Author Archives: Marcia Mae Nelson Pedde

Poetry Corner – Haiku Galore!

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Hello Dear Ones!

If I submitted a tweet for every haiku I write, everyone who follows me would see my smiley-faced avatar umpteen times a day. It also means I’d not have time to do much other than write haiku and enter tweets in to Twitter! I tweet enough as it is without adding an additional load to my followers’ HootSuite or TweetDeck or other such options!

As a result, today’s Poetry Corner will offer a compilation of the haiku and related styles of micropoetry that I have recorded the past week. They are provided here in the order in which they came to me.  Haiku subjects vary moment by moment in topic for me – just the way my mind works and my heart connects to all that is in my life. You’ll notice there is seldom a common theme: with one exception – the Progressive Haiku poems (seen as #progressivehaiku in Twitter) that have an emotional series or chain of thought over several stanzas from sadness to joy.  Enjoy! Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – The Immobilizer

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Hello Dear Ones!

Sunday’s She Says – Embracing Perfection post may have given you a hint as to what my discussion might be today.

Two very powerful reasons almost brought that potential to a screeching halt:

1. The weekend’s passionate excitement became yesterday’s fear.
2. Yesterday’s fear brought forward old beliefs of not being good enough.

The plans I had to take my first baby steps forward into a new venture yesterday fizzled out with self-doubt and fear traumatizing my courage and questioning my value. What right had I to approach people promoting my hobby as a tool they should a) need and b) pay for … ? If there was no value to my own self in what I do, how did I expect others to see value in this?

Confidence flew out the window and perched on the nearest tree laughing at me, taunting me. I just wanted to cry. Yet I wanted to sleep – lay down, take a nap and forget the ugliness I was feeling inside. The Immobilizer – FEAR – had found a perfect place to nestle, expanding the terror and frozen world of inaction within me.

Doesn’t sound like the Pollyanna – the woman who sees the glass as being full (1/2 liquid plus 1/2 air) – that you’ve come to know over the past 6 months, does it? In Sunday’s post I spoke about embracing the perfection of who I am in every moment – with the excited anticipation of becoming even more. Yet knowing there could potentially be more for me, I was astonished to awake with immense self-doubt. As the day progressed, I became more and more agitated, convinced that my excitement was totally misguided.

My e-friend (and a very wise woman) Renee Ludwigs’ recent post discusses her dog Rudy and his persistence. Sad as it may seem, I envy Rudy his level of ‘dogged’ persistence. Me, I get truly excited about something and it’s the best thing since chocolate … yet, without continued variety and excitement, my enthusiasm has the potential to dwindle, fizzle, sputter and die.

Thinking back, I realized that only the things that kept me impassioned over time ever made it from the drawing board out into the ‘real’ world. I had to give serious thought as to whether this new adventure had such potential within me – enough to give me the ‘dogged’ determination to not only start but to follow through to its finish.

I decided today that it did have that characteristic.

The first step I was going to take yesterday and did not – I took today! I just hit the ‘SEND’ button on an e-mail that has the potential to jettison me into an exciting future!

Pollyanna is still alive and well and she’s living in Victoria, BC, Canada! And the Immobilizer? The Immobilizer has been vanquished … for this situation at least!

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

Eating Our Way Through Victoria – Coffee’s On!

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Hello Dear Ones!

Grab a coffee before you sit down to read. No, it’s not that long an article – but it is the topic for today.

Mike and I, even more than eating our way through the city of Victoria, tend to frequent good coffee shops. We find that we can tell a great deal about a community by the numbers and quality of the coffee houses a location offers its local residents.

Years ago, and back in Ontario, we opted for one particular national coffee spot. There were two prime reasons:  one was the frequency of shops – one on practically every other corner; and the other was consistency – all food and beverage options were the same whichever location we chose. At the time, and with our lifestyle, that was a desired convenience. (Hint: my brother wrote an anthem for them and put it up on YouTube. It now has over 125,000 hits!) Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Punc:tu;a’tion!

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Hello Dear Ones!

Over the years there has been controversy regarding the appropriate use of punctuation in poetry. From when to insert a simple comma, to the applicable introduction of a hyphen – and all the way to the final stop, or period.

Discussion ranges from using or ignoring an apostrophe, such as it’s and its, to the more demanding option of a colon or a semi-colon. Depending on the style of poetry used, punctuation can vary. Many poets use the breath as the only natural comma and hence end a line and create movement down to the line beneath it to effect that breath.

Gertrude Stein, who called the comma ‘servile’, expressed an interesting dispassion for semi-colons.  She wrote (notice her lack of commas in this writing) back in 1935 in her book “Poetry and Grammar”:

“They (semi-colons) are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature.” Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Children as Teachers

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Hello Dear Ones!

As adults, we often hear what most of us don’t realize was originally a biblical expression: “Out of the mouths of babes.” The term is usually in reference to something a child has said or done that has adults amazed at the wisdom emanating from a tiny being, as yet untrained in things adults should know. We remark on such wisdom with awe, not giving much thought to the Source from which it comes. We all have the ability to tap into Divine knowledge and a knowing beyond our own human capacity, whether we be eight or eighty, or somewhere above, below or in between those ages.

This past weekend I had a profound experience that I wrote about in my She Says – Intrinsic or Extrinsic? post. Though I only mentioned some of my situation and the results that led to my writing that post, I had two additional teachings come as part of that overall experience, both of which came through children. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – One Breath Per Line

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Hello Dear Ones!

An dear e-friend and great micropoet through Twitter: Tina Nguyen has recently inspired several of us to get into a more extended style of Haiku – known as Gogyohka:

Gogyohka is a new form of Japanese short poetry, founded and pioneered by Japanese poet Enta Kusakabe. Gogyohka is pronounced go-gee-yoh-kuh (the “g”s are hard as in “good”), and literally translated means “five line poem”. Gogyohka is five lines of free verse on any subject matter. There is no set syllable pattern, however the poem should be short and succinct. The goal is to compellingly capture an idea, observation, feeling, memory, or experience in just a few words.

Gogyohka is a fun and easy form, making poetry writing accessible to everyone, including children. Yet it is challenging as a method of practice for self-reflection, contemplation, and distilling one’s thoughts. Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Growth through Challenge

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Hello Dear Ones!

My niece is 10 years old today. While I wrote a birthday wish on her Facebook wall, I was contemplating what life would be like for her this year. As I tend to do at times like that, I envisioned the most amazing experiences for the 365 days ahead – fun and laughter, joy and play, learning and growth – offering loving thoughts with expectations for positive experiences and fabulous outcomes.

I found myself flashing back to my own life at that age. I reviewed some of the joys and the challenges of being 10 years old back in my day- and that was several decades ago! The most joyous memories seemed a mixed blend of highs and lows – growth and fears.  A quality that I recall having then and retain to this day is my absorption of anything new. I was and still am like a sponge – taking in everything new around me!

One experience that brought me immense joy and drama was going to summer camp.  Like many children, I’d never been away from family for more than a few days at a time. To be gone for two weeks was an enormous concept, filling me with both excitement and trepidation.  The separation was a rite of passage. It became even more than that in many ways. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Cosmically Dancing

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Hello Dear Ones!

Today I am honouring a very dear e-friend – an amazing woman who continuously delights me with her upbeat and spiritual ways. She shares the deepest and richest of glows from her inner being to all around her. Wise and witty, playful and boldly brash when she needs to be, Nardine Neilson is a valued member of several forums of which Mike is an active member and I – well, I’m a lurker. Mike will notice a post or topic that he thinks might appeal to me and sends it my way. I usually respond and so am known to the groups. It is in this fashion that Nardine and I have since communicated more deeply the past many months.

The following is a poem that Nardine posted to the Astral Projection and Medaphysics Forum on April 30, 2010. She blessed me with the permission to publish it here for your enjoyment. What a powerfully spiritual piece! Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – The Mundane

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This is the task you have chosen. To live the magical in the world of the mundane.

You know in your hearts that you are unwilling to succumb to the mundane. You know in your hearts that you have chosen this challenge because you needed to restore your faith in yourselves, and in the never ending creative process from which you spring. For you could not, through your rational mind, endeavor to accomplish any of the things which you hold important – you could not write, you could not sing, you could not paint, and you certainly could not create your reality.

~ Conscious Creation

Hello Dear Ones!

Have you ever watched an 87 year old man slide a light bulb into one of his socks till it fills out the tip of the sock where his toes would nestle and where a gaping hole can be seen? With wool thread – not necessarily the same colour as his sock – a sewing needle and the light bulb as the base for his endeavours, he proceeds to weave back and forth. His patient and persistent process results in a neat, fully functional and hardly visible patch of ‘cloth’ occupying the vacant space where once a toenail had pierced through. He has just extended the life of his sock.

Observing this process, you experience a sense of calm – both within the man as he works diligently, and within yourself as the observer. Similar mundane processes can be seen in many day-to-day activities: a woman spends several hours ironing and neatly hanging and folding clothes; a construction worker methodically ties the laces on his work books; a small child with two Dinky cars and a patch of floor keeps him/herself amused for more than an hour.

It is more likely that you can see the magical potential in the child’s behaviour than in the other options described above. After all, we tell ourselves, children have amazing imaginations! What about adults? Do we have fabulous imaginations as well? Do you? Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Remember Father on Mother’s Day

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Hello Dear Ones!

As long as I can remember, every Mother’s Day – without exception – my Dad would be heard to say, at some point to anyone and everyone within ear shot: “Don’t forget Father on Mother’s Day!” Though we lavished Mom with gifts and flowers, cards and, usually, a meal out, we always remembered Dad in some fashion.

Though my Mother has left this world physically, she is with us in our hearts and memories. It is to our memories of her and our hearts’ yearning for her that I dedicate this post in advance of the Mother’s Day weekend. MoM, wherever you are and whatever celestial mischief you are getting into today … Happy Mother’s Day!

(BTW Dear Reader: if you hear thunder and see lightning on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 … that’s my Mother telling us ‘kids’ that she’s thinking of us! How do I know? Well, that’s a story for another day …) Continue Reading →