Caroline Gerardo's Blog, page 38
July 31, 2012
Haiku and Love for One Fallen Angel
One Fallen Angel ~be ready for new love now ~ the figure appears from dark.
Heart hears a call sound~ hoo do you sadly measure ~ calling
home true love.
A past lover gave me Fragments d’un Discours Amoureaux . I
think he stole the book back. If I could find it I would quote to you why love is always
out of balance. The lover’s figures are merely gestures waiting for response.
It is like compost.
I met this man who makes Bio-fuel from
trash. He’s franchising German plants to islands, to Shanghai, perhaps
to Haiti, but that is another story.
The burning dung becomes something
treasured; Rumi says to kiss the snake who guards the buried treasure. Open our hearts and kiss him to find new love.
Lover's bouquet needs the gesture of water.
notes: Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse really was stolen from my house but not likely from the person who gifted the book. My translation of Rumi Harsh Evidence is not the same as Coleman Barks
July 28, 2012
Keep Working
Peddling along a plan
stop, notice patterns
waves work in sets
bees organize hexagons
sleep deep on your left
be it
use the electrons
in trajectory direction
keep working
the next wave
is on the way.
July 25, 2012
Create Something New
Show me the terror in your nights.
Demonstrate the courage
to face creating building making
something new.
Not some spread sheet projection~
a trembling thing in your hands~
now.
July 23, 2012
Golden Rules for Boys
My daughter is away in Ireland and I read an article about “The
20 things I have taught my son” and thought I might give my own take on this.
Please add in the comments your advice you would offer as life lessons for
boys. Feel free to be creative.
Sign in photograph above is from hiking this morning. This
sign is actually twenty some feet from a very steep cliff that dives down into Laguna
Canyon. In the fog this July 23rd you could not see the drop, just a
sign that makes no sense. Please leave some sense for teenage boys and share.
1.
Be kind to everyone, all the time.
2.
Smile and look people in the eye when you extend
your hand
3.
Learn to manage money, save half and invest in a
variety of stocks, bonds and ideas
4.
Stand up straight every time you walk through a
doorway
5.
Play team sports, prepare for game day with all
your body and heart, learn to lose with gracious attitude then pick up and get
ready for the next game
6.
Defend the weak, the bullied, and care for
animals
7.
God and country mean something in your soul;
understand what this is to you personally without preaching; show you care.
8.
Apologize when you are wrong, learn from you
failures because understanding our big errors and changing is being great
9.
Tell the truth, it is always easier.
10.
Find a mate who is better, kinder and smarter
than you are, her genetics will be important to your children, her goodness
will keep together your extended family and your mutual respect will change the
world.
11.
Read, learn, get good grades in everything, try
college classes you might not think are exciting, school is about digging into
subjects that are different from what you know and building who you are.
Education is a lifetime gift you must continue to allow yourself.
12.
Keep your body in shape, don’t put junk into
your mouth or lungs it needs to last through a whole bunch of trials
13.
Random things happen –good and bad, and they all
pass over like a river in the big picture
14.
Friends come easy early in life, keep them around
by communicating.
15.
Don’t cheat on those you love, don’t talk trash
on those you love, and for heaven’s sake if you have friends of the opposite sex
don’t cross that line
16.
People at work are your team to be cultivated,
they are different than family
17.
Be creative it feeds everyone around you
18.
Find your passion and work a plan, a five year plan
a ten year plan
19.
Manners are always important, don’t say or do
anything in public you would not want your Grandmother to see or hear.
20.
The gentleman walks on the outside of the curb
to protect ladies, children and the elderly.
Also on this same trail the high security dog watering bowl. Note: pot is chained to heavy rock that you would need to carry out. Or could the rock be used to smash the chain? Do I need to add never steal because it is just mean?
July 21, 2012
Hold Them To Your Chest
No worry, all doors are unlocked.
A block where fireflies are not in jars,
A cell phone left outside, is returned.
Look into evil eyes with superpowers to transform.
Under your bed is a shield that bounces bullets.
Hold children to your chest,
give them strength
to face a sad world today.
Prayers for the many families changed by a gunman in Colorado.
July 16, 2012
Find Your Truth
Finding Your truth
I read a number of posts about Comic-con as the celebration
of nerds. Nerds are the new sexy you know. Getting off the train in San Diego
on Saturday I wished I had donned my old superwoman costume, just to scream
without words that I also fit in.
We look upon each other as a label. My children are forming their own name tags; they are athletes, scholars and creative persons on a mission to find their
prize here on earth. When we look at a friend, or meet someone new, we ask
them what they “do” in order to get a sense of who they are and what to call
them. I’m not referring just to the politically incorrect skin color, ethnic
heritage or status zip code where they originate. It is easier to give something a name, and context to not think carefully about what is inside.
I have reinvented myself a couple times in my life, by
deciding to focus on a part of “me” that has ability. I've been an artist and perferomance poet who
lived in an urban loft, I married my college sweetheart and became a business
woman to support my next hat, being a single mother. Along the transformations, I
was always creative, keeping journals, blogging, taking photographs, making
paintings that I rarely shared with anyone, for fear it might tip the balance
of the identity behind which I wore as a mask. The work circle of work partners saw
me as only one thing- the leader lady who made them Be great. My children saw me as the Mother whose job was to drive,
clean and arrange a fantasy, my ex-husband saw me as a pretty thing to control.
Being one thing when I give my elevator speech, “hi I’m C.
G. I am Wonder Woman,” might not sound so crazy at Comic –con, an event where
everyone is allowed a fantasy. Walking the talk, speaking only my own truth
every moment of my life, now that’s a challenge.
What if you hold the power to do anything, to make anything
to be anything?
I believe you do already have it but just need a nudge. I’m
whipping out my magic lasso and granting you four wishes, BUT, now you must do
the work.
Be great today my friends, I need to get back to writing.
C. G.
July 14, 2012
Pray Big
Keep my children safe on their journeys.
Thank you for the gift of great family.
Let my friends who read this know I care.
I appreciate every wonderful moment on this earth.
Thank you for your love.
C. G.
P.S.
Please help me write great.
July 11, 2012
Through These Veins We Are Connected
Boundaries Bound by Mulugeta Gebrekidan
Through These Veins
Anne Marie Ruff takes us on an adventure in
the coffee highlands of Ethiopia. The bitter taste of death, sweet almond
extract of true love and intrigue are wired together in this epic story.
Ruth and Zahara are two strong women
searching for truth. They want to save those they care for from the tortured
death by AIDS. A cure is within their very grasp.
Stefano, the Italian scientist, is plant
collecting before the forest disappears. He meets a medicine man who has found
katannii leaf extract can cure AIDS.
Life replicates fiction- I understand what it
is to collect plants, having been a collector of roses and rare plants.
Stefano’s passion for rescuing the secrets of the forest is romantic and true. The
charming Stefano streams with life blood.
The topic of a cure for AIDS is timely.
Timothy Ray Brown is the first person to have had HIV totally eliminated from
his body. Will some plant that is burned or cut down hold the secret to
something better than a “functional cure.”
Our oldest human relatives come from
Ethiopia, a now country suffering with drought, deforestation and death. With
one Medical Doctor for 100000 citizens, survival rates are low. Locals hold to
superstitious beliefs that spirits and supernatural forces can cause bad
fortune, and illness.
Ruff stands apart from preaching to us about
Pharmaceutical Companies, corrupt governments or political action. “Pepsi and
Coke should start a big political campaign,” Ruth says. Ruth speaks a profound
idea. Ruff’s writing flows gracefully
showing the evil forces what they are.
There are passages where Ruff’s images are
handsome and bitter as raw coffee, as in, “She wrapped both hands around her wine glass attempting to
steady herself, to prevent herself from descending into the abyss of uncertainty.”
As if the red wine, or liquid of the glass could save her fall.
Above the image of the beautiful paintings of
Mulugeta Gebrekidan.
He is an Ethiopian painter using mixed media and oil. His work expresses the
same longing to save, to stir greatness without explaining.
Ruff inspires us to conserve this beautiful
earth’s biodiversity without asking or waving a flag. “Think carefully about
how you can stay true to your values-”
Through
these veins we
are all connected. Ruff’s novel is romantic, thrilling and uplifting. Read it
and be changed.
Anne Marie Ruff Grewal lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two boys. Photograph courtesy of Anne
.
July 10, 2012
Fear Uncertainty Doubt Oh My
Back to basics, son is off to the Sequoia's with Uncle Jerry and the boys. I've moaned about this before, how I miss my beta reader... Now that the next novel is almost ready for editing, I beg anyone who reads thrillers or transgressional fiction to take a whirl at my current manuscript. Thinking of offering bribes, yes cash money.
I read this twitter conversation about FUD, or more exactly how writers but I think also our world wide economy feel overwhelmed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The best solution for that is to be ready. Write your plan on a yellow pad, break it down into daily chores, then execute.
Perhaps I post a cardboard sign stating: will read your book in trade...? Anyone write literary fiction out there? Hello ~
"Fear uncertainty and doubt ~ oh my, no forget about it."
July 9, 2012
Gone Fishing
Or Frankly Scarlett, he doesn't seem to care either.
One of those days... thanks Margaret Mitchell, Gone With Everything.
Writing is slow today, son packing for camp, daughter packing for Ireland.
I'm putting up the gone fishing sign on my brain.
