Candid Corvid Productions

Water begins penetrating from around cracks in the ceiling.

Held within the box, two left from four in an ark of cats, dogs, and other small creatures.

The air cools and refreshes as moisture particles transform parch of smoke’s frequent visiting.

Fires raging every summer reissue warnings that this haven’s in the path of greed’s consumption.

Usually when there’s a threat, forest animals run from it, responding instantly to impetus of their instinct.

Were that I could be like them, instead of repressed shaking, fighting to remain human.

I know better than to abandon course: I must confront the thunder pounding at boundaries…

Picking up the battered sword, I strike until break through illusion’s encasement.

Water pours freely into the room, thirsty and drowning our sanctuary.

Feral winds rush to surround me as I emerge, filling my lungs – invigorating as they carress my face, welcoming.

The coming maelstrom shrieks its challenge, glowing eyes a rage-filled promise.

I must seek its heart for our safety. There, we’ll watch as what we’ve come to cherish is destroyed.

Ear plugs help to simulate the experience as I lay still snuggled under layered, thin blankets.

If I could quiet the terror and inner chatter warning we’re in danger, it would be easier to soak in the pleasure of solitude.

But my cells ready for battle, and muscles clamp down – anticipating maneuvers. There are just so many attacks, and few ways to counter them.

The key is to keep moving, to keep setting forth on our path, attempting to breach the other side and make contact, before it is too late.

The assault is beginning in earnest. My only consolation is that in the back of my mind, I’ve planned for this.

I don’t understand what it is about them that churns within, propagating their susceptibility to passive-aggressive malice in the guise of “good business.”

In times especially as these, my need for distance is reinforced. For how can the world be safe when family turns against you, without real provocation – just imagined, as their fears puppet them?

On this dark path I have traveled, I made sure to carve a swath where I could rest and reflect.

Even as my body has trembled to over-react, I have pushed aside the fear, in favor of what I could do.

May this time I gave to myself have been enough for what I am about to go through.

I dust off my shield, take a last look at the land that has grown to love me, and prepare for the worst – praying for a miracle to save me.

Just as the wind begins gathering under my wings, my parents sabotage me.

They will help me if they can control me – if I am dependent and in need.

But the moment I gain strength, they sense it, and disrupt me – so I have to leap and flee.

Their timing, as usual, is impeccable. My life is a series of evasions from other people’s greed.

To me, written scriptures can seem a bit stodgy – especially after having had people shove their pasty-stale versions of meaning down my gullet, force-feeding me.

However, Mathew 6:33 appeals to me in a new way, like a fresh bit of verdant scenery.

In my quest to find my “right path” and acquire my true life partner, I feel as if I keep getting thwarted.

I do not need to be lectured about how “God has plans for me.” I am the type to say, “Get your hands off of me!”

But, in this moment as I write, seeing the clock turn to 6:33pm and looking up possible meaning, happening upon this writing just when I was feeling a certain yearning is as if the message has spoken to me.

Perhaps God and I are becoming more congruent.

Trust was extended, when we both had every reason to prevent it.

He let me see inside him: all his faults and weaknesses.

In doing so, I found the rarest gem of his heart’s beating – generous in any weather.

We had barely tapped the surface of what we could have been and achieved together.

I wonder after its ending if maybe it is better this way.

(They like to hear you give up. It lowers their defenses.)

I have what is needed to manifest my own dreams, and trying to collaborate with others can enmire progress and cause conflict.

I am either being led – or have been offered a path leading away from death’s darkness.

Allah, take care of him for me. Treat him kindly and give his heart freedom’s relief.

As defined by society, marriage must march-in-step to predefined conformities.

But, this is not what proves a worthy and endurant union.

Structure can give guidance when needed.

But, like a young plant placed in a pot without drainage and room for roots’ expansion, a constricted marriage can suffocate.

My fiance’s and my engagement challenged all presets externally and internally.

It was a brave clarion-call beckoning to the universe, daring it to support relativity of love’s essential energy.

Our truth was bold and unrelenting.

Its ending proves nothing – except that forces colluded to cheat because they had already lost against us.

A pandemic had to happen to stop us.

Cowardice concedes no defeat.

Neither does a warrior.

For ten years now, I have been privately practicing blog writing and composing presentations. I’ve learned by not forcing skill and just letting inspiration gently guide me.

(It wasn’t easy, as I do have a headstrong temper!)

Over time, I have noticed reoccurring themes and tendencies – as well as experienced unexpected and sometimes daring revelations.

I did not realize my efforts would lead to my beginning to put aside camoflauge and allowing others to see my vulnerabilities more directly.

I thought I would always keep to myself – perhaps someday publishing under a pseudonym. However, the heart can only contain so much anguish when denied what it seeks and deserves.

If I cannot love all those I cherish, I must love the world. It needs my – and all of humanity’s – care to heal it.

I am capable of loving on many levels simultaneously, but my life’s circumstances seem bent on partitioning my love into zones.

I can’t help but weave it into my thoughts presented to you.

It’s what has always led me forward, luring me into the future, against fears of the unknown.

Other people’s words entwined with melodic tonal and atonal harmonies, activating emotions that would’ve stayed supressed and dormant – these artists saved my life, giving hope beyond a past left charred and crumbling.

I’ve gotten pretty good at remembering by response patterns when a song passes by in revisiting. Yet I’m grateful for the search engine bots that suggest new options to choose from.

The messaging within each song I share with you becomes, at least temporarily, like a mantra to me:

“We are one person,
We are two alone,
We are three together,
We are for-or each other…”

Music is as essential to me like bird song is to the wind.

Without it, life is silence.

What’s important in life is based upon how we define it.

We go to the dentist to clean off our teeth and keep our gums and body healthy. We accept this as a necessary and proper way to proceed.

However, sometimes there are other needs.

When I first visited with my fiance, we stayed the night over at his friend’s house. I hadn’t expected to, so did not have my toothbrush toiletries.

The amazing, differing things we ate that night resulted in a tiny calcium deposit forming on the inside of my front two touching bottom teeth for lack of flossing.

Whenever my tongue explored the groove from behind, I could feel it there.

At first, it irritated me, for I like my teeth to feel clean.

But, as I returned to The States, I realized it was one thing I carried home from my time there that had any type of permanence on the material plane and could always be with me.

As I worked odd jobs seeking stable employment, bartered at a hostel, camped out of my car, and couch-surfed, whenever I needed consolation and reassurance that our time together had been real, the tip of my tongue would seek and find our witness.

I viewed my time of hardship’s endurance as a trial-by-fire to purge weakness and become stronger.

Though I needed help and ached for an equally financially-contributing partnership, I didn’t want my fiance for superficial materialism.

I wanted him for his warm, canoodling laughter and his innovative, inclusive playfulness.

I believed he would help me, once he arrived, we married, and could get established.

I was to be the “bread winner” and provider for our family, initially.

For his love, I would have carried him over any mountain.

My current mom-and-pop team have been very supportive, over time getting better and better.

I very much appreciate their efforts, and they’ve made sure I’m sheltered. But, they still can’t shake their fear when I regain my power.

As soon as I start getting restabilized and redirecting myself productively – opening again to dreams – they shift the ground out from under me.

Perhaps I’m energy in motion – and they can’t keep up with me. I’ve got so much passion wanting to expand from inside of me.

Maybe I’m the one, always rearranging.

The word “exaggerated” exaggerates itself by how it’s spelled and how it sounds.

I love it when words sound like themselves.

Or when they exacerbate themselves further like a fear of long words being called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (my youngest’s addition).

Notice it includes “quip” inside itself, as if making fun of its own outrageousness!

When I reached for love again and extended this to a new man, I saw the signs coming that disaster was about to strike me.

She began ringing her hands with anticipation, noting how much more she’d have to work against me due to his reputation’s popularity.

Then, something happened to him – the timing was like a clear warning: if I pursued this, he would be harmed further.

Thus, I gave in to events that followed and let the rip tides carry me – far, far away from that man’s golden halo.

When I saw my fiance for the last time in Egypt, it seemed she’d gotten to and had sucked him skin to bones of vital energy.

Of course, I released him – though felt this was wrong: he’d fallen victim to his version of the messaging.

I’m not sure I should involve myself with a man. Perhaps I ought to stay alone, as I’ve all along been.

What I need is deeper connection’s nurturing and life purpose meaning – and the men I’ve met live shallow lives with focus that is fleeting.

I’m designed to support my partner’s dreams: if they’re “nightmares,” my life is unhealthy.

When my husband left, it felt as if a curse had been cast against me (this may have been true to some extent, in review of anothers’ trying to “steal” him from me).

I couldn’t believe he’d chosen my 40th birthday to have his midlife crisis, and I wondered in anguish how my life’s good efforts could not have avoided this.

I was looking in the mirror, deeply distressed with brain impulses blast-bombarding, and witnessed myself have a mini stroke as the left side of my face briefly dropped.

I sensed a powerful, negative force trying to crush the light within me. Something was taking advantage of this opportunity.

I prayed for protection and guidance and soon happened upon my husband’s data key – which must have slipped from his pocket while he was driving, and then slid to the floor behind the driver’s seat.

I had never trespassed upon his digital privacy, but this had to be the exception. I loaded it and learned that the choices he’d made had nothing to do with me.

I wasn’t a real candidate as his life mate – just a construct for him to project upon in our relationship.

Years later, I became engaged to my fiance and traveled between places I’d lived before, trying to find where we could settle to begin our new family.

From the beginning of our relationship and throughout, I felt as if a malevolent spector was smothering my brain in constant bad messaging.

“You’re too old for him. He will leave you for a younger woman. You aren’t attractive.” Envious, angry, and destructive, it lashed at me because I dared to strive to be happy.

The presence was constantly working against my positive psychology, squeezing and suffocating with painful degradation.

i struggled against it feebly, unsure how to dislodge its grip.

While staying briefly where my parents then lived, I went on a water fast for 24 hours to tap into cellular cleansing and resetting.

I then ate only tiny amounts of meat with a lot of cooked down vegetables, worked out almost daily, and bicycled everywhere instead of driving for a couple of weeks.

I quickly lost the 20 pounds I had gained from being exposed to extreme living situations without security. As a side effect, the skin on my face and forearms sagged: I looked as if I was 70!

Ever since that first day in the mirror after my husband disappeared, I’d felt as if The Crone had been taking advantage of my emotional vulnerability, scrabbling to suck the life force from me – and now she was winning!

But I fought back, now – valiantly – putting action, if not thought, into countering her.

I began doing facial muscle exercises and skin rolling massage with my fingers to reactivate tensility. I reentered work where I was using my arms and body frequently and regained muscle strength and tonality.

Eventually, the plumpness under thin gauntness began to return, and my skin began to retighten. My features are smoother now and more honestly self representing.

I am regaining ground and am proud of my efforts.

The Crone is a Bitch, if you let her be. There is no romanticism in her gnarled bones. She is spiteful, vengeful, and will suck youth from its marrow while cackling with glee.

The only defense I know of against her is to convince her I am not easy prey for her feeding.

When all crashed back in March this year, reprieve was delayed (and then cut off in June). From the beginning, I felt September was when I would reemerge.

I had hoped for less interference – to be allowed to proceed and progress, supported.

Through fire’s compressive heat beyond melting, I’ve held course, determined to not be thwarted.

Casting off the old by burrowing through caved-in tunnels, I’ve found a thin ray of sun peeking, as the hearing’s judgement is rendered in my favor.

Will I be allowed to emerge into the light of day, somehow stronger for my endurance? Or will I be shattered into pieces and buried again, mercilessly?