Real Life Books and Media
Blogging, painting and poetry by DiVoran Lites gently wrapped in one of her delightful stories
Make time.
Take time.
Hurry up.
Slow down.
Not enough time.
Give something up.
But what?
Life is a pleasure.
Life is a joy.
Nothing is dispensable.
More is better.
Even petting cats takes time.
Brushing teeth, conversing…
I want to do it all.
But one thing at a time.
Slowly
So I can savor it.
I delight in the way God constantly renews us. Saturday, I was invited to a tea party at a lovely home in a beautiful subdivision north of town. It was a celebration for the launch of Jessie, Rebekah Lyn’s brand new book.
We were all invited to wear hats, if we wished, which set the tone for our dress. At the last minute, I grabbed my only skirt – white, cotton, tiered, and put it on with a favorite flowery tee shirt. It turned out to be the right thing to wear – after all, it’s summertime down south.
One friend did wear a hat and it was a vintage number – a work of art – satin apple blossom in pale turquoise on a light frame of ribboned stems and a tiny veil. The dress she wore was beautiful too; in fact, it was such a fine dress that one of her best friends confessed to having one like it in a different color. Fortunately, it was still at home and she was wearing a long linen skirt and a bright gauzy peasant blouse.
Everyone at the tea party was interesting. Rebekah Lyn had known many of them for most of her life. Her mother was there. She’s Onisha Rebekah Lyn’s publicist. Another friend came too. She had been in charge of setting up the party, making sure there were enough china teacups and antique teapots to serve from. She handled many other organizational details and received a public promotion to assistant marketer. About a dozen of us sat at a round table and chatted. It was deliberately old-fashioned and reminded me of my mother, her friends, and their parties.
Rebekah Lyn’s great aunt Joan attended. She volunteers at The Titusville Historical Society and was instrumental in helping Rebekah with research of the history of this area. Jessie starts out in a community that no longer exists. The property became part of the Space Center, so the families who lived there had to move to the mainland.
One of Rebekah’s favorite teachers was at the party. Rebekah calls on her for not only general historical references, but for tricky English questions as well. Everyone paid close attention as Rebekah talked about the writing and publishing of Jessie.
Rebekah Lyn will be at the Sea Turtle Festival in downtown Titusville on June 14 with her books. I’m going down to help her set up, I think Onisha will still be in town, too and her assistant will come by and help, then head up to Jacksonville to visit her sister. As for me, I may look for a ranger I know who is monitoring baby turtles as they hatch. He’s looking for volunteers too and I may know someone who’d like to do just that. Maybe our son and his wife will come. He’s an environmentalist who dearly loves turtles and all other wildlife unless they’re “exotic,” which means they’re taking habitat and food from the local critters. Really though, he’s got a soft heart and will take the time to have a conversation with any live thing, even the brown lizards, who are taking over from the jewel-like green anoles.
That’s what it’s all about – tea parties – talking to the animals, family communications, reading each other’s books. It’s all about people loving people and working together in love and harmony.
Psalms 104:30 “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.” (KJV
Jessie, coming-of-age story set in the exciting years of the U.S. race for the moon and releases July 20, 2014. Pre-order are available now at a 60% discount. Kindle readers will need to purchase through Smashwords
By the time I depart for heaven, the journals I in my closet will have multiplied to over a hundred. It may hold that many now.
So what will happen to the many books I’ve written over time? Will anyone ever want to read them?
The dear ones in my family have listened to me for all, or most, of their lives. They pretty well know what I think, and what I’m going to say. I feel deeply loved by them, but I’m not sure they’re going to want to read my journals. That doesn’t hurt my feeling at all.
I write the journals as if they were letters to God, even though He already knows everything that’s going on in, and around, me. I also have in mind a reader who might like reading people’s journals for the fun of it.
If no one wants to read them, they can be used in several different ways. They can be as landfill, or as bricks for a handy-dandy little dugout in the Arizona desert. Surely so much thick paper, cardboard, cloth, and even ink (that will run in a rainstorm) would come in handy for use as construction materials.
They might be scary to read. I’m not always the nicest kid on the block. They won’t be indecent, or vicious, though. That’s just not me.
Writing helps me work through things, but if I write from hurt or in an angry fit, I shred the pages and throw the scraps away.
My son has a good idea. He says they could be disassembled and scanned. Apparently, new machines do miraculous things. It is a good idea, but I don’t want to take the time, nor do I have the equipment.
I honestly never meant to create a problem with my passion for journaling. Bill says it saved my sanity and I heartily agree. It aided my healing tremendously. But maybe the need for them will be over when I’m gone.
If I could, I would leave them for my future self, if I were my child, grandchild, or great grandchild.
If I could, I’d warehouse them for a hundred years so they couldn’t possibly hurt anyone. They’d be read for whatever someone could get out of them—if anything. They warehouse people’s bodies, so why can’t somebody warehouse my journals?
I don’t think I’ll leave them to anybody in particular. God can sort it all out when the time comes. That little dugout in the desert is sounding better and better. Or how about a nice campfire? Even that many journals wouldn’t make a bonfire…people could roast marshmallows…or…or…I don’t know. What do you think?
“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” Ecclesiastes 12:12
Rituals and routines. We all have them. What do you need to do before you can start to write? For years, I’ve needed to check and answer all my emails the minute I sat down at the computer. I love emails, especially letters from friends, but anything else is compulsive for me, as well.
The easiest writing I do is by hand, in my journal, stream of consciousness and venting. I can spend hours at that. Sometimes I’ll cull an idea that later becomes a blog. Then one day I was writing about journaling and I began to think about the difference between a journal and a diary. Also, I was looking forward to my grandson’s daily posts either on Face Book or in his blog because he had gone to Japan.
I do my journaling by hand because Julia Cameron suggests it in all her books, starting with, The Artist’s Way. I can’t really explain the differences. Computer writing goes fast and is not too hard, but handwriting in my journal may allow me more of a feeling of privacy and freedom.
So I decided to do both. A journal is a journey of life; a diary is a listing of the things that happened in a day. Now I’m keeping a dairy on the computer and a journal in a heavy-paper sketchbook. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s great, it will help my production of blog posts for Writing Life on Rebekah Lyn books, and My Take on Old Things are New.
The big surprise is I feel more compelled to start with my daily diary than I do to go to email! Wow. How cool. I’m set free from yet another addiction. Today, I spent the whole morning starting with the dairy but going on to finish several posts. I’ll have to wait and see how it works with novels. But, I haven’t seen my email today, so ta, ta for now. I deserve it, don’t you agree?
