After Paris – Writing 101 Day 10

It’s a cold Sunday afternoon, two days after Paris. Two days after tragedy and the news is still reporting on everything

“the attack is an act of war by isis terrorist army” says French President Francoise Hollande….     “cities around the world are lit up with French flag colors” says another news station.  “the death toll is now at 132” says an online news service.

We are tuned in and plugged in to any new detail. Twitter, Facebook, CNN, Foxnews….. Check the updates. Stare in horror. Try not to cry.

And yet life seems so ordinary as pans of jars are on the stove chattering away awaiting being canned with something. It’s fall, it’s Sunday, it’s a normal day. But it’s not a normal day. It’s normal for us so far from tragedy. It’s normal for this time of year. But everything has changed.

Had you asked me to sit quietly and observe for twenty minutes two days ago, I might have come up with something terribly different. And I can’t think of anything else that would affect me like coming home on Friday afternoon from an ordinary day out, shopping for pants, to seeing Paris. Paris in chaos…

Paris, my dream place. My one destination that I have dreamed about visiting since I was about 12. I dream in French sometimes.  And it is the one place I have hoped to visit.

Life is kind of ordinary right now as a Fast and Furious movie is on tv, my sister is banging boards and pans as she works on the dishes, and the kitchen is cluttered and full of vegetables and pans for the canning.  It’s noisy. It’s quiet. It’s just home.

Nothing terribly exciting ever happens around here, not that I mind it much. I like being home. I like the quiet chaos of a home. I mean, when I say it’s quiet, I mean compared to cars and trucks and the endless beeping of the backhoes as they put in new water pipes for the town, Monday through Friday, 7am to 4pm. Right now it is relatively quiet. Though I could probably do without the noise of the movie on. You don’t realize how loud a film is until you are in the other room trying to concentrated.

Home is safe. So for those where home is safe…. What is Paris now to those that call it home? Is it safe? Is it even home? How does one go on in life when a tragedy has hit very close to home. For some, right next door. For the man that helped people off the roof of the Bataclan  as terrorists shot people below. So close to home how do you walk outside and even breathe? How does one go on?

I have never been in the middle of a tragedy, nor do I ever want to be. So I can’t understand. I see it from a distance.  Roseberg, Oregon and the shooting there a month ago was as close to a  tragedy as I can think I have ever been. Everything else is far away. It makes you feel a little distant, literally and figuratively , when you think about it.

What is it like to have it a part of your life? I hope I never find out as I live an ordinary life and pray for those who have lost loved ones…….. And I pray for those in Paris……

Kate

Down Time, Not Writing Time – Writing 101 Day 9

When I’m not writing. Well, that’s pretty much just my life.  I get up, I take care of the house, I fix meals, I garden/farm… I exist.  Life is rarely me going from one point of writing to the next. It’s more of a “Oh, yay, I have five moments of time in between what I need to do and what I have to do.”  Right now, as I type, the timer just went off reminding me to swish the hand laundry. The delicates that have been piling up for way too long and all us girls in the house are completely out of favorites. It’s a desperate time. It really is quite traumatic when we run out of that favorite blue thing…

There, I have eight more minutes to type before the timer goes off again. My life has down time, for sure, but it’s sporadic. Right now, because it’s cold and wintery, I have evenings as my down time. I don’t take the daytime as I am usually rushing to get everything done before 4pm when I have to get outside to cover rows and rows of plants growing still, and finish up taking care of the chickens for the evening. Basically I have an hour and a half of time shot every evening…. Pardon me, there goes another timer for the washer…… And today it will be even worse as it’s supposed to be even colder, so everything needs a bit more cover tonight.

But when I do have down time and I’m not writing, I do have some other things I like to do. Usually they relate to writing, or reading. I read whenever I can. Right now I have about five books started and very little hopes on finishing any of them. I have a hard time finishing books now because 1. I write more than anything so books get put to the wayside; and 2. I don’t like half the books I start. The one exception this year was the Vampire Academy series and The Lady In Gold. Other than that, I can’t think of a single other thing I finished from the library.  I did have my book review books.

I visit the library whenever I can, but I haven’t taken much time to sit down and just read there lately. I get caught up visiting the ladies and I don’t sit down and read. Granted, it was summer mostly so I couldn’t take the time earlier this year. But I love to browse the shelves of the little library. Shelves I know so well. I could close my eyes and you could put me on any isle and I could tell you what was in front of me. Most likely. I might be a little off since they changed the shelves a little and moved everything over one shelf.

I enjoy puttering outside in the sun, but usually there is something that needs to be done so puttering is more of an actual job that needs doing. Yesterday it was spreading mulch and burning.  But when I can, I have my camera with me and I am busy snapping away for anything from the business, to my cards, to just fun. I enjoy getting up close and personal with things.

Life gets in the way of a lot of writing. The fact that I’m taking time out of my day right now to write is crazy. I should be vacuuming something or picking up something else. There is enough clutter right now to make a OCD person go completely insane.

But not writing gives me a chance to mull over ideas. Which I’ve said in the past. And usually after I do a bunch of writing challenges, I need a break. I should have probably taken a break after October and writing every day, but I liked the idea of a poetry challenge. And I liked keeping up the pace, even if I don’t post every day. If I just sit down and work on a sonnet, it’s still writing. So every day I’m trying to do that. I love it. And while sometimes I get a little burned out, it doesn’t happen enough to give up writing something every day.

Kate