Category Archives: Essays

Sweet Liberation!

This evening while checking in on my special shape-shifting leaf, i realized it had happened. She spread her wings and let go! I have learned so much from that little leaf, but I think her final lesson may be the greatest one of all…peace and gentle landings to you dear reader.


As rain and chill and darkness fell
She spread her wings to ride the wind!
Attachments shed, in weightless bliss,
She’ll slumber now through frost’s first kiss.
How gracefully she gives herself
Unto her final rest,
Nestled near the heart
of our dear mother’s gentle breast.
Would that I, when that time comes
For me to breathe my last,
Like my gentle friend, the leaf,
embrace my dance with death.
For seasons come and seasons go
Each living thing must die,
But grace abounds to guide us all
into the bye and bye.

Happy Slumber Little Leaf-Bird!

~ kat ~ 30 November 2015


Leaf-Bird Watch

birdleafwatch

Digitally Remastered Photo by Kat Myrman 2015

Chilling a bit on this rainy Sunday. Took another photo of my shape-shifting leaf from yesterday. She’s still hanging in there. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a daily vigil! We’ll have a celebration when she finally lets go!

In the meantime, this is how I color these days…digitally. Here’s a remastered photo of my new muse. It’s quite relaxing and therapeutic, though I do miss the smell of crayons! I love coloring…and definitely outside the lines.  Hope you’re having a great Sunday! 🙂

For a little background on this bird-shaped leaf, click HERE for the rest of the story! 🙂


Sunday’s Week in Review – 29 November 2015

IMG_5386

Busy busy week, but I had some time off from work, so some extra opportunities to reflect and write. (My favorite thing to do!)

We lost one of our own this week. The lovely Barbara Beacham who brought us Monday’s Finish the Story Challenge  and many inspirational photographs that fueled other flash fiction and poetry challenges. She will be missed. Rest in peace dear lady and love and healing to her family.

And then there was the rest of this week. The world has continued to spin out of control, but there is one constant for all of us. Life. In all its crazy manifestations, life is the muse that fuels our art and the words that we spill out onto the page or blast on our blank computer screens. Life is a precious gift always.

And so we gave thanks here in the U.S. this week for the blessing of life. We’re a rough and raucous lot, we humans, but we can’t do this alone. The good news is, more and more folks are figuring out that we’re in this together. I suspect there may be hope for our kind yet. Call me a dreamer!

With gratitude then, for this forum…for all you lovely souls here, and the families and communities you / we all represent…let’s devote ourselves to being kind to one another. Just once each day. More if you like. The world won’t mind. Peace and Blessings to you! We can do this. 🙂

~ kat ~

Sunday’s Week in Review – 29 November 2015

It’s not that I’m incapable of a logical thought.
her sinister smile was the last thing he saw…
It had been a long journey…
Cats purr and doves coo coo
How easily we lose ourselves
She wanted the sun.
(a) Complicated life
We grumble for more.
…safe from the monsters she didn’t know.
The rousing “Surprise!” gave him his answer.
As a grateful community cheered!
…I think we’ll be safe!
we’ll have plenty of time to simmer …
“Are you gonna miss all this?”
Millions of people do this every day.
Nocturnal creatures
Dementia slowly, insidiously, devoured her mind.
but for now the wind is calling me to dance and it’s going to be fabulous!
Scrabble was her game!

kat ~ 29 November 2015

If you’re new to this blog, a bit of background to explain the verse above. It is a line from each poem or prose from the previous week. Lifted and placed in the order written. A snapshot review of the week. It helps me to prepare for the upcoming week with a clean the slate. 🙂


Variations on a Dream

Photo by kat 2015

Poetry challenge #6: two styles of poems from Jane Dougherty. Read more HERE.

The first poem style: Cinquain – syllable rule: five line poem on any theme with syllables following a 2-4-6-8-2 pattern.

Second poem is in the ‘words’ style: 1-2-3-4-1 pattern of words where the first is a noun, the second two adjectives describing the noun, three and four description, emotion, and the last word a synonym for the first noun.

Cinquain:

At dawn
Shadows frolic
Cats purr and doves coo coo
Rousing me from restless slumber
To dream.

Word Style:

Daydreaming
Diversionary, Nonsensical
Detours from reality
How easily we lose ourselves
Mind tripping.

kat ~ 22 November 2015


Flights of Fancy

Most of the time I operate from the right side of my brain. I’ve confirmed this through exhaustive testing via social media personality quizzes, so I know it’s true. By the way, don’t you just love those? I now know my aura colors, who I was in a previous life, what my power animal is, and of course, that I am right-brained!

This can be problematic when reason and logic are called for, but in general I manage just fine. Those who know and love me have learned to accept my flights of fancy without so much as a blink. It’s not that I’m incapable of a logical thought. It just takes a bit more concentration for me to get there.

Being an artistic type, I see things. Some might quip that I see things that aren’t there. But they are…there, of course. I like to think of them as muses that nurture the art I create. The best art tells a story or holds a universal truth or simply touches the heart, forever changing us.

Take my walk with the dog this morning. To some, the plastic drop cloth twisted in the pine tree in my neighbor’s yard amounts to nothing more than litter. A nuisance, suspended just high enough that a ladder is required to reach it. And so it flaps there in the wind day in and day out. But this morning? This morning it caught my eye.

 

photo by kat 2015

 
At first glance it looked like an eye looking back at me. But then, as I stepped back to catch a different angle I saw my morning’s lesson. It’s a common theme. The battle of good and evil that jousts in my head. 

If you can’t see it, allow me to enlighten you. On the right we have good…angelic, winged, opaque. The opaque part surprised me. I always assumed that truth is transparent. In actuality, truth is absolute.

 

photo by kat 2015

 
On the left we have the darker side of one’s nature. A sharp-edged shadowy figure with a hollow belly. (I’ll let you simmer on that one for a minute.)

In the blink of my eye, a pine tree with trash stuck in its limbs has become a reminder to me that there are two sides to my nature. A light and dark side. And that they face off regularly. Especially when I neglect necessary house cleaning because it might be a little bit hard, or require assistance…like a ladder…or a bridge (I just added this last part…an expanded reflection that I am taking away from this encounter.)

Oh…I see your raised eyebrow. A bit of a stretch? Too bizarre an imagination, you say?

It’s okay if you don’t see what I see. If all you see is garbage hanging from a tree. I need your perspective too. I guess that’s why they say “two heads are better than one.”

Have a great Sunday!

~kat / 22 November 2015