AnnaCecile

Quiet. I have the voices in my head again, chirping like birds.

You think that I am someone who has it together, who dances across the stage of daily life with grace. Instead I tiptoe on elephantine feet. You think that my platter is silver and that gifts are bestowed from impeccably gracious hands. Instead, my platter is a collar made of rope and the only hands that I see are those that wish to grab me. You believe that my sunshine is cloudless and that what furrows my brow must only be thought. Instead, I live in rain and wind and fury. I have harpies circling for clouds and plant crops between my eyes.

Quiet. I am listening. What is it that you seek, my sailor of wind-tossed quests? You give me responsibilities, all wrapped up with titles, ties, and obligations. You give me shoulds and musts and needs. I gather them up and pull them inside. I will be your Mrs., I will be the mother to your children, I will be the scholar, I will be the worker, I will reap all that you sow in me. Your quest will be completed. You have succeeded in your duties and may take this burning spark back to your beginning.

Quiet.

Can you hear the cracking?

Let's start again. In the spring, the flowers will bloom. In the spring, the birds will sing. In the spring, I will succeed. And having made success, I will retreat back again and marshal my forces. You may burden me but I will not sink. You may doom me, but I will float. You may not know me, but I will thrive. And I will be legend. And I will be secret.

It's been a while.  

I am back in school, full time, four courses this semester.  Anatomy and Physiology, Cultural Anthropology, Statistics, and Honors' Critical Thinking and Writing.  I am planning on finishing an Associate degree in Liberal Studies, an Associate degree in Business Administration, a Women's Studies Minor and either going for my Nursing degree or a Medical Lab Technician Associate degree with a fast track to a BA in Biology.  In addition, I am not working at the hospital a minimum of twenty hours per week.  It's all part of tying to make a better life for my family.  Let's not forget the three other jobs as well, the winter accounting, the summer campground managing, the publishing, and then, of course, my photography.  Oh wait, that makes four additional jobs, and I'm forgetting the crafty art type business that I'm trying to foster.  

So, the crux of the matter is, I want to be back here.  Not for comments and favorites, but just to feel like I'm alive again.  To engage in the act of creating something, even if it merely is re-editing old work, and to have it be out there is some manner.  I want to be again, to be something other than the ordinary person I am in daily life, to be able to call myself an artist again, to have some secret place in my being.  

So please, if you can, foster this with me.  I need it right now.  Not tomorrow, but now.

To start again, but this time, to be more real.

Hmmm....

There's a suspicious absence of work lately.

Hmmm....

There's a suspicious absence of work lately.