Gratitude Tuesday

Temper, Temper

My temper reared its lovely head in a piece I wrote and shared with some people. I knew when I wrote this poem I was angry. I mean the words I used made it pretty simple "selfish," "bastard," "you(accusingly)."

But the response that the people who read it had to it made me realize that there was even deeper anger there than I had imagined. I was really mad at this person. The anger had been submerged in my mother's death, but it was deep and came out on the page so that the comments that I got made me reevaluate what I had written.

It was very angry and I am grateful. I will take anger--rage as a muse any day. I wrote my piece with more than a bit of a temper and I allowed for my own therapy and recovery. I began several pieces in poem and prose that are helping me to get even more of this out.

I am not watching my temper...

Gratitude Tuesday

Sustenance

I am writing my first Gratitude Tuesday in a long time. I am grateful today for physical and mental sustenance. Particularly mental. When my mother died, I knew I was going to continue to write, but I was not sure where I would find the inspiration from.

I have been startled to discover I still experience joy, happiness, passion--intense good emotions. I am able to take their sap and use them.

I am also able to utilize my sadness. Writers at the end of the day are leeches, we suck the sap out of every experience, every movement--everything. I have never been ashamed of the things that have inspired me or the things that I have utilized for the sake of art.

It is art at the end of the day, isn't it? Whatever medium. A blog, a novel in progress, the new feelings you have for another person...all of it is art right?

I am grateful...

Gratitude Tuesday

Re-

I am back on a Tuesday of all things! I am happy for the prefix "re"--rebirth, redo, reincarnation, reeverything.

There is a second chance for everything.

I am preparing myself for Script Frenzy. I will still blog, but that is going to be my focus. I am sucking up life right now for the visuals that I think film requires that I need to write down. I am going to have to write my eye. Exactly what my eye sees which is a challenge and a pleasure at once.

I am going to reinvent the way I create. Wish me luck!

Missed Gratitude Tuesday...Again

So many things have been going on, and I am the type of person if I do not write about it right away it is lost.

I am aglow from new friends who embrace their inner Anais Nin in their e-mails and IMs. One should be so lucky to have friends like that...

...and I am. Tuesdays have become a day that does not embrace me having the time to blog--maybe I can anticipate my gratitude on Monday?!

I started working on yet another new story. But better yet, I picked up an old one I had not worked on with new inspiration.

I am glowing and full of all kinds of gratitude!

Missed Gratitude Tuesday

...I am going to continue next Tuesday. I want to keep some decorum. Life has been so hectic...I want to keep something still...

Gratitude Tuesday

Quirks

In my I Heart Memes post, CeeCi mentioned my semi addiction to Tori Amos...

Her new album came out today, and it is the new soundtrack in my head. I cannot even begin to describe how good the album is. I am the sort of girl who usually does not love an album until I have heard it a few times. I have never met a Tori song I did not like. The lyrics, the voice, the sounds. What a sensation.

I read years ago in an interview in Rolling Stone, Tori Amos said that she was an acquired taste like anchovies. I remember my first Tori album was "Boys for Pele." Let's just say my mother does not like anchovies. No matter how low I played the album she would hear it and tell me to turn it down more.

A crush of mine once asked me to waltz to a remix of "Hey Jupiter." I was just getting to know him and I don't dance much so I said no, but it was once of the most romantic things a guy has ever proposed to me.

There is a Tori album that is the soundtrack to infinite parts of my life. Even when her words cannot be literally translated for me, I find something I feel in them and am captured.

Maybe Tori is one of my quirks--among many! Thank God for them because if we were all the same we would be nothing.

Gratitude Tuesday

Persistence

This one gets written small and sweet. Fortune cookie style. Imagine breaking the cookie--preferably chocolate--and seeing this in tiny red writing:

Much gratitude for persistence because sometimes you have to go on when there is nothing to go on with.

Gratitude Tuesday

Observation

I believe in the power of observation. Whether it is inward or outward, there is not another way in the world to learn than to look at what is around you and in you.

Have you ever felt like a failure? As if you could do nothing right even though you were trying harder than you ever could? Did you ever think what am I doing? The common denominator for everything in your life is you. You can change yourself.

I am a chameleon. I got the ability from my mother who is much more stable than me. She knows how to keep me grounded. I am the kind of person who will plan for the worse case scenario because I want to be prepared. My mother told me that I get myself all wound up all the time when there is not even a reason for me to feel that way.

Now when I fall, I let my mouth savor the soft metallic of the scrape wherever, and think I have gotten up, I can move on.

Just an observation about me.

If I was not an observer, I would not be a blogger. I watched what other people were doing and decided to join in. Being a blogger is one of the best things in my life. I see things--observe things like I never did before. Other people like I never did before.

I am richer for it.

I licked observation on a sugar cone today. More observation led me to free ice cream cone day at Ben and Jerry's. I actually hate ice cream cones, but there were no cups so I had to have one to place the fudge brownie ice cream in.

A lot to observe on the periphery of Times Square I might add.

Have you done your taxes? Oh the observation that I have not means I have to get off of this computer and do that!

Gratitude Tuesday

New York

Only in my beloved New York, could I--who can newly drink coffee again post Lent--be walking out of Starbuck's, tell a woman that the beads she was wearing were nice and have her give them to me!

I was mad because I had just gotten my coffee and asked for six packets of honey to put into it--a habit that is hard to relinquish post tea--only to have the barista say to me that that is sure a lot of honey! This after he failed to give me my change, and I said okay keep it.

But I digress...

I pointed to the woman's beads and said they were cute. She said thank you, and after I poured half and half into my coffee said to take them. I said no of course! But she insisted. Turns out she had a bunch as part of a New Orleans promotion. I took the beads, and was overwhelmed. I have never visited New Orleans, but it has always had a dear spot in my heart. It was lovely to feel some of the hospitality of the city, and to have a Fat Tuesday so much after the fact.

What city connects other cities like New York does? I am proud to be a native New Yorker because as far as I am concerned it is the capital of the world, which has given me endless experiences like the above.

Gratitude Tuesday on a Wednesday

Magic

I believe in magic, not the pulling rabbits out of hats sort, but the kind that is meaningful and makes you think. I walked a blind man through a watery Times Square station today. The magic of people to help one another humbles me. Have you seen CeeCi's Geeky Streak? She helped me put the red in my blog, it's a simple change, but I swear it is magic to me!

BTW Guess what reared its pretty late head to me after the contest was over? I'll post the rest of objets d'art soon enough. I finished it, and so I won in my own way...


Magic courtesy of Getty Images

Gratitude Tuesday

Love

What other word could I pick with the letter "L?" I am a hopeless and hopeful romantic--thanks Probitionate! I have been in love with love since I was a little girl. I think it is one of the most beautiful notions in the world--contrary to Tina Turner.

It is probably one of the words that I overuse the most in the world, but it is something that I always feel, and say with a great deal of gusto when I use it. I told a co-worker today that I loved her and she did not even flinch. I once told a guy that--who I probably loved more than her and he was nearly freaked out.

Love is a heavy word and should not be misused. But it is, but then like I said when you say it or feel it in the moment, you mean it. I mean it almost every time I say it. Because there is not another word that gives the same meaning.

I love books. The sexist thing to me is to see someone reading a book--especially one that I might have wanted to read or read and liked. I love the person with the book at that moment, and I mean that.

I was at a book release party, and it was ridiculously entertaining. I saw someone there who I had not seen or heard from for a very long time. It was interesting the emotions I felt while talking to them. We kissed goodbye, and I was like how insignificant that was. Love and kisses can sometimes be so insignificant.

And sometimes be everything in the world.

There is nothing else like love under the sun, I rather have it than money or bread in my mouth.

I am grateful for everything I love, and for everything I have the potential of loving...

This cupid is courtesy of Getty Images

Gratitude Tuesday

Kink

I am thankful for every kinky part of me, my hair, my mind. For everything that undoes my kinks.

I have been thinking about what turns people on--maybe so much from having seen Les Anges Exterminateurs, reading Glamour. I do not think that my personal fantasies fall into the realm of the typical or atypical. Fantasies are a hypnotic state, and when I am in the mood, I let my mind wander. If I am sitting on a train, I have no problem setting my fantasy right there against a pole. If I am in the supermarket, maybe on a pile of lemons, so as we move the scent will go with the rolling fruit. I am very spontaneous.

Yet I am willing to share the stage of my fantasies with you, but not the what actually happens against that pole or on those lemons--I don't kiss or even fantasize and tell...

Now share with me--that would make me even more grateful!

The above image is courtesy of Getty Images.

Gratitude Tuesday

Jazz

In the form of Astrud Gilberto. I am pretty certain that you cannot capture a bad side of her voice. Whether it is English or Portuguese, she never fails to create a certain sadness or happiness! I was at a lovely now extinct restaurant years ago, and the backdrop was Astrud Gilberto for Lovers.

Need I say more about her, or elaborate more on my gratitude? I was reading the notes in the CD I got of hers today--yes I am that old fashioned--and read that she was a housewife with little musical training. Also that her career did not take off much after the seventies. I also recently learned that Star Trek was not such a big hit in its day either. I think endurance is the key, and to Astrud I bid a warm, obrigado.

Gratitude Tuesday

Icicle

First, I am thankful for Tori Amos's song, "Icicle."

Then I am thankful for becoming one today in NYC. I do love New York, even when it is cold on my face, and colder running up my legs--I was crazy to wear a skirt today with sheer pantyhose!

But when I am warm, and later I am going to lay down like Tori sings in this song...

And on the train ride home, I am going to think of The Butterfly Tempstress, you must go to her post and ponder the quote there, and just the entire post!

This icicle of Tori Amos from Toriphoria .

Gratitude Tuesday

Happy

Oddly enough I have been really happy. The kind of happiness that makes you full teeth grin stupidly for no reason at all. To people who are not as happy as you. Who frown at you actually or worse, but you are still so happy that you cannot help smiling!

This remarkable image from http://www.stuartpound.info