Something Old, Something New, Making A Dream Come True

Yesterday my wife told me a story about something that had happened to her when she was young. Right after that I had to take a shower and get ready for work. Sorry, I know that conjures up a disturbing mental image but that's the facts as they are. Actually I do a lot of my best thinking in the shower however since I'm wet I can't write anything down and often tend to lose those great thoughts unless I make a serious effort at remembering it.

Anyway, as I showered I thought about her story and then somehow  began to think about a poem I had written a long time ago, before I even moved to Oklahoma and that was at the end of 2001. It has sat for all those years and I've never done anything more with it. I ended up thinking that perhaps I could review it and see about doing some editing, perhaps making it more descriptive.  Then I segued back to my wife's story and realized that if I give it some good thought I could make a poem of that.

What happened with her was that when she was six years old there was a religious procession with statues on platforms that people carry and many people get totally absorbed in their worship. They chant (it's Catholicism) and almost reach this state of mind that resembles a higher consciousness because of how much they concentrate. Unfortunately they also can lose track of what is going on around them. My wife fell and was walked on by several people and nobody helped her. Luckily she was able to get up without being seriously hurt.

That's not something I can just toss off with little effort. I'll have to really think about how I want to word things and how I want to present the happenings as a whole. I have some preliminary ideas about people getting so wrapped up in what they are doing that they loss sight of their surroundings. You know, the can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing. Once that and the other re-working I spoke of earlier is done I plan on looking at other things I've written and giving them an overhaul and finally I want to record them and put them out as a podcast episode.

That's something I've have thought about for so long I couldn't tell you when I first had the idea. I do remember a cousin of my roommate  from when I was in the Army in Washington D.C. telling me that she liked my poems but she felt that they needed to be read aloud in my voice to get the full effect. That was in the early nineties so probably it was sometime right before that. For some reason I've never done that but with technology where it is today there's nothing to hold me back, other than my sever procrastination and self doubts that is.

The time is now, I've put off doing things like this for too long and I need to get off the pot (not talking about weed) and get things done. Nobody will do it for me, I have to make the effort and I must say my chances are looking better and better.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.