School starting this month reminds me when I rode the big kids school bus for the first time. Looking out the window I was confused to see puppy-dog tears streaming down my mother’s face.
Thirty-some years later I understood when my child started school and it was me with the tears.
Anne Carlson
“Hey Mom,” my son said to me tonight, “can you help me untangle this?”
Let’s just say this pretty much wraps up being a parent.
Anne Carlson
These are lights in a graveyard I discovered on tonight’s evening walk.
Not to be indelicate, but do spirits really need a light to find their way back to their own grave at night?
Anne Carlson
“I repaired the face of Christ today at the National Cathedral,” Christopher, my late husband told me as he hung up his work jacket. Years later, during President Reagan’s funeral, I called the family to tell them the stained glass image, shown between every T.V. segment, was part of Christopher’s handiwork,
but I didn’t tell them about the tape measure.
The following day was hard for me to wait for the days’ report. “So how did it go?” I asked.
“I got kicked out of the cathedral,” he said proudly.
“You what?”
“You see, there was a guy in a long robe and a really tall hat, (the cardinal???), standing directly under me. I was really high on the scaffold and the worker next to me kicked my tape measure off the scaffold. Do you know what a tape measure can do to a man’s skull?”
“So what did you do?”
“I screamed, ‘Watch the f*** out!'”
“Why,” I asked, “would you swear in one of the most holy of places, while, I might add, you were eye level to the sacred image of the son of God?”
“You see,” he said, “construction workers are always yelling things to each other, and people are used to ignoring it as chatter. That man’s life depended on my ability to signal the people below and I needed something that was sure to attract immediate attention.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes. The person next to him pushed him out of the way, and my tape measure shattered at his feet. ”
Anne Carlson
In fiction, the author is the creator of a world.
Being god is a lot of work.
Anne Carlson
I have 4499 messages in my email inbox.
Does that qualify me as a message hoarder?
Anne Carlson
Creating mean characters has been a challenge for me, in my current writing project.
That’s not the world we live in as opposition makes a story.
That wicked vampire posing as a woman in a venomous rage that I met this week-end?
Perfect.
My new character.
Anne Carlson
What’s your favorite movie theme?
Anne Carlson
Okay, it was an impulse buy.
As far as salt goes, I’m ready for the apocalypse.
Anne Carlson
A time to let go, to forgive, and make space for higher vibrations, they say.
I was bitten by a vampire posing as woman in a venomous rage Saturday morning as I prepared to leave for home. Whatever her problem was became mine, as toxins of vengeful anger surged through my expanding veins.
The delightful memory of my cherished trip was being strangled as I soothed my furor by filling my creative mind with avenging strategies.
The woman clearly deserves bad things, but wait a minute, am I the keeper of bad things? My challenge of forgiveness on this day of the eclipse.
Anne Carlson
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