Nags Head: Mile Post 9

Beach Front Cottage....wide wraparound porch...windows over-looking the dunes...wide, wide beach now swept clean by the tide of all the debris of shells, rocks, shards of sea glass ground smooth in the tumbling of the tide.

ECU plays Marshall tonight in Greenville. This is the 40th anniversary of the plane crash that occurred as the Marshall team was returning home from the ECU game. There will be a moment of silence...a tiny dot of silence to commemorate the silenced voices and interrupted lives of those on the plane. Do their lives move forward with Christ in heaven? Were they ready?

I heard a plane crash survivor talking about the responses of his fellow passengers on the plane. Some of them went to their deaths praying to God, entrusting their lives to Him; others cursed at Him.

If death should take me unaware,

I would my mouth be filled--

Not with curses--but with prayer.

And since our time of death's unknown.....?

Today we are heading off to the Wright memorial, perhaps to Jockey's Ridge. A sunrise and a sunset trip to the top of Jockey's Ridge was always a part of our family trips to Nags Head. We began to come when the water was yucky and smelled like sulphur, when all the cottages were gray weathered boards, unairconditioned with windows open on the sides to the air. The dunes now covered with golden rod and thorny bushes were blanketed with waving sea oats and underneath the waving fronds were the burrs, pesky little golden orbs that clung to our clothes and made us yelp and hop as we ran barefoot through them. It was all a part of the experience--along with the fried spots....I only remember the fish, the dunes, the sea, the sun rising or falling from the heights of the ridge. Where are the memories of the family, the uncles, the aunts, the grandparents who were setting tables, cooking the food, putting us to bed? It was a wild free, unfettered life lived totally outside of the lives of the adults. Where are the memories of the ocean swims? Gone. Gone. I know who was there because of the pictures in the albums.

Sophie the lab we are watching for my brother and sister-in-law while they are at the ECU homecoming is pacing through the house looking for them. Every now and then she comes to put her cold nose under my hand on the keyboard looking for a pat. She's a sweet dog.

Time to go.....

Blessings,

Day by day, day by day, day by day

Lord, three things I pray,

To see Thee more clearly,

To love Christ more dearly,

To follow Him more nearly,

Day by day by day.... Amen

Potpourri

This morning my mind is adrip with poetry. A friend we met during a recent cruise to Alaska has sent me a book of his poems. 

The door is opened. Awakened is the muse who sleeps within. Like the umbrella tree that sheds leaves of Shakespearean quotes in Van Nice's 2005 whimsical installation, The Library at Wadi Ben Dagh, she strews abroad bits and pieces, resonant fragments of verse, that drift in and out of my thoughts--a veritable literary flotsam and jetsam of iambic debris in the wide ocean of memory. The poets' words printed indelibly on my life...

What do I write? I work at the novels, gnawing on the prose, struggling with the characters, unruly creatures who take off on their own tangents creating havoc out of my organized plots, but the poetry comes unbidden on the wings of a chance thought to flow through my fingers onto the page...whole, complete, enclosed each in its own rhythm...there is no rhyme nor reason for the sudden seed of thought that springs up in full blossom upon the page...I have tried to write them...intentionally settling myself to topic in front of empty page...but nothing...they must be caught like butterflies on blooms as I walk through the days...I think a real poet would not write in this haphazard fashion but would settle to the job until it's done and the words march obediently across the page...keeping time to the poet's tune....

Blessings....

Teach me, O God, Thy holy way,

And give me an obedient mind;

That in Thy service I may find

My soul's delight from day to day

William Tidd Matson

Musing on a Saturday Morning

I wonder...

How many people were awakened by the 3.6 Mag. earthquake that occurred in Northern Virginia at 5 am on July 15? 

If there is anyone else who automatically inserts earlier for the ago when she reads a sentence like this one from The Winds of Dune--"Almost a half a century ago, the elder Kynes had begun his work using materials gleaned from abandoned Imperial research stations."(Herbert and Anderson, p.201)

How many people are hooked on McLeod's Daughters or Doc Martin and regularly sign on to Netflix to watch them?

"In Thy Presence is fulness of Joy." (Psalms 16:11)

Blessings

Self-Editing for the Novice Self-Editor

Weather report:

84 degrees and light showers-- outside

Beastly cold-- inside (which does not refer to the temperature or to my state of mind, but to nose and throat and head)

Equipment: tissues, cough drops, coffee, Holly Lisle's book on How to Revise Your book in Seven Days, Browne & King's book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Strunk & White's The Element of Style, a spiral notebook, pens, and red,orange, and green posta-notes, and the hard-copy of my WIP, I am ready to begin.

Since there are very few quotation marks in the WIP, I am going to clear up the punctuation as I go. This is a departure from Lisle's process, but along with Doubt (that I have the wits to accomplish this task) and Dread (it seems a monumental task), I have had quotation marks dancing in my head. So, I will type them once and for all into the dialogue and hope that they will settle down and be quiet so I can get on to the more serious stuff --- identifying irrelevant rabbit trails, giving bodies and settings and actions to talking heads, and weeding out passive verbs which I love when God uses them as in: "But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift." (Eph 4:7 NKJ), but which tend to slow down the action and muddle the narrative when I use them.

Procrastination also slows down the action. A friend's daughter is turning 40. What a MILESTONE that is...er ....was....I remember I was determined to stay awake till the bitter end of my 39th year so I did and watched the clock tick off the last minutes. Right at the stroke of 12, some friends called from Illinois to sing "Happy Birthday to me". That call was a gift. I hung up and went right to sleep.

Before I get right down to SELF-EDITING, casting off procrastination and opening up the WIP, I am going to send ODE to FORTY a poem I wrote for a friend of mine to my friend for her daughter. I have posted it here at the bottom.

Till tomorrow..."Things are not to be done by the effort of the moment, but by the preparation of past moments." (Richard Cecil, Joy and Strength, p.123)

Blessings, Ann :o )

PS If you like this poem and think reading it would be an encouragement to anyone else who is in the "pit of despond" because of turning 40, you are welcome to copy it. EnJOY.

PS Jr. I have really got to get to work.

PS III Today, starting Chap 1: p.1

Ode to A 40 Year Old

Remember Forty is the beginning, not the end,

So welcome to the club, my friend.

When we wallowed in our youth,

Often unruly, but never uncouth,

Forty loomed as a decrepit age,

A barely, believable, ancient stage.

But, oh, how the years have changed our view!

How young I seem, and how young, you!

These years have added maturity,

And I can say, with much assure-ity,

We're freer now than in our teens

And all those awkward ages in-between.

We've learned through conflict, love, and tears

To identify and conquer some of our fears.

We're much better able when the subject comes up

To answer, “What will you be when you grow up?”

This is not to say the years haven't take their toll,

But you and I know, we'll never be old

As long as our wrinkles and achilles' heels

Don't get in the way of the youth we feel.

As we keep our minds open to each new view,

How young I'll seem, and how young, you!

(Ann Westerman)

In the Shadow of His Wings

Dread and Doubt came to sit on my bedposts last night. Actually, I don't have bedposts, and there is no where for Dread and Doubt to sit except in my head and the pit of my stomach sooooo I got up and fixed myself a cup of green tea... 

And journaled my way back to peace and then to sleep 'til morning. David provides a good guide in the Psalms for this solitary middle of the night walk. Many of the Psalms go from railing to praise, and I find that my journal entries tend to follow the same pattern as the writing helps to turn my eyes, and my focus, from the problem to God who promises to work all things together for good for those who love Him. He has a plan for our good and not for evil.

He promises to keep us in the palm of his hand and in the shadow of His wing...

Prayer takes us home: "Thank you, Lord, that no matter how inhospitable the place I endeavor to pray; prayer itself fashions it into your home and mine" Karen Barber (Daily Guideposts 4/29/98)