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A great many things
Cause me shame, angst
And sorrow.

A life filled with regrets
For actions taken
Hurtful words spoken
Acknowledgments left undone.

Today, though, I realized
That my apologies
Sincere, genuine, raw and heartfelt
Were greedily accepted, perhaps gleefully so,
By those who had flung their own arrows.

Their tarnished memories failing to recall
How they excluded
Mocked and judged me.
Looking down on me, still
Yet receiving my mea culpas
While never offering their own.

I wonder: Does this make me unworthy?

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Not long after my retirement in March of 2017, I made a short-lived attempt at what Julia Cameron recommends vis-à-vis her best-selling books, The Artist’s Way and The Right to Write, that being a Morning Pages routine which involves writing, in longhand, three pages each day, every day, preferably first thing each morning.

PSA ~ A Google search of the term ‘longhand’ provides the following description: Ordinary handwriting (as opposed to shorthand, typing, or printing).

Writing, with a pen (or, horrors, a pencil), using one’s own hand on the surface of a clean 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper: What a concept, amiright?

Cursive writing, when your stream of consciousness is babbling at an incoherent rate, makes for some pretty messy scribblings on the page. The anal retentive component of my psychological make-up balks mightily along the way when my thoughts become an erratic composite of loops, lumps and dribbles: virtual screeches against the white, lined notebook paper I’m writing on. My journals over the years, originally all written in longhand, eventually gave way to a neater, tighter script of the printed word so now to revert to cursive has been a bit of a challenge.

But I get it. Printing tidily on the page (remember: anal retentive, here) does lend itself to losing that flash of inspiration that drives someone to preserve their thoughts on paper. In contrast, however, writing in longhand (quickly, so quickly!) helps to scoop it all up (er, down) but where’s the advantage if, upon later inspection, one cannot decipher what one has written?

Hmmmm. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, I’m going to give it another go. Julia recommends a 90-day commitment of Morning Pages, um, paging. With that in mind, I’d best get back to it. Best to strike when the iron, I mean the pen, is hot…

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I would like to live by the sea.
To contemplate
Knowing the roar (and the quiet) of expansive waters
In my everyday affairs.
Waves kissing the shoreline: blue, gray, seafoam green.
Sailboats. Salty breezes.
Watching gulls and pelicans
Frolic in the tide.
Luscious light and sound. Movement. Scent of ocean air.

I harbor romantic notions of a different life.
A quaint cottage, rustic but charmed.
Water on my horizon.
Neighbors and town folk, quirky yet sturdy. Solid.
Good people, just like anywhere.
My days spent in clarity
And purpose, if and when I want them to be.
Sometimes I yearn for the grit and sheen
Of another reality, an alternate existence.

With gauzy vision, however, I imagine
Someone, like me, along a rocky beach
(Or elsewhere)
Contemplating fields of corn, heavy with dew.
Cattle grazing on a sun-soaked hill.
Goats, chickens, barb wire fences. Grain bins.
Sunflowers, wild chicory.
Old barns
And hummingbirds in the spring.

Another dreamer who, like me, also dreams.

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Sleep eluded me
Until midnight
(Mind churning with the day’s activities)
But a restful night nonetheless.

Early morning
Summer storms
(Welcomed!)
Awakened me.
Darkness still.

Thunder in the distance.
My lighted keyboard
Helps me find the keys.
My body says “Rest a little more”
But my brain has other ideas….