What It Really Means

It being this:

What it really means to me to see the cover of the first issue of the Rusty Nail, in which I have been published, could take a lifetime to try to explain since it took a lifetime to get here. But since I know you all definitely need to get on with your day, let me condense it down into as little as I can.

It means the stroke didn't win.

It means that blindness, all the surgeries, and then the residual visual impairment didn't win.

It means that the genetic disorder that is dissolving parts of my body including my spine even as I type this, didn't win.

It means disabling physical pain didn't win.

Emotional pain didn't win, either.

It means that loss didn't win, that doubt didn't win, and it means that for that one moment that it took me to take a leap of faith, trust the message that the description of what Craig Hart and the team at the Rusty Nail Literary Magazine are trying to do, that fear did not win.

It means Bipolar 1- the brain disorder (I so do hate the term 'mental illness'. Bipolar is no more deserving of that unfortunate, stigmatized title than epilepsy or stroke is) that I share my life with along with OCD and PTSD, DID NOT WIN.

The messages my parents gave me about how I'd always fail as a hopeless dreamer, did not win.

For all I've lost along the way, in this moment, my words--my heart's work-- won out.

That is what this means: and why as soon as my first copy of the printed issue arrives it will be framed, and hung upon my wall.

Thank you to Editor Craig Hart, and everyone at the Rusty Nail, for believing in an unknown poet you didn't know from Eve, and giving her this chance. Thank you does not begin to cover it.

Five poems. Two prose pieces.

My words, my name. In that magazine.

I must be dreaming.

Thank you to all the friends who have cheered me on along the way (and I'm sorry I can't name you all for fear of missing someone but I have to mention especially Matt Irvine, Stephen Parrish, Dianne Salerni, and all the Poetry Pact folk past and present, without whom I am quite certain this day never would have come. Thank you.)

Even if I go back to my 'Dickinson Method' of writing now (and you all know what that means) this will remain.

An experienced poet who also appears in this issue told me the other day to always remember the way that this moment feels.

I said, 'perhaps like really falling in love for the first time.'

He replied, "Or out of it."

Call me a hopeless hopeful romantic, but I say 'in', and I'm sticking with it.

Just wait until I get my "I heart the Rusty Nail" t-shirt. Oh yeah. I WILL wear it proudly. And I will require a matching tote bag and of course, the coffee mug.

If you would like to, you can download the digital version of Issue 1 of the Rusty Nail from Lulu for little more than spare change.

You can also order a copy of the print edition from Amazon

And you can visit their website anytime at http://www.rustynailmag.com/

Rusty Nail accepts no advertising, so there is also a button you can press to make a small donation if you choose to.

It is such a beautiful thing to see a magazine and staff that is all about artistic integrity- pro-writer, as it were.  It means so much to me to be a tiny part of that. So I hope you'll consider submitting your work, and/or/if not, helping to show your support by picking up a copy or making a small contribution (or at least, spreading the word!) It would be very much appreciated not just by them but I am sure by all the writers who are featured in it.

I can't wait to see who turns up in issue 2!

Thanks for reading, and for celebrating this momentous occasion with me.

Oh, and sorry, Lydia, that I didn't wait until the issue actually arrived to post this and take a picture- but I am sure I will cry, and I do so look like hell when I cry- even happiest of tears.

xoxo
~bru

P.S. Since I know some of my friends would want to know this- for those of you with kids in the house- you should know some of the other pieces in the issue do have instances of coarse language (mine do not).

Changes – Flash Fiction in response to a prompt from The Rusty Nail Literary Magazine

Hey all,

Quick note first- been totally tied up with a serious family emergency the past few days and am still working with the situation- so I will be in and out but I am around.

While my brother convalesces (he’s napping at the moment) I had to get some of the stress out- and I saw the writing prompt from The Rusty Nail and had a thought. I'll bold the lines that the prompt consisted of.

Please forgive any formatting errors, I am dog tired. But this was too good to pass up.

Enjoy. Talk to you soon. 492 words- including the title.

~bru

---

He hadn't always been this way, but he recognized and appreciated the change. How could he not? This wasn’t the kind of change that was mildly noted by others, when you changed the part of your hair or bought a new hat.

Today the beginning of a new life, something really big, and it was going to start with him telling his boss where he could stick those spreadsheets.

Once, he would have been beating the pavement in worn out loafers. The obligatory cheap, slack, aging tie slung lazily around the neck of his boring perma-press shirt. No one noticing him much at all, not at the office, not at the sales conventions, nowhere. No how.

For forty-five years his life had stumbled on this way. Being what everybody else expected. Going to business school, doing what his father did, what his brothers did. Never quite, however, doing it distinctly enough to make things really come together.

He pondered this at many points but he always ended up falling off the trestle of his train of thought.

Then- it happened.

The reason for his lack of success in anything he undertook came to him last night in an instant- the elephant in the room landed on him like, well, an elephant. It happened when he saw an image flash for a split second across the dust-layered television screen. When he saw it—them—he loved- truly loved- and wanted something for the first time in his life.

Well, at least for the first time in his life he was finally ready to admit.

All this time he’d been sabotaging himself, and the reason was all tied up in and as simple as the meaning of a single pair of shoes.

All these years, he thought, working so hard day in and day out and for what? To slave for a man who cared even less about the work than the amount he paid for it? Money to then be spent by a woman he loved less than his bowling ball Trixie…and the rest to be blown on cigars and rotgut whiskey? Was that what life was supposed to feel like, walking through a river of rice pudding with cannonballs strapped to your loafers?

Today though, all that was going to change.

Everything would change.

He wouldn't spend one more day making profit for that bigoted son of a bitch.

Not another penny would go to the scheming gold-digger who didn’t care how many hours of overtime it took to keep her in Coach bags, either.

Trixie he’d keep but damn it, he wasn't going to pound the pavement in those worn out loafers any more, either.

No, from now on he would never walk a road again without imagining a runway, and his elegant gait would be accentuated by the graceful arc of his brand new Jimmy Choos.

From today the world wasn't his anymore.

It was going to be hers.

What an Artist, Her Dog, and One Photograph Taught Me About Happiness

I met artist and poet and woman of a gajillion talents Angie Ledbetter on Facebook back in January of 2011, and she is, in fact (though she may not even know it until she reads this) one of the very reasons that I decided to return there, and on my own terms.
(Speaking of that, so far it seems to be working really well for me. Miracles may never cease.)

Anyway, Angie has made a resolution to post a photo and some food for thought every day in 2012. The picture she posted yesterday hit me at exactly the right moment and really got to me. Talk about the teacher appearing when the student was ready…

It was a picture of her dog, Bandit, with something curled up beneath him as he sat basking in brilliant rays of sunlight, shining on him and a gorgeous wood floor.

The caption with the picture said, quote:

“Sometimes you have to drag your own blanky into the sunshine.”*

My jaw dropped, and I believe I was actually pointing at the screen the way people do when they've seen something they can't quite believe they've just seen.

This reaction was not due solely to the sight of such a distinguished poet and writer using one of my favorite informal words in the world, “blanky”, (because that is what I called mine as a child, of course, as well as the many I crocheted for charity before my eyesight went) but because the concept was so profound yet explained so simply and perfectly it is nothing less than the whole of the very lesson of what it takes in life to find any sense of happiness.

Lincoln may have said “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Tolstoy may have said “If you want to be happy, be.”

But neither of them really tell you a lot about the process of actually getting closer to it; whereas the quote from this poet, captioning a picture of her beloved dog and followed up by some chat in comments in which she told me that the dog doesn’t just move his blanket once but will continually drag it from spot to spot following the sun as it shines in different places- THAT smacked me right between the eyes like the proverbial suction-cup arrow.

I wanted to thump myself on the head as I thought, “DUH! Doggie figured out what you should have years ago. You can't just move your blanky once and expect to stay warm. You have to keep at it.”

You can’t just dream happy or wish happy to be happy. You have got to go after it and follow it when it tries to slip away. Otherwise, we could be consigned to a life in the cold, and the darkness. (Not that I think Angie would ever let her baby get cold, I'm talking about me now, the dog is just fine.)

I’m not saying it’s easy to follow happiness or that I’ve mastered the art, by any means. But I sure as hell am working on it.

The sun holds still for no one, neither does life.

It changes. People; friends, even, come and they go. Our health changes (BOY does it change for some of us...) and we age. Some dreams grow and others die. Same with love. The thing is, if we're sitting around and counting on someone else to 'drag our blanky into the sun' then we are going to be sorely disappointed, and bitter.

I don’t want to be either, at the end of my days.

So grab an end, my friends. Let's pick up our blankies and chase the warmth together.

I'm with you, Bandit.

~bru


*(quoted with gracious permission of Angie Ledbetter)

So Close To Home

I have a confession to make.

I've worked on four, count em, four paintings today and I hate them all.

I've another canvas (only prepped with background color) sitting in the corner behind me and I hate it too.

But this happens.

I hate every single one of my paintings before they're finished. I'm not quite sure exactly why that is, but I do.

I don't mean a general dislike, either. I mean a sense of 'oh my god no one has ever painted anything uglier than this in the history of paint why do I bother' and I want to destroy them in various ways. My family has hidden paintings from me in the past (that I've yet to find...that spacescape is around here somewhere...)

The only way I ever don't pretend to think of using to destroy my work is fire- because I've set my clothing on fire once, on the stove, by accident while I was almost completely blind and I would like very much never to repeat the experience.

Well, that one and the one where I almost set the kitchen on fire by catching the paper towel roll when it was too close to the flame on the stove and I couldn't see it (depth perception issue). Needless to say I am not the girl you ever want to ask to light your smoke. Moving along.

When I'm at the point of hating a painting I need to do either one of two things- stop for awhile and go back to it later, or finish it straight away without stopping to think then not looking at it for a month at least. Today I have no choice but to wait a bit because they're layered with background colors, sky and clouds, and must dry before I can add in the rest.

So I decided, I should write a blog post. Hopefully I won't still hate them so much when it's over.

This post isn't supposed to be about my inferiority complex as an artist (I always say 'other people's stuff looks like stuff. Mine does not look like stuff' meaning the stuff it's supposed to be.) I think I compare myself to more talented artists the way a lot of writers (myself included) compare their work to other writers. So I keep telling myself it the writing bit is counterproductive (which it is) than so is the comparing the art bit. My art is what it is, a bit of me, such as I am.

Today's post is about the experience I know you've all had- even if you've never told anyone- where you saw something on TV or at the movies that hit so close to a raw nerve in you- felt so familiar and so desperately personal that you couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and most of all couldn't forget.

That happened to me last night.

I saw something that was so deeply personal played out on the screen right before me- the emotions exactly if not the exact circumstances, that all day I've felt short of breath. Every time I remember it I feel like I've been kicked in the solar plexus.

I can't explain to you what it is, because I can't talk about what it represents. But I can't just keep it inside either- all that shattering, panicked, aching emotion of feeling that the writer of the scene had exposed me- and my cheeks still burn from the shock of it.

I wonder about my writer friends, and I wonder what scene it is that has done this to them.

I know there is one. There always is.

I don't expect you to talk about it any more than I can talk about mine. I just wanted to say I understand why you can't.

After all, if you can't not talk about your deepest feelings with your friends, who can you not talk about them with? (and yes I know what I did there, grammar wise, apologies. That's how I'd say it if I was speaking, so that's how I typed it. It is a point I'm trying to make, which I hope you get but if you're hung up on the grammar than you probably won't anyway.)

Thank you for being people I can not talk about things with.

It helps.

Have a safe and happy weekend, everybody. I may stop in here if the mood strikes.

xoxo
bru

PS Thank you to my new followers- have followed back as best I can. That goes for Twitter folk too if I somehow missed thanking you there. Most appreciated.

Because It's Wednesday and I'm Still Giddy Over Monday

Just something fun and silly I did over the weekend. For fellow fans of Downton Abbey...I give you:

Downton Alley

Enjoy.

See you tomorrow with something more substantial, today I just feel like making people laugh, if I can.

xoxo
bru

A Flash Challenge I Couldn't Refuse

Hi everybody! Thank you again SO MUCH for all the comments, Tweets, and FB posts the past two days. I am going to try to answer everybody back individually if at all possible- so thank you! Means more than I can possibly say.

Now then, today I am posting a little bit of on-the-fly flash, because I was challenged/invited to write 300 (title does not count) words for ruanne's Dancing With the Fairies writing contest.

Now you know I swore off contests long ago but I hate to turn down a flash challenge- especially an interesting one, so here we go.

She asked for 300 words about, quote: "...flash fiction (300 words or less) on your (fictional or not) first-person encounter with a faery, goblin, or fantastical being of your choice."

(Please note she added 'no undead' no vampires or zombies.) Head on over to her lovely blog Yearning for Wonderland to check out what she's giving away to the top three entries. For now, here's my response to the challenge. Hope you enjoy.

EDIT: I decided to record it as an audio blog too. You can click on the box to listen to me, or you can read it below (or both! :)



Air Mail by February Grace

Have you ever wondered what an angel’s handwriting would look like? Well I don’t wonder, ‘cause I’ve seen it. It’s angled and modest as it would have to be, after all, to pass as human for the benefit of the US Postal Service.

It had to be serendipity, a special guardian magic or whatever you want to call it that brought the angel into my life. The way he just arrived out of nowhere, at the time he did, too much to be coincidence. Just when I was most alone; just when I had given up.

He never came to me in person, no, only through the letters.

Letters in which the words seemed to automatically alter in size the worse my vision got, larger and larger so even though I’d struggle and squint I could read them, 'til the end. Until total darkness fell.

That’s when the audio recordings began to arrive.

Mysteriously dropping in through the letter slot. Appearing my computer, even my mobile devices. Revealing a voice both warm and soft that offered words to me of promise, of belief that I could survive, that I would survive, even the most difficult of all days.

He was right. I'm still here.

Angels write magnificent letters, you know. Not always tucked in linen envelopes or sealed with signet rings. They don’t look like you might expect letters from heaven to look, but they are that, just the same.

Maybe one day you'll realize you've received one. Maybe when we pass each other on the street you’ll share with me the most knowing of all glances- the one that can only be understood by those who have felt the brush of wings and fingertips both, wisping across the nape of our neck and the surface of ordinary paper.

~FG

(PS apparently the linky below in html has all the info you need if you want to join in the fun. So everything from here down is from ruanne. Thanks! ~bru)

Big News

Oh, I have been dying to tell you all this. I waited until I was sure it was really happening...


Through a series of chance occurrences and serendipitous events not to be believed, I ended up facing one of my fears-- and this time, I won.

I submitted my work to be considered for publication.

Now five of my poems and two short prose pieces (Girls Don't Fish and Other Lies My Father Told Me and Wish Trip) have been published by The Rusty Nail literary magazine.

They are up on the website as of today and are set to appear in the download and print editions when they are released (hopefully March).

This is a huge day for me. A day that, with all my struggles I doubted would happen, and I know would not have happened without the support of so many of you that I can't possibly name you all. You know who you are.

If you have a moment, please go by and check them out. It would mean a lot.

A published poet and writer of prose.

Me.

Who ever would have thought it could be real.

Thank you to the folks at The Rusty Nail for making it real. Hopefully this is the beginning of many good writerly things I never imagined could be.

I'll speak to you all on other subjects soon. Today is for celebration.

xoxo
bru

Leave Nothing Kind Unsaid

I've been wanting to write a post for a couple of days now and I'll admit, I'm finding that last one a tough act to follow. I mean, it had Stephen Parrish in it, how do you top that?

But since I can't just sit here forever (oh well I guess I could but I don't want to) I guess today's post will just be a few short notes, tied together with string. I hope that you'll find something meaningful in them.

First, the thoughtful part: I really cannot stress enough how important it is to love and value the people you care about while you can.

This was something first impressed upon me in 2001, the summer when my father and my husband's mother were both in critical condition in ICU in different states at the same time both with survival chances that were slim to none.

Miraculously they both pulled through, but we never again took it for granted that someone will be there tomorrow. You see they both literally fell over and nearly died- without warning. Aneurysms of two different kinds, just days apart.

I think I've said here before that living through that experience forever changes what you constitute as a 'crisis'.

Sadly that lesson was reinforced in 2011 when my family lost a dear young friend- thirty-two years old, happily married, three year old daughter, and a successful and fulfilling career. She had it all, and in an instant it was taken away when she was hit by a pickup truck while riding her bicycle. Suddenly she was just...gone.

We found out this week that one of our neighbors passed away recently. Sadly we live in one of those guarded, tense neighborhoods where you don't get to know your neighbors well, and if you try they wonder what crime it is that you're looking to commit against them. So we keep to ourselves- everyone keeps to themselves.

This particular neighbor shared a wall with our apartment, however, and often passed my spouse as he came in and out from work. He would smoke outside (keeping the smoke away from his children) and they, or we, would exchange polite comments about the weather, all that. When their youngest was born I congratulated him on the "It's a boy" sign in the window and he beamed.

I watched him play with his kids in the yard behind the building and could hear them running around the living room and laughing at night. We knew every time Michigan scored a touchdown in a game because he'd whoop and cheer and I had to smile because even if I'm not a football fan, I am a HUGE fan of my U of M surgeons (Go Blue, indeed.) He’d spoken briefly of having some health problems (we never got far before he had to go to work) but nothing serious, we thought.

One night not long ago we were alarmed to see them take this man out of the house, to an ambulance.

We would never see him again.

His wife and children were away for awhile and then, his car, which had been parked continually in the port, was gone too. Finally only just the other day did my spouse get up the courage (or risk intruding to ask) if the gentleman was all right.

His wife said, simply, that he had passed away, about a week after he'd been taken in the ambulance.

My husband was quite shaken by this. The man could not have been much older than he is- and left behind two very young children. I know it brought back thoughts to him of the friend we lost- his very best friend's wife as it happens- and he keeps bringing it up, thinking about it.

Mostly I just think how sad I am that I never even got to know my neighbor’s name. I knew the kind of things about him that a close-by neighbor can know due to closer quarters (and he was a good neighbor) yet, we never got beyond those polite exchanges to even know each other's names. And I hate that about this neighborhood. It makes me ever more anxious all the time to leave.

I know I am lucky, though. I have a roof over my head and food to eat and these days that is an embarrassment of riches. There may be safer neighborhoods but there are also worse.

My point is something we all know but often forget- people aren't permanent. You have to take every opportunity you can to say kind things to them and make them laugh when you can.

I decided to blog about this when, this morning, while catching up on posts I read the sad news of another distant-acquaintance who lost his wife very suddenly, during a meal. It just breaks my heart.

It all adds up to one thing for me: that urgent need to treat time like the precious commodity it is.

So I am renewing my promise to myself not to ever let anything loving go unsaid. I got so buried for a little while beneath the muck that is trial and error of modern medicine that I just could not speak. But things are improving (and I pray that they hold- that this is the combination that I can keep taking this time) and I am reaching out to those I've so missed.

Part of that includes making an earnest effort to participate in the Month of Letters challenge- in which you are charged with writing 24 letters in the month of February and mailing them- snail mail. One a day every day your post office operates where you are. I can't mail every day (I talked to the creator about this and she has put in a special rule about this kind of thing, thanks! :) It doesn't have to be letters to 24 different people. It's just about communication and breathing life into an art form that I love and do not want to see die- the mailed letter.

And finally in my more modern-day attempt to reconnect, I will humbly admit that yes, I, February Grace, have returned to Facebook. Now before you go all "HA! Hypocrite!" on me, I want to explain why this is.

I'm going back because there are people who use it as their sole means of online communication that I need to be in touch with.

I stand by what I said when I left before about there being people there who would use you and hurt you if they can.

But there ARE good people too. People I care a great deal for. And to say "I refuse to use Facebook because I had a bad experience there before" would be akin to saying "I had an argument with my mother on the telephone once and she hung up on me and so I'm never going to use that danged contraption again!"

That would just be ridiculous.

So I'm using it- not letting it use me- or anyone use me. I'm there for real friendships, and everything else will just be so much background noise. So if you see me here and there around those parts, that’s why.

So...are you participating in Letter Month?

Whether or not you are, if there’s someone in your life you've neglected and haven't talked to in awhile but miss…

Call them. Write them. Email. Text. Something.

Today.

Whatever happens you'll be glad you left nothing kind unsaid.

~bru

PS if you're interested in receiving a card from me in the mail during letter month (just a short note- I have to ration that eyesight...) email me your mailing address and I'll see what I can do.