The End

I am jealous of dead people in 2011. It is absurd and wrong, but I envy them for being through with this pain. I hurt and I can't get it to stop. Too many of my milestones are heartache and misery. I don't like my life. I don't value my life. I am sorry, sorry, sorry I feel this way.
For 2012, I need change. Things have got to change. I can't live like this with a broken heart and a mind of misery, battling the need for money to eke out a stupid, worthless existence.
This site has helped me, given me someone to talk to, let me get out the thoughts swirling in my head, but I'm done with this too. I'm slamming the book shut on 2011 and all related subjects.
I want my life back.
I want myself back--the one excited about life and thinking she could make the world a better place, the one who was guided by love and believed happiness was achievable.
I am left with this shell and misery.
I have to believe 2012 will be better.
I am the control. I am the variable. We are both disappointed with our results.

Captain of the Ship Needed. Inquire Within.

Silly Wabbit. Our race is an illusion. We've been running in place this whole time.
Then Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and the dish ran away with the spoon.
You and your silly tightropes, thinking you're above it all, preening in imagined spotlights, your spirals are knots you've tied yourself, your wire, mere thread.
Is it time to take out your wholecloth and fashion anew?
Or do I piece her back together and pray the music will come?
Katherine wants to be a nice quiet librarian and share our passion for books and intellectual freedom.
KD exceeded our expectations, filled the boots we once thought were so daring, but for all her bravado, she's been wounded in battle and is MIA. Her guitar has turned to lead and it made her cry.
Kathy? Forget it. She's always crying.
She can not take over anything except children, dogs, and pretty things like flowers which is her department anyway.
Mom appears when summoned.
Angel, Delilah and Gypsy Nurse took off.
Somebody's going to have to rise to the occasion and deal with this world and get us some place. I need to be able to pay my basic living expenses .
This can't be impossible.
It just can't. I have too much done that I believe in.
I  am stalled.
I need to put energy into finding an agent.
Consistent energy.
I try here and there, here and there, and get rejected and go back to the part I love instead of pushing to find someone who can help me get from here to there. 
So there you have it: my first wish: Let me find an agent who believes in me as a writer.

Deflated

I try, and try, yet I am not solid.
I know because three times I have been deflated.
I imagined the return of the prodigal daughter after a 5 year absence from family functions, and instead received a letter saying come alone or don't come. Deflated.
I tried to be a do-gooder donating to a Breast Cancer Research Charity when I sold items on ebay. When they collected, I bounced a check. When I didn't cancel my "free" trial membership to a vanity music site, I bounced three checks. Deflated and in the hole at Christmas time.
I decided to use my time to write, vigorously attacking writing projects, believing I merit making my living as a writer or musician or something I do naturally. Instead of getting a job while I am in grad school to be a librarian, I gave myself permission to live frugally and write instead, trying to get the creations in my head on paper.
It crossed my mind as I was writing my screenplay, how doubtful it was that I could even get it read, much less having it produced. I smelled whiffs of futility, but decided to jump in instead just because. Just because the story has been dancing in my head and I just decided 5 pages a day and push, push, push, and I would have a screen play in no time.
Final Draft is my enemy.
I hate, hate, hate it.
I had 43 pages of a screenplay I was in love with--the one I have thought of for 5 years, and it crashed. I continually saved it, but it crashed and my precious creation disappeared except for a 30 page PDF version. It is only 13 pages in length, but I really lost 43 pages because the 30 page version is nothing like what it became.
I am not sure I have the heart to write it again!
I am deflated.
I feel like giving up.
Who cares anyway.
I cared a great deal and now I am deflated.
I feel like I can't win for losing.
What if I am a nothing girl after all?

The Tortoise and Ricochet Rabbit

I am the control and I am the variable, in this, my life.
The control is the tortoise that plods ever onward.
The variable is ricochet rabbit: Bing, bing, bing!
Racing hither and to, crissy-cross on my tightropes, laughing, crying and changing, the variable has lived many lives in one, from nothing to something and in between.
The control is unimpressed.
The variable cannot be repressed.
For all my experiments, I still hold only pieces and bits.
In the canyon below my high wire are broken dishes and my shiny assumptions that counted as truth yesteryear.
Once upon a time I saw truth as something to be sought.
The bloody shards below mock this idea of truth.
We have no truth, only moments of letting go of our precious baubles and learning to celebrate their smashing. Spirals, angles,  trajectories, and time, affect our truth.
Our peeping eyes disagree on what we see.
Truth lies somewhere in your buoyant step, after, after, and after the baubles smash in little tiny bits.

My Baby, My Teacher, the Rocket Scientist

My dog is small, a perpetual puppy, and he doesn't mind all the gobbledigook babytalk that comes out of my mouth. Small creatures tend to bring that out in me.

My eldest son, the Doctor of Nuclear Engineering, accepted this for a short while. I remember the time. I remember the exact spot I was standing when this changed. As I was gazing adoringly at my 3 month old baby boy, we locked eyes. He distinctly told me that he loved me but that he needed the facts (not my baby talk please.)

I changed and had a blast introducing him to the world of wondrous things with no baby talk allowed. I still sang to him, of course, which he always loved.

This whimsical black sheep, educated career waitress, broke singer/songwriter, Peter Pan, Captain of the Ship, Pied Piper mother,  is no rocket scientist, but I raised one. I surely did.

Swift Kicks in the Pants. and Bites in the Butt

I might as well have had a target on my posterior, bent over ready for the boot.
4 Big Kicks in the Butt I Got for my Vanity and my Spirit of Giving Back in the Name of my friend, the late Sam Moss. 
Vanity: Reverb Nation had a special free trial offer and I thought why not and thought it was fun to watch my name climb the site billboards. It made me wonder how it worked and because I realized it was a closed system at best, climbing their charts meant you paid for premium services. I like to see features and whether they are necessary and decided this site is a good way to share music if you have a large following or if you stick to all the free features it is a good place to post songs for others to hear. Meanwhile no notice was given to me that my free trial was expiring and I had kept no reminder to self, so I bounced 3 checks.
Vanity Hurts.
My other painful kick was a 4th bounced check. After my hitherto free services bounced my 3 checks, ebay collected on my donation to breast cancer research., and bounced a 4th check. I decided to donate 25% in honor of Sam-his wife Dido died of breast cancer. Charity hurts. Vanity and Charity bit me in the butt.
All the bounced checks have made me in the negative, negating all the work I did the month of October selling and shipping on ebay. Plus I still owe my son his half ---eaten up by my bounce.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch and Ouch again. 4 swift kicks when I could have learned with a simple warning letter.
Oh, my aching arse.
But I have to just forget it, sitting on pillows until the bruises heal.
My aching bum is nothing in the scheme of things. 

LIke Water

I channel my efforts with my tightropes, and then follow the path of least resistance, just like water.
.

Little Tiny Bits

My urge lately has been to organize, to use what I have, use up my bits.

Jesus and the Red Words

Jesus was a man. Jesus lived. We love Jesus because we were taught as children how kind and nice and powerful and miraculous he was. While I sang in the Episcopal choir, I was still confirmed and had the good fortune to be given a bible with a new testament with an apocrypha where all that Jesus was reported to have said is written in red.

When I write songs about the words in red, I always mean the apocrypha, for it was an experience to read those red words. To me it said Jesus was all those things I had been told and that he was to be considered a teacher/mentor. He gives us the beautiful and succinct golden rule to live by: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  A quick check with the golden rule, and you can make up your mind about how to behave in any given situation. It teaches us compassion and thoughtful living and gives us a check and balance to live by. I love the golden rule.

But I also distinctly heard him say he is our brother and that we could emulate him but that we should not exalt him but our mutual Father. He tells us there is life after death. He is powerful. He is a social nobody. He is growing in strength, not by military strength, but through love and miraculous works. He has lost years. He befriends the outcasts. Jesus is a rebel. Jesus had a temper.

Still I cannot swallow the idea of drinking Jesus' blood and eating his body because he died to save our sins. How does that work exactly? I don't see how it computes.
I think it was a political murder and people added some zing to control the potential uprising of the masses.

If I am wrong, I am down the chute to hell and I bet my 3 children's immortal souls in the bargain.

The only way I can recognize the Jesus I met through those red words is to proceed with love and compassion, guided by the golden rule. It is a beautifully organized chaos in this world from the spiders web to the cosmos. How could our existence have a trick ending? For surely it is a trick if only the people who parrot the right words are destined for heaven like the Christians say.

Even in the Episcopal church where hell is not often mentioned, I was afraid for my Jewish friends, until I kicked the religion habit and branched out to my own personal Church of KD where all beautiful souls go to heaven because that only makes sense.

I feel brave for shutting my ears to bible-thumping-men-in-white-shoes. I only did it because I vowed to never tell my children anything but verifiable truth. If I didn't know so, we'd look it up (a librarian-ish tendency I've had all my life)
Having very intelligent, genius children, I decided to approach religion like some people think this and some people think that, introducing them to a range of religious ideas instead of indoctrinating them with the faith I grew up with.

This surprised me, although I remember thinking maybe my children would give me insight to my questions someday if I just gave them the facts. We did have a church for awhile, because I thought they would like the social aspects (but they didn't) So we quit and took nature walks instead.

My Empty Nest is Not Empty

I have an empty nest, true, but I am realizing motherhood is forever, and I have many gifts left to share with my grown children and their families.
1) I need to thrive so they have no worries about me. They can think about me and smile.
2) I need to be healthy and clearheaded until the end of my life. I do not want to be a burden.
3) I want to be there for my children and my future grandchildren. I want to live long.
4) I want to be healthy of mind and spirit, as well as body, so my children will want my grandchildren to be around me. I want to love and share and show my grandchildren the world through my whimsical eyes. I want my children to see the magic they have forgotten, our magic, the magic we made with love, learning, laughter, and song.
5) No matter how old my children are, I want to hug them, hug them tight. If they need me, I will be there.
6) I want no news to always mean good news. I will communicate but if I don't, my children will always know I'm doing great, and vice versa.
7) I must be financially secure: No rescues from my children. I need to be smart and plan this well at this juncture. As this is my weak spot, it will take some concentration and effort to achieve financial security. This should be my focus now until it is achieved. It is still uncertain how: I want to be compensated for being writer of story and song and feel this is entirely achievable and doable and righteous. I can also be a librarian who writes or a touring singer/songwriter. I feel as if I can still follow my passions and make a living, but it can't be a squeaking by existence as it's been or I'll be a beggar at my life's end.

Bearded Baby Cockroach in a Skirt To Land on Moon

I wish we were the ant, but we are the cockroach, scurrying, and furtive, resilient, and adapting, watching out for the shoe of fate that threatens to squash us out of existence.
We are bearded baby cockroaches in skirts who get kicked in the pants to build our characters.
We take a licking and keep on ticking until our final shoe-down.
Unfortunately kicks in the pants often leave splinters, impossible to reach being in one's own derriere.
Then you must ask for help and it is a bit embarrassing. Or you don't have your splinters doctored and they fester and block you from your goals.
I believe that through the kindness of friends, family and strangers, I have been relieved of all my bloody splinters from the past, and now I can move along.
I predict there will be great changes in my life in the coming year, good things, exciting things, fun things. I see it coming like the rumble of thunder.

Ode to the Moon

We are the Moon with our reflected glory, and our two faces.
We see the same and different moon from our corners of the Earth.
The moon is nice, the way it makes you feel special because it follows you, even in speeding cars.
When the moon is full, we feel its pull.
It can make us bleed and fight.
Moon. Oh, Moon.

What to Say to a Jumping House

The road I'm on is familiar. I've driven it many times before, but I have never seen this old house or that one. It makes me curious. Because it is old, I know it has been there longer than I have traveled past. How could I miss it? I either looked at it or didn't, both without seeing. Because I am the control and I am the variable, these anomalies do make me curious. I take from it that it is all the same difference. The end result is the same whether I saw it without seeing or didn't see it. Either way, a house just jumped out at me and I said "Well, Hello! Fancy Meeting You Here!"

Word Rebels: A Short Short Story by KD Rouse

“Words are all we have.” - Samuel Beckett-

Oscar managed to push the dictionary under his bed before his mother came in.

 “Acks?”  she asked,  “Test 2moro.”

“I hate Acronyms!” said Oscar. “Why can’t we use whole words?”

“2 Slo” said his mother. “Law sa acks betr.”

“They aren’t even real acronyms,” said Oscar with disgust. “Do you know if a word disappears, we lose the only way to describe something. Like an animal going extinct.”

“U hav 2 try,” said his mother. “Law.”

“I think people should be able to talk the way they want.”

“U betr Behav. Arest’d” she said with some concern. Acks as the Universal Language was adopted in 2057 and was taken very seriously. Anyone who could not master Acks, or even worse, refused, well…They were cracking down.  

Words are beautiful, delectable, delicious, said Oscar dreamily.

“Shhhh!” said his mother sharply. “No! Law!”

“No law, “ repeated Oscar. “I like that. No law! Up with the word!”  He knew he had found his calling, but said goodnight in ACKs to please his Ma-ma!

Me and St Pete

I have imagined God as a game show host where we all go down the chute to hell (Father, Son, and Game Show Host by KD Rouse)
I had a day dream about playing "Defend Your Life" with St. Peter at the Gate too.
"Well, " he booms like thunder. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
All I can think of is "Plop, plop. Fizz, fizz. Oh what a relief it is."
 I see him scowl and all I can think of to say is "I''d rather fight than switch."
"Excuse me?" he roars.
"This tastes like butter!" I exclaim.
St Peter reddens so I keep trying.
"You're in good hands with Allstate." I chirp.
"Enough!" he yells.

I warble "Have it your way!"
"Do you not understand the gravity of this occasion?" splutters St. Pete. "Your immortal soul is at stake."
"SOOOOUUUUULLLLLLLL TRAIN, " I sing. " Save 15% on sole while quantities last, " I say.  "We cook your steak to perfection."
"Lord, Lord," says St. Peter, with his face in his hands. "Why hast thou forsaken me? I get all the crazies."
"Fear not, " I say, "For the angel of the Lord is upon you."
St Peter snorts. "You don't mean you do you? It's up to me if you get your wings and so far I haven't understood a wor..."
"Fly with me!" I sing. "Come fly with me!"
"That does it!" yells St Peter. "Century after century I've done this. GO on, Go on in. Let HIM deal with you. I quit!"

Tees, Ringtones, & Songs

If you want a KD Rouse thing or another, here is my little store: 

KD Rouse: Reverb Nation Store

I Know What I Want At This Juncture

I know what I want for this next era of my life.
I continue to need freedom to write, therefore, I need $.
I realize I"ve had it with worrying about how to pay my basic bills.
I've decided I do not want to perform out as a singer/songwriter at this time.
I want to place songs with successful singers and unknown stars.
I do not want to be a librarian although I almost have my Master's in Library and Information Science from UNC-G. The time is not wasted however. I am using this new information to organize my thoughts, prioritize, understand my values, and learned more about communication. Besides school, I write.
I considered going to Grad School for writing but I didn't want to be told what to write or how to write. I just want to write what I want. Plus at the end of library school, I can be a librarian with a job if my writing endeavors never translate to money. I am prepared to be a cheerful librarian. I love the library, but I don't think I will have to work there. I think I will have experienced some success by then.

Entirely Different.

Walk with me, before you help me back on my rocker.
I am a new sack of sugar. Entirely Different.
I am an inch shorter, scarred and yesterday I was still beaten down and battle worn.
Today  I am Entirely Different.

Fountains, Trees, Stars

The  fountain's flow is illustration of balance without nets or tightropes.
Trees give and give and cheerfully use our left-overs.
Stars cheer us on.
They shimmer and twinkle, tempting us to dream.beyond our tiny skulls and bones.

How Long?

I am eight and my stomach hurts, hurts, hurts. I am getting fevers. I remember 105 like a crazy dream. Dr. Shaver is mean and asks me questions. My sisters are at home and I don't know the right answers. He's getting angry. "When was your last bowel movement?" he snaps. I am bewildered. I don't know what this is. I wish my big sister was here. "Bowel movement," he repeats. I am clearly bewildered. "BM!" he yells. "CaCa, Poo-poo, Doo-Doo! Poop! How long?"
Now I understand what we are talking about but I still don't have an answer. I didn't know you were supposed to measure it or even notice it.

Dr. Shaver is angrier. "How long?" he demands. "Once a day, a week, a month! How long?" I don't know so I guess the right answer. "One month," I say, hoping I chose the right answer so he will stop being mad.  He is more mad and leaves the room.
They corrected my crooked urethra at Children's Hospital. The hospital doctor is nicer but he still asks questions: "Why didn't you tell us it hurt when you peed?" he asks. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe no one ever asked.