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RagaMuffen
11 June 2009 @ 11:27 am
I've been sick. My mom has been sick and my dog died. I don't have much else to say these days, it's been a rough first half of a rocky year and I'm trying to be bright and optimistic so if I come here and write things down that gets harder to do. Forgive my absence and know that I care about what goes in your lives.

I'm around and I'll be more around soon.


xoxo
 
 
RagaMuffen
04 April 2008 @ 05:39 pm
Circles and spirals consume every moment, lost in a tangle of chasing myself as I'm running from myself. I never asked, I can't recall even looking yet still I found it. Or did it find me? Does the question even matter?

How can the known be unknown? Is that a prospect outside the realm of human capabilities? Forgetting is a joke that was invented by what I have come to call the evil masses. If forgetting is the best solution that you can throw at me, please save your strength and my patience and sell that idea where the blinders are still firmly in place.

When I was very young my Mamaw told me that the world was never going to be honey ponds and flitter trees. As I child I had no idea what honey ponds or flitter trees were, so them not being the culmination of my life didn't really upset me all that much. Now that I see the idea she was trying to impart to me so that it wouldn't seem overly foreign or be more than I could bear all at once as an adult...I find myself quietly sitting in the strangest places staring far away from the world I live in and longing for honey ponds and flitter trees.
 
 
Current Music: Alter Bridge- Open Your Eyes
 
 
RagaMuffen
03 April 2008 @ 11:51 am
I can never decide which is a longer span of time....forever or never.

When Chief Joseph said...I will fight no more forever. I wonder if he chose to speak the words that way because he knew something about the relation of never and forever.

Maybe one day I will know. One day...somehow that seems a more unending span of time than either forever or never or even the two combined. One day doesn't seem to come around. One day seems to be looming out in the great unknown teasing you. I hate one day.
 
 
Current Music: Michael Buble- Lost
 
 
RagaMuffen
21 February 2008 @ 10:45 am
The voices in my head have never been my best friends but they've been the only friends I had from time to time. So, you know, we talk.

The sheepish one that generally sits in the corner and just pays attention to all the details has really been coming around lately.

Don't you think you should give this matter a little more merit, I heard the voice say. So, I looked as deep into myself as I could, which is deeper than I had ever known before, and said, "No, I don't think I need to give this matter any more merit at all, I think this matter deserves my heart."

The voices that have never grown up always giggle when I mention heart. Youthful thoughts on broken hearts would break your heart if you really thought about them.
 
 
Current Music: Westlife-I Wanna Grow Old With You
 
 
RagaMuffen
13 February 2008 @ 03:22 pm
So, this past weekend was the Valentine's Dance at each of my children's "friends" schools. I would have felt better had Ethan and Carly both been going to the same place but...it was not to be.

I won't tell you how this night made me feel...because well...imagine sad being one side and ecstatic being the other...Yeah, I felt both of those and everything in between. 
Pictures )
 
 
RagaMuffen
13 February 2008 @ 11:07 am

 I've held it in my hands, and rolled it through my fingers, I've tasted it in my mouth but it will never be mine. Is knowing that it exists enough? Can it be sufficient to have the knowledge of a thing that you can never possess, never truly experience?

There are some things in life that leave such indelible mark on us that we can never forget them, never let them go. We know we will spend our lives chasing them in what will end as a futile pursuit. There is a beauty in futility that I don't think many people ever truly see. My eyes were opened to it when I first realized that I was never going to have a daddy. What a silly thing for a grown woman to say, yet I not only said it but I meant it as well. I am content to give up the glorious father and child reunion to live with the exquisite ache of the certainty that my futile search will never lead to my continued rejection by a father that has no desire to know me. 

Still, there are some things that people would look at and tell me, "You know that can never be yours" or "You know there is no answer to that" and I refuse to see it. I refuse to give in to the idea that it is futile for me to seek out that answer ot for me to strive to make whatever it is that I want- MINE. 

I think tht delicate balance between knowing some things and hoping for others is a tricky thing and I throw mine off all the time. I fall down so far into the mix of it that I can barely find myself much less find what it is that I am looking for. There have been times when I've fallen so hard that I can't even remember what it is that I am looking for. Usually, I think the ultimate answer is that I am looking for myself. Sadly, I don't know that I would know me if I saw me. 

If on most days I am content with my life...I am making the most of what I have and letting go of the past....I am looking forward to a future that has happiness inside of it...Does the path that I take to get to those days really matter? 

Is the man who finishes the race but was lost the entire way any less finished than the man that stayed the course the entire time? I don't think so. Maybe he isn't as fulfilled, but he is just as finished. 

Fulfillment is better than finished.  I hate the way the resemble one another so much.

 
 
Current Location: my desk
Current Mood: How about...moody
Current Music: Rachel Yamagata- Reason Why
 
 
RagaMuffen
30 January 2008 @ 12:24 pm
 I was reading the last 20 pages of the novel that started my life, when you asked me so shyly why I felt the need to read something over and over again. I finished the paragraph, because something inside me wouldn't let me not, and then I looked up from my book and saw the way you never understood why I am the way that I am but I finally knew that you liked me the way that I am.

I read to you a piece of the novel that started my life, and your face was like the most provocative simile that one could imagine. I closed the book when I had finished the piece and you were startled into nervous speech. Why did you close it, how will you know where you were, when will you read more; you just kept asking these questions and I realized that you could never be the way that I am, but you wished that you could.

In reading the novel that started my life, I am reminded that I have a life and that it moves forward and back every day and that the loss sometimes far outweighs the gain but that the gain has so much more value that I don't mind the loss nearly so much. You are tangled in all the words that I read in this world and finally I know that the way I am is the way I am meant to be, if only to cement the fact that you will be exactly the way you are.
 
 
Current Location: my desk
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: John Coltrane- In a Sentimental Mood
 
 
RagaMuffen
29 January 2008 @ 11:53 am

If I had given in immediately it would have been ages ago when you knew how I truly felt. I know how to fight, how to hold back, deny myself. Deny me to defy you and I will win every time. 

I have known for a long time that if you could take it back, you would. What you lack in courage you can't make up for with conviction. You're the epitome of what you hate and you hate me because I am the only one that knows the score.

The night that you learned you weren't the god that you had always thought yourself to be you were wearing that blue shirt with the mysterious stain on the sleeve. Your hair was in your face and your mouth was curled just like a lie. Your eyes couldn't focus and your hands couldn't steady themselves. 

Your music is coming in through the tiny particles of air and choking me but it looks so beautiful that I can't turn away. I want to be able to hate everything you are but I can only muster the strength to hate...everything you made me.

 
 
Current Location: My desk
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Nena Simone-Feeling Good
 
 
RagaMuffen
15 January 2008 @ 12:09 pm

Well, I've been away for maybe the longest time ever from LJ. It's been a strange time but good, for the most part.

I should be ashamed for not coming and thanking those of you who sent Christmas cards, gifts and letters. So...Thank you all now. It meant a lot and really brightened up the season. 

I've been a member of LJ now for many years and I've never once thought paying for it was any better than the free junk....but yet again someone has paid for my LJ and for extra pictures....So, thank you as well. I have a feeling it was just a plot to get to me update. I guess it worked if that was the case.

I'll try to come back soon and put something of interest here....if anyone still reads this stuff, that is.

Much love to you all.
xoxo

 
 
RagaMuffen
12 July 2007 @ 11:16 am
Happy Happy Birthday to my favorite Zombie EVER!!![info]zombie2000
 
 
RagaMuffen
09 July 2007 @ 12:36 pm

The colors you paint don't exist in the same realm that we live in. They are only brushed against the ashy canvas of what we could have been.

Today would my brother's 28th birthday. He would be my friend and confidant. Instead he has now been dead longer than he was alive.  The 4th of July was 14 years since the day he was killed. I can't come to grips with this. It's like he is in everything I do and everything I say and I can't move on and I can't back up and it isn't killing me...and maybe THAT is the problem. 

 
 
RagaMuffen
23 June 2007 @ 09:12 pm
Not A Suitable Girl

Her face was a timeless
look of disdain
always pointing my direction
with pursed lips and perfect manners
her body spoke to me,
"you will never do."

From the floor up, I know
that is she correct.
Far better than her,
I know, nothing I do
will ever be enough
for her.

How did I get in the door,
where were the fact checkers
when my history followed me
down the marbled halls?
Can her eyes really see
the awkward humility,
the exclamations of
"you will never do"
resounding from
every moment
I've lived.

Suitable, other girls
could be weighed,
measured and found
to be highly suitable.
Unsuitable was
familiar territory to
girls like me, girls
who did right by you
in the dark and in the light,
even though our homes,
our last names, our stories
made us seem otherwise.
Girls like me understood
a mother's broken heart,
a hope for fulfilled dreams
even if in the hands
of the child that took theirs.

I could have been
the compassionate
hands to hold the mirror
that would have shown
you that our faces, our
"you will never do" pasts
were not so unalike.
I could have held you
as you left a world
that you did not
know how to love.
I could have,
wiped your face,
smoothed your hair
as you learned
that the girl
who will never do
sometimes does
what no one
else will,
because she is
suitable for such
a moment in time.

---------------------The Original...or The Inspiration__________________

Always Unsuitable
 
 
 
She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they smirked. It is true

I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the silhouette. She knew
at once that we had sex, lots of it

as if I had strolled into her diningroom
in a dirty negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry

on my neck. I could never charm
the mothers, although the fathers ogled
me. I was exactly what mothers had warned

their sons against. I was quicksand
I was trouble in the afternoon. I was
the alley cat you don't bring home.

I was the dirty book you don't leave out
for your mother to see. I was the center-
fold you masturbate with then discard.

Where I came from, the nights I had wandered
and survived, scared them, and where
I would go they never imagined.

Ah, what you wanted for your sons
were little ladies hatched from the eggs
of pearls like pink and silver lizards

cool, well behaved and impervious
to desire and weather alike. Mostly
that's who they married and left.

Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.
I would have cooked for you and held you.
I might have rattled the windows

of your sorry marriages, but I would
have loved you better than you know
how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.

Marge Piercy
 
 
RagaMuffen
21 June 2007 @ 12:37 pm
Thank you so much for my sweet little hugglepuff bears of love. They made me smile.

I really really needed a smile. You really are precious[info]uawildcatgrl

xoxo
 
 
RagaMuffen
20 June 2007 @ 04:59 pm
So, here is the new challenge...anyone is welcome to play along....In fact post the challenge in your journal and have your friends play along and ask them to post here just so I can read what they write...if they want to, that is.

Take a poem...any poem...your favorite poem...as long as it is a poem that you didn't write....and rewrite it. Change the style, the meter, the cadence of the whole thing. Just make you sure you keep the idea.

Change it in a way that there is absolutely no plagiarism involved. Change it so that what you love about the original can be truly felt. 

So, pull out your Robert Frost, your Emily Dickinson, your Richard Brautigan or anyone that touches you and spin their words out up and let them flavor something of yours.

If you absolutely hate this challenge idea...feel free to let me know and by all means throw some new ideas out there.

xoxo
 
 
Current Music: Rachel Yamagata- I'll Find A Way
 
 
RagaMuffen
20 June 2007 @ 10:10 am

Happy Birthday to the the LJ ambassador!

May each of your dreams be fulfilled, may each of your hopes come to fruition.

May your happiness be as deep as the ocean and your troubles as light as the foam.

We all love you, Happy Birthday Dave!

[info]inspectorjury
 
 
RagaMuffen
11 June 2007 @ 07:46 pm
I just wanted to say thanks to each and every one of you who played along in the challenge that I laid out there. I know that it is hard to incorporate words that someone randomly picks. Yes, I held another book in my hands and flipped through the pages and picked 15 words and then switched books and picked 10 more. I did use books of poetry though...So, really I knew that they could be in poems. heh.

I admit that I cheated and did two different poems. I thought maybe I would like the second try better but really I don't even think that I like it as well. Such is life.

I have a friend that made an LJ just so he could post a poem...he is actually a fairly good poet. A very romantic one so you should all nudge [info]outomyelementto at the very least update his new LJ with tons of poems. 

 I wanted to say that it was so much fun doing a poetry challenge again. I'm sure it has been absolutely years since we did one. I think I was living in Dallas or maybe at my Mom's while we built our home...either way, loooong looooong time. I will absolutely post another one and hopefully each of you and maybe more of you will play again.

This time [info]ilovespit[info]gaia43[info]uawildcatgrl[info]anarch, [info]outomyelement, and [info]sweetbabyjames2 wrote
 poems and some posted in response to the post I made listing this challenge's rules and some can be found in their own journals. Feel free to check them out and just remember that it is a game and that it is fun but most of all....it gets you writing anything. Sometimes just writing anything at all will open the gate for you to write exactly what it is that you need to be writing.  Oh, I of course played too...and will always try to write whatever it is I ask anyone else to...so at least you will never be all alone.

xoxo
 
 
RagaMuffen
09 June 2007 @ 07:54 pm

Bold Patience

We felt ourselves abandoned in the echo
in the mayhem we allowed to engulf us.
Moments of your life still seemed to panic
as hands brushed over your memory. 
Still, you could not defy this death.

It was the merciless silence
that made so keenly aware your disappearance.
Dreams of you lingered in each of us
each of us afraid to forgive you
in the midst of an apology that you did not offer.

To steel ourselves against our yesterdays
was a pitiful denial of the power that you
held over our fragile cusp of tomorrows.
You, as indelible as the expelled breath, 
a forever lingering bright laughter.

A union of past and future is weighty
heavy with regret and anticipation.
The idea that you will not surprise me
in an embrace of shared blood and bone
is a sorrow so sweet that if I doubted God, 
I would convince my body to give up it's ghost.

I gave up on searching for a key to where you are
content to be bold in my patience
I wait with the years resounding
as even they long to close.

 
 
Current Music: Josh Ritter- In the Dark
 
 
RagaMuffen
09 June 2007 @ 12:13 am
I say this is a rough draft...but that implies I would rework it...most likely, I wont.

 
Elegy for a Stranger
 
I remember the year
that I first spotted your mayhem,
your straw hat, your bicycle and echoes.
 
There was a silence clouding you
your story defied what we all understood.
Regret that I never knew you,
is the indelible taste in my mouth.
 
On the cusp of something bigger,
your wheels always in a panic.
Where were you planning to offer the apology,
that you never intended to forgive?
 
Through the whole town, I was aware
of the idea you had been there before me.
I never turned the key correctly,
never found the power just to ask,
never thought I could convince
what I came to know as a man of steel.
 
Dream your way into knowing me,
I am not bold enough to know you otherwise,
close this gap between speculations
with the sweet revelations of your truth.
 
Union of like minds melding over warmth
you offer up your words, I offer my hands
the bones, the flesh of a friendship
that never crossed over into the brightness.
 
 
RagaMuffen
08 June 2007 @ 02:44 pm

I did mention the poetry challenge thing the other day. I know it is Friday and the world somehow stops on the weekend...at least the LJ world...but with this assignment you can all come back fresh on Monday and have lovely poems to share.

Okay...Poetry Challenge for 6-8-07

We will use the list of 25 words. One word per line to make a 25 line poem. The words can be used in any order but must all be used.The poem can be broken into stanzas or not. The meter, rhyme and rhythm all to be set by the author.

1. hand
2. bone
3. echo
4. key
5. steel
6. forgive
7. defy
8. bold
9. union
10. sweet
11. mayhem
12. power
13. bright
14. apology
15. indelible
16. year
17. convince
18. dream
19. close
20. idea
21. regret
22. cusp
23. panic
24. aware
25. silence



I try not to forget that it was Aristotle who said that revolutions are not trifles but that they sprang from trifles. I need a revolution of sorts...so this is the sort of trifle that I hope mine can spring from. If you are need of one yourself, trifle along and we will see what happens. 

There is no deadline...there is no end...play at your will and reply with your poem or reply that you posted your poem at your journal or e-mail me Ragamuffen@aol.com

xoxo

 
 
RagaMuffen

So, once a long time ago I wrote a story and put it in this journal called Carey Wayne and the long dark hall....I only mention that because if you want to understand the emotions about what I am about to write...you could read that and understand better.

My cousin carey Wayne shot his son the day before yesterday. I don't have all of the details. I do know that Corey is in critical but stable condition. I have heard that his father shooting him was an accident. They were apparently in an altercation with men that he DID intend to shoot. I have also heard that he accidentally shot his son twice. He has been arrested for 2nd degree attempted murder. Corey will have surgery today to hopefully remove the bullet that is lodged between his heart and lungs. I hope that Corey doesn't die. My desire to know more about this is bizarre....like a true crime show on television that you happen to know the characters. Life is random and bizarre.

I'm not going to write anything else here because I will let this stand on its own.

 
 
Current Music: Tori Amos- Digital Ghost