In celebration of my blog’s 14th Anniversary, I offer you these 14 Fun Facts about Random Acts of Writing…
1. Random Acts of Writing is followed by more than 1,700 people around the world, including my high school English teacher who reminded me, early on, that it was important to keep my writing universal so more people could understand and appreciate it.
2. In total, there have been close to 37,000 visits to Random Acts of Writing and more than 110,000 distinct views since 2010.
3. According to WordPress, most folks like to read the blog on Mondays at 11:00 a.m. That’s…random.
5. Travel is often featured here on Random Acts of Writing, with frequent posts about Texas, France, Cape Cod, day trips, and the awesomeness that is the American Road Trip.
6. Alice in Wonderland makes regular visits to this blog, as do Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and my Dad. But it was Gene Kelly who starred in the opening number back in 2010.
7. As a graphic designer as well as a writer, I know the importance of images. That’s why there have been more than 3,000 images posted, including famous and obscure artwork and original photography.
8. Random Acts of Writing is a fifth generation creative effort that has its roots in the 1980s zine culture. The Latest News was its first incarnation, which I published from 1989 – 1996.
9. It turns out, I am an internet research geek. Many of the posts you read are infused with details from Google Books, Wiki Art, the Library of Congress, Wikipedia, Bible Hub, and Quote Investigator. I once spent four totally nerdy hours on Google Patents and had to stop because my mouse hand cramped up.
10. The intention of Random Acts of Writing has shape-shifted over the years, but its most-talked-about topics include creativity, books, nature, spirituality, and poetry.
11. Every April since 2015, I have attempted to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month. You can see all of the results here.
12. All of that writing — more than 2,000 posts — led to the publication of four books: LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, and Water Under the Bridge: A Sort of Love Story.
13. All of that writing has also fed my quarterly publication called MANIFEST (zine) and my new book, Sleeping with Ghosts, coming out this fall!
14. This is the 14th time I have written an anniversary post, each of which has ended with gratitude to YOU, my readers, for your Comments, your Likes, and your support since 2010. It has been a blessing to share this journey and this ongoing conversation with you.
These stories — stories of men and women — are familiar, their expectations, disappointments, betrayals.
But my empathy and anguish are subdued now, lingering in corners and far enough across the room to not matter all too much in any immediate sense, like the urge to smoke that rises sometimes with coffee or at 3am with cold, cold stars.
And I swear I will never lie to myself again like that: baking hope in cakes or diamond rings or affairs with unintended consequences.
I will bide my time to 80 (god willing) inhale the old habit as promised, but never again will I lie in wait for those stories — stories of men and women — I used to tell myself.
Three Chairs Publishing is psyched to present MANIFEST (zine) issue #14: You Mean a Woman Can Open It?
As a woman born in the late 60s, there’s never been any question that I can be whatever I want to be. It’s what my parents and teachers taught me. It’s what my role models in the 70s and 80s demonstrated for me — Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas, Judy Blume, Madeleine Blaise, Madonna, Jane Fonda. And it’s how I’ve lived my life since I was old enough to make my own decisions about things — how I work and play, where I live and love, what I do and how. My own terms. My own expectations.
Of course, that doesn’t sit well with some folks. Mostly male folks of a certain genre. And there have always been attempts to keep me “in my place” — verbally, physically, financially, and so forth. But like so many countless women, I have persevered and succeeded, despite the obstacles and objections.
YOU MEAN A WOMAN CAN OPEN IT? is in honor of ALL the women who can, who do, and who keep on doing — who persist — no matter what.
INGREDIENTS: collaged elements, color copies, color scans, digital art, ephemera, essays, original photographs, poetry, quotes, vintage artwork. With thanks to the voices of #metoo, Ruth Orkin, Man Ray, Augustin Pajou, Céline (Melle-T), Bethany Armitage, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Carol Nicklaus, Elizabeth Warren, and Wonder Woman.
20-page, Full Color 5×7 booklet, free bookmark, and a curated Spotify playlist, Cost: $8.00 or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00.
You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.
As if by maestro’s cue, five black ducks dove bold into the current as Beethoven’s Five Secrets took off in flight, its eddies of sound mirrored in the rain-raged waters, music and a murmuring of shore birds swirled around the sun’s reflection, carried with them their quiet riddles in ripples and whorls, while the familiar and foreign danced in the Sound of shimmering secrets.
See here, this sweep of time that swings in swift strokes from what was to what is what was to what is overlap so seamlessly sometimes I see it all simultaneous joy leaves and smiles fade, trees fell from storms, and silly giggles echo off the shadows of a ghost who seems taller now than the tree itself as I skirt the shore skips stones in a high swell so intent to take what was leave what is what was to what is what was to what is what was to what is
1. The Law of Attraction says that positive thoughts bring positive results into a person’s life, while negative thoughts bring negative outcomes.
and
2. Humans are unable to look away from a train wreck.
I point this out because there is energy in thought. And there is energy in where we put our focus. This is the concept behind prayer as much as the Law of Attraction.
I want to remind you of this — remind all of us — as we head into that contentious and energetic conflict we call Election Season.
Donald Trump and the MAGA zeitgeist is a train wreck of epic proportion, and it’s hard to look away. It’s hard not to watch the video clips and stare at the headlines in agony; not to gasp, mock, or tremble with horror at the hypocrisy and hate spewing forth; not to share “look what they’re doing now” posts on social media.
Believe it or not, all of that — those reactions — are actually innate human responses. Watching disasters — like staring at a car accident when you drive by, watching news broadcasts about tornadoes, or fixating on Trump’s behavior — triggers our survival instincts.
Our brains are wired to perceive potential danger, analyze and interpret the situation, decide if we should fight or flight.
And studies have shown that we are also prone to what is called “negative bias.”
One study published by the American Psychological Association found that we react to and learn more from our negative experiences than we do positive ones. ‘Humans are prone to negative bias and negative potency,’ explains psychologist Dr. Renee Carr. ‘Negative bias is the tendency to automatically give more attention to a negative event and negative information than positive information or events.”(1)
This explains why we know more about Trump’s criminal activities and abhorrent behaviors than we do about all of the good news in our country and around the world.
I bet you didn’t click on any of those links. That’s part of the negative bias. We’re likely more interested in what other angry things I have to say about Trump than we are that deforestation is decreasing in the Amazon Rainforest, that formerly endangered species like the American bald eagle and the humpback whale are recovering, that there’s a new malaria vaccine about to change the face of public health in Africa.(2)
Negative bias isn’t all bad. “The healthy component of watching disasters is that it is a coping mechanism,” says clinical psychologist Dr. John Mayer. “We can become incubated emotionally by watching disasters and this helps us cope with hardships in our lives. Looking at disasters stimulates our empathy and we are programmed as humans to be empathetic — it is a key psychosocial condition that makes us social human beings.”(3)
But let’s come back to the Law of Attraction. As the book explains:
The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself, is drawn.Whenyou say birds of a feather flock together, you are actually talking about the Law of Attraction. You see it evidenced when you wake up feeling unhappy, and then throughout the day things get worse and worse….You see the Law of Attraction evidenced in your society when you see that one who speaks most about illness has illness; when you see that the one who speaks most about prosperity has prosperity.(4)
We are what we think. We attract that on which we focus.
“As you observe things on the television or in the newspaper, that, because you do not want them, make you feel negative emotion — you hinder your allowance of what you do want.”(5)
While that negative bias — focusing on the negative — is a good coping mechanism, it also means we’re investing our time and thoughts in seeing all of what is wrong and bad, and not what is good and possible. The negative gets all of the attention, and the algorithm of what we see and how we perceive things gets skewed.
So let’s bring this home — to 2024 and the election season.
The more we focus on Trump and the tsunami of fear and hatred, the more our energy — our emotional energy, our thought energy — is projected in that direction. The more we think about something, the more we attract it. Not to mention the fact that the more we read his headlines and share his news, the more free air time and advertising we’re giving him and his campaign.
In an ideal world, there would be a setting to block how much Trump news shows on our feeds. Like Parental Controls, only maybe called Peace of Mind Controls?
Because the more bandwidth he gets, the less there is for headlines about all of the good things happening here in the U.S. and across the world. And the less we see and share the good news, the harder it is to have faith that things will get better, to have hope for our future as a country, and ultimately, as a race.
Think there’s not enough good news to share? Then check out the Good News Network with positive and uplifting stories about conservation efforts, medical and scientific achievements, people making a difference, and all of the good things happening around the world and right here in the United States!
I was trapped in a house of the past where staircases appeared twisting to nowhere and rooms were puzzle games,
where I walked through old conversations and emerged in the present, my foreign reflection in a hall of faceless mirrors,
the scenes of people I used to know still in their old spaces were so real I could touch the pencil he held in his hand at the desk he used to write from
but only she only she was my only constant
broadcasting into rooms to show me the way with an urgent regard so as not to get trapped there
hurried me to dress and gather my things as if the house were on fire
as if my insistence to stay would alter a future I still have no heart to imagine.
I remember the first time I was ever gobsmacked by art. Do you?
My WHOA! moment was back in the early 80s at Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum. I was wandering one of the galleries clockwise and came first, unmoved, to Thomas Cole’s painting The Present showing a castle in ruins, abandoned and backlit by a sunrise or sunset. But it was his second painting, The Past, that stopped me in my tracks. It depicted the same castle and landscape, only at some mythical point in the past, broad daylight, with throngs of people and a jousting tournament in play.
I remember the paired paintings — and my reaction to them — vividly, to this day.
I love when art MOVES us like that. Makes us stop, gasp, internalize it. Carry it with us, decades later. For me, it’s Rodin’s Crouching Woman at the Hirschhorn Sculpture Garden in D.C., Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss at the Louvre, Shepard Fairey’s Arab Woman at the ICA in Boston, Van Gogh’s Starry Night at Yale.
With that same sense of a visceral experience, I spent several hours at the Yale Art Gallery again this weekend. Maybe it was the fact that it was my first time in a large museum since COVID, or that I spent the day with a friend who was equally enthralled and inspired by the energy of the space and the vast amount of famous and fantastic art — but I left full up with awe and appreciation, and a deep gnawing urge to create something WHOA myself!
Here are some sights from the Gallery…
Plato
Ceiling Tiles from Dura-Europos
Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guanyin
An Allegory of Intemperance, Hieronymus Bosch
Rooms by the Sea, Edward Hopper
Camden Hills From Bakers Island, Marsden Hartley
Sentinel I, Wangechi Mutu
Mayflower, Marisol
Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite, Kehinde Wiley
Across town, the sky was falling. While I settled in for the long, windy night, he laid beneath fallen trees — a trauma compounded.
Everywhere, things were breaking — foundations and forests — and I wonder sometimes if that was the moment we broke as well.
The moment all the cracks and shakes finally finally split us apart.
These days, in the forest where we first and often met, I can see our ruins — mark the day of our beginning, the warped rings of memory. and in the wreckage of canopy, our final silent fall.
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
— William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
I knew it was coming. In that same way the slight rumble in the sky tells you there’s a storm coming, the telltale first cough told me Sick was about to arrive.
It started on a Friday, early in the morning. By noon, I was enthusiastically coughing, by three, I was losing my voice and canceling dinner and weekend plans.
Dr. Google confirmed it was not one, RSV, and a COVID test outruled the other. So I gathered my potions — wild cherry bark syrup, Throat Coat® tea, slippery elm lozenges, magical immune support tablets — and took to the couch.
Sick transformed pretty quicky into bronchitis. There were some days I swear I was about to meet a lung in person for all of the coughing. I sounded like a Muppet and, thanks to a round of pinkeye, looked like a zombie for most of December.
And while I missed the month-long fray of holidays activities, I also missed the month-long fray of holidays activities. Instead, I rested…a lot.
I took it easy. And I napped. And I slept. And I sat on the couch and read books. And I watched all eight of the Harry Potter movies (again). And then I slept, again.
Even Work took a back seat to Sick for the month. Lots of things did. But, it turns out, being sick was just what the doctor ordered.
In the past month, I’ve managed to reset my nervous system that’s been in fight-or-flight mode for a very long time. I feel calm and centered in a way I have not since the quiet days of 2020.
I have not set my alarm clock since December 1, and my sleep routine feels balanced and healthy. It turns out, I need NINE hours of sleep, not six — and if I allow it, my body sleeps and wakes in an easy natural rhythm.
If I allow it, I move around in an easy, natural rhythm, too. I remember this rhythm — it’s the beat I dance to when I’m on retreat or vacation, when I listen to my inner music that says: go for a long walk, you need a nap, take some time off.
I suspect we all need more rest than we allow ourselves. We all need more time on the couch with books and comfort movies. Now, in these precarious times more than ever.
Question: is it possible that the only resolution for 2024 is REST?
I’ve been doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 10 years now, and this is the sixth year I’ve successfully met my personal goal of reading 50 books — 52 actually! This year’s statistics, according to Goodreads’ My Year in Books, included 14,328 pages read with an average book length of 276 pages. The shortest book, clocking in at 52 pages, was Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück, and the longest, at 676 pages, was Habibi, a gorgeous graphic novel by Craig Thompson.
Some of my highest rated books, with five stars, were also some of my favorites: From My Button Box: Collected Essays in a Pandemic Time (Judith Bruder), Leaving Time (Jodi Picoult), The Book of Longings (Sue Monk Kidd), The Invisible Hour (Alice Hoffman), Julia and the Shark and The Dance Tree (Kiran Millwood Hargrave), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Book of Lost Names (Kristin Harmel), November 9 and Verity (Colleen Hoover), The Paris Library (Janet Skeslien Charles), and Other Birds (Sarah Addison Allen).
For better or for worse, I often find book inspiration from List Challenge, and I am so tempted to consider reading Rory Gilmore’s Reading List or the 100 Books to Read Before You Die or Books to Read to Be Considered Well Read. But I much more prefer wandering the shelves at the library or following breadcrumbs from this book to the next.
My next pile for 2024 includes not so much books as authors. I want to read more Jodi Picoult because we’ve only just met this year. Also Ann Patchett, John Green, and Isabel Allende.
How about you? What have you been reading lately? And what are you looking forward to in 2024?
“All these migrants crossing the border! They’re destroying our country!” she proclaims, just arrived from Christmas mass, where the whole congregation rejoiced the arrival of Jesus. The hypocrisy shocks me silent, my heart screaming “Jesus was a migrant, for Christ’s sake.” The next chapter in this merry-making-gift-giving story includes his parents’ flight from oppression, how they sought refuge in a foreign country to find a better life for their child. Or didn’t you read that far? Do your holiday prayers exclude empathy and compassion, do unto others, Matthew 25? Did you forget the ALL of the purpose of the child?
I try to tell from the walk, the shadow, the stature, the bow in the legs
is it him?
wonder what we would say after all this time
I should hate him, put the painful slides at the front of the reel
instead I pull out the happy ones, shine a light on what surfaces of those feelings long ago, of all that seemed possible
and even though I know better now I slow down
stare and stare and stare
consider the recognition mine and his a weird and inappropriate reunion in a parking lot at Christmas, Solstice Bells on the CD in my car and he smiles like he still owns me joyful and cruel all at once
The deer path has been excavated from its intimate trail of mossy secrets to a course hewn five feet wide accommodating us, of course, but not the slow poetry of listening here, where the January thaws laid bare a Caretaker’s House like Brigadoon, brief or here, where in the sunrise silence one could hear the Lady Ferns unfurl in fanfare nor here, where small Spring Beauties gathered in gossip beneath the wise old Oak who bears witness now only to the wreckage, the red blaze nailed deep without apology.
I am so tired of my humanity of our vulgarities and violence we never learn or we do and forget forget in the name of [insert team logo here] then we crown excellence worship one above the other but it’s not excellence if it’s bestowed and not earned if it’s dishonorable or dishonest He says he loves her because she’s amazing, but she is also a sinner — aren’t we all — according to that book oh but which book? and which god? and which party? and which plight? Nevermind Forget the hypocrisies and contradictions just go shopping — Shop Shop Shop Buy Buy Buy More More More to fill these gaping holes in our souls worship the profits Oh holy night but we kill the stars and everything they manifest a battle of wills and wars and words us, them, he, she, they big end, small end, dead end Dead End all of us with no surgical procedure to repair the despair no subscription prescription no mantra talisman ritual get down on your knees devotion we just spin spin spin round and round and round and round same song, different day different year different decade different century and the beat goes on
This is no place for a cricket I said out loud to him and to nobody, then lifted him gently into the confines of an old coffee cup, belly of a whale for all he knows of Columbia and Sumatra, but they sing there like he does, and who’s to say his are not folklore themselves — long-told stories passed down late at night, to our ear cacophony, to theirs a thousand tales a million years the universe in the short patch of grass now, there, and safe, as safe as Jonah I pray silently
forgive us our trespasses
as I walk back to my car parked askew in the crowded lot.
She knows, of course, it’s why she’s allowed me here this intimate task of parting, of packing up your things, why we smile easily between hidden glances
so this is her
We’ve known each other forever, of course, wondered enough to troll, but we’re like minds and hearts as well, why else would you have loved us both? I don’t tell her I saw you a shadow, a whisper in her room, that your smile was in gratitude for the kindnesses here now, and then, when I held tight your sorrows and secrets.
Instead, we just laugh at your photographs, agree to keep the tape in the top drawer to put things back together after I leave.
In these post-pandemic days with the black veil of politics, wars, mass shootings, and climate change draped over our collective humanity, I suspect we are all suffering, in some way, from what clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Scott Eilers, calls “ambiguous grief.” It’s the realization that something you always thought you’d have will never come to be, or mourning the loss of an alternate version of yourself — or Your World — that will never exist. This small zine touches on that big subject through seven poignant poems.
Color, mini booklet + Inserts and a curated Spotify playlist, Cost: $8.00or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00.
You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.
Once upon a time there was a bear and he lived just around the corner from the footbridge where the jays still caw about a troll and hummingbirds wax poetic about jewelweed on the banks of the stream. It was there, one day, a woman stood in utter disbelief as rain fell on a sunny day and the breeze turned into music. People around her raced by fear in their breath eyes full of warning, but she, being a brave sort (or merely hopeless) walked up the path, around the corner, and asked the bear to dance.
Last night, I snuck across the pond to the half-cut trees, their slaughtered limbs strewn across the yard of the large new house and listened while spiders and ants and caterpillars evacuated, slowly. I knelt below the one last Maple in whose branches I once spied turkeys sleeping and I apologized in whispers that sounded like midnight bird wings, while my tears collected in pools around her sweet trunk and we listened as the stars departed and the sun rose and the marsh hawk came to pay its respects one last time.
wonders at the man and woman who move beneath her — the fine strings of connection they don’t seem to notice
the man moves and the woman follows the woman speaks and the man nods somehow symbiotic
each of them picks berries from the autumn olive — share the savoring — pause and pucker at the bittersweet
yesterday’s web tangles in the woman’s hair and the man assists — white web entwined with silver strands he hadn’t noticed as threads of memory spark around them
I wonder what you will look like with gray hair
but wisps of time and love their midnight musings only float on sunbeams now as ephemeral as she herself her dance on fine filaments the dew, the stars, the Universe
The weight of a catbird in its final sleep too close to the road is surprisingly heavy, as if all of her songs — the whistles and whines the cheeps and chirps the mimics of a lifetime — are stored within her feathers so soft to the touch. I pray my long gentle strokes, my whispered comforts, might wake her to forage with her chicks once more and I stay hopeful for fifty-one steps until I lay her, quiet, still in the cool soft moss of the shaded yard, where the stalwart maple keeps eternal watch.
I am sitting on my screen porch in the Love & Relationships bagua of my house eating Liangfen. Called “Rice Bean Jello” on the menu, it is a bowl of delicate, translucent noodles served with cilantro and chili oil; a Sichuan dish sometimes called “heartbreaking jelly noodles.”
If you feel sad or heartbreaking, go and taste it, then your sadness will go with the wind sinceit is too spicy, so that all the feeling you have is a spicy taste.
I ordered Liangfen for just this moment — Sunday lunch on my screen porch and quiet meditations on Love & Relationships — part of a mindful evaluation process a friend and I are working through this fall.
It is not surprising to me that the Love & Relationships bagua of my home — the far right corner of the nine-squared feng shui map — is a screen porch. A place where seasons come and go, where winds shift and conditions often change.
And so, the Liangfen and its intention to chase away sadness are good company as I take inventory of Love & Relationships, and honor all of the changes that line up in multiple columns on what I call my Loss List.
If I were more inspired, the Loss List could probably be one of those fancy word clouds, but for now it’s just a long list; the friends, clients, loves, acquaintances, advisors, and communities to which I am no longer attached. The people and places no longer part of my present — or my future.
Sometimes, I want to point fingers, blame the pandemic, firmer boundaries, age and natural attrition, poor choices, humans. Other times, I just want someone to validate the losses with a giant YES stamp, I GET IT.
This is grief of course — heavy, messy, capricious GRIEF that breezes in and out of my days like the unpredictable breezes from Long Island Sound.
And there’s a lot of it — like climate changing levels of grief. The kind that shifts the ground, floods your reserves, erodes hope. Or…maybe it’s the kind that burns off the detritus in a blazing firestorm to eventually become beautiful new growth?
But I’m not there yet.
Today, I’m sitting on my screen porch enjoying the first chilly afternoon of fall, there’s a hawk bearing witness to my tears, the cause of which is only this bowl of Liangfen — just heartbreakingly spicy enough for a quiet reckoning.
I think to warn the hummingbird of the black snake I met along the trail, then remember: snakes don’t fly, and even the racer would be too slow anyway for the flit flit flit of this apparition I can’t blink to see a solo staring contest until my eyes tear up
sure, sure — blame it on the bird
my eyes were teared already on this quiet, dying Sunday, summer seeping into fall but more than that the things we can’t ignore, the changes that might someday soon require the snake to fly for its supper after all
There’s a spider crawling on the Buddha that sits on my desk, and I wonder if she — the spider — is praying, wonder if I might ask her to do so on my behalf for the butterfly I have no heart to remember, its blacktop last breaths and wingbeats were things I could not bear this morning on my way to the woods that are themselves dying. Good Lord, if I stop to kneel down for each and all of it, there would be no time left.
It started with the shock (And the shock and awe) Then the monetizing of fear and attention stimulated by 24 hour scrolling alarm. There was finger pointing and hate fanning, an us-against-them rip current we couldn’t escape.
We glimpsed Hope then we lost Hope over and over, until the hate spilled out formed a tsunami fueled by the the lock-step dumbing down, the entertainment value of ignorance broadcast on our unescapable devices.
So we coronated a devil the leviathan who gorged on hate and let plague prosper, while swarms of protest were never enough to stave off the the dead ones in school halls, the bloodied rights of masses, the arming of idiots the fires and floods, the crimes of church and state.
Then two decades in to this human debacle, our sanity eroded and collapsing, they announced that aliens walk among us and I wondered, hoped and prayed
I had known her like a lover — the curved slope of her spine, the embrace of a shoulder’s bend, the cool pause of shaded breath. She was my solace, my companion in meditations, my inspiration for poems (and two books).
But it’s been years since we spent time together — she, the two mile loop along the backside of the preserve, and I, her loyal, adoring visitor for some ten years.
I blame it on my knees, say I can’t and shouldn’t.
I blame it on the storm that left her forever altered.
But the truth, I suspect, is that I am altered.
The woman who walked that path and heard the voice of angels…sometimes…has been, for years now, hobbled.
Hobbled by grief. And disappointment. By the other storms that swept through and changed the landscape of what I knew as my life.
I am no longer that walking woman in the same way the woods are no longer what they were when we shared precious time together.
And so this morning, we bore witness to that. She, at seven, was cool and quiet as I walked our familiar path for the first time in four years.
Did she notice, I wonder, the changes in me like I did in her? Her overgrown spots, the pockmarks, the diseases slowly taking over, the things that no longer serve her. Or me.
Did she mourn the losses in me as I did in her? Tears or raindrops, who can tell.
Did she our change for what it is — inevitable, unpreventable…necessary?
Was she as glad to see me after all this time — as I was her?
Photos & essay @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this post, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
There but for the grace of god, I whisper as a prayer in fast passing for the pigeon who lies writhing by the overpass, its fatal injury too much to bear for either of us, so I imagine the wings that catch its final breaths of sunlight are those of angels sent to comfort its frightened spirit, stroke its soft body and hush the pain in the flash of a second I could not.
IMAGE: Study of Mice Dancing, Beatrix Potter. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
It’s hard not to wonder if mice get post-traumatic the stress of recall repeat remember the night she levitated formed circles scaled stairs (twice) ran and ran and ran hid and hid and hid found herself in the most unlikely predicaments:
cat’s mouth cat’s paw gloved hand and then…
then… that wide expanse of lawn lit by the moon and streetlight
I left her there at 2 it seemed the safest place despite the trauma or because of it?
In daylight, will I find her there still… still in the grass just a ghost in the walls?
I don’t dare look.
IMAGE: Study of Mice Dancing, Beatrix Potter. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
You know that good feeling you get when you eat dessert? That’s your brain’s reward system releasing dopamine. Researchers have shown that sweets rival sex and cocaine when it comes to dopamine triggers. Think about that.
Dessert — it’s as good as sex!
That explains a lot, doesn’t it? Researchers have also found that sugar inhibits stress-induced cortisol secretion, minimizing feelings of anxiety and tension. Maybe that’s why STRESSED Spelled Backwards Is DESSERTS!
Don’t miss this sweet issue of MANIFEST (zine) that includes results from the Get Your Just Desserts readers’ poll — on Sale Now!
INGREDIENTS: collaged elements, color copies, color scans, digital art, ephemera, essays, hand-drawn fonts, laser prints, original photographs, paper cut illustrations, photography, poetry, quotes, rubber stamp art, vintage artwork. With special thanks to Alice, Isabella Beeton, TJ Buckley, Sara Midda, Arthur Murray, Marcel Proust, E. J. Stanley, John Tenniel, and Mary Berry who inspired the title of this issue.
20-page, full color 5×7 booklet + Inserts and a curated Spotify playlist, Cost: $8.00or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00.
You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.
As I grow older, I want to make myself a better person
I want to put down my ego — my self ego and my human ego — and see the world with wide wonder and compassion
I want to stop taking sides, stop needing a defense or a logo or a standard, let go of my attachments, my fear, my uncertainty, wear my age loosely
I want to open my heart, let love in in big, scary ways so I am full up
so instead of dying maybe I just burst like the jewelweed flowers that explode with seeds along the trail
seeds of love and curiosity seeds of magic and dreams
seeds left to flower in the oneness when I am gone
This is a response poem because yes, some products are made in China, but so are Pandas and Snow Leopards, so grow up. Photo by Terry W. Johnson, Georgia Wildlife Resources Division. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif
She seemed lost or tired (or both, like me) the carpenter bee sitting in my driveway hot in the midday sun, and while she wasn’t too keen on being seen, or moved, for that matter, I shuttled her onto a notecard — Post Office, Library, Lettuce — and sat her down safely on the cool peaty mulch in the shade of shrubs in full purple bloom, left a small puddle of water in case she was thirsty, then said a little prayer so small and so large in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, Amen.
It’s been five years since my dear, sweet friend Mary Anne Siok died. I haven’t re-posted this — her eulogy — for a few years, so I thought this would be a good time. And a good reminder. I don’t say YES nearly enough, but I say it much more often because of her.
Mary Anne and I met in a freshman English class at UMass in 1984. We were just joking a few weeks ago about how it’s been 30 years since we graduated. I said “How the hell did that happen?” and she said “Because we’re old.”
But the MA I knew – the one we all knew – was never old. Very often her texts would go on and on about what she was doing and where. (Even her cousin Katherine couldn’t keep up!) The weekend before she died? On Friday, after a full day of work and a train commute home to Rhode Island, she went out for sushi with Billy. On Saturday, she and I spent an entire day walking around the mall, shopping, talking, toasting her birthday with bloody marys. On Sunday, she was with friends at Foxwoods to see the Hollywood Vampires, and then on Monday she celebrated a gorgeous spring day with a drive along the coast and lobster rolls.
THAT, in a big long-weekend nutshell was our Mary Anne.
MA was my best friend, my secret keeper, my sister, my person…and the most fabulous yin to my yang.
Me ever so cautious and worried, the introvert full of specific plans to her come what may, live life to its fullest, hell yeah we’re doing that extrovert with an absolute love of life.
She was inspiring.
So much so that in recent years, I’ve taken to asking myself WWMAD? As in: What Would Mary Anne Do?
What would Mary Anne do? Mary Anne would say Yes.
YES to the next concert, the Red Sox or Patriots game, the fireworks, the dive bar, the music festival, the movie night, the road trip, the matching tattoos, and one more Hallmark Christmas movie.
YES to the beach. Always.
YES to anything in black, the sales rack, the sparkly earrings, the extra glass of wine. And YES to Dunkin Donuts. Of course.
YES to dancing … anywhere, drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe, going to the symphony, enjoying a home cooked meal, taking a spinning class … or yoga, cheering on her boyfriend’s band.
YES to shopping at the outlets, seeing an art exhibit, wandering a museum, getting tickets to a play, or a long full day at the Big E.
Jump off a 3-foot ledge into the ocean while a crowd cheers? Yes. Help you check off something on your bucket list? Yes.
YES to coming to your BBQ, your daughter’s dance recital, your campaign event, your nephew’s first birthday, your sons’ soccer game, your girls’ weekend, your wedding, your holiday dinner. Probably all on the same day … usually with a gift … always with that big, sweet, joyful smile.
A smile that said YES, I’ll move in with you. YES I’ll meet you at the winery. YES I’ll be at the party. YES let’s go shopping.
YES, we have to do this again soon.
Not everyone can do that — be so wide open to life and love and friends and experiences. No holds barred. Fearless. Hell yeah, we’re doing that!
And so, in honor of the blessing that was our wonderful, bold and brazen, brave and beautiful Mary Anne Siok, I challenge you — all of you — to say YES a lot more often.
And I thought we could practice right now…ready?
In memory of Mary Anne Siok, May 31, 2018. Click here to read her full obituary.
Though I have come to quickly despise the seduction of Facebook’s force-fed Reels feature, if I play it right, I get a delicious sequence of recipes and food things in my (literal) feed.
One such reel was a recipe by social media favorite and recipe developer Justine Doiron — aka @Justine_Snacks — called Crispy Lime Cabbage & Turmeric White Bean Mash.
The video, not the recipe name, is what caught my eye. Because cabbage? Kinda ew…or so I usually think. Until I watched the recipe and considered the flavors.
Then a quick Instacart shop and I was ready to test it out. Lots of ingredients, lots of steps…but the result? OMG, sooooo good!
So good, I ate is all week. You might too. Check it out!
Taking center stage in the felt and fiber exhibit was a shrouded human-size figure, death wrapped in yellow — the color of butter and bees — but called Chrysalis to imply resilience
resilience in the face of everything
OMG, the everything we face sometimes feels like death — its foul smell invading even the simple pleasures
it’s hard to ignore the crises in woods that are dying it’s hard to ignore the crises in the violence of a Sunday drive it’s hard to ignore the crises when even my favorite characters are battling hate and headlines
every thing of the injustice
I long for the days when my favorite characters could just fall off ferry boats and have sex in on-call rooms.
When their soundtrack was mine on a Sunday drive that didn’t require white knuckles and a prayer.
When the woods were lush and fertile, the promise of the butterfly born from the Chrysalis, color and light and HOPE.
It makes you want to lie down, wrap covers around your tired body, and sleep a deep and dreamless sleep,
because these days even the dreams are pockmarked and ravaged
and you wake gasping for breath, the bile of it all burning your throat,
a burn that nothing will assuage…except the last Jiffy corn muffin dripping with butter and drizzled with honey,
a final gift from the bees, who swoop and swarm en masse, before leaving for good.
If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif
Preparing herself for the inevitable, the sandpiper — usually found along the coast makes her home now by a small pond in the woods three miles from shore. It’s quiet here, most days, except when the wind carries clamor from the south, and she’s been welcomed graciously by the turtles and frogs, the heron and wood ducks. They’ve come here, too, this protected space with ample shade and shallows to share with anyone who needs asylum from the rising conflict. You might say we are refugees, displaced from the familiar by forces not of our making finding exile here, making life despite the storm, saying grace for the bounty
The moon all but a ghost this morning faces the sun with eyes tilted and welcomes the day. From the trail below I watch them greet each other in the sky and at once I am celestial, nothing but atoms and poetry in a cosmic breeze, whirling in space, witness to miracles.
This morning at 4, a tiny gray mouse looked up at me, somewhat frightened, and said “I-I-I think I took a wrong turn. I-I-I was supposed to go left but I went right and wha-wha-what is that orange creature scowling at me through the window?” “Shhhhh. It’s OK,” I whispered. “Please don’t be scared. Just turn around slowly and go back the way you came. That’s always best when you get a bit lost. Look for something familiar and hold on a while, take a nap, then try again when you’re back to feeling brave. It always works for me.”
Today’s warm breeze is not the first sign, of course, it started weeks ago when the clocks moved forward and the sun shifted, when I folded my favorite sweater for the last time and the wide windows welcomed the cacophony of spring sounds — motorbikes, lawnmowers, chainsaws, barking dogs, the hammering, hammering, hammering — soon the shimmery waves of heat will rise from the pavement, the mass throngs of people will congest on sidewalks, beaches, street corners, town parks, the hallowed trail I call Heaven, and the endless days will unfold hour by hot, humid, buggy hour while I stock up on iced things, hoard stacks of library books, move to the cooler part of the house, give praise to the window machine beneath which I’ll spend the months dreaming of those long and silent winter days, their fertile ground for contemplation and undisturbed peace.
I may as well be invisible in this library of ghosts only the manager sees me tells me I am early motions to the chairs by sunlit windows where flowers bloom my shadow cast long against the dusty floor it, the only other notice of my presence… conversations collide around me old friends embrace offer bouquets of smiles brush past without excuse so I step back, meditate on book spines pretend they are company enough until the show begins and I listen to stories and laughter my chair rocking slow — I bet they think its haunted.
I sit on a Noble bench in the woods it’s barely 7 — the shy ones’ hour we come early to this place the humming bird at the apple bough the rabbit among her clover the timid turtle poking its head from the pond to see who and what is about so I respond with a whisper We’re safe to float in Eden a little longer as two herons fly overhead and it’s so quiet we hear wings beat, heartbeats even this morning before the fray.
It’s been a long time, love — my inspiration — since we’ve enjoyed such leisure, these moments before the sun and you, noting birdsong, the call of waves, our morning folklore or you, calling me to the yard, to feel its damp grass underfoot, stare into the night’s stars while you run your finger along the moon, those cloud myths etched in dreams transcribed and holy, somehow, these long, sweet days of April, and I am more grateful than you can know.
I have lived in this house they called New Eden for 25 years on a quarter acre lot around the corner from Long Island Sound.
There’s a claggy pond out back, and a nature preserve just a stone’s throw away.
It’s Heaven, really, never mind the state road on the other side of the eight foot privet that keeps the peace.
The day I moved in, two bright green parakeets landed on a branch of the great old Maple in the back corner of the yard.
They seemed as auspicious as the lilac, beloved since first sight, blooming at the edge of the driveway.
Every year, I pray the lilac will bloom again, that the Maple will survive another storm to keep company with her resident squirrels and raccoons. And me.
She and I wept together when the grand Oak came down, and we still laugh at dusk when the rabbits come out to play.
Seasons come and go here at a predictable pace,
the sublime hush of winter steps aside for spring birds who sing in sparks of poetry usually lost in the busy buzz of summer
before the breeze of autumn shivers the knotweed and startles the monarchs who make no tracks, but the field mice do
tiny footprints criss-cross with bird notes and the straight firm steps of the coyote
turtles come and go, too, snakes, hawks, owls, and once a frog so big I thought he might be a prince!
this sweet spot has revealed its secrets for ages — snowdrops bloom where never planted, a robin’s nest appears beside a window, and salamanders tuck in by the bird feeder
just last week I discovered a small sliver of ocean just to the south, in between some saplings, hidden from view until now
No wonder the ospreys fly so low, and waves sometimes wake me from dreams.
There’s an archnemesis on the playground and devils at the pulpit, people are afraid of words words! ideas, thoughts, stories
the holy rage through traffic to get to their entertainment complex
pass by the street beggar praying he’s not gay or trans or black or blue or whatever their god teaches them to hate this week, this century
and history repeats
I had an archnemesis once she threw rocks at my face and called me a whore but names will never hurt me
it’s the rage I worry about the everything-that’s-old-is-new-again-rage fueled by the mouths of demons and poor pages of books tossed in the street, there next to the beggar who picks one up and reads
“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”
In my next life, I want to live here in this crazy loud city where everything feels iconic and ordinary all at once, where pavement steps aside for flowers and small spots of cool grass, and trees carry the sound of musicians and pigeons, where the ordinary walk side-by-side with the out-of-this-world and I, anonymous, don’t care about reflections in buildings made of glass, where everyone arrives at the park by noon and it doesn’t matter who or what you are, because you leave soon, for a few bucks careen through the underworld, arrive somewhere else entirely, like magic, knowing where you were, and every place else, goes on without you.
I promised you a diamond he says of our courtship, but never a ring — and he laughs with that smile, like I’m in on the joke. We make a contract — verbal, never signed, then I invite them in and tell them my stories.
I’m charming and kind, in just the right ways, endearing and fun everything they want, until it’s time for me to leave. That’s the hardest part, as they forget the agreement, so I do it slow to start.
I pack up my interesting bits, then take back my affection, I pull at the threads of what’s left until there’s nothing to hold onto. That’s when they leave — THEY end it and the contracts breaks by default.
He sees me crying then and shapeshifts to the one I remember, pulls me to his chest and holds on as tight as that first embrace years ago, the perfect fit, the smell of old books and cedar, then a devilish laugh and I wake to the sound of tears pouring down, midnight thunder and wicked, wicked lightning.
This is to be expected. I don’t come with a pedigree or a PH.D. I don’t wear laurels or titles well I haven’t kissed ass (or any of you), and I know, I know I should have bowed low and deep before the queen but I’ve never been one to follow the rules or jump through hoops of anyone’s making but my own.
You’ve got a bit of hate there stuck between your teeth
cover up that weak mind, it’s embarrassing
not cool dude more wrong side of history than team spirit or patriotism, even
maybe patriarchy
kinda red car nuclear missile escalation compensation
if you ask me
which you didn’t
and wouldn’t
because you know already everything I didn’t say
and you’re gonna wear it like a badge of honor proud and defiant full of fear and lockstep down a path towards an epitaph that dogma won’t ever resolve
and the people went thirsty and the animals died and the viruses spread and the innocent suffered and the kids were slaughtered and the fires raged and the books were burned and the idols were worshipped and the empires crumbled
and the people argued and the people took sides and the people hated and the people judged and the people fought and the people cried
My path along the ridge this morning gives the impression of sky walking the fog heavy in branches that burst in cumulous tufts of the palest spring green like clouds, to be expected here meeting eye level with birds who suggest I should be singing
Val-deri, val-dera Val-deri, val-dera Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
It was New Hampshire for God’s sake and I hoped it would imprint us how could it not? those ridiculous mountains their shock of snow and sharp air so fresh your lungs get greedy — But you were miles away ghosts on your lead line climbing summits of regret a backpack full of memories bitter and sweet stuck to the roof of your mouth — which explains the dead silence yours and mine as we watched the snow fall covering over our footprints on the path outside.
The half-life of Uranium is either 4.5 billion years, 700 million years, or 250 thousand years depending on how you examine its primordial isotopes, that which remains of its interstellar medium its stardust — like us, formed inside of stars when stars collide so what then is the half-life of love? its biochemical chain of events a Big Bang complex interplay of pheromones, dopamine, and oxytocin elemental does it decay more or less quickly than that which lights up the sky? does it leave traces? its luminescence still seen sometimes its volatility, too rapid and unpredictable change just another reaction, expected meltdown, its core damage
I love these places of waiting this quite axis of the world a point around which things spin he on his way there and she on hers there they, together, embrace and part or run, race, return and I, here, silent silent and of no consequence to their what-comes-next nor to my own, really I am here-and-now, a great pause a smudge of time a nothingness into which pours everything peace, poetry, god
before the painted parking lines and engineered bridges before the pervasive blazes that welcomed every one before the storm that created a war zone there was a trail in the woods a simple trail that wound from an unpaved lot up a long, slow incline and down, slowly, into Eden or Shangri-La or Paradise or whatever you call the place that brings you back to yourself without contortions without effort except for moving and breathing and letting go and paying attention to the song of white pines, and the path of the pileated, to the fetal curl of spring ferns and the sweet Spring Beauty so small but significant you get down on your knees like a prayer whisper your apologies for the trespass weep at the loss of her secret spot, there at the base the Oak now fallen, our heavy footfall her sure demise
He makes headlines now and then one book and then another false tears and faulty claims a prophet for profit. How do you know for sure, a friend asked. It’s posture, I explained. No, not how he sits — though his aggressive leaning and pointing are tells, for sure it’s how he postures his point twists his words like he twists his face pushes his prophecies and perversions like he pushes the energy in a room hand gestures feign truth like magicians or priests at the pulpit, predator preaching his Rules, his black and white dogma with a heavy fist to the table so it must be true, and you must believe God Damn It.
From the fascia that constricts — wants my body fetal some days — I cannot extract the kamikaze pilot, tweeze him from his destructive path save those who drowned or the family of survivors who struggle, still, some days, to keep their heads above water.
I cannot extract the boy in the photo unawares and smiling while sea battles raged and mothers wept eyes blind to the the hard fist of the drunk who pounded on doors and broke happy spirits.
Some things float, you see, carry on despite the damage.
A most graceful dense mounding shrub with broadly spreading branches that create a weeping effect with the deep green, finely textured foliage.
What would the old tree say of her current predicament — wedged between the state road and the utility substation, her circadian rhythm forever disrupted by the flashing traffic light, her water source, runoff from the nearby shopping plaza
More than a century ago, she lived here on farmland acres, and they named her Weeping despite her attributes — a vernal fountain of perpetual joy — she, a specimen, divine fated to become more beautiful a champion of time
But the hour is cruel marches against the Sargent’s desire changes our perception of beauty sephos, Sepphōra, Sephora®
Her graceful curves and fountain sprays of green have grayed, and she is deaf to the song of her breeze
She is not long for this world — and probably for the best — we insist ourselves so loudly now even the bees are grieving.
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