Spinning Plates

I have too many plates spinning. I have (in no particular order):

1. Writing projects and all that that entails

2. College course work

3. Ubuntu 12.04 hacking because it is so fun

4. Social obligations (I ignored this one for 15 years, and am not going to fail in my social life again)

Also, I updated my book entitled Confessions of a Spiritual Warrior to encompass more of my real-life-paranormal experiences. It’s scary laying my soul to bare for all to see, but if it helps someone, then it is worth it.

Five Major Health Changes

I forgot to say in the video that bipolar symptoms have been gone for weeks since the changes.

Book Progress Update and Take Breaks

Just a note on the progress of the book and then another passage from Madeleine L’Engle. The book, code-named Near Future, is coming along slowly but surely. I wrote an intimate scene, and Venus said it was the new 50 Shades of Gray. I don’t know about that, but it was a nice compliment. So, although I am a Christian, it will have adult situations (that is,  sex) and language in it. I feel it is important to be true to the artistic vision without artificial constraints.

The following is good advice (especially for me as I am a workaholic by nature).

Take Breaks

We need to do things which are going to reawaken our creativity. On our vacations I frequently spend a lot of time writing. But on a cruise, for example, I also spend time up on deck–particularly at night when all the lights are out except the one running light and I can lie on the upper deck and there’s nothing there but the stars. And on a freighter they show movies in the dining room, and I usually go to them whether they’re lousy or not, just to get a break, to get away from work.

–Madeleine L’Engle, Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life

Venus Demilo is Co-Writing

Venus Demilo is now co-writing with me the novel Near Future (working title). She especially brings a female perspective for the romance bits, is very talented, and has a bigger vocabulary than I do. 

From Chaos to Pattern

No poetry today, but something from Madeleine L’Engle which is a little like poetry.

It is not the subject that makes art religious or sacrilegious, but the impulse behind it. You sometimes get an artist who is spoken through despite his own professed atheism, because it’s the creative impulse to look at the seeming chaos of the universe and then to express this chaos in terms of pattern and of order and of love and—perhaps most important of all—of joy.

–Madeleine L’Engle, Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life

Poem: Echoes of Love

Echoes of Love, by Michael Jay Wilcox

My love for you burns brightly
It is focused on you and it is white hot like the sun through a magnifying glass
Affliction has purified my love as if by fire

My love in our youth is paltry compared to now
You are more beautiful now than in our youth
My love for you burns brightly

Circumstances and challenges beset us
But it is as nothing compared to the reward of your love
Affliction has purified my love as if by fire

Your love is sweet like honey, dripping from the comb
It is as ambrosia, the immortal food of the gods
My love for you burns brightly

Pure love heals our souls
Sacred love gives us hope
Affliction has purified my love as if by fire

Our love will overcome all obstacles
It is stronger than heaven or earth and will conquer all
My love for you burns brightly
Affliction has purified my love as if by fire

The Pearl of Great Price

Madeleine L’Engle’s reflections on a writing life are popular among visitors and follower’s alike. So without further ado:

The moment of inspiration does not come to someone who lolls around expecting the gift to be free. It is no giveaway. It is the pearl for which we have to pay a great price, the price of intense loneliness, the price of that vulnerability which often allows us to be hurt; the less readily understandable price of hurting those we love, even though in less radical ways than Gauguin’s. And I am not sure it’s a choice. If we’re given a gift—and the size of the gift, great or small, is irrelevant—then most of us must serve it, like it or not. I say most of us because I have seen people of great talent who have done nothing with it and who mutter about getting down to work “when there’s time.”

–Madeleine L’Engle, Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life