A Woman and a Man

She is a pretty woman…a woman with one of those faces that radiates youth and grace and serenity and one of those faces where you can already see the gentle contours of the lovely middle aged woman and the cute old lady that she is going to be in decades to come. She speaks softly and smiles shyly and she lets her fierce intelligence shine without having to make a lot of noise about it.

He is a boyish man…a man who lights up every room he was in and who holds fast to his inner child while embracing the responsibilities and hard-won wisdoms of adulthood with equal diligence. He is smart and funny and he has a way of putting everyone in his company at ease.

They flow together naturally…their differences binding them together as sweetly and as wonderfully as their similarities do…their life energies, complimentary and contradictory, combining to make a gentle kind of everyday magic.

They flow together gently, naturally, wondrously…the lovely wise woman and the handsome boyish man…their paths in life having wound together to create something new…and magical…and lasting as they continue on along the winding path that leads on to the golden horizons.

It is a very good thing.

- for J & J -

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More MKW Blogstuff: Neverending Rainbow

July

Peter was born on a sultry day in July. His mother, who had been told to expect a great deal of agony during the course of delivering her first child, was pleased when Peter made the transition from the comfortable shadows of her womb to the bittersweet light of the world outside with remarkable speed and ease. Peter remained the apple of his mother’s eye for all of the rest of her days.

Peter ran for the first time on a cloudy day in July. He had been walking for months but that was the first time that he the opportunity to really see what his chubby little legs could really do. Peter ran into his verdant backyard and kept running and laughing while his mother smiled and his father, the most impressive man Peter would ever know, looked up from his newspaper and his cigar and nodded appreciatively.

Peter had his first kiss on a sweetly magical night in July. He had pursued Rachel shyly for weeks never imagining that she knew he was even alive. Peter had always thought of Rachel as an angel incarnate and he hadn’t imagine that she would say yes when he finally screwed up the courage to ask her out to movies. But, much to his amazement and delight, say yes she did. When Rachel held hands with him as they walked home from the neighborhood theater Peter couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful…at least until they kissed, ever so shyly, with no witnesses save for the lazy golden moon in the sky and Rachel’s pesky little sister peeking through the curtains of her second story bedroom.

Peter got married on bright and breezy day in July. He and Sara had wanted to be married on their favorite cliff overlooking the bountiful Pacific and that is indeed where their friends and families gathered to witness their union. Sara was a vision in flowing white with a tiara of tiny flowers in her long black hair and Peter thought that there couldn’t be a luckier, happier man than him anywhere in the sweet blue world. Peter’s mother, smiled beatifically as the apple of her eye took a bride; Peter’s father, no less impressive for the years he had accumulated, nodded approvingly.

Peter’s daughter Kimberly Michelle was born on a rainy day in July. Kimberly Michelle had her mother’s eyes and his mother’s smile and, like he had done, she made her debut in the world with very little fuss. Kimberly Michelle staked out a large part of Peter’s heart from the instant that she placed in his arms and he couldn’t imagine helping to create anything more wondrous ever again. Kimberly Michelle would remain the apple of his eye for all the rest of his days.

Peter looked up at the golden moon for the last time on a soft but unremarkable night in July. His years had been long, his world had always been more happy than not, and he was not afraid of what was to come after. Sara was still the light of his life. Kimberly Michelle and her brother Christopher Jacob and their children still brought him boundless joy. Peter knew that he would be remembered when he was gone and that was good enough for him.

Peter died on a still morning in July. Sara found him in his favorite chair, his newspaper fallen to the floor, his cigar still burning in the ashtray on the end table. He had slipped from life with remarkable speed and grace, his mighty heart having beat its last while he was thinking about Sara. Peter was buried on a crystal clear day in July…his friends and families gathered together crying and laughing and hugging each other…and remembering. Peter was remembered and that was enough for everybody who loved him.

Friday the 13th (Waiting)

Friday the 13^th. Were I a superstitious person I would be worried. But I’m not. I have two black cats and my birthday falls on the 13^th day of March so I’m certainly not sweating things like superstition (knock and wood :-)

It’s summertime in America and the sea breezes are coming off the Pacific are trying to soothe my soul and I’m waiting. I am surrounded and kept safe in warm, golden circles of love and friendship and kinship with the universe but I’m still waiting.

It’s a time of reckoning in the world at large and I’m waiting. All about our bright blue globe, people are living, people are dying, people are being born into a world that shifts and roils and morphs…for the better and for the worse…with every passing instant and I’m still waiting.

Voices are being raised in song, blood is being spilled on the sands and on the streets of far too many nations, dreams are being given wing, and hope is thriving where it should have no foothold…and I’m waiting.

Friday the 13^th…just another day in tapestry of never-ending time…and I have no time for superstition. Because I’m waiting…I’m hoping and praying and swearing, working and dreaming and fighting…and waiting. I’m waiting on the world to change.

- thanks and apologies to JM -

Angels and Electricity

The club was packed and the electricity was palpable through the humid air. People were chattering amiably all around me but I paid it not the slightest bit of attention. I wasn’t there for them. I told myself that I wasn’t really sure why I was there at all but I knew before the thought was finished that that was a lie. I was there for her.

She and I had talked about “forever” like it was something that could really happen. And, for a brief season anyway, we lived that way too…two fools passionately in love and not giving a moment’s consideration to tomorrow.

“Forever” wasn’t quite as long as we supposed it was going to be. She left…or I left…or we left…I really can’t remember anymore.

And now I was here…the better angels of my nature compelling me against the nagging doubts of my more rational self…waiting with the amiably chattering crowd.

And then the lights went down and the crowd started buzzing excitedly and then she was there…in the spotlight, in the center of my known universe…guitar in hand and beatific smile on her breathtaking face. She started to play…that song she wrote for us one rainy Sunday afternoon as we lay in bed letting the day slide lazily by…and I felt like my heart was going to bust wide open right there and then.

I shrank into the shadows presuming that she would never see but it seemed like her gaze was fixed on my location in dark as she sang that song…the song she wrote for us back in the time before forever ended…and I sang along and all of the buzzing crowd faded from my perception one by one until there was just her and just me.

And when she was done, she put down her guitar and held out her hand in my direction. The crowd reappeared and then parted like graceful waves as I felt myself moving forward. I looked up at her and she floated down into my arms. We kissed…the way we used to kiss when forever was a real thing between us…and brushed tears from each other’s eyes. The crowd sighed and then cheered. I lifted her back up to the stage and she played and sang while I watched proudly, wistfully, hopefully.

Afterwards…with angels on our shoulders and electricity in our beings…we kissed and laughed, cried and apologized…we talked about “forever” like it was something that could really happen…two fools falling in love again and not giving a moment’s consideration to tomorrow.

- special thanks to Eddi -

Live Earth

F.Y.I.: I've written a piece on the Live Earth concerts over on my pop culture blog, Neverending Rainbow. If interested, please see here.

Happy Anniversary!

July 5, 2004: This blog debuts with absolutely no fanfare at all.

July 5, 2007: 380 posts later, this blog is still droning on.

Okay so maybe it’s not really all that interesting when all is said and done but let’s all give a jaunty “thumbs up” to the 3^rd anniversary of the blog version of Bread and Roses anyway (Yay!)

Thanks to all of those who have read B&R over the years…and special thanks to everyone who’ve taken the time to comment.

In the future we only promise more random acts of creative stuff and optimistically cynical nonsense and whatever else the heck happens here (it’s a mystery even to us sometimes…we just go with the flow and hope that it makes some kind of sense…)

Onward…

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MKW's Pop Culture Blogstuff: Neverending Rainbow

America

(This was, in the spirit of full disclosure, the Independence Day post I wrote last year...it said everything the best way I could think of so it makes its second annual appearance here.)

America doesn’t always live up to its promise. But its promise is still something worth striving for…worth dreaming of…worth fighting and dying for if need be. I am a cynical patriot but I am indeed a patriot and no one can gainsay that fact.

Blind, unthinking loyalty to anything or anyone is a fool’s path; knee-jerk disavowal of everything this country thinks it is...everything this country wants to be…is also a fool’s path. As with most things in this world, the truth lies somewhere in between strident, inflexible extremes…this is certainly true here in America…our generous, arrogant, naïve, myopic, our hard-hearted and inflexible, open-minded and open-hearted America… our complex , often marvelously and infuriatingly so, America.

Here in the 21^st Century, America is looking for its way…we’re fighting wars on distant soils and building walls on our borders…we’re reeling still from the knowledge that our shores are not immune from terror and chaos and sudden brutal deaths by the score; we are a nation united by history, hubris, and hope…we are a nation fractured along ever-fluid lines of politics, race, religion, pride, and culture.

We are America…for better and for worse…in times of peace and in times of war…in times of joy and pride and in times of sorrow and shame…in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) celebrates us and in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) reviles us.

We are America…the sons and daughters of many distant lands…the sons and daughters of adventurers and outcasts…the sons and daughters of slaves and freedmen…the sons and daughters of visionaries and madmen, of pirates and craftsmen, of warriors and peacemakers, of saints and scoundrels, of builders and destroyers, of emancipators and bigots, of heroes and villains…the sons and daughters of uncommon wizards and countless everyday folk…

We are America…we don’t always live up to our promise…maybe we never will completely…but it’s our birthday and attention must be paid just the same.

In the cool, soothing twilight,
In the soft, warm glow of the dawning sun,
America sings…
We sing of joy and hope, of pain and forgiveness,
We sing of sins gone but never forgotten,
Of sins to come, ready to be weathered and overcome.

We sing of bright souls lost and redemption found,
We sing of blood spilled and new life a-borning,
Of life renewing, ripe and fertile and eager to soar.

In the bittersweet shadow of our history,
In the burnished glow of complex days to come,
America sings…
We sing of our days of glory, our dreams of tomorrows,
We sing of peace from war, liberty from chaos,
Of passion never-ending, God’s grace blessing us all.

In the cool, soothing twilight…
In the shadow of our history… America sings:

“…God shine His grace on thee…”

Happy Birthday, y’all.

Namaste.