DNA

Earlier in the year, I had my DNA analyzed by ancestry.com and received my results within a few weeks.  It was so amazing to see all the areas of the world where my ancestry began, and how those early relatives scattered and connected, and where we have all established ourselves today.  I now have the confirmation that my family tree connections were correct, even generations back. If you haven’t researched your ancestry, you should.  The kits are not that expensive.  Our son and daughter-in-law gifted my husband and me with ours last Christmas, and it was exciting for the whole family to see the results.  My husband is adopted, so it has a special meaning for him to connect with birth relatives, most of whom he was unaware.

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If Only

I just watched La La Land, and loved it.  I had heard the negative reviews so sloughed it off, not worth the time to watch.  Just more Hollywood fluff, a glitzy attempt at contrived song and dance routines by actors who are neither singers nor dancers.  So it won at the Academy Awards, but that doesn’t prove anything.

Best Laid Plans

I came across this piece I wrote over ten years ago and decided to post it.  Reading through it I thought, oh my, what a difference a decade makes!  I am not as audacious now as then, for sure.  I know I TRULY have no more time to waste, not to mention money to spend!

Since I wrote the following piece,  I have fallen as much in love with jewelry making, acrylic painting, and decorating hat boxes (not at the same time) as with all the other creative endeavors preceding them.  Those things naturally ran their course the same as did the others I wrote about back then.  Always I come back to my writing.  It patiently waits for me, my old, most faithful, long-suffering friend.  I will never say never, but for now, I believe my addiction to dabbling in various distractions and dalliances, has truly lost its passion, I really do.  The years have gotten away from me, and now the time has come to settle down and seriously focus.  I have two books to finish.  But again, the best laid plans. . . . 

Real or Fiction?

I write mostly fiction.  The best stories in my opinion are about some kind of friction. Friction between characters, friction between elements, friction between the internal  and the external.  Too often my fiction is mistaken by friends, family, or casual acquaintances as autobiographical. Or if not that, then as a true account about actual people and actual events. Too often the friction is perceived as factual, and sometimes taken personally.

Choices: Chapter 10

Chapter X
1836
The Republic of Texas

I woke up that first morning contemplating my next move in this new place. I didn’t know anything about the area. Was there a trading post, other settlers?  If there were others, they would most likely be along the river, probably further southwest. It was an uncertain time in the territory. The both of us traveling a distance on one horse was risky but we had no choice. We needed tools, basic supplies, a mule and a wagon.

Choices: Chapter 9

Chapter IX
A New Leaf
1836

I left Tennessee toward the middle of February, halfway thinking about following my old friend Crockett to Texas to see what was happening there. The Colonel had lost his appetite for Washington politics, according to a man who came into the shop one day saying he had read about it in a copy of the Alabama Watchman.  I suspect Davy simply tired of having his honor trampled by the likes of Andrew Jackson, and opted for more worthy pursuits. For whatever reason, most likely adventure, he went to Texas.

Choices: Chapter 8

Chapter VIII
Loose Ends
August, 1822

Upon my return, I noticed something peculiar in CB’s behavior.  He seemed preoccupied, on edge, not at all himself.  At first I thought it had to do with me personally, something I had done, or said. It nagged at me that he could be holding me accountable for the death of Louis, finding himself somehow caught in the middle, between the Friedel loss and my part in it. He had become close with the Friedel family, visiting their farm often, tending a full blown romance with Isabel.  Or, I surmised, perhaps he was simply ill at ease with me, not knowing how to address my loss.  He had expected me to return with my wife and baby, my family. It could be that my bereavement was more than he was sophisticated enough to process, not as acclimated in the white man’s ways as I had thought.

In Eve’s Defense

God did not live in Eden,
he only came to visit.
He enjoyed the fragrance of life
pulsating from the paradise,
and claimed it –
for he was God, the Imperialist.
The man and the woman were, in truth,
Children of the Earth;
germinating, they had erupted from her fertile source,
the way of all life in the garden.
Serpentina, the Magnificent, the Queen of Eden,
tilled the soil, and knew Earth intimately.
God, the Missionary, forthrightly
converted the children.
He laid down the law of the land:
“Ask no questions,” he said,
defining the mind’s curiosity as sin.
But Serpentina, the Wisdom in Eden, was a thorn in the
heel of the intruder,
for when she appealed to Eve’s intuition,
Enlightenment came to the daughter.
with unpardonable independence.
In Eve’s defense, there was no guilt.
There was no crime, and Adam never fell.
In fact, they stood and questioned God,
who promptly convicted them.

Anita Stubbs©1991

Mother of Pearl

Reaching, reaching deeper.
Pulling, pulling inward through the darkness
Into the very core,
Into the fiery light,
Into me.

Impacting, imploding,
I am the sun fragmented.
Embryonic granule of the Whole,
The Center, the One:
Mother of pearl.

The Family

Sitting on the old front porch swing, Julianne waits for the arrival of the unfamiliar, for the seventy-year-old-woman who gave her life.   Gently pushing the toes of her left foot against the floor in rhythm with the suspended motion, Julianne is struck with the profound comfort of her own immobility.  In the midst of the constant procession of life, I wait here, she thought.   Had always waited, it seemed to her now, while her environment ripened around her, touching her, sustaining her, as the patterns of living changed routinely, yet predictably, through the years.