Category Archives: Random

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Auditory ADD

The World Becomes a Miracle

The sun gleams bright up in the sky,
Its beams shine on your face,
A hundred bluebirds sing up in the trees,
Fields of flowers bloom like valentines made out of lace,
Painted butterflies float on a breeze.

In the night the moon glows bright,
The crickets sing their song,
Cicadas sing along,
Every star is twinkling your name.
And I look up and think of you,
and wish that you were here,
wish that you were near,
It makes me blue that you’re so far away.

The world becomes a miracle,
when you are here with me,
but when you’re gone it’s just another place,
I dream about you every night,
of kisses warm and sweet,
And all I do is long for your embrace.

Boats and trains and aeroplanes,
they sometimes interfere,
make people disappear,
and lovers move a million miles away;
And though I know it won’t be long,
Until you’re here again,
Until you’re near again,
I sit and count each sad and lonely day.

The postman brought a telegram,
it said you’re coming soon
-Saturday at noon,
and I’ll be waiting for you at the gate,
soon the world will once again become a sunny place,
when I see your smiling, lovely face.

The world becomes a miracle,
when you are here with me,
but when you’re gone it’s just another place,
I dream about you every night,
of kisses warm and sweet,
And all I do is long for your embrace.

I’ve got so many irons in the fire I’m beginning to feel like a blacksmith on steroids. I’m working on a novel, a couple of short stories, an essay and some poems.  I’ve even got a little erotica brewing, though I’ve got to diagram the various positions to see if human beings can actually bend into the shapes I’ve choreographed. WordCamp just contacted me about doing another presentation this year (despite last year’s debacle), and I’ve got to get going on that, too. 

But my brain plays awful tricks on me. Each day, I crack open the laptop and begin writing or editing or researching or playing word games on Twitter, when, from out of nowhere, something completely different will start trampling through my head. It’s a horrible ADD thing, and I believe it’s brought on by a type of genetic insanity, combined with financial panic and aggravated by SHS (Spastic Hormone Syndrome). Lately, what’s trampling are songs. A tiny voice begins to whisper rhymes, and soon, a melody follows. It’s happened three times this week.

They’re like the old road kill tunes I used to write, only worse. Before long, I abandon my other projects, because once this hay ride starts, I can’t stop until the voice has had its say. It hijacks my head and makes me pick up a guitar, a tragedy for all who enter these premises.

It happened again yesterday. I was working on an essay I plan to submit to an online publication. There I sat, crinkling my brow in a serious manner, rubbing my brain cells together and trying to make sparks, when a little sing-song started. La, la, la, tee dahhh. I’d been writing about important things– beauty and society and the size of my butt, but that voice in my head was drowning it out. It was like American Idol in there. This time though, the tune was sweet and wistful, a little old-fashioned. I stopped construction on the essay and began jotting lyrics, the ones above. I became a gypsy in our living room, automatic writing for the spirit of some 1920′s flapper.  

I thought it was pretty swell for an amateur, much better than “Little Dead Squirrel.” By the time my hubby got home, I’d finished. I was overjoyed, because although it had disrupted my regularly scheduled writing, I rather liked the end result. Best of all, Amadeus didn’t grimace  once when I sang it for him. In fact, he liked it. We had some errands to run, and we hummed that sweet tune all around town and home again.

“Catchy, isn’t it?” I beamed, feeling kind of hopeful. Maybe I can do this songwriting thing. Maybe we should do a demo. Maybe we should move to Nashville. 

He nodded. “But you know, that tune sounds a little familiar.”

“It does? Well, I wrote it to sound like an old standard. It probably sounds like a lot of songs.”

“No,” said Mr. Music. “It sounds exactly like something I’ve heard before.” He puzzled over it for a while, then it hit him. A few days earlier, we’d listened to a Jesse Winchester song someone had linked to on Facebook. We’d only heard it once, but now he played it again. As we listened, my heart began to sink like Lance Armstrong’s career. With a few differences in the pattern, my new ditty was almost identical. I’d committed otic plagiarism.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. How was it possible that a four-minute song–a song I’d heard one time–had crawled inside my head and stayed without my knowledge? How could my brain have betrayed me so? I guess the answer is that it really is a very beautiful tune, as you’ll discover if you click on the link below.  

At some point, I’ll come up with a new tune for those lyrics, but in the meantime, I may need a prescription for Ritalin if I want to get any work done. And if this keeps up, Amadeus will need earplugs. And beer.  

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I Dreamt I Went to Heaven

I dreamt I went to Heaven,

and God reviewed the record,

of my days upon this Earth,

and of my past, so checkered.

As I stood there waiting,

Beside the pearly gates,

The Lord said, “Wow, your blog stats,

were really pretty great.

But your posts were mediocre,

Your Facebook page, third-rate.

Your LinkedIn was a shambles,

You never did updates.

Your YouTube vids were horrible,

(Though your grandchild is adorable)

Your e-books were deplorable,

Still, you begged readers to buy.

Your Pinterest board’s disorganized,

Your keywords weren’t optimized,

Your passwords all got compromised,

– “John Doe” will never fly.

So, I’m sorry we can’t take you,

Though I hope you won’t be bitter,

but we just don’t give out wings and harps,

to those who can’t use Twitter.”

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She’s Still Teaching

Remember the story of Miss Reed, my first-grade teacher? It started with this one little post I wrote about her several years ago. About a  month ago, I followed it up with this one, about how I finally learned what became of that miracle worker of a woman.  Although she died a few years ago, I was able to contact her son and tell him of the lovely things his mother did for me when I was a little girl. A few days later, he wrote back:

“I apologize for not writing sooner…but each time I sat down to read through your letter in preparation for my reply, I was overwhelmed with emotions.  With each read, I could see my mother stooping over to put herself on a child’s level as she offered her carefully chosen words of encouragement and hope…She would be so pleased to hear that you pursued writing.  It was mother’s dream to write children’s books when she retired.  She believed that if you could nurture a child early enough, that child could later withstand the harsh realities of the world…Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences, because through your words and memories I was able to see my mother once again – A priceless gift…”

I assured him that her theory about nurturing children was dead on, and told him how upset I’d been to learn she was leaving our school at the end of first grade. “Your  wonderful mother invited me to your house that summer, to make the transition easier,” I wrote. “I played with puppies in your yard.” He wrote back and said that the family had moved to California that year. Mrs. Reed never did realize her dream of writing children’s books.  Alzheimer’s took over before she got the chance. But right before the end, she returned to her beloved Memphis, and was surrounded by her loved ones when she died.  

Last week was kind of a rough one around here. For days, I’ve been miserably sick.  One of Amadeus’ best friends was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The father of my daughter’s baby daddy died in his sleep the morning of The Boston Marathon. I think you get the picture. But a couple of gray and gloomy days ago, I checked my email, and there was another message from Mrs. Reed’s son. “I thought you might enjoy these,” he wrote. He’d made a little collage, six gorgeous photos of my former teacher, whose unreliable  image I’d been carrying in my head for forty-six years. There were Polaroids of her as a young woman and an old one, as a single mother and a grandmother. A black and white showed  her sitting on a sofa with her four small children, including the one writing me (who’s now a grandparent himself). As I studied them, my heart filled with gratitude and happiness. ”I hope one of these pictures shows the smile you remember,” he wrote.

Indeed, one of them did. Although the hair was a different color, there was no mistaking that expression. It was the one I looked forward to seeing throughout first grade. Wasn’t she beautiful?

Mrs. Reed

I’ve never met the person who sent this to me, and I probably never will. But there’s some sort of love that permeates the online world. I like to think of it as the same kind of love, the same genuine kindness that flows between us during times of tragedy and grief. There may always be bombings and massacres–we share the Earth with people who do unspeakable things. But we also share it with the man who took the time to send a stranger photos of his mom.