Sentimental Fool

It's back, it's up, it's off and running. You really should participate.
It's the Arsty Essay contest over at Judith's chateau. Judith HeartSong <~~ Linkage
And it's a difficult one!!!! In a good way, go visit, try it, do it, you know you wanna.

(topic currently pilfered for advertisement and mussing purposes, please visit Judith's for full details, rules, guidelines and deadlines)

"What is your favorite and most inspiring possession? Tell us about it, and if you want an extra creative challenge... tell us about it without naming it until the very last sentence of your essay:):):)"

That Judith is a crafty one if I may say so myself. I'm not letting those little smiley faces fool me, it was a very crafty and brilliant/difficult topic to throw to us mere emotional humans.

When I read the topic, alarm bells and the electrical currents called my thoughts seized up in instant conflict. This is why..........

I, Rebecca Anne, am a self proclaimed sentimental whore.

If something has a story, meaning, physical or mental value, I keep it. I have a well designed system for storing all these items, call boxes. Wood boxes, pretty boxes, lockable boxes, glass boxes, metal boxes, jewelry boxes, marble boxes, big old hope chests, teeny tiny jeweled boxes, handmade boxes, doesn't matter. If it can pass off like a Pandora's box, without the plague if you open them, hiding my favorite things, it'll do.

There isn't a room in my house that doesn't house some sort of box, filled with my favorite and most prized possessions. I can only think of two things that are very sentimental and prized that aren't cased in domains of 4 walls and a top. My flyrod and my art collection on the walls. Everything else I possess can be blown to the four corners of the earth and I wouldn't really care. But my boxes of sentimental gold and my walls of art and the flyrod that usually lives in my Tahoe are utterly important on the grand scale of prized.

Pick one? Play favorites? Place one above the others?
Judith, Judith, where art thou's merciful creative soul?

Since I read the theme yesterday, I've played a few completely totally sick and twisted scenario's in my head, just for mind bending fun. The best one is............"Your house is on fire, and you have time to grab one thing, what would it be" .........thinking that if I played that game with myself, I could narrow it down. All that did was coax me into looking into the financial costs of building a completely fireproof room in my house.

The thing is, very few of my prized items are worth any monetary value. I doubt anyone would give me a single buck for some of the rocks I've collected from all over the world. Or donate 10 cents for a pressed flower I found atop a mountain in Montana. There is no value on a note written by my then 5 year old daughter telling me I'm the best Mother in the whole wide world, even to the moon and back. There's no value, other then sentimentally on a completed journal I've written, or a story I've tossed on paper. Or a piece of cut ribbon from a present I received. And letters, my beautiful cherished letters.... I save every single solitary letter ever written to me and I think I would perish should anything happen to them.

I'm 35 years old and I think I've been saving the most important sentimentally valued things of my life for 30 of them. I know this, I've learned over time nothing I buy for myself is of great importance. Nothing I can go to the store and toss in my cart can compare to something given me by a friend, a loved one, or found during my wanderings. I may be alittle off my rocker, but can anyone else say they cherish a green rock found on the banks of the Lamar River while fishing with an extremely special person? I think not, thats why it is so very damn important to me. It isn't even really the pretty rock, it's everything that rock represents.

I'm home for a few more days, I'll be doing my very best to write up an essay. I'm just not sure how in the sam hell I'm going to pick one solitary thing. Can we go metaphysical here? Then I wouldn't have to play favorites and offend any of my physical possessions...................I love my prized sense of ummm, well, floaty thought..............

Propensity Of the Ominous Nature

I have a propensity for skin cancer... says Mr. Scalpel yielding Doctor.
I have a propensity for staying outside in the sun...says Me.

Which propensity shall win?

The way I see it, I'm rather screwed in either direction. I would wither and die if I spent my days hiding from the very thing that enhances my life...outdoors.....but outdoors is where that glorious back stabbing bitch of a sun is located.

When Dr. Slice and Dice did his medieval propensity on my face, he accused my skin of intensely leaning towards future and more skin cancer....."Your skin has a high propensity (sheer traitorous behavior in my humble opinion) for further skin cancer" he warned like a fortune teller......I couldn't help but think what a shitty propensity to be assigned.

I know my current cancer would get kicked out of the cancer lounge by much bigger, badder, meaner and vicious cancers that other people get. I know that. I realize that. I'm grateful I dodged the melanoma bullet again, the one that would earn a permanent membership to the lounge, and got smacked with a lessor cancer. But this propensity reality feels like an ominous black cloud I'll have hovering just behind my over sun-screened body for life. Wonderful.

I can't imagine changing my lifestyle at this stage of my life. I imagine it's too late for prevention, all I can do is maintain now. (Sunscreen, hat, long sleeve clothes in sweltering 100 degree weather, blah blah etc...)  My propensity for fun and adventure, outdoors and life seems a much better focus then the propensity I didn't ask for.

Since my natural inclination is to do as I damn well please, I shall now focus on my habit of ignoring the bad and enjoying the good.  Thats nothing more then sensible wisdom.

I did learn something about my personal mentality. When hearing the news, the boo C-Word, rather then feeling sorry for myself, or being reduced to tears, or fear, or something memorable like inspiration or wisdom, I got pissed, furious if the truth be told. I rarely get mad about anything, but on this certain occasion, I did. If I remember correctly I believe I said something like, "Now that fucking pisses me off" to the Doctor when he told me over the phone. I suppose nothing makes me more angry then a threat to my little patch of grass on this earth. 

I have a new battle scar, and she's a beauty if I may say somyself. Another dent in this vintage car called me. I have other impressive scars achieved in more glorious of a fashion, so this one is just another notch of experience. If my propensity fortune goes according to the Butcher man, this old face of mine will look like a mine field someday. I may have to make friends with a body shop, i.e., a doctor, with a propensity for plastic surgery.

I think, my outdoors will win, always win, until the day I am gone. On the day of my death bed, I suppose then, I will let my bad propensities win.    On that day, they can have me.

Sneaking In

It's past midnight, sometime in July, it's summer I don't need a calendar.

I feel like a teenager sneaking back into the house after disappearing for an evening of eye opening adventure and UN-punishable sins.

Although I'm only lighting a small candle, I see this place is as I left it. 

Thats good to know.

How is everyone? Good I hope.
I'm doing fine thank you.
I'm alive, and kicking (potentially screaming sometimes) and doing well. My computer didn't blow up, I didn't loose the link to this journal, and I wasn't held hostage by anything remarkable. I just........ well,....... snuck out of the house for a while. 

A rather limp excuse for my absence, even unapologetic, but it tis what it is, me. I disappear in this world as often as I disappear in my 'real' world. In April I took movement to a new level and haven't paused much in-between. This computer collected much dust and my real home is in dire need of some cleaning as well.

I've been forced to stay in town for a bit, so I thought it was time to reconcile with these pages before another month passes. I'm failing miserably at keeping a documentary of my life in the nice chronicle order this realm offers. Whoops.

I'm really not ready to give up on the old Shadow of the Iris here, I just need something......to change within me. I need to open the doorways again and let the thoughts flow. I'll get there.

~~~~~~~~~~

My last entry gives me ironic pause.

I lived through turning 35 with only a few moments of numerical panic. I've pushed myself to act as carefree, young and spontaneous as possible over the last several months. Self assurance that I was truly vibrant and still kicking some serious life ass. It worked for the most part. Other then the fact I found out I have skin cancer last week. (stating that is like jumping out of a corner yelling Boo at people) That little bump in my road of life has royally pissed me off.

I blame my last entry. Sure as life, if you complain about insignificant, you'll get smacked with righteous perspective.

I'm not entirely surprised by the news. I've had enough pre-cancerous spots removed from my skin the past. The good news is I dodged the melanoma bullet once again, and got a less severe punishment for my fun in thesun with a nasty thing called squamous cell carcinoma. If given a choice, I would have taken some old basal cell cancer cells that make up 90% of skin cancers. But nope, I fall into the other 10% category.

No biggie, it doesn't appear to have spread, it's non-aggressive, it's fixable, it's a 95% cure rate, it's hardly worthy of a panic, but it still pisses me off. The bad news is this live cest pool of cancer cells is located on my face. I go under the knife, a procedure called Mohs surgery, leaving any potential vanity thoughts at the door, on Thursday. Meaning, I have no idea how much will be left of my face after they are done. Beauty.

Life event duly noted. Enough of that depressing little curable experience.
If I'm not scared, worried or alarmed, no one else should be.
I hereby swear I will never complain about another wrinkle, gray hair or birthday.
Karma
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There was a time, when AOL journals were united by a very special woman named Judith Heartsong.
She moved her 'location,' but I've never stopped reading her entries, admiring her art and basking in her outlook of life. 
Once again, she is opening the possibilities of wonderful creating, writing and unity through her journal with her
Artsy Essay Contest.
I encourage everyone to visit her journal, get to know an extraordinary woman and participate in her contest that starts the 15th.
I have two of her amazing pieces hanging in my home, my prizes for doing what we all do here.
Writing. 

Judith HeartSong