cronechronicler

Exploring the poetry of everyday life

Mar 15

Haiku: Ostrich No More

by vivachange77

Poet in me slept
Escaping circumstances
Of a world gone mad

High time to awake
Stir my juices, let words flow
With my mighty pen

A suffering world Haiku Poetry Writing life

15 Comments »
Jan 21

Haiku: Daily Prompt – Privacy

by vivachange77

Time alone is gold
To an introvert like me
Precious currency

Daily Prompt Haiku Writing life

7 Comments »
Jan 6

Alchemy

by vivachange77

Imagine dawn sky dressed in pink-ribboned clouds
Trees green-leaved in summer
Changing colors for autumn
Sobered by stillness of bare-branched winter
Chilling cold and deep silence.

Imagine a mother of sons and grandchildren
Heart filled with wonder, love, joy
And trepidation
World is near changing
Beyond recognition.

Imagine aging a worthy challenge
Rich adventures and exploring
Forge wisdom a gift
Hard-won and enduring
Unknown roads lie ahead

But for today the sun is shining
Golden hours to seize and embrace.
Shadows, too, can be lovely
I’ll plumb them tomorrow.
Translating my life into poems.

A Gift Beyond Measure Dawn Sky Poetry Soul of writing View from my window Writing life

22 Comments »
Nov 1

A Rose By Any Other Name

by vivachange77

In June when I visited my son Donovan Hart he gave me a remarkable gift. He put in my hands a book titled Enscribing the Heavens from This Side by Ina Hamilton Hart. Donovan had collected Cronechronicler posts written by Vivachange77 from May 2014 through April 2016 and had them published by Amazon. He wrote the pieces about the book and the author on the last page and on the back of the book. My granddaughter Leela contributed her drawing of a crone.

Over the summer we made a few edits. In September Donovan published the book in paperback and on Kindle. Last week Colleen Chesebro ~ Fairy Whisperer reviewed my book on her blog and posted her review on Amazon.com. So far so good. I wanted to shout my news to the blog world but wasn’t clear how to do this. Then I discovered that Amazon.com misspelled Cronechronicler on their website in a subtitle they added. Amazon made the correction for me. When I checked, I was dismayed to find that now capital letters were missing from the main title. Twice I’ve talked to someone at Amazon who promised to fix the problem, but to no avail. It is like a Rubix cube puzzle I can’t solve.

I began my blog with the intention of creating a legacy of family stories and writing new stories and poems revealing the woman I am becoming. I am delighted to have a real book to give to family members and friends. I don’t know a sleek way of inserting a blue link in a blog post to let my followers know where to find my book. If you go to Amazon.com the old-fashioned way and write Enscribing the Heavens from This Side it will take you to my book. Disregard the absence of capital letters and some weird punctuation. It is still a rose.

A Gift Beyond Measure MY BOOK Writing life

18 Comments »
Oct 10

Everyday Inspiration Day Six: Where My Writing Happens

by vivachange77

My writing begins where it will. This morning I was in my living room chair reading the Sunday paper when the neighborhood geese flew overhead. A haiku began to unwind in my mind. I reached for a notepad  and pen in the end table drawer and jotted down the first two lines, then sketched out a few more. Later I will give the haiku its final form on my desktop computer .

Last winter I had a dialogue with the early dawn sky and its amazing pink stripes. Every morning I found a new image I used to describe the  stripes. Sometimes the image came to me as I ate breakfast facing the window. I would tear off a scrap of paper from the daily news and write down the thought before it drifted away. A compelling first line was all it took for a haiku to grow.

Writing about my travels or family stories happens another way. I have boxes filled with travel itineraries, notes and pictures of the places I’ve been stored in freezer-sized Ziploc bags. I love to revisit a trip and re-live it in my mind’s eye. Writing brings up more memories. Family stories come to mind from pictures and letters stored in boxes and from objects that have accompanied me whenever I moved. I also write about my family in the present. The actual stories take shape as I write on my computer – sometimes prose and sometimes poetry.

The objects in the  room where I write are  visible reminders of my journey. By the window there is a child’s desk that belonged to one of my sons. A futon and a lamp occupied my computer room in the last place I lived. A maple chair  from my first house  after I was married sits in the corner. The drop-leaf table that matches it is in my kitchen. My Diplomas are on the wall. A picture of a cowboy riding his horse on the winding road of Texas ranch, which was a wedding present to my parents,  hangs over the futon.  My father was from Texas. There is a wooden wall clock in the shape of Ohio, where I now live, that ticks as I type. On the  window ledge is a large coffee mug with the name of the college I attended. My computer, glass computer table, office chair,  printer and the table it sits on are  newcomers. Four green house plants are my living companions.

Everyday Inspiration Haiku My writing room Soul of writing Writing life

4 Comments »
Oct 5

Everyday Inspiration Day Two: Things I’m Good At

by vivachange77

Making a list of what I’m good at tells a  story about life for me at the present time with a few old “talents” thrown in.

1. I enjoy problem-solving. I figure out things on my computer intuitively and then don’t know how I did it. I muddle through. I use odd things around the house as tools, like my old nut cracker to unscrew stubborn jar lids.

2. I take good care of my nineteen house plants. I find where they like to sit according to how much light they like and how much water they need.

3. I am a good mother and grandmother. That has always been the  most important thing to me. I make mistakes and learn from them. I love my family dearly.

4. I’m good at talking to strangers. I learn about things I would never have thought of. I get to see the world through a different lens.

5. I love being by myself with time to reflect and just do nothing. I like silence and peace. It’s a good time for writing.

6. I am an experienced traveler. I’m good at choosing where I want to go, making reservations and packing. I am reasonably patient in airports when things don’t go right. I have never yet had to spend the night in one.

7. I’m a competent money manager. I’ve balanced my checkbook monthly for years.

8. I tell stories and have a huge storehouse of memories to draw on. I’m also a good listener for other people.

9. I gave away my car, gave up driving, and discovered a whole new lifestyle I like better all the time. I meet different people. I depend on knowing the weather like a farmer because it governs my errand-running on foot. Ice is my nemesis.

10. I am dependable and know how to organize things.

11. I  trust change (though I’m not crazy about it) and have recreated my life several times.

12. I am working on figuring out aging. I trust this process.

13. I’m good at throwing out things and recycling. I like to find new homes for stuff I’m not using.

14. I’m good at making and keeping to-do lists. I write everything on my paper calendar so I won’t forget.

15. I’m good at letting go and moving on.

 

 

 

Change Daily Prompt Everyday Inspiration Writing life

18 Comments »
Oct 4

Everyday Inspiration Day One: Why Do I Write?

by vivachange77

Writing is the joy and  purpose that putting life experience into words gives me. It happens when I go quiet and lose myself in the actions of the sky, trees, wind and small animals outside my window. It happens when I need to  tie up loose feelings from my own life experience. Experience is the key word.

I write from the perspective of a woman who will turn eighty in two months. I know what it is to have  felt the same way inside as long as I can remember. I know what it is to feel my body aging and live with limitations. Best of all I am discovering the unique joy of the changes I experience. I am changing and like a Janus face can look backward  and forward through a rainbow of experience arching through time from my early years to a still mysterious future.

When I started my blog I knew I could write.  I did not know I have been given the gift of writing poetry. I am a wordy person by nature and reducing my words to the seventeen syllables of a haiku gives me focus. I love to find just the perfect word and word field to express myself. I love writing poetry because at least in the Word Press world there are few rules about complete sentences. I love leaving spaces for readers to fill in with their sense of what my words mean in their lives.

I write because I have stories to pass down to my children and grandchildren. I write for the pleasure of remembering places I’ve been in my travels.

Writing makes me whole.

 

 

 

 

Becoming Myself Daily Prompt Haiku Poetry Soul of writing Writing life

14 Comments »
Jun 8

Haiku: Crystal Ball Gazing

by vivachange77

Today muse calls me
Stirs senses and memory
Words take on new life

Future time unspools
Writing stories uncertain
New author in charge

Haiku Soul of writing Writing life

6 Comments »
Jun 5

Strange Reunion

by vivachange77

My high school class is between the every-five-year interval of our reunions. Now something even more momentous has moved some classmates to plan a get-together. We’re having a Four Score Party to celebrate our 80th birthdays. The travel logistics are daunting so I’m sitting this one out. Yesterday a classmate who is big on nostalgic websites emailed links to two sites for us to feast on. At first I didn’t want to take the time to read them. I’ve enjoyed the reunions over the years but am not a fan of the silly lists of how things used to be. However yesterday was rainy and I had nothing better to do. So I read.

One of the websites had the year-end report of the City Recreation Department a few years after we graduated from high school. Several classmates, mostly boys, “replied to all” about summer jobs they held that year. I did not know any of the boys very well. One wrote about his job emptying and cleaning the city swimming pool on Sunday nights. When he was finished, his job was to walk across the street to the City Water Department and ask them to turn the water back on. From his words in the email I pictured my classmate as a young man scrubbing the pool every Sunday summer evening and then personally interacting with someone at the Water Department to begin the process of filling the pool again. I had the beginnings of a story in my imagination. I could imagine (because I certainly remember) the heat of a Mississippi summer evening and where the boy might want to go when he got off work and friends he would hang out with.

If I were to go to the Four Score Party and have a conversation with my classmate I doubt his summer job sixty years ago would come up. It is funny to me that I see him more clearly as a person in his written words in a group email. It is funny to me that I am writing this post for people to read whom I will probably never see in person. And yet this is prime reality for me. Long live the mysterious joys of human imagination. Long live Word Press blogland!

Writing life

7 Comments »
Apr 30

Continuing Inspiration

by vivachange77

Tomorrow I fly away to West Virginia to a Crafts Center to engage in a class on creative writing. I’ll be back with new ideas and energy in a couple of weeks.

Writing life

14 Comments »
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