Welcome to the WordCrafter Refracted Reflections Book Blog Tour, where we will have reviews and guest posts from a few of the awesome authors who contributed to this unique and unsual fantasy & science fiction anthology. This is the second of three WordCrafter anthologies to include stories handpicked by me, mostly from the submissions which caught my eye when on the editorial team for Guilded Glass. This anthology was by invitation only and the stories contained within are exceptional. Today is the last day it will be available for pre-order, because the release is tomorrow!
Refracted Reflections: Twisted Tales of Duality & Deception
Reflections and Refractions…
One reveals truths, while the other bends light into varying shapes of deception.
Does a small camp mirror reveal hope… or death?
Is the warrior in the mirror a monster… or a protector?
Does a glimpse in the mirror reveal a young woman’s true self… or what someone else has shaped her into?
Does the mysterious portal to the future reflect what could be… or what must be left behind?
Are the dancers reflected in the water’s depth things of beauty… or evil?
This unique and imaginative collection of nine mind tantalizing fantasy and science fiction stories will appeal to readers who enjoy thought provoking tales with hidden meanings resting deep below the surface. These stories will keep you pondering long into the night.
If you liked Gilded Glass or Once Upon an Ever After, you’ll love Refracted Reflections.
We have a great tour planned for this week and I hope you will stick with us and follow the tour. We have a great giveaway, where you could get a free digital copy of the anthology, just by leaving comments. Today is a double tour stop day, with this post and a review by DL Mullan on Undawnted, so be sure to click the link below and check out her review. You may leave comments for her review here, as well.
(Note: Links in the schedule below will not work until the post goes live.)
Tour Schedule
Refracted Reflections – September 19 – 23
Monday – September 19 – Introductory post on Writing to be Read & Review on Undawnted
Tuesday – September 20 – Guest Post & Review – Ligia de Wit on Carla Loves to Read
Wednesday – September 21 – Guest Post – Elisabeth Caldwell on Writing to be Read
Thursday – September 22 – Guest Post – Valerie B. Williams on Roberta Writes
Friday – September 23 – Review & Guest Post – Roberta Eaton Cheadle on Zigler’s News
For a chance to win a free digital copy of Refracted Reflections, just leave a comment to show you were here. Follow the tour and comment at each stop for more chances to win. Three copies will be given away in a random drawing.
Each of the stories included in Refracted Reflections feature a mirror or reflection in some significant way. The reflections given are sometimes surprising, often fooling those who gaze upon them, because things aren’t often as they seem.
I have included two of my own stories, “The Devil Made Her Do It”, which is a reprinted story about a woman blinded by love and deceived by a man who just might be the devil, which first appeared in Relationship Add Vice, from Zombie Pirates Publishing; and an original fairy tale, The Not So Perfect Prince, about a prince who is so full of himself that he can’t see who he truly is.
But mine are only two among nine outstanding stories by eight talented authors, and we’ll be introducing five of the contributing authors on this tour: Valerie B. Williams, Roberta Eaton Cheadle, Ligia de Wit, Elisabeth Caldwell, and of course me, Kaye Lynne Booth.
Follow the tour to learn more about Refracted Reflections: Twisted Tales of Duality & Deceptions, and for more chances to win a digital copy of your very own. Don’t forget to stop by Undawnted for DL Mullan’s review today, and you’ll find us over at Carla Loves to Read with a guest post from contributing author, Ligia de Wit and a review by Carla Johnson-Hicks.
About Kaye Lynne Booth
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
I value originality. It requires a level of commitment and a sense of one’s self as being unique and talented. At some base level NO ONE is truly original but in the world of human expression, of artistic and technical feats that are part of our culture, there are individuals who stand out as being special. They have hewn materials out of the core of their selves, and the results are striking and unprecedented. It is the unprecedented nature of the creations that forms the matrix of originality.
The Primacy Of Memory
There is a moment in life as one grows older that the memory recreates all the life’s experiences as if for the first time. Re-living my life from the sheltered glade of memory has been a rich meditation. What did I do and why did I do it? Observing behavior that was inexplicable at the time but contemplation later reveals why something happened. At no time have I lost a firm conviction that higher powers are always at play in the Self and that these powers design with great wisdom all that shall befall the sole witness to this life and that is one’s Self. The events in a life are far from pointless: they are signboards on a journey of profound discovery. Having a deep faith in that idea has enabled me to survive otherwise insane events that boiled up from within myself. When the psyche accepts full responsibility for the unfolding life it gains a power that shows itself in acts of compassion. Some of the work of compassion is restraint from judging people and events without consulting the context in which their behavior forms. Sometimes it is needful to discern and this discernment is a form of placing a context over the specific acts and ideas that carry the consequences of thinking. ALL thinking is consequential. Thinking is the most important thing one does and the skill brought to thinking shows development of the soul’s concept of itself. If you are going to think, it is wise to learn HOW to think and WHAT to think about.
Watching The Domino
We ordered a pizza for delivery. In twenty years, we’ve never ordered food to be delivered so this was a special birthday gift. What set this apart was the experience of tracking the delivery driver’s trajectory as he wound his way through the complicated streets of our neighborhood. We sat watching the phone in fascination as the vehicle’s icon reflected the driver’s turns and twists as he negotiated the neighborhood looking for the right place. This went on for ten minutes and we became like cheerleaders hoping for our team to score. We were thrilled when he came onto our driveway and broke out in cheers as this ordinary experience of modern tech showed us that it worked and that it was, indeed, completely ridiculous.
Robert had taken LSD three hours ago and now he was trapped in the bathroom. It was a small bathroom in a small beach house. The place looked out over the Pacific Ocean and could only be reached by climbing a hundred wooden steps or riding a cable-driven cargo trolley. The place belonged to Linda, Robert’s acquaintance, a woman who made tie dye and batik clothing.
Robert wasn’t a casual taker of psychedelic drugs, but he was with good people: yoga practitioners, Tai Chi enthusiasts. He felt safe. His friend Pam was at the party, and his room mate Steve.
It was an intimate gathering, about a dozen people agreeing to share an experience in a beautiful setting. Linda dispensed a tab of LSD to each arrival. Now it was getting towards evening and the group had settled into serious tripping. There was a bit of talk. Some giggles from a couple on the sofa. It was quiet.
The sound of the surf tumbled in the background.
Robert was hallucinating but when nature called she could not be denied. He viewed the act of taking a shit as a comedic episode, a meeting of the sacred and profane. He made a little mantra from it, mentally chanting the words to a samba beat: how could a thing so huge still have to take a poo. He danced a little samba step as he crossed the room to the bathroom. How could a thing so huge… still have to take a poo. The Huge was himself, in his expanded universe, the hyper-galactic infinite divine. And yet, way way down there in the microcosmic world, his body still had to eliminate the dross from his intestine. It all came down to the most common things.
The bathroom was a cubby hole. It had a toilet, a small window and a wooden stand that held an incense burner and a couple of magazines. An old tarnished mirror hung on the wall opposite the throne.
Before the toilet episode began, Robert had been watching Linda move about, with her bun of blonde hair trailing cute little wisps. She wore a sleeveless batik dress of luminous green and a necklace of silver and turquoise. Robert liked the shape of her. She was well toned, contained in a nice little parcel of soft firmness. Her breasts lifted the neckline of the dress and the effect was mesmerizing. Linda was single, Linda was beautiful, and Linda had given him a smile as she dispensed the tablet of LSD. Robert interpreted this smile as an invitation. He thought Linda was conveying a message. “Ask me to make love,” he thought she was beaming at him, “ask me.”
The problem…. that is, the problem before getting trapped in the bathroom, was working up the nerve to ask Linda to make love. Other couples were pairing up and vanishing into various nooks on the property, riding the sound of the mighty surf into psychedelic splendor.
The party’s social math, the indices of affinity seemed to put Robert and Linda together. Robert had never done this kind of thing before. He had never approached a woman to ask if she wanted to “go somewhere quiet”. The complexities of an LSD high built a scaffold atop Robert’s shyness. How do I do that? he wondered, how do I come right out and ask a woman to make love? He wondered and feared, and wondered and feared, and tried to engage Linda in pleasant conversation but an acid conversation can be very weird. There are multiple interpretations layered on every word and phrase.
If he said, “Hi,” well, okay, there you go. Was he greeting her or was he making an insipid observation on his state of psychic elevation?
“You’re beautiful” he said, at one point. “You look stunning in that dress.” That was not ambiguous. Linda merely said “Thank You” and the conversation jumped off a cliff and went splat. If only she would make things easier for him! Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she didn’t send the signal he thought she sent. But her fingers had lingered on his hand as she offered him the white tablet. She had given him a deep soulful look.
Then his stomach sent him another kind of signal. The bathroom was directly off the one large room of the house. The room was virtually the entire living space. There was a counter, a kitchenette, and a short fight of stairs that led to a loft bedroom. A thin plywood door separated the bathroom from everything else.
Robert’s poo was a loose disgusting mess and he was about to turn the flush handle when the thought occurred to him: what if the sound of the toilet flushing sends someone into a bad trip? Or worse, what if it sends everyone into a bad trip?
The house was high on the bluff and the toilet flushed with a distinct sound as the water forcefully drained. Sploosh! it said, splodda splodda splodda splodda, and all the pipes in the house rumbled and whooshed for what seemed hours.
Everyone is so high! Robert thought. If I suddenly introduce these sounds with all their associations, they will drown out the Ravi Shankar on the record player and they will enter people’s LSD-saturated inner landscapes as a downward spiral that will carry them into the underworld! People on acid are so suggestible! I’ll ruin the party!
He couldn’t look at the poo. He had closed the lid and was frantically using a National Geographic to fan the fumes outside. He was on the verge of puking, which would add another dimension to his problem. There was a box of incense and a pack of matches, which he now used as he attempted to work his way out of this mess.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Another part of Robert’s psyche was laughing at him, saying, oh this is pathetic, you’re wasting your whole fucking trip on idiotic paranoia. Robert fought back. It’s unselfish paranoia! he replied. I just don’t want to send anyone down the toilet. Acid’s unpredictable. It can be a catalyst for deeply buried psychic material. I can’t take that chance!
It seemed that hours passed. Robert fanned fumes out the window, lit incense, lit matches until the pack was gone. There finally came a breaking point.
Fuck this, Robert decided. It’s inevitable. I have to flush the toilet. He reached out and touched the cold metal handle with its contoured shape. He caressed it for a moment. Then, in an act of passionate courage, he pressed down and released the water.
Sploosh! Oh god it was deafening! Splodda splodda splodda, down down and down into the depths of the underworld. The pipes went Whhhsssssh like Boeing 707’s lining up on a runway before takeoff. There were at least eight people just a few feet away from this sonic pandemonium. They might tear him to pieces when he emerged. He, personally, had bummed their trip! They might ostracize him forever, banish him from other weekend retreats at other beautiful houses full of beautiful women.
His heart was beating frantically. Okay, he decided, let’s face the consequences of my irresistible evacuation. Robert turned the knob and exited the bathroom, closing the door with the barest of clicks.
It was almost dark. Sitar music came gently through the speakers, playing an evening raga. Candles were lit and most of the group sat rocking to and fro, lying on beanbag chairs or prone on yoga mats. Nothing had happened as a result of Robert’s flush. Nothing at all.
A candle had been set in the middle of the room. Linda was alone on a cushion, sitting in yoga posture, meditating on the flickering light. Her eyes were open and appeared radiant and enormous. She glanced at Robert without reproach. The whole episode had passed without a ripple, it was a product of Robert’s self-conscious agony.
What the hell, he thought, just do it. He found a cushion and sat next to Linda, replicating her full lotus, displaying his credentials as a yogi. His feet rested easily on his thighs and his spine straightened as he gathered the nerve to approach this gorgeous woman.
Linda’s shoulder looked velvety in the candle light. Robert gently put his fingers on her body, just the four tips of the fingers of his right hand, touching her oh so lightly. He watched Linda’s response. She didn’t flinch or move away from him. Nor did she move towards him. She was set in her own center. That’s okay, Robert thought. That’s okay. Again, his heart beat fast, his stomach turned over with anxiety. I’ve got to do this, he urged himself. I’ve got to break through my fear. You get nothing when you don’t ask. So just ask while you have the chance.
“Linda,” he said, “You’re beautiful. Your skin is amazing.”
She smiled a subtle little smile but remained facing forward. Robert was about to commit himself but he realized that he hadn’t prepared his words. How should he put it? “Linda, will you make love with me?” Or more commanding. “Linda, make love with me.” That might seem too aggressive. How about “I would love to make love to you, Linda.” Oh, that was clumsy. Love to make love. Oh fuck it. He leaned close to her and quietly spoke into her ear. “Linda, love make me, oh, uh, you know, I really dig you, um, um, this is hard. What I mean to say is I want you to make love to you. I mean me.. I want.to make love to you. There! Whew!”
Linda’s head turned with agonizing slowness. The huge shining eyes rotated until they met Robert’s eyes. She was a sacred dakini, a deva, a goddess!
“Robert,” she said, “you’re sweet, but you’re just not my type.”
Robert squeezed the pillow, almost pulling it out from under himself. “Okay, okay, that’s cool, I understand that, it’s just that, well, okay… thanks.”
He stood up holding the pillow in front of his body, then dropped it back to the floor and walked onto the deck. He could see the last of the sun’s rays as they vanished into the starry night. His vulnerable heart opened and wept. After a time, as he watched the sky, he realized that at last he was free from all the ridiculous bullshit he had just put himself through. He didn’t have to hook up with Linda. He didn’t have to hook up with anyone.
The Milky Way was alive, writhing with creative force as gods and Buddhas contemplated the infinite void. The sky was the most beautiful thing Robert had ever seen.
Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.
Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, Confessions Of An Honest Man won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Arthur’s “Mind Fields” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
The first time I grasped that I was deeply crazy was when I began to eat huge amounts of food. I indulged especially in sweets. If I were to make a pie chart of my life (and refrain from eating it), I’m sure it would show huge chunks of time in the bulimia/anorexia’ zone. The worst of my food disorders followed me through adolescence; years seventeen through twenty two. I was a “student” out in the world, trying to maneuver by being on college campuses.
I had a sneaky way of being anorexic. I deluded myself into thinking that this was a spiritual discipline. Macrobiotics. It would get me high, exalt me spiritually. By eating small portions of brown rice and onions, chickpeas in barley, I was the paragon of yogic discipline. This was who I wanted myself to be. I got skinny. I weighed 125. On top of this I was taking LSD, DMT and smoking weed. I was deep into my purpose, my destiny of becoming a musician of salvation and a figure of reverence. I hope you can hear the self mockery in my tone.
Then I came to a breaking point. After a year of eating a strict Macrobiotic diet I had such a craving for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I bought the ingredients and took them back to my hidey hole. “What are you doing?” I asked myself. “This is a self betrayal, this is the opposite of Macrobiotic discipline. You asshole, what a failure you are!” So I ate it. Then I ate something else sweet and gooey. Then I couldn’t stop eating every kind of junk food on the planet. I had been like a coiled spring ready to bounce. Boing!
I was so ashamed of myself. This was 1967, before eating disorders had been invented. I was a pioneer. My bulimia wasn’t the pukey kind. It was the Exercise Freakishly type of bulimia, the one where on alternate days I would purge with sweat and effort, then follow with a day of relentless eating: an entire apple pie, backed up by a half gallon of ice cream. After that came the cookies, and so forth. One day exercising. One day binge eating. Back and forth, one followed the other, for more than a year. It was insane and I knew it. I got so unhealthy that I could pull out hands full of my own hair! I looked for help. I went to the college shrink. I was desperate. He said, “I don’t know what’s happening to you and I can’t help you.”
Ironically, I lost weight. My waist was a twenty nine or thirty. I was not a registered student any more, I had dropped out. I was living in a vacant student’s quarter, avoiding the security guys and bedding down with a pad and sleeping bag. I got money from my dad. I worked as a stable boy at a local horse ranch. I had my drums stashed at the university’s music building in a practice room. I practiced there for hours every day, getting high by all means and experimenting with the limits of my technique. That was the point of not attending classes. I let my dad pay for semesters at Western Reserve and then I would slip down to Antioch College in Yellow Springs from Cleveland and hang out with people who talked to trees. I practiced with relentless vigor, working through the famous “Stick Control” book and listening to Coltrane records.
Wait a minute. I’m conflating two different periods of time. It doesn’t matter. That’s the way memory works. It’s all narrative but sometimes the pages are out of order. I find myself more objective about my life as I get older. My life has been so bizarre that it qualifies as the stuff of novels. That poor guy (that is, myself) didn’t know what lay ahead. He thought that if he took enough acid, did yoga and meditation, ate rice and played the drums then he would launch himself into nirvana. It’s not a bad plan, really. The problem was that I was fractured psychologically, harboring behaviors that would shame me again and again. They would almost kill me.
These were adolescent ordeals, but they were precursors to my future. In 1967 my eighteen year old self dreamed of cosmic unity while the biggest thing that lay ahead of me was heroin addiction. I interrogated my psyche by reading Jung and Freud. After that came years of therapy. I was determined to save myself.
It took a long time, but none of it can be repudiated. I am lucky to be alive and well.
I’m still slightly food disordered. I control, compensate, manage. Mostly I exercise and pray.
Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.
Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, “Confessions Of An Honest Man” won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s “Mind Fields” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.
2020 has been an difficult year for all of us as Covid 19 turned lives upside-down. Here at Writing to be Read and WordCrafter, we saw some great accomplishments, in spite of the fact that my genre theme schedule fell apart half-way through the year on the blog and content was a little more sporadic. I had to figure out how to adjust to my own “new normal”, which life changes brought my way, but they also led me to remember who I am. Now, I’ve analyzed and regrouped, and I’m ready to head into the new year with new ideas and projects.
WordCrafter’s 2020 Virtual Writing Conference
One of the biggest things for WordCrafter was the 2020 Stay in Place Virtual Writing Conference back in April. We ended up with twenty-two distinguished authors, offering live stream and video lectures, and interactive workshops and discussion panels, with free content for the Facebook event and a Zoom platform for the interactive stuff. We had a good turn-out with only a few glitches, and we’re preparing to do it again in 2021.
WordCrafter Press releases in 2020:
Ask the Authors
In April, the Ask the Authorswriting anthology was released after two years of compilation. This book is an ultimate writer’s reference with tips and advice from twenty-two authors, and it started right here, from a 2018 blog series of the same name. In November, the print edition of this book, (and all WordCrafter Press books), became available, as well.
Two of my own books were also released. Last Call and Other Short Fiction is a collection of my short stories, and my paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, is now available in print on Amazon, but the digital edition can be purchased through other retailers. In the coming year, I will have a story in the Where Spirits Linger anthology, and I’m working on a new book, The Outlaw and the Rockstar which I hope will be ready to release before the end of 2021.
Raise the Tide
WordCrafter Press‘ first stand alone author’s book was released in December, Raise the Tide, a devotional book by James Richards. We also look forward in anticipation to adding the January release of a massive poetry collection by Arthur Rosch, Feral Tenderness, to this list.
Feral Tenderness
Writing to be Read 2020:
We had some great guests on Writing to be Read. On “Chatting with the Pros”, my author guests featured Diana Raab, Amy Cecil, Cherokee Parks, L. Deni Colter, and Kevin J. Anderson. I’m hoping to transform this blog series into a podcast, which can be accessed through the blog, in the coming year, and I hope you all will join me there. Other authors interviewed in 2020 included Mark & Kym Todd, Jade C. Jamison, and Alan Dean Foster. The most viewed interview was with erotic romance author Nicky F. Grant. Interviews fell by the wayside along with the genre themes, but I’m planning to bring back author interviews for 2021, and I’m working on a new blog segment, “The Authors’ Covid Coffee Clache”, which will address issues of the pandemic specific to authors.
I was also honored to be a judge for the Writers of America’s Spur Awards and I reviewed my top six picks, and the winner of the western romance category, The Yeggman’s Apprentice, by C.K. Crigger. These were the best of the best, and I was honored to be given the opportunity to read and review them.
WordCrafter Book Blog Tours
Also, in 2021 Writing to be Read will be a host for the WordCrafter Book Blog Tours, so we’ll be keeping you up to date on several new releases as they come out. Robbie Cheadle will bring us a new blog series on nursery rhymes and fairytales, “Dark Origins”, and I plan to bring in a new series, “Writer at Work”, which will talk about different issues that writers face. Subscribe to this blog with one of the buttons in the upper right-hand corner to be sure not to miss this great new content or the tried and true content of continuing series on Writing to be Read in the coming year.
Like this post? Let me know in the comments. You can be sure not to miss any of Writing to be Read’s great content by subscribe to e-mail or following on WordPress. If you found this content helpful or entertaining, please share.
Yesterday in Colorado an unseasonably cold winter storm hit us. We went from temperatures in the seventies and eighties to near zero temperatures almost overnight, and at 8,500 feet, we got at least eighteen inches of snow to go with it. Not that I didn’t know it was coming. I pay close attention to the weather in these parts, but knowing a storm is coming and the reality of its impact are two different things. Oh, I made all of my winter preparations, making sure all the yard and garden tools were picked up and put away, digging up my Gladiola corms and storing them for winter, taking down all the hummingbird feeders and cleaning them for storage, too.
I told myself that the approaching storm was a good thing. We need the moisture and the snowfall will surely help get all the wildfires that have been raging across the state under control. I envisioned all the writing I would be able to get done now that there was no more yard work to becon to me and no sun to entice me outdoors. I saw myself staring out the window at a pristine wonderland while soaking up the warmth of the pot belly parlor stove, tapping away at the keys on my laptop as the word count on the book I recently started soared.
But this morning, reality hit when I found I couldn’t step off the porch without shoveling a path through a foot and a half of snow. So, I pulled out my winter coat, gloves and snowboots and bundled up and out I went, shoveling paths to all areas to which I need access.
The Juncos were struggling, perching in the rafters of my front porch to get out of the snow, and I swear, I could see them shiver. Although I’m sure birds have some kind of inner sense that tell them when bad weather is headed their way, they could not have predicted these cold temperatures at the end of October, and they seemed to be at a loss as to what to do. So, a path to my shed to get bird seed was in order, and then one was needed so I could get to the bird feeder to fill it, so my little feathered friends wouldn’t have to tough the freezing tempertures on empty stomachs.
I had to be able to get to the coal bin, so I could keep heat in the house, so a path was needed from the house to there, and another to the generator to keep the electricity on. My neighbor offered to plow my driveway, which is a great help, but I needed a path to the gates and an area cleared so I could open them so he could get his ATV in.
Now, here it is, afternoon and I stopped for lunch, but that is a lot of digging. I still have to dig a vehicle out, so I can at least get out in case of emergency and clear off my back deck. I’m working on this blog post, which should have been posted this morning, and I haven’t typed one word on the new book. The yard work may be over, but shoveling has taken its place. Winter wonderland my eye!
Writing to be Read 
Mind Fields – The Ideas of A Morning
Posted: January 28, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion, Reflections, Uncategorized | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Life Reflections, Mind Fields, Writing to be Read | 1 CommentI value originality. It requires a level of commitment and a sense of one’s self as being unique and talented. At some base level NO ONE is truly original but in the world of human expression, of artistic and technical feats that are part of our culture, there are individuals who stand out as being special. They have hewn materials out of the core of their selves, and the results are striking and unprecedented. It is the unprecedented nature of the creations that forms the matrix of originality.
The Primacy Of Memory
There is a moment in life as one grows older that the memory recreates all the life’s experiences as if for the first time. Re-living my life from the sheltered glade of memory has been a rich meditation. What did I do and why did I do it? Observing behavior that was inexplicable at the time but contemplation later reveals why something happened. At no time have I lost a firm conviction that higher powers are always at play in the Self and that these powers design with great wisdom all that shall befall the sole witness to this life and that is one’s Self. The events in a life are far from pointless: they are signboards on a journey of profound discovery. Having a deep faith in that idea has enabled me to survive otherwise insane events that boiled up from within myself. When the psyche accepts full responsibility for the unfolding life it gains a power that shows itself in acts of compassion. Some of the work of compassion is restraint from judging people and events without consulting the context in which their behavior forms. Sometimes it is needful to discern and this discernment is a form of placing a context over the specific acts and ideas that carry the consequences of thinking. ALL thinking is consequential. Thinking is the most important thing one does and the skill brought to thinking shows development of the soul’s concept of itself. If you are going to think, it is wise to learn HOW to think and WHAT to think about.
Watching The Domino
We ordered a pizza for delivery. In twenty years, we’ve never ordered food to be delivered so this was a special birthday gift. What set this apart was the experience of tracking the delivery driver’s trajectory as he wound his way through the complicated streets of our neighborhood. We sat watching the phone in fascination as the vehicle’s icon reflected the driver’s turns and twists as he negotiated the neighborhood looking for the right place. This went on for ten minutes and we became like cheerleaders hoping for our team to score. We were thrilled when he came onto our driveway and broke out in cheers as this ordinary experience of modern tech showed us that it worked and that it was, indeed, completely ridiculous.
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