The Writing Life

The other side

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

“You were made to contribute,” I read and these words felt strong and true.  But what do I have to give?

Isn’t there’s more to my calling in life than providing a vacation for tourists?  Building my world so others can enjoy it for a brief stay away from their own reality.

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”  Seth Godin.

I believe this and have tried to live my life this way, yet I’ve been providing that escape for others.  And doing so is what has enabled me to live the life others dream of, but don’t dare to walk away from safe and sound and secure to create.

Have I no further talents, gifts, abilities, that can help in some way?

Seriously, life is hard sometimes.  Why can’t the answers just present themselves?

 

I’ve been told they are out there.  Be still, silent, and listen.  I don’t hear them yet.

I try to find a quiet time alone with her.  Hear her wisdom.  In wind and water and hard earth beneath my feet.  Above the river, across the river.

Here, our Rio Grande, her stories are not old, but fresh and new, like fairytales heard as a child.  Here, only miles from where she emerges from snowbank and spring to tint, trickle and trail the mountains and wind her way through my land, my world, my dreams.  Here, she is new water, strong and pure, not yet softened and slowed, diverted, polluted.

Step in, she calls me.

And I do.

I thought you would be harsh, blunt, cold, shocking.

Instead I find you have softened with age, sun, seasons.  You are summer waters.  Childlike.  Or very, very old and wise.  Hard to tell the difference in your silver face.

Rolling over rounded rocks, as have I.

Take me to the other side, I ask of you, in a current too strong to remain.

And now I walk above you. And am there.  On the other side.

Washed away by white noise of the river.

Stepping upon last year’s leaves still untrodden.

Extremely lucky, just a few initial thoughts

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

photo by Forrest

 

Now she rains

Cool and wet, green and lush

Wilds washed away

In a land of extremes

Balance is hard to find

With the pendulum swinging widely

Wildly

Only over time

Does balance blanket

A soothing shelter upon her soil

 

Flashes of the white of winter

The deepest blue sky

You ever were lost beneath

Drawing you in and back and beyond

Alone and silent and still

Arrested with an unforgiving chill

 

But now she finds me

Restricted to raingear, cabins, confines

And conversations where I remain so out of place

Who knows when I will no longer be able to remain reserved

Lashing with fire and fury and rage

Open the doors to the cage

And let the wild beast roam free again

 

Hot as a southern summer night

When here and now the monsoons douse passion

And barefeet and shorts and sunburn shoulders

Suffocate beneath down and wool and oilskin

 

My uncertainties are never doused

Fed well by water, sun and snow

The one element to flourish

In this land of harsh elements and extremes

 

 

I share our latest project, my latest dream, with a visitor from out of town, out of state, for I’m already far from town.

First I hear I’m crazy. Then I hear it must just be luck.  I’ve heard both before.  Funny how it always comes from those standing on safe ground.  Unable to see what it took to get here.

It starts with a dream of biting into the succulent peach and letting the sweet juice flow freely.  Then climbing the tree and stretching out, reaching to the edge of the limbs to pluck the ripest fruit.

Can you see more than the results? There I am, eating that ripe juicy peach.  I make it look good and easy.  Now.  But don’t you know?  It started with a dream.

There is a price to pay for dreaming.  One must step out on that limb to make dreams happen.  And it seems like out there where the wind whips and balance is a bit shaky, you might wonder at times if in fact you are more than a little crazy.  But that is where you’ll find the luck.  That is how you make dreams real.  They don’t seem to materialize on solid ground while sitting around.

Sure, one could choose to stay safe, secure, easy.  Remain on this side of the river because there is no road, no bridge.  Me, I’ll say, let’s build a road, a bridge, and cross the river, and go where the rest aren’t willing to go.  And there are my boys, hammers, shovels and saws in hand.  Because no one said we could not.

Luck is found out on the limbs.

That’s where you’ll find me, even if I fall from time to time.

 

Crossing waters

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

The river sounds like rain

And is louder than my thoughts

For but a moment I am lost

And realize there is no place I would rather be

A silver lined droplet of hope

For the seemingly eternal conflict between heart and soul

Spark and dousing

For here I have found such wilds

And such confines

And the balance makes me dizzy

I hide here like a child

Knees to chin

Sitting silent dog and me

On fragile moss covered rocks

Where so few feet have stepped

And hopefully never will

Across river

Among the tall trees

Spotted sun

And columbine

My little bit of solitude

A chance to get away from those who came to get away

I’m hoping there is more to me than past and present

Here and now

Stand and confront the rushing waters

Look into her depths like a crystal ball

Answers floating downstream in the bubbling white foam below

I walk the still precarious planks with the Rio singing underneath

She has no answers for me today

Rain

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Rain

Coming in waves

She returns

Angry as the ocean

And we welcome her wrath

Hard and pounding on the windows

 

Upon the rim of my hat as I untie the horses and set them free

Lasting for but a moment and passing on

Returning to calm and blue

Barely scratching the surface of soil

Parched lips and land

Thirsting for more

 

Last night she came

Joining us as we curled in bed

Welcomed as a lover

We opened our windows to her

Receiving

Let her song flow in

 

Soft and mild like breakers on a bay

Gently lapping at hungry soil

Waves as potent as the pulse of my husband’s blood

Warm against my bare breast

His quiet breath leveling out beside me

While her lullaby seduces me again and again

 

Singing the sweet symphony of promised showers

Heralding from the metal rooftops and the hard ground

Now hills and sky are a broken pattern of grey

Fading

Interspersed with indigo blue

Dominating

 

And still I swear the grass is a shade greener

The soil darker and richer

If only the facade

And for once

I care not scratch the surface

To find the underlying truth below

Voice of water

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Calm me with the

Voice of water

Delicate as evening rain

Subdued sky

Bathed in pink and grey

Subsiding winds

Down to a whisper

Douse the fires

That rage around me

Are aroused within me

As the wilds are washed away

In a commotion of smoke

My blood burns hot and troubled

Untamed

Unconvinced

Longing for the touch of water

Random thoughts from a hyperactive mind

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Continuation, alteration of the poem I started Monday:

A new ending, though it’s still not right.  Interesting to find something so simple so challenging.  Endings.  I gotta work on mine.

 

Back to the place

Where we were birthed

Or are we born again

Each day

 

Nope.  Not there yet.

Oh, forget it.  Onto a new start:

 

I wept tears like raindrops

Pregnant with promise

(now is this too cliché?)

Pouring upon the land

Dousing sparks of unrest

In changing times

A land hot and swollen as my crying eyes

Sadness for the loss of life upon the now red hills

My sisters standing before me

Stripped and whipped

Waves of grace flow and settle like smoke from approaching fires

Covering up

Consumed

 

Tears like raindrops

Falling through the cracks

Of a parched land

Raped and left to die

Our land of plenty

 

And now my mother weeps

Left lying in a heap before us

Blood we are unable to wash free from our hands

As needles from the dying trees fall

Lining the yellow brick road to where I wonder

 

I am suffocated, suppressed

By my own sadness

 I cry

Tears

Dancing

A song upon the metal roof

 

Friend and fellow writer, Tricia’s M. Cook, has just published a new post on her blog over at Mountain Gazette entitled, “Hunting Bears,” an essay for those who know and love these furry beasts. Me, I can be as wild as any wild beast and willing to hold my own and fight for it if need be.  You stay on your side of the fence, I’ll stay on mine.  I choose to live in bear country, and I stake a little claim there.  And yes, I will defend it, though I’m happy to let the bear do as she pleases on her side of the fence.  I believe Ursa, like my friend Coyote, can be trained.  See this line?  Don’t cross it.  And don’t, definitely don’t mess with my watermelons, as the old story goes.  Tricia has a slightly different way of seeing things.  Please read for yourselves.

Which reminds me.  The free range cows have come for the season.  How out of place can an animal be, seeing domestic cattle up above tree line.

The semi’s arrived, and how many hundred pair are left to learn the perils of the High Country.  Never a popular moment.  Nor will it be after they are gathered for the season, and we are left to find the strays.  Or carcasses.

Our Forest Service calls it multiple use.  A lovely term. I call it putting up with cow shit and closed gates for the profit of the one rich man who owns them.  Go figure.

But this much I’ve learned: you might wanna still be a cowboy, but I’d rather keep working at being a horse(wo)man.  Hooting, hollering and riding the road in a dusty wake behind a bunch of loud and stinky cows destined for slaughter isn’t really my thing.  Why do we still use that term, “cowboy,” for those of us that work horses, not cows?  Cowboy.  Consider it.  Part cow?  Ever look deep into a cow’s eyes?  I use the term “deep” loosely here, if you know what I mean. So, as you can figure, I’d rather stick with being a horseperson and leave the “cow” part for the dinner table.

 

And I end today’s post (are you still here with me?) with these simple words:

 

I care not to live someone else’s dream

And try to wake early enough to remember my own.

Untitled

/ Gin Getz / 5 Comments

 

 

(Forrest took these photos yesterday of Crow and me on our family Father’s Day adventure)

 

Wrapped

Entrapped

Bursting through the surface

And gasping for air

A dolphin above the waters

A woman beneath big sky

Ascending to higher ground

Scattered seeds settled

The wind pauses

Roots begin to grow

Twisted in the unseen vine

Back to ashes

Where we belong

A side note

/ Gin Getz / 5 Comments

A side note.

The horse story will resume another day.

For now, there is this.

I am a writer, though you may question that fact almost as much as I do.  For I’m taken to believe that a writer without a publisher is not really a writer at all.  Then what am I?  Trying.  Too hard at times.  Willing to change my voice for the approval of others.  Sing a song to please you, so to say.  So tired of rejection and getting nowhere and being asked to be patient and trust when truth is it is my self I do not trust, my talents, my abilities.

However hurt and down this gets me, quiet, soft spoken and demure I will not be. I get mad.  I suppose anger has its proper place.  If not suppressed, it can be a call to action.  Then how shall I act now? What shall I do?

In response to yet another rejection from a publication I’m not even impressed with, an editor who pointed me in the direction of work he personally liked and suggested I try to sound more like someone else, I wrote the following.

 

Tell me who I am

What to wear

The words to whisper in your ear

Does this dress become me

I ask

As I coyly dance before you

On my knees

Where you want me

Where I’ll never be

And then it is over

Last I looked you smugly smiled

And then you smiled no more

Now I hear only the evening wind

A familiar soothing sound

Wind chimes drowning out your banter

Cutting through your shallowness

Calling me closer to where I was

Before I ever tried

Awaiting rain

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

 

Awaiting rain

Elusive, tempting teasing taunting

Powerful, passionate and cruel

I would start with a single cloud

Full of hope and promise

Growing filling building like dreams

But instead there is smoke to the south

Wind from the west

Endless blue as far one can see to the north

A mountain blocking my view to the east

The sacred four directions

Not quite forsaking though perhaps a bit defiant

As the land flourishes in her new red hillsides

Like a new dress worn for the very first time

As the world turns and the springs dry

And the once boggy fields can be crossed on foot

And still I can imagine

The sound and smell and feel of hard cold high mountain rain

Saturating hot flesh and dry land

Lush fresh new youthful green of the Aspen’s full leaves

In contrast to callous ground

The first drops will land and leave tiny craters in the sand

Kick up perfect puffs of dust on the trail

That which once was a single track

And now we have a road

You will hear them coming from a quarter mile away

Prepare yourself

Step to the side

Hide like a doe in the trees

Far enough to be safe from dry earth kicked up in their wake

Or the splatter of mud that will be churned to paste after the rains

They will ride by

Pass you unawares

And feel they have conquered the mountain

With their little motor

And sense of security

Driving along side by side

Smiling

Like a bunch of ignorant beasts

Clearly where they don’t belong

As long as the gates to the zoo are left open.

Scattered

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Several starts over the past two days, leading to nothing complete.

I must pass on a proper post this morning.   All I have to share with you are words from a brief letter I wrote to a friend:

“Your words seem clear and wise, at odds with the scattered formation of my thoughts this morning. One after another popping into the forefront, each carrying little weight and depth.

“Writing is not going well today. I do believe in trying to force it, push it, make it happen. It’s not just creative whim, but discipline. A balance of the two. Any professional or ‘real’ writer will say so, though days like this tell me otherwise. I have a wonderful opportunity to try to make a go of writing. If only it would…. go.

“… I am not as in demand, and question my skills… and thus my worth. I was taught the value of self is related to the work we do. I’m ‘finding’ projects – getting the cabins spic and span for use and showings, training horses, etc. But do not feel it is enough.”

 

Last years seeds scattered in the wind

Awaiting the rains to settle me…