Lamenting Days of Yore

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap organized by Baking In A Tornado. This week I joined 15 other brave bloggers who picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

Here are links to all the writers now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out.

Baking In A Tornado
The Momisodes
The Bergham's Life Chronicles
Stacy Sews and Schools
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
Spatulas on Parade
Sparkly Poetic Weirdo
Southern Bell Charm
The Angrivated Mom
Confessions of a Part Time Working Mom
The Lieber Family Blog
Cluttered Genius
The Diary of an Alzheimer's Caregiver
Someone Else's Genius
Climaxed
 

My subject is: You have a choice of a perfect vacation. Where do you go and who do you take with you? It was submitted by The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver. Here goes:  

"Highland Blood

I can sense it in my bone,
Feel its pull on the wind-
Can hear it echo within my breast-
Sending chill across my skin.

An isle worlds away is calling
Brazen realm of cliff and stone
A land of blooming thistle
I’ve glimpsed in aging tome."

-Luke Douglas

 Green. Jade. Emerald. Forest.

The color means trees. The smell of pine needles. Rolling hills of wet grass after rain. I've always been attracted to it. It means life and brightness. Even if there is no sun, and the clouds dim the day, I will find the green. It is always vibrant.

To me it also means Scotland. I instinctively picture endless fields, farmers and their sheep herding the countryside and tall trees as far as the eye can see. I grew up next to cornfields. That is a different kind of countryside. It always felt barren and dry.

I daydream about 16th century Scottish life. I'm not sure if that is what I would find now. I would take my husband, of 10 years, and cross the Atlantic Ocean. (He might have one arm left by the time we land. Airplanes make my stomach roll.) We would plant our feet on the foreign soil and walk off the beaten path. It is a place I wouldn't mind getting lost in for awhile.

We could rent a small cottage in an out-of-the-way town. Just us. No children. No expectations. Like the honeymoon we never had. We would wake up to chilly mornings with coffee and dew speckled landscapes. Then talk a walk down cobble stoned roads and find a market for breakfast. Then meet the people.

I am in love with accents. Not languages but the way people talk. French is supposed to be the language of love. I prefer the big, burly gents.Words so thick you have to watch the person's mouth to track what they are saying. They seem exotic. I would roll my tongue around words like Mackinnon, Beinn na Caillich, Argyle and Carnasserie. My ears would be filled with laughter because alcohol runs freely through Scottish veins.

Of course, we would visit the tourist stops. All the castles. Stonehenge. The Coast. Tea rooms. All the Pubs. The Lock. The Highlands. The Isle of Man. A free vacation is so open ended. We might never leave. 

Except for the kids. I almost forgot about them.

-J

Why?

     Because I have something to say, whether you want to read it or not. Ha.
     But really, why do blogger's blog? For me, it's a social outlet that gets all these words out of my head. It gives me hope that maybe I can shut down at the end of the day. Lately, though, it's been a fight with the Zzzzz's because I'm thinking of what I could write about next.
     Andrew Sullivans sums it up: "Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.  You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary."
     So if you're capable of having an hour long phone conversation with a friend, you can blog. Think about that last conversation, break it down into topics and you have blog posts. Forget the necessities of five sentences to a paragraph or writing a six page paper that you learned in High School. Write what you know. Write what you like. Write what you enjoy and have fun with it.
     Cathy Larken writes: "Ignore the editor within who might want to sneer, “no one would read your writing.” That’s just the resistance that many writers have to deal with rearing it’s ugly head. Laugh at it, make faces, give it no power and it will get bored and go away."
     Do things your way. Spread knowledge. Nothing is too small to write about if you are interested in it. You don't need to please anyone but yourself.
   
     Why do you blog? If not, why haven't you yet?