Finally. To H with it.
This is how it works: Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your journal,including an explanation what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.
sockkpuppet gave me "H"
1. Home. As in Holcombe, then Eau Claire, then Milwaukee, then Prairie du Chien, then Oshkosh. When you call three places home, home is always where you're going. It's never where you are.
2. Hope. When the woman opened the box, all manner of unspeakable evils flew out to inflict themselves upon the human race. Terrified, she slammed the lid of the box down, only to trap one thing inside. Pandora's gift to us: the ability to rise up every morning and get through every day.
3. Horses. The first thing I learned to draw with any skill was horses. I never rode a horse that I remember, though my mother claims they set me on the back of one once when I was very small and that I was terrified. I have no memory. The plodding ponies circling numbly at the fair don't count. My grandfather rounded up mustangs and broke them to saddle when he was young. He carried the mail through the Montana winters on horseback, wearing furry Buffalo chaps. There's a picture of me wearing the chaps before we sent them to a museum. I collected small model horses, 24 breeds, 25 horses. All of my purple ribbons at the fair were horse-related: the stable I built for my collection, the same horses decorated with school glue and sequins on a carousal flywheel, the backlit photo I took of my white-haired Fashion Star Filly in the dark, a flannel blanket making a textured moon-like surface. I can name all of the 25 horse in my stable from memory right now: Joker (Palomino). Desert Rose (Toric). Oberon (Irish Draft). Nightshade (Polish Draft). Black Beauty,Too (Shire). Baby Mine (Clydesdale). Mimic (Thoroughbred). Autumn Mist (Saddlebred). Will O' The Wisp (Morgan). Willowmere (Danish Warm Blood). Suncatcher (Tennessee Walker). Free Spirit (Arabian). Snowmane (Lipizzaner). Whisper Please (Andalusian). Morning Star (Knapstrup). Sunset (Mustang). Bombadil (Pinto). High Hopes (Appaloosa). Farfalla (Percheron). Shadowfax (Paso Fino). Tiger's Image (Turkoman). Dingo (Brumby). Black Moon (Karabair). Creek (scratched-up Karabair, my first). Arrogant Strider (Fresian). Most of the names came from books, some from race horses some distant West-Coast relatives owned. Girlish horse love is not about sex, about having something moving between your thighs. It's about freedom, about the ability to travel alone, about running down the wind and never looking back. It means escape.
4. Head. I pledge my head to clearer thinking. Nature's strongest shape: the dome, fusion of separate bones into one protective shell, grey matter coiled inside like some lusting mollusk reaching beyond itself. Here. In my head.
5. Heart. I pledge my heart to greater loyalty. In the center of your body, but slightly off-center, so more mass is on your left side. Fleshy pump, four rooms, no place to sleep and always flooding. In elementary school they taught you to put your two hands together in a fisted prayer to understand the approximate size and shape of your heart. I pledge allegiance. I don't know to what.
6. Hands. I pledge my hands to larger service. My hands are small, fingers short. I can't span an octave on a piano, four frets on the guitar is a stretch. Two palms, eight fingers, two thumbs, ten nails. One coffin. The palmreader will read your off-hand to tell you what your natural path should be, will read your dominant hand to tell you how you will manipulate your future. The life line on each is jagged, possibly broken. Both hands claim I am intelligent, one hand that I'm a lusty lover. My sinister hand isn't telling. In New Orleans, I almost had my knuckles read. That was before Katrina. My hands will never be big enough.
7. Health. I pledge my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country and my world. All of the systems of the body working in harmony with each other, blood and bone, breath and nerve. The body and all its tributaries.
8. Hard. Rocks, steel, bone, wood. Diamonds, needles, nails, teeth. Water. E-flat. Ice, granite, fist, heart.
9. Halloween. All hallows, all souls, floating and sticky-sweet. Masking to reveal the secret inside. Big brown bats winging though the night, able to wing their way even through the snow, but already dreaming of sleep in these woods. Black velvet and cats feet, bubbling iron and spiders spinning our life lines into sticky tapestries that will crumble with the morning dew.
10. Horror. Everything comes out of you. Not all of it can be put back.
sockkpuppet gave me "H"
1. Home. As in Holcombe, then Eau Claire, then Milwaukee, then Prairie du Chien, then Oshkosh. When you call three places home, home is always where you're going. It's never where you are.
2. Hope. When the woman opened the box, all manner of unspeakable evils flew out to inflict themselves upon the human race. Terrified, she slammed the lid of the box down, only to trap one thing inside. Pandora's gift to us: the ability to rise up every morning and get through every day.
3. Horses. The first thing I learned to draw with any skill was horses. I never rode a horse that I remember, though my mother claims they set me on the back of one once when I was very small and that I was terrified. I have no memory. The plodding ponies circling numbly at the fair don't count. My grandfather rounded up mustangs and broke them to saddle when he was young. He carried the mail through the Montana winters on horseback, wearing furry Buffalo chaps. There's a picture of me wearing the chaps before we sent them to a museum. I collected small model horses, 24 breeds, 25 horses. All of my purple ribbons at the fair were horse-related: the stable I built for my collection, the same horses decorated with school glue and sequins on a carousal flywheel, the backlit photo I took of my white-haired Fashion Star Filly in the dark, a flannel blanket making a textured moon-like surface. I can name all of the 25 horse in my stable from memory right now: Joker (Palomino). Desert Rose (Toric). Oberon (Irish Draft). Nightshade (Polish Draft). Black Beauty,Too (Shire). Baby Mine (Clydesdale). Mimic (Thoroughbred). Autumn Mist (Saddlebred). Will O' The Wisp (Morgan). Willowmere (Danish Warm Blood). Suncatcher (Tennessee Walker). Free Spirit (Arabian). Snowmane (Lipizzaner). Whisper Please (Andalusian). Morning Star (Knapstrup). Sunset (Mustang). Bombadil (Pinto). High Hopes (Appaloosa). Farfalla (Percheron). Shadowfax (Paso Fino). Tiger's Image (Turkoman). Dingo (Brumby). Black Moon (Karabair). Creek (scratched-up Karabair, my first). Arrogant Strider (Fresian). Most of the names came from books, some from race horses some distant West-Coast relatives owned. Girlish horse love is not about sex, about having something moving between your thighs. It's about freedom, about the ability to travel alone, about running down the wind and never looking back. It means escape.
4. Head. I pledge my head to clearer thinking. Nature's strongest shape: the dome, fusion of separate bones into one protective shell, grey matter coiled inside like some lusting mollusk reaching beyond itself. Here. In my head.
5. Heart. I pledge my heart to greater loyalty. In the center of your body, but slightly off-center, so more mass is on your left side. Fleshy pump, four rooms, no place to sleep and always flooding. In elementary school they taught you to put your two hands together in a fisted prayer to understand the approximate size and shape of your heart. I pledge allegiance. I don't know to what.
6. Hands. I pledge my hands to larger service. My hands are small, fingers short. I can't span an octave on a piano, four frets on the guitar is a stretch. Two palms, eight fingers, two thumbs, ten nails. One coffin. The palmreader will read your off-hand to tell you what your natural path should be, will read your dominant hand to tell you how you will manipulate your future. The life line on each is jagged, possibly broken. Both hands claim I am intelligent, one hand that I'm a lusty lover. My sinister hand isn't telling. In New Orleans, I almost had my knuckles read. That was before Katrina. My hands will never be big enough.
7. Health. I pledge my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country and my world. All of the systems of the body working in harmony with each other, blood and bone, breath and nerve. The body and all its tributaries.
8. Hard. Rocks, steel, bone, wood. Diamonds, needles, nails, teeth. Water. E-flat. Ice, granite, fist, heart.
9. Halloween. All hallows, all souls, floating and sticky-sweet. Masking to reveal the secret inside. Big brown bats winging though the night, able to wing their way even through the snow, but already dreaming of sleep in these woods. Black velvet and cats feet, bubbling iron and spiders spinning our life lines into sticky tapestries that will crumble with the morning dew.
10. Horror. Everything comes out of you. Not all of it can be put back.