How Far Are You Willing To Go?

You know what you want but how far are you willing to go to get it?

While in Mesa our lives brushed briefly with an artist. Painting a mural on a building in Mesa.  The mural was a mirage designed to look like a melting building - melting in the Arizona heat.  It took six months to complete it and he and his girlfriend lived in a, not very large trailer, in the parking lot until it was done.  A glance at the worn, sun-faded trailer sitting on the blacktop made me think of one thing, suffering for one's art. 



Don't know if I'm willing to go there but how far are most of us willing to go for whatever our dream might be.  Are we just paying lip service to a dream or are we out there hauling ass trying to make it happen.  I read a blog today that said the only one we can control is ourselves and that's true. 

In the meantime watch out for the brambles and thorns in life - I heard some of them can make you veer just a tad.

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

I'm So Alone...We All Are

Travel takes us out of our norm and into the norm of other people and places.  Usually, as tourists, we're looking through the telescope of distance and can only assume what another person's reality might be.  But some days we make contact.

Today, was one of those days.  While feeling our way around our new stomping grounds, we headed into Mesa.  And it was there where our lives knocked up against the life of an older woman on the precipice of change.  She'd just lost her husband and in the throes of fresh grief she was uprooting herself and selling her house and belongings.

The story came out in a few questions that were innocent enough - strangers getting to know each other.  But soon it was clear that we were entering shaky ground.  But grief is a strange beast.  Some of us curl up and shutdown and others of us just want to talk.  We listened as she spoke of a man we would never meet and recounted stories that began with we when it was clear there was now, only an I. 

Reality.  It was in the tears that were so close to the surface and that sad but resigned half-smile on her face.  It was as if the smile was a shadow of a personality in happier times and the house, a reminder of what she no longer had.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

Sometimes storms come out of no where.

Her fear echoed in that sad statement.

Real life - maybe that's why many of us love romances where we're guaranteed the happy ending.  We all know love comes with strings, long sticky, often sorrowful ones.  If you love you may some day grieve.  

It's those feelings that slap us around and knock us to the ground that in the end, and this isn't like it sounds but - are a writer's feeding ground.  I know I was close to tears myself.  It felt like I had been widowed by the death of a man I had never met.  But it is those emotions that I'll remember a year, two or even ten from now.  And while I probably will never forget her, it won't be that woman or her circumstance I'll write about, but the emotion I briefly touched, somehow - somewhere it will be there.
 

Ryshia
www.ryshiakennie.com

Where in the world am I...?

Where in the world am I...

I know it's a strange question, I should know, shouldn't I?  It seems in the last week or so I've been many places.  It's been a rush of craft/flea market sales, contests and packing, not to mention travel.  And even though I know where I am, I'm feeling slightly disorientated.  I've been offline for awhile, skidding across country borders in search of some nicer weather.

Instead I've ran from warmish-cool fall temperatures and no snow in Canada only to discover the further south we went, the colder it got.  In fact, the snow that we hadn't seen up north was hundreds of miles south courtesy of Blizzard Brutus that was moving in across some of the northern states.  We drove a step ahead of that storm for most of the way, getting caught on icy highways only in New Mexico.  But that's another story and you'll have to bear with me as I backtrack here, there and everywhere.

Somewhere in New Mexico

But weather is what it is and often there's no second-guessing it, unless of course you own a pig spleen or two.  A strange prairies' lore for weather forecasting.

So we're here in Arizona, in one piece, the weather has turned again, for the better, and I'm just trying to catch my breath
It's strange typing this by a pool that I was recently swimming in with temperatures only now dipping enough for a light sweater.  I've been told that home was hit by the long arm of Eh Tu Brutus - read Brutus the Blizzard and a foot of snow landed as temperatures plummeted since we left.  I glance over at the pool and think I'll be glad to just make a straight trade, one pool for a snow shovel.  Somehow I think no one is buying.

Tonto National Forest

Last week internet was spotty because of travel and this week began with no internet.  Finally in a stationary place I set up shop and vacation or not, meant to spend a couple of hours a day at work.  And it was then that I learned how stealthy the internet is as it creeps in and sucks up time.  I won't say much about it as that subject has been written to death but if you want to try an experiment - turn off your internet.  It's amazing how often you just click here or there, checking the weather, the news, your mail.  Short blips of time that are almost automatic.  I didn't realize how many there were until I couldn't connect at all.  After I got over the panic of not connecting, I enjoyed long stretches just focused on one thing, my latest story.

So now that I've wrapped the story up and discovered my synopsis needs a bit of tweaking.  Yes, any story I've ever written makes it a few chapters in before veering ever so slightly from the synopsis. 

I may mull that over some day but in right now I have a new cover to look at.  It seems that although the world outside my window has changed, my laptop still reminds me that other worlds and promised vacations aside - right now there's still work to do.

Ryshia

If you're interested in a bargain read - The e-copy of Ring of Desire is on sale for 99 cents at Amazon.com.  And the e-book of From the Dust is on sale for $2.99.  Both are great deals that may not last much longer. 

Illusion of Calm (soon to be released) - the Borneo jungle trembles with life and shimmers with the threat of death as Garrett and her scientific team flee to safety dragging their headless guide behind them.  But in a land rife with predators can she trust the one man who claims to be their rescuer?