Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 69

SPIRITS & GHOSTS BY NIGHT

“Now I remember those old winter’s tales that speak of spirits and ghosts by night.”   - Christopher Marlowe

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KQ8XMJR
"Christmas Eve is a genial, festive season, and to counter balance, 

we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood.”  - Jerome K. Jerome

Did you like the Archangel, Darael, in my last post?

 
 He is a major character in my Christmas Ghost Story, Beware the Jade Christmas, 
though he patiently waits until the 2nd Act to enter the fray ...
And like the Angel Provocateur he is, 
Darael never lets those around him feel comfortable ... 
nor he is he even comfortable or sure about himself.

Why do people love to tell Christmas ghost stories?  
The telling of such stories goes back even before the publication of A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843).


 The tradition of telling holiday ghost stories goes much farther back: 
farther than the Nativity though not before the sense of its need. 


When the nights grow long, and the year is growing to a close, it’s only natural that people feel an instinct to gather together. 


At the edge of the year, it also makes sense to think of people and places that are no longer with us. 
Christmas ghost stories are older than the Victorian one with which we all are familiar.  

These stories are about darker, older, more fundamental subjects: 
winter, death, rebirth, and the certainty that our black deeds always return demanding their wages.

As Dickens wrote, 
the ghosts of Christmas are really the past, present and future, swirling around us in the dead of the year. 
They’re a reminder that we’re haunted, all the time, by good ghosts and bad, 
and that they all have something to teach us. 

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KQ8XMJR
Merry Eerie Christmas
And please consider spending a mere 99 cents for a thought-provoking stroll 
through the ghostly haunts of 1946 New Orleans with a mysterious angel as your guide.
 The paperback is only $5.99!

BORNE ON THE WIND_WEP story

BORNE ON THE WIND {995 words}

“Your life, like snow, while ongoing masks your passage, when finished, marks your path.” – Darael


Labored breathing.  I’d heard the term often but only now realized the reason for it.  Every breath hurt as if I were giving painful, hard-won birth to it.

The dead are never far from us. 
They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final grasp for air


From just outside my hospital room door, I heard the nurse snap, “Mr. Evans, I can only tell you that your tenant is in guarded condition.”

“I just want to know how soon I’ll be able to rent out his apartment, that’s all.”

“Mr. Evans, he may well recover.

“Ha. If that’s him breathing, he ain’t got long for this world.”

“Then, you have your answer, don’t you?  Please leave.”

There was a long silence followed by heavy steps heading away from my door.


A face of flint stuck in from a crack in the door.  “Did he bother you?”

I shook my head and wheezed, “He only bothers himself, nurse.”

Her face softened.  “How can you be so forgiving?”

I managed a weak smile.  “He has to live with himself 24 hours a day.  How can I not feel sorry for him?”

She sighed, shook her head bemused, and quietly shut the door.

By the dim mirror light, I tried to make out the plaque on the opposite wall.  It was an ornate rendering of Margaret Fishback Powers’ poem, Footprints.  
 I snatched back the snort before it cut me in two.

Others had lived worse lives I knew, but when the blows came for me, I never felt carried.  Never.   
My footprints had always been solitary, lonely ones.  Women went for the Bad Boy never the ugly, poor Nice Guy.

I could have become mean, bitter, but what kind of company would I have been for myself then?   
Better by far to give encouragement and a smile to those who entered then left my world.

I spasmed a series of wet coughs that cut me in half, bending me in a fetal position.  The world blurred, became black.  I blinked my eyes to clear them. 
It truly wasn’t worth the effort. I saw shadows moving in the corners of my room.  Though I should have been alone, I wasn’t.  

Words, feeling like mine but were not, slithered into my mind: ‘You will die alone, unloved, unmourned.  Yours was a worthless life.’ 

Maybe the words weren't mine, but were they speaking the truth? Were they?

“Enough!” softly rumbled a Voice above me from the back of my bed.  “Did you not hear the nurse?  He is in guardedcondition.”

Wails of pain and outrage pierced through my mind.  Then, the Voice of distant thunders spoke but one word.

“Go!”

The inside of my mind suddenly was all mine once more.



I turned to see who had spoken.  Fingers of soft steel took my shoulder and stopped me.

“No.  Not just yet.”

“Who are you?  What were those voices?”

“The unlearned call them demons.”

“Ah, I’m not important enough for demons to fool with.”

There was a hint of laughter underneath the rumbling words.  “Then, perhaps they were bored.”

The laughter disappeared.  “If you are in the light, darkness will always try to extinguish you.”

The Voice sighed, 
“You, born of Eve, look back on your lives and those of others and only see a meandering trail that wanders into the light and into the darkness to things you only imagine are there.”

There was a strange blur in front of me, and I hushed in a painful breath.  The plaque was gone from the wall.   
Somehow, I knew that the mysterious speaker was holding it in his hands.

“Her heart was in the right place but her perception off-course … like all those whose blood is that of Eve’s.”

“Who are you?” I wheezed.


“Those with cloudy perceptions call me Archangel.”

“And were wrong?”

“And right.  Life for you of tainted blood can be confusing.”

“An Archangel?  I’m just small potatoes.  I’m not worthy of someone like you.”

The undercurrent of laughter was back.  “Really?  Remember what I said of flawed perceptions?”

A flurry of mists billowed in front of me and out of it floated a slowly spinning globe of the earth.  A breath smelling of cedar and honey blew over my shoulder.  The masking clouds wisped away.

Tiny spots of golden light dotted every continent, appeared in isolated places on the seas.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Footprints.  Your footprints.”

“No.  I never left this city, much less this country.”

“Oh, but you have.”

 “How?”


“There are Nexus Points in every soul’s life where a shared laugh, a compassionate word, a needed affirmation of another’s worth, or desperately needed money left anonymously in a mailbox can start a ripple of random acts of kindness whose wake goes on and on.”


Steel fingers softly shook my shoulder.  “Those acts became a way of life for you.   
So much so that they became a part of you … and a part of all those you touched and a part of all those they in turn touched.”

My breath just wouldn’t come anymore as the Voice whispered in my ear. 

“Just now, the nurse you think of as Nurse Ratchet, because of your forgiveness, is withholding a bitter retort to a small child whose heart would have been shattered by those harsh words.”


An elephant seemed to be sitting on my chest and an ice-pick stabbing deep into my heart.  It hurt so badly I couldn’t speak.  I choked.  I heard a wet rattling gurgle in my throat.

The Voice murmured, “One last soul touched by you.”

Steel fingers settled on my chest.  The pain disappeared.  All became honey-light.

The ghost of laughter was back.  “Boot Camp is over, good and faithful servant.  Now, the fun begins.”

I MISS CHRISTMAS

"We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how." - Dan Fogelberg 

When we were innocent, Christmas seemed innocent, didn't it?
I remember sprinkling "reindeer food" 
over the grass in the back yard.
I remember leaving milk and cookies 
out for Santa.
I remember leaving a note for Santa 
to give my toys to a boy
who needed them more.

"What if Christmas," he thought,"doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
 - Dr. Seuss

We let our rationality leech the wonder and mystery out of our lives like calcium from bone and question why we break.
Do you understand how electricity works?  
No? 
But that does not stop you from flipping 
on the light switch.

Do you know how a touch screen works?  
No? 
But you still use it to search the internet.


Just because you don't understand
why God would choose to
visit us as a babe
doesn't stop it from being true.
 

Perhaps only the childlike "get" God.

Let the joy of children you see 
spark the memory 
of your own childhood 
during Christmas.

Our favorite Christmas carols
can bring to mind and heart more 
trusting, innocent times.

We live in a world of mystery 
despite the musings of pundits 
who blather they know it all.
Look up into the night sky 
with its myriad wondersand be a child again.
Look at a drop of water 
under a microscope with itstiny worlds within worlds. 

All this costs nothingbutis worth more than gold.
TRY IT.

KEEP THE 
MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS AND PERHAPS IT WILL KEEP YOU

HOW TO FIND THE TIME TO WRITE DURING THE HOLIDAYS

I know how hard it is to find time to write during the holidays!

10 hours of straight rare blood runs for over 400 miles yesterday 

left me too wiped but to collapse and sleep until I had to get up to go to work!

But holiday writing can be done.

Today, I demon-possessed Orson Welles in 1946 New Orleans ... alternate history is so much fun ...

But not so much for the three former O.S.S. agents trying to survive a midnight stroll with him!

 (of course the corrupt New Orleans police force of that time didn't help either!)

Sometimes the truth is more fantastic than fiction.

But I digress ...


1.) FORGET THE GOAL OF OTHER MONTHS

Any words written now should be considered a victory.  Reward yourself for them.

 By removing the pressure of trying to beat the clock, you’ll free yourself to see your productivity in a new way. 

Also, give yourself a little slack this time of year.


2.)  BE A YOGA WRITER

Be flexible.  

Take an inventory of any free time:

 your lunch hour,

the time you spend waiting for your children during holiday pageant rehearsals,

 sitting in an airport waiting for your flight—you get the idea. 

Use this downtime to write. 

And since this “found” time doesn’t take away from any other holiday tasks you need to accomplish, 

you’ll be less likely to feel guilty about working on your writing projects.


3.)  TO YODA LISTEN -- A CREATURE OF HABIT YOU MUST NOT BE

Think you can only write at your favorite desk?

Unthink.

Bring a laptop, a tablet, or a pen and paper with you as you run your holiday errands. 

When you find you’ve arrived somewhere early,

 use those few extra minutes to jot down ideas or to continue working on an ongoing writing project.

You can also decide to wake up earlier (or stay up later) than usual to ensure 

that you spend some time at your favorite desk, with your favorite hot cocoa, and no interruptions.


4.) HANDS FULL -- MOUTH OPEN

 You’ve got five bags of holiday gifts in one hand and a platter of holiday goodies in the other hand. 

How are you supposed to type or hold a pen to write?

 With a dictation program for your computer or app for your cell phone, writing can be virtually hands-free!


5.) WRITE LIKE A SHUTTLE LAUNCH ... IN STAGES

 Look at marathon runners: they don’t begin their training by trying to run 26.2 miles. 

Instead, they run many shorter distances to build stamina, and slowly increase the mileage as they get stronger. 

Why would you start writing a book by trying to write the entire book?

Writing in 15 minute stages in the morning, then in the afternoon, and finally in the evening hours can get a lot of writing done per day.

ART ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE EASY_IWSG post_Ghost of HARLAN ELLISON

Ghost of Harlan Ellison here:
For a brief time, I was here; and, for a brief time, I mattered.
I am not surprised that I am still kicking around despite being dead.  
Life always managed to beat me on the head like a Hong Kong gong  ...
so why shouldn't death?


That rat, Clemens, had the gall to lure me here to Meilori's by baiting me with my own words:
“In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... 
anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.” 

Clemens said , 

"So write to the dreamers who visit Roland's electronic newspaper and tell them what's what."
 

What's what?  And to think I once respected the guy.  Never meet your heroes.
All right.  
He wants me to elucidate, to illuminate, to unravel the Gordian knot of your dreams.  

I'll point out some road marks but not all of them.  

Eternity is calling me, 
and I want to wander. 
I hear some of you moan, "I like 'having written,' but I hate writing.  It's hard work."
Well, f___ you, of course it's hard work.
Everything worthwhile is hard work.

If it weren't hard work, everybody would be doing it. 
Art isn't supposed to be easy!


You think Michelangelo didn't feel the jolts of his hammer 
against the pick slamming into the marble as he sculpted David or the Pietà?
He felt it all the way up his damn arms to his neck and back down his spinal column in spasms of a Niagara Falls of agony .
Art should always be tough. 
 It should demand foot pounds of energy for every good sentence you manage to pound out on the paper.
Nothing good comes from coasting.

 You never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, 
dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time; 
and once you become strong or rich or potent or powerful 
it is your responsibility to help the weak become strong.
Which is why I am writing to you guys, shouting, 
"The road ahead is damn hard. Nobody guarantees you can make it to the end.

Nor should they.
But if you believe in yourself strong enough you can walk it.

It is up to you, and you alone, if you make it to the end."


 
 I don't know how you perceive 
my mission as a writer,


 but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. 


It is not my job to lull you 
with a false sense 
of the rightness of the universe.  


This wonderful and terrible occupation 
of recreating the world in a different way, 


each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare.


 I stir the soup. 
I inconvenience you.
I make your nose run and your eyeballs water. 

 But enough of that. 
I am gone, and you are not.
Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, 
Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. 
And all that we are, all that remains, 
is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.

 Remember that and write well ... and live better.

TO TELL THEIR STORY

 “The living owe it to  those who no longer can speak  to tell their story for them.”  -  Czesław Miłosz
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KQ8XMJR/
In my Christmas Ghost tale

you will meet dapper young men in the 1920's who court the mysterious, deadly Senorita ...

to their eternal sorrow. 
Here is a glimpse of New Orleans in the 1920's where you can see the styles ...

Look closely, and you will see a glimpse of the Jade Christmas! 


Most of the action in my Christmas Ghost Story takes place in 1946.

To us, that time seems so far away.

Those living then did not realize they were living history ...

as we are today.

Take a peek:


For just $0.99 you can time travel to a Christmas Eve lost in time and mystery.

Give it a try, will you?   :-)

BLACK FRIDAY is DEAD_ It is now GRAY NOVEMBER

I got assaulted DAYS before Halloween by "Black Friday" sale announcements 
in my email and mail!
You see, there’s no such thing as Black Friday anymore, not in a literal sense.

It long ago escaped 

— or transcended — 
its original meaning and location, leaping beyond United States borders to establish itself in other countries and continents,

 to become just another shopping day in a sea of shopping days.


So much so that even Cyber Monday hasbeen lost in that ocean of buying days.

The term is now a conceptual synonym for the idea of “sale,” a Pavlovian cue to

get you in the right frame of mind to open your wallet. 

 Just a few years ago, Black Friday had the aura
 of a FOMO event. 
Now it seems more symbolic than significant 
in the pantheon of retail holidays.
And is that change really a bad thing?

I'M THANKFUL THAT I'M NOT A BEST-SELLING AUTHOR

Yes
You see I do not have to worry that my next book won't outsell my last one
nor do I have to continue a series of which I've grown weary!

I can roam wherever my imagination takes me at my own pace and in my own way.

The whole concept of weight trainingis that our muscles grow strongerby fighting resistance to them.

We achieve success after repeated attempts and failure.

The Snowflake Generation:
Young adults of the 2010s, thought of as being less resilient and more prone to taking offense than previous ones.

Resiliency is a key indicator of success. for we are made stronger BECAUSE of the struggle not in spite of it.
THE JOURNEY  IS THE DESTINATION
Be thankful for the little things along the road in our struggle for whatever goal is in our sights. 
 Imagine all the small things you overlook because you’re caught up in the daily grind. 
The soothing sight of the season’s first snowfall, the joy of a playful puppy, 
a delightful birdsong in spring or 
the pleasant patter the raindrops make as they hit the parched ground. 



When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude

May you have more blessings today than you thought possible!

THE SCIENCE OF THANKSGIVING

Angelina Jolie took her children out of the country during the Thanksgiving Holidays 

as she found what the pilgrims did to the Indians offensive.

I cannot blame her:


But she missed the point behind Thanksgiving:

GRATITUDE
Thanksgiving may be the only major American holiday focused on giving thanks for all of life's blessings, 

but gratitude isn't just a good excuse for chowing down on turkey and pumpkin pie; 

it's also a way to promote good mental and physical health.

Gratitude can improve your sense of well-being and fight depression ...

unless you really hate your in-laws who are visiting or they hate you!

Grateful people engage in more exercise, 

have better dietary behaviors, 

are less likely to smoke and abuse alcohol, 

and have higher rates of medication adherence.


A feeling of thankfulness for the positive things in your life 

can improve your sleep and lengthen its duration --

likely in part because you are consumed with fewer negative thoughts,

 and more pleasant thoughts as you drift off at night. 

 People who report more gratitude also show better cholesterol levels and blood pressure numbers.

A key to the effect, however, is that it must be other-focused.

 In a paper published in June 2014 in the Journal of Positive Psychology, Dr.Watkins and his colleagues 

showed that keeping a diary of three blessings worked much better to boost happiness 

than recalling three times when a person felt a sense of pride in his or her own accomplishments.

He says, 

 "What we believe is happening is that the habit of gratitude 

makes people look for the good in their life more, so it trains their attention towards more good things."


Gratitude is linked to optimism, which in turn, is linked to a boost to your immune system.

And during this flu season, making each day Thanksgiving could spare you sore throats, coughs, and trips to the doctor.

You see:

Gratitude is a gift that you can daily give yourself and your body.

Laughter is as well:

TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK ... FOR WHAT IS THERE TO BE THANKFUL?

Life is laced with the fault-lines of unpredictability. 
At the drop of a hat, disaster can strike. 

Everyone encounters death, heartbreak, devastating illnesses, job instability, and financial crisis. 

Perhaps it’s a personal situation that arises and then knocks you down. 

Maybe it’s the stress of your job that keeps you up too late at night.

Whatever it may be, we all experience the whirlwind of unpredictability at times.


I will not give you the litany of my own griefs.  

When your heart has been cut out of you, someone counting off their own woes is just salt in an open wound.

But when it happens to you, you may feel:

            Consumed
            Shattered
            Lost
            A Total Mess 
            Devastated
            Like a Failure
 
And when our lives feel like they are spinning out of control, 

it’s not always easy to think of what may be secretly waiting for us on the other side of our Valley of the Shadow. 
 

It’s difficult to feel hope or see the bigger picture.

At those times some talk of the Silence of Heaven ... as if.

 Pain never whispers or is silent.  
It shouts.  
And sometimes what we think of as a Silence to our pleas to Heaven is but a silent nod 

that there are Paths of Blood we must walk to go where ...


We learn the lessons we would learn no other way.

We teach those lessons to those who observe how we respond to what they will later encounter themselves.

We have hurtful walls we have erected around our hearts demolished by pain, anguish, doubt, and despair. 

We learn humility in an area where we thought we were healthy ... but were anything but.

 Prosperity is a window to a bright world.  

Tragedy is a mirror showing us who we really are.

What we have lost, we have lost.  

What we gain from the tragedy is up to us and our responses to the pain we wish would just go away.


No matter how tough you are, it is very easy to feel vulnerable, confused, or lost.

When things go terribly wrong, 

it is hard to feel anything but the chains of grief on your shoulders with no prison bars between which you can see the light of day.


REMEMBER:

1.) EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO US  FOR A REASON

I do not mean this as a cliche.  

It happens for the reason we assign it in our thoughts.  

In my World View, we are never alone.  
We have the Father guiding us down needful, and sometimes bloody, paths.

But that may not be your take on Life.

 Still, it is up to you to make what has happened in your life empowering or dis-empowering.  

Your thoughts can either help you or hinder you further.  

Your thoughts can either fan the flames of courage 

or stamp down whatever embers of it still remain.  

Your mind, your choice.

 2.) PAIN IS INEVITABLE; SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL

No season lasts forever ... not uplifting spring nor bitter winter.

Focus on pain and your concentration acts as a prism increasing its flames.  

Focus on a task outside of yourself no matter how simple, and the pain ebbs a bit.

There are always others worse off: focus on some small way to help them.  

Not up to helping out at a food kitchen? Phone for donations to it or another good charity. 

Your tragedy is not your whole story:

 try to make this but a small chapter of your story, headed to a healing ending.



3.) "IS" -- THE ONLY VERB YOU LIVE

This one moment is all you have.  

Is it full of pain?  

Each throb of pain is but a link in the bicycle chain of your life bringing you to healing -- 

if not of your body, then of your heart.

Are you still breathing? Of course you are. 

Then, great, you’ve just handled that moment. 

Are you ready for the next one that will bring you one step closer to engaging in your life again?


I do not have all the questions, much less all the answers to them.  

I merely hope that this has helped in some small way not to make the very thought of "Thanksgiving" a mockery.


 All of you are in my thoughts and prayers.  Roland