine for inviting me to join Writers Rising. I'm a 44 (as of December) year old writer who has been steadily creating since I learned how to write. My first writing implement was an Olympia manual typewriter; I learned how to use it in junior high from Mr. McAffee, an eccentric and often frightening South American gentleman who had the tendency to shout out "Heil Hitler!" just to see if everyone was paying attention.

My second writing tool was a Smith-Corona electric colored a sort of greenish brown. It had no brain whatsoever - no memory, no special effects. To make corrections you backspace, switch over to the correction ribbon, and type over the mistake. The letters were often out of line. I kind of wish I still had that typewriter - it presented such a beat-up and impressionistic typeface, it would be pretty retro-cool from a contemporary design point of view.

My third writing tool was one of the first line Macintosh home computers that I used when I was at my then-girlfriend's apartment - this was about 1985 or so. It was sort of mind-bending seeing my words appear on what looked like a black and white TV. The novelty wore off as soon as the relationship fell apart, and I went back to scribbling in journals like a proper poet should.

After some experimentation with borrowed memory typewriters and at one point an elderly S-C manual in a suitcase like journalists used to use (it had a blocky modernist font I think designers would kill to get their hands on now) which I had purchased from a yard sale, I got back to working on a Mac SE for the next few years. When that went the way of the dinosaur I hopscotched through a number of PCs, and there are great many .doc files from those years that are floating around somewhere, probably on 2 1/4" floppy disks.

At the moment I am communicating with you via my refurbished Macbook 15" running OS X v. 10.5.8. It's fairly close to the point of having outlived its usefulness, but I have little income to speak of at the moment and none to direct toward a newer machine.

I've got an awful lot of work done on this machine. I think it's because it's so easy. It's ergonomically easy, it's technologically easy, and since it was used I got it at a very competitive price. I've typed poems, songs, murder mysteries, horror, erotica, resumes, cover letters, emails to my mother, complaint letters, everything imaginable on this machine. It seems fairly advanced now, but I smile thinking of how we'll view these machines ten years from now. Things are going to be so different then I think we'll barely recognize ourselves.

Feel free to write in comments here about writing machines you've used over the years, what you're using now, and what you plan or hope to be using in the future.

Thanks again for making me a part of your group!

- Erik

Hello from Down Under

Ooooh how exciting.

I am officially a contributor!

I could be really cheesy now and say... G'day

But I won't.

My real name is Sharni Montgomery - Sharnanigans is the name of my upcoming website and freelance writing business.

I am stoked to be part of this group.

Thank-you Katherine for having me as a contributor.

I am from a small town in Country NSW in Australia.

I am passionate about writing.

I lived in Sydney for a number of years where I worked for the Sydney Morning Herald .

I worked in an advertising role, however just before I left for the 'One Horse Town" (my nickname for where I live) I had 2 stories published.

One was a little crazy (my pre: settle down a little days) I answered share accommodation advertisements in the paper as a means to find love!

Click here to read

The other was an interview with an Australian rock singer - Jon Stevens.

Since leaving Sydney life has turned on it's head.

I met and fell in love with a farmer - we took off to Vietnam to teach English - but discovered we were pregnant and came home!

It has been a blessing - since becoming a Mother I have started my blog The Chronicles of Sharnia which I am absolutely passionate about.

It has given me a creative outlet as well as allowed me to meet many inspirational writers - that I begrudged not being able to meet in my town - hello cyberspace!

I am in process of having website design - and I hope to interview inspiring people on my here and make a real dent in the cyber world (ambitious! yes!) and I will continue writing the chronicles of my life.

I love being part of a writing group as I love to empower and be empowered by talented writers.

Thanks for having me.

Gathering Contributors

Hello Everyone! While it would be nice if each of the Writers Rising members could be part of a small group of Writers Rising members, we realize that forming a group may be difficult. This is especially true for those living in a one-horse town. So, if it's possible to form a "live" writing group in your community, that's great. If it's not possible, this virtual online group will serve you well. The point here is to share writing and projects and to get feedback. People who have formed groups can share their own group experience. This blog was set up to be a collaborative way to share writing and writing experiences. Right now, there are two contributors listed on this blog. If you are interested in being a contributor on this site, please leave a comment at the end of this blog and including your name, blog URL and e-mail. Your information will not be posted, but will go to me directly. We want to start with about 20 contributors. Thanks for reading!