Here it is.

I set this blog up ages ago, yet the purpose for it changed so many times I never seemed to get started.
It was originally intended as a companion to a podcast, which remains on the back burner and not forgotten.
I thought I might start using it to get up on soapboxes of various sizes and shapes to spout off my opinion on all of the flotsam and jetsam that is the news. Oil spill, Arizona, "financial reform", "healthcare reform"...there's been plenty in just the past month or so to fill pages and pages with what I "think." But aren't there enough people carefully wording opinions on all of this...waiting for all of the concurring opinions to praise them on their insight and sexy turn of phrase? I might have things to say...brilliant things, even...but there are others saying the same in slightly different words. So, while I might feel the need to spout off on some topic on here now and then, I won't be using this space for that alone.
I don't expect many people to be reading this...just a few I invite to stop by, I suppose. I decided the space does not need a definition.

The past year and change has been very altering for me. Unfortunately, not all in a positive way. I'll even say not in much of a positive way at all. Such is the risk one takes when one tries to live without filter. I've been known for saying through the years that I would not allow life and its miserable challenges to change me. I would not be beaten down! My naive, open heart would stay as it was until the day I was old and eccentric...with long hair, odd collections, far too many books and a proclivity for things that just aren't "age appropriate." Well, my friends, life has been working me harder than an insurgent at Abu Ghraib. I am hanging onto those filaments of naivete...but just barely.
Boo-freakin-hoo, ay? Life is a tangle for most of us, sure. I'm not talking about the everyday crap. Economy, job stuff, child rearin', garden variety pain and traffic, the woes of friends...I'm still handling most of that with aplomb. The addition of certain personally cataclysmic events...direct hits to my previously upheld definition of myself...well...THAT is what has made for the rough go.

If you are reading this, chances are you know me pretty well. You know I tend to not only speak...but write and write and write in an effort to sort out, soothe and heal. As of late, I have been writing poetry again. By no means am I calling myself a poet. Hardly. While I'm fairly fond of some things I have written, I know most are simply words struggling out of me as representative of what battles inside. It's been that way for me always. I'm just jotting them down now. But writing down a turn of phrase or a couplet or two a poet does not make. Not at all.

So this space will be a repository for most of it. Since most of the random notebooks and slips of paper are easy to lose and this spot stays put. Keeps me from losing everything in the random fires, if you get my meaning.

I do have plans to try to start up a local poetry group. Make some strangers friends and give them all a forum in which to dump out their words.

Caveat emptor...chances are, I'll be unable to stay off the soapbox at some point. Might post a picture. A random thought. As always, my beloveds, your comments are welcome...encouraged, even.