you being wonderful

Thought for the day

You are a wonderful person just as you are.
Maybe you think you're not perfect.
That's okay, because perfect is boring, and highly overrated.
You have talents - maybe you can sing, or make a mean grilled cheese.
The world needs someone with your exact skills.
You have gorgeous parts - perhaps your feet, your elbows, your gentle spirit.
God treasures every bit of you - even the bits you'd rather change.
You were precisely made to fill a unique niche.
If you could see the puzzle from above, you'd understand.
You only need to rest in being you.
You are a wonderful person just as you are.

happy Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, people! Today is a beautiful weather day in North Texas. Yeah, spring! Today, I'm thankful for...
The color purple.

 Paws.

 Wood.

Okay, so it's still National Poetry month. Here's a poem I wrote on May 2, 2009. That was pre-accident. It's weird, but now I seem to divide my life into before that accident and after the accident. Whenever I think of an event, the first thing I do is to calculate where the it fell in terms of the accident. I hate that. Though, actually, I think I'm doing pretty well with finally getting over the wretched thing. Maybe it will just always be some kind of reference point, as, of course, moving on is not the same as forgetting. Who knows?

Wishing

I wish I could make sunshine.

I wish I could eat unlimited amounts of cheese.
I wish wrinkles didn’t appear with age.
I wish I had time to read all the books I own.
I wish I were more confident.
I wish I had a good singing voice.
I wish I never had to clean bathrooms.
I wish adults played catch and hide-and-seek.
I wish I’d grown up with two parents.
I wish bubbles fell from the sky sometimes instead of rain.
I wish I could buy the world’s best purse.
I wish I never worried.
I wish good health was guaranteed.
I wish everyone always had good breath.
I wish sidewalks were springy.
I wish I could eat sandwiches for every meal.
I wish I had a gigantic backyard.
I wish I were a published author.
I wish I could see God.
                                 -Kimberly Laustsen

thieves & poets

Today, I'm thankful for...

The color orange.

White hydrangeas.

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (isn't there just something so adorable about him? I mean, look at that little hand.)

So, yesterday morning, something really random happened, which was both funny and annoying. It's about nine am, and I'm ironing in the upstairs family room, which looks out over the front yard. Jamie was laying in her usual spot in front of the window on a squirrel stakeout. (By the by, to entertain myself while ironing, I was watching the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene. Interesting, yet creepy.)
     Anyhow, Jamie starts barking wildly. I look out and see that some woman is leaving the house across the street, and the owners are yapping with her as she gets in her car. I shrug. Whatev. I tell Jamie to chill, which she does. They talk a while longer out there as I resume ironing.
     Next, Jamie starts going crazy, barking, growling. I look out to see that the woman, a sixty-ish plump gal, has pulled her car to the curb in front of our mailbox and is proceeding to rip part of our honeysuckle bush, planted beside the mailbox, up by the roots. Yep. She's standing there at ten am of a Sunday morning yanking with all of her might to swipe our plant. I was like, huh? I didn't care that much, as she only took a small part of the plant, but, I ask you - what the heck? If I hadn't still been in my PJ's, I'd have sprinted out the front door to ask her if she wanted me to fetch her a spade.
     So, apparently, if anyone wants any of our plants, they can just come right over and help themselves.

     For today's poem, my friend, Cornelia has agreed to let me post one if her poems. Her birthday is today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CORNELIA!!! Her poem is awesome, as is she. It is inspired by true events, as she is getting her first tattoo on May 1st. She had to make the appointment ages ago, as she's going with one of the top tat artists in Dallas. Maybe she'll let me post a pic afterwards.

Ink Me

Tattoo me

with doves and dragonflies and koi
and candied love words.
Scribe my calves with
vines, cherry blossoms, and galloping horses.
Paint indelible teardrops on my cheeks.
Drape powder-blue forget-me-nots and Psalm 37
across my shoulders
and Shakespearean verse down my vertebrae.

Etch credo on my body,

a shout to readers
that I have permission to be.

In black and gray and colored pigment

in lively flourishes and banners

announce to my mother, my siblings
that this body, this daughter, this sister, this person
is now free.
Tattoo a blazing phoenix across my back,
stinging, durable, sacramental art that roars ---
I rise from the ashy wreckage of our lives.

By Cornelia Blair

to Ronnie, with love

The past few months, I’ve been practicing patience. Not gracefully, but kicking and screaming. The thing about life is that we don’t always get to choose what happens. We might break fourteen bones and have to wait eons for them to heal. A friend that we’re really attached to might move to Austin. Our kids might find their dream jobs far away. We might leave a job we’ve loved and done for years. We might find out that a cousin, who was more like a brother, is dead. All of this could happen in one year, making life downright confusing.  Like a town where all of the streets get rearranged overnight. You want to instantly know how to find everything again, but you can’t till you’ve driven around awhile getting used to the new arrangement.

     Adjustment comes slowly. You have to wait. You have to practice patience till, bit-by-bit, a new normal is revealed. Though the process is slow, it’s not all bad. You get to learn the beauty of small favors. Like a cup of hot coffee in the morning, and the way the sky looks a different shade of beautiful each morning, and the smell of honeysuckle growing by the mailbox. When your bones finally heal, you get to realize how incredible it is to not be in pain. You learn to savor each moment with the people you love. These small things might seem trivial in the scheme of life, but they’re not. They ‘re the now, and what’s life but a series of nows all lined up? So I've been practicing my nows.

     This poem is about that struggle as it relates to grief. Last September, I found out my cousin, Ronnie was dead. He and I were the same age. Our moms were sisters, and, we all lived together, on and off for half of my childhood starting when we were three. Our siblings were all in school then, so Ronnie and I spent all day every day together playing in our Florida backyard. Mostly we caught chameleons, building elaborate houses for them from mayonnaise jars and cereal boxes, and we dug in the sand for treasure. We unearthed a huge concrete block, which we were convinced was a valuable ancient relic.

     From the start Ronnie was a somber kid, having already been abandoned for a year and then reclaimed by his mom. He and I mostly played silently, as we could communicate without using words. I loved him instantly, and always knew what a good and capable kid he was. As we grew, I could see that he didn’t get to have the kind of life he deserved. I hated that. Any fool could see how much potential he had. When we were thirteen, I silently vowed that my (future) kids would be raised with all of the love that Ronnie had deserved.  That unspoken promise was all I had to offer him, and it has stuck with me as a galvanizing force.

     The last time I saw him, we were nineteen. I lost track of him shortly after that. For years, I’ve tried to look him up, but lots of people share his name, and I didn’t know which state. I suspected he had died, but hoped he was okay. But then, last September, a relative found his death certificate on Ancestry. He’d died in 1993 at age 32.

     I’ve been struggling to make peace with the loss ever since. I’ve lost many relatives, close ones even, but never completely understood grief until now. Mostly, I miss what Ronnie could have been. I want to get to the acceptance stage, to make sense of his loss, but the process absolutely has its own agenda and cannot be hurried. It’s getting easier, but only step by step. Writing helps some. I couldn't find a good picture of him, so I am trying to draw one from memory. That's the picture here, though it's still in progress. Maybe when I finish the picture, I'll have finished the grief work. Today would have been Ronnie's fifty-first birthday.

Grief

Grief has to run its course.

Can’t be forced.
Can’t be pushed up, out, nor in.
Can’t be persuaded to end.

Grief must wind, meander

where it will,
visit old haunts, call up

images of times past; that
face you thought would last.

Grief must condense a life

into a few important scenes,
must dictate what gets
carried and what’s laid down.

If the lost was young,

and passed
too soon, too soon,
that pain will continue to
burn. Might get stuck
and stay a while,
as you keep askin’ God why
He took this child.

Grief is slow.

The answers are not clear.
Sometimes you
can only wait,
while holding the living near.

Grief makes me tired,

too tired to cry.
I hate that my cousin
had to die.

mostly pictures

Today, I mostly have pictures.

I was making some white sangria for a party tonight.

It was a robust, luminous jar of sunshine which had to be photograhed.

Also, I took some shots of my number one assistant, Jamie (my dog), at crossing guard duty this morning.










Last thing is a short poem.

Falling

To create,

we must

step off

the edge,

into air,

into lightness,

into slant

rhymes of

the heart.

        -Kimberly Laustsen

poem and how to make a T-shirt tote

Greetings, earthlings. Today, I've got two things. First, a poem, since it's still April, and National Poetry Month is in full swing. Here's that:

And Beyond

What is a poem

anyway, but a
soul on the shelf,
a philosophy tied
with a royal blue
velvet bow,
a bit of hip or
lip held out on
the palm, a
memory rescued,
a melody played
slowly dipping
and rising just
so, the sharing
of the solo sung
by your little
self - arms held
up pathetically
at end with an
uncertain grin
displayed beneath
two endlessly
searching eyes
leading in, under,
through and beyond.
     -Kimberly Laustsen

     Don't ask me what it means, exactly, but it was fun to write. I guess it's somewhat about that in-between place where poems live and grow. That place is a level below conciousness, like the state between asleep and awake.

      Thing two: I wanted to show you how to make a totally cool tote from an old long sleeved tshirt or henley. I got the idea when I saw this huge multicolored  men's long sleeved henley at Goodwill. The colors drew me in. I don't know anyone big enough to wear the thing, so I thought it would make a good grocery store tote, and bought it. After much pondering, I struck upon the fastest and easiest way to sew it. I got a couple of other long sleeved T's to practice on (this one here included), and to try variations. Here is how you make it:

First, using a rotary cutter (or scissors if you do not have one), cut the bottom of the shirt off right below the armpits.

Then cut off the arms at the longest point. You want to make a cut perpendicular to the seam going down the arm. Cut it straight across right below where it joined the shirt body.

Thirdly, using a tight zigzag, sew the shirt bottom closed along the bottom edge, right sides together. (If the shirt is wide, you may want to slice off a section, cutting inside of the seam, then zigzag down that edge to join that, right sides together.) You can leave it like that, but I prefer to then square off the corners so it hangs better. To do this, line up the bottom and side seam on a corner, right sides together.

 You'll have a triangle shape. Sew straight across the triangle bottom about 2 inches from the point at midpoint using the same zigzag. I sew another line inside of this one, then trim off the corner.

Fourth, take the sleeves and sew them together at the end closest to your hand, right sides together. Pull the inside one out to make a long tube. Now, lay the thing out and have the seam on top in the middle. slice off the ends to make them straight lines across, both sides even.   
Take this piece, put the non-seam side against the right side of the torso portion, with the arm sleeve seam in line with the torso side seam (if that makes any sense - email me if questions). Sew these with a zigzag. I usually sew once with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, then again right along the edge, but then I am neurotic and tend to over-do the seam thing. You can decide for yourself.

Fifth, here's the place where two roads diverge. You can stop here, esp if you have used a shirt with the bumpy weave common to henleys, or regular t-shirt fabric. If you have these and want to stop here, then tug on the exposed top edge of bag boy to make it roll so that it looks good and will not fray. If you have ribbed fabric, or just want a more blingy look, then proceed to the next step.

Sixth, take a bias cut strip of fabric (2 &1/2 inches wide), or t-shirt material. fold it together, right sides out. Sew the thing to the top edge of the bag all the way around ends together on the outside side of the bag (the one you see when you use it, not the seam side) joining the ends together when you make the whole circle. Use zigzag. Trim edges. Flip the folded edge up and over the seam and down the inside edge. Zigzag along the bottom of this on the inside. (Apparently, I am in love with zigzag.) You can stop here. Only the brave will go further. If you are one of the brave, then you may want to fashion some sort of clasp/closure device. You can sew a button, with a loop, sew two strips of the bias to the open sides for tying, even put a zipper. You can probably come up with even more interesting options than that. Have fun! Email me if you have any questions.

found it

It's a day late and a dollar short, but I finally found the Easter poem I wrote a coupl'a years ago. Here it is.

The Sorrow and the Glory

Silent as you watched them hate you.

Silent as you felt them pierce your flesh.
Silent as the father looked away.

Did you weep within your soul?

Did sorrow sear your heart?

If you had shed a tear, it could have drowned the world.

And with one word you could have vanquished all as they
     laughed,

     mocked,

     stripped,

     despised,

     killed you.

Your silence made them fools.

I, too, am a fool, yet mystified
that you could want to know me.
That silently you chose to bleed and die
and give your love away to fools like I.

Words fall away like shame

within the presence and the glory
of your name.