Warren Bluhm's Blog, page 31

This dog

I am a bit groggy this morning — this candle isn’t really designed to burn at both ends — and Willow seems groggy, too, a little more than a week shy of her 12th birthday, which will make her 84 in dog years if you cotton to that stuff.

She holds her head up, as best she can, as if to say, “If he can be up this early, I guess I can, too” — my canine companion, never very far away unless I’ve left her behind to bring bacon home.

Is she mine, or am I hers? Now there is a question.

We ...

I would rather

“I would rather …” was that an e.e. cummings poem? I remember the emotion of reading it for the first time — “I would rather … than teach a thousand stars how not to shine.” Was that it? It took my breath away.

I love when words do that — move in your heart and say a hopeful thought. Add to the beauty in the world. I love when words do that. I would rather be a single Elwood P. Dowd than a thousand nattering nabobs sneering into the dark.

I would, wouldn’t I? Then why am I drawn to be sour...

Turn the page

Yes, that’s right. Turn the page. You filled up the last page and life goes on, so turn the page and keep writing the journal of your life.

There is always another blank page waiting, but first you must turn to it. Oh, you can just sit there staring at the old page, the filled page, but you wrote it all in ink and it can’t be erased and you can’t change it, so: Best practices? Turn the page.

You need to keep going. Reading back over past regrets, OK, you can resolve to have learned som...

After the lockdowns

Spare me the “one year later” stories. Just spare me.

It is always one or five or 10 or 20 years since something awful happened. Oh Lordy, wait until this coming Sept. 11. What dastardly plots could politicians hatch while the supposed watchdogs are busy collecting bad memories from 20 years ago?

I am much more interested in today, which I can directly affect, and tomorrow, which I can try to influence, than in reliving past disasters. Or, if we must talk about what happened a year ago...

The room

(Originally posted Sept. 7, 2017)

“Don’t think,” said the man with the white mane. “Just open the spigot and be surprised by what comes out.”

And then he walked away.

I wanted to cry out, “Don’t think? But I can’t stop thinking,” but I had no voice.

So I stopped thinking.

Suddenly a spot appeared on the wall, which grew and grew until there was a hole large enough to step through. I could see that the room beyond was not the same room I would have found had I cut through the w...

Full

Writing can come in fits and starts, but I am full of words, every day, all day.

“My God, it’s full of stars.”

My God, I’m full of words.

It’s only that I don’t always write them down , but when I do … catharsis.

The dance of the pen across the page is a deer prancing in the snow, kids racing through the grass, a performance car zipping across the flats so fast the videographer struggles to keep the machine in the frame.

When it works, the words flow like water.

When it doe...

Intentions and reality

Every pile of debris in this messy room began with, “I’ll just set this aside here so I remember to come back and take care of this.”

I encounter my heroine, and she’s not happy

“There you are, Jeep!” I said to young Ms. Thompson the other day. “I haven’t heard from you for awhile.”

“Oh, there YOU are,” she said back, seeming a little cross. “So you didn’t forget me after all.”

“No, no, I think about you all the time. I stopped hearing your voice.”

“Right. Me and Blaine and Bill have been chattering away and running around tarnation, but you didn’t hear any of that,” she snapped. “Do you know how hot it is in Snoggle Swamp? We could have just picked up Snoo...

Gratitude over coffee before dawn

To wake up and smell the coffee, first you have to wake up and make the coffee. This is harder than it sounds but not impossible.

Hmmm. When I am conscious that I didn’t pre-post anything on the blog last night, I write self-conscious blather. When I am free to soar, my mind wanders to distant stars and running across a sunny field laughing in the tall grass and surprised by scurrying critters and the occasional deer.

Oh, let me be unleashed from (and here he dozed briefly, because the...

You will find what you seek

If this be the new Dark Age, greet it with sunshine.

If this is the time of anger and hate, greet it with peace and love.

If this is the time of “give me what I deserve,” be generous.

Resentment is a dime a dozen; gratitude is precious and eternal.

Seek out reasons to be glad about this life, and you will find them.

Seek out reasons to be bitter and entitled, and you will find those, too.

I can tell you life is sweeter when you search for the light in the darkness, not the ...