Autumn Nostalgia

I miss you already spring and summer!

It’s that time of the year when what I call my “autumn nostalgia” kicks in on me.  I get all warm and fuzzy for no good darn reason, I watch my favorite movie (Love Jones) three times a week, and I read books, any book from my favorite author (Eric Jerome Dickey) over and over again, and I wanna exercise only inside. 

There is something about this time of the year when everything is just different.  The leaves are practically gone, the grass is brown, the swimming pool is covered, and the patio furniture looks cold and hard instead of warm and inviting.  Even charcoal burning which is a sure sign of bar -b-q smells differently.  A few more weeks, and we'll be setting the time back on the clocks!  All these things, that are sure to happen every year with the change of the seasons, causes me to have mixed feelings about taking the wool pea coat, scarves, hats and gloves down from the top of the closet.  I get in the kitchen and instead of making taco salads, and fun light dinners, I start making soups and stews, chili and casseroles! I feel like Mama Bear, and I’m getting ready for hibernation. 

Maybe I’ll learn to run outside in the cold this year.  A year ago, I downloaded a running app, started and finished the program, (YAY) (LOVE IT), but I only liked running in the spring/summer time.  I just couldn’t figure out how to keep that daggone cold air out of my lungs! (LOL).   Maybe this is just what I need to get rid of my autumn nostalgia.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still watching my Love Jones at least three times a week, and I’m still gonna read EJD until the words run off the page, and will probably make at least four or five soups or stews.  But I’m gonna switch it up and get outside more this fall/winter season.  Try and learn something new.  Who knows, maybe this time next year I'll be having summer nostalgia. Wish me luck!

A Found Treasure! Me, Myself, and My Opinion

Roger M. Suggs, better known as the rapper Vigalantee, Owner of Phatahdat Records, the creator of "No Jangle Movement", the emcee, speaker, and social activist based in Kansas City, Kansas, has step away from the recording studio, and he took his words with him!  He has stepped into the world of authorship, placing his words into his debut book Me, Myself and My Opinion, sharing such powerful poems as The Reasons, Educational Love, Good Man vs. Scorned Woman, and much more.

This is one of my favorite artists, and being as i am an avid reader of all things good, my greedy mind had to  have this! Vigalantee if you happen to be strolling through the neighborhood of The Diva Journals, stop by and give the people a lil something!

Check him out readers! You won't be sorry!

Payloads Store

http://store.payloadz.com/details/1339390-ebooks-philosophy-me-myself-and-my-opinion-by-vigalantee.html

At the Kindle Store

http://www.amazon.com/Me-Myself-My-Opinion-ebook/dp/B0096R1C64/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347929343&sr=1-1&keywords=Me+Myself+and+My+Opinion

When I Realize, That I'm In My Own Head

I'm in my own head, and to be honest, I really wouldn't mind staying here for a while longer.  I'm riding, and while the ride is complimentary, there is construction going on and the journey on the road is extremely bumpy and uncomfortable.

I'm in a hurry in here.  There is construction machinery, hard hats, horns honking, and it's detrimental to my thought process.  Too much going on in here, here being my own head.

I think I'm visualizing my destination being a lot closer than originally anticipated.  I'm still in a hurry, and there are so many bumps.  The faster I walk, the further my destination is pulled from me.  Need To Slow Down.

So many potholes, ramps and road cones; why is there so much stuff in here?  Too cloudy.  Can't move around in here.

I see my destination again.  Dang, red lights now?  Will I ever make it?  

Sharp left turn, there's some speeding, and more bumps.  Pressing the brakes hard!! Stop! There is a pedestrian (a thought) in the crosswalk.  Almost destroyed it.  Gotta Slow Down.

Not there yet, but destination seems closer.   Another sharp left turn, another huge bump, and then a complete stop.

I decide to not get out of the vehicle transporting me (my mind) but decide to take another rough ride so I can create more. 

We are still reading!

Hello all.  I was dusting off some things the other day, and ran across a book that I had put away for several years now, and have never read.  It’s a book by Bernhard Schlink called The Reader.  Originally published in Switzerland in 1995, translated from the German in 1997, and once a selection of Oprah's Book Club, The Reader has enthralled me since page one.

Postwar Germany and a fifteen year old male child is walking home from school when he falls deathly ill.  He is rescued by a woman who is only a few years younger than his mother.  Over a period of time, she becomes his lover.  She captivates him with her passion, but confuses him with her silences.  Eventually she disappears, and the kid, (ironically this is what she calls him in the book) doesn't see her again until he is a young law student and she is on trial for a crime she is being accused of committing.

I'm telling you, I am truly a lover of anything vintage; but who knew that this seventeen year old treasure was hiding on my bookshelf!  I do remember purchasing this book from my local library during one of their book sales, so I doubt I paid more than $1.50 for it, but it is more than worth that!  It's a great read.  See if your local library has a copy, or if Amazon has a used copy for sale.  

Get it and enjoy it as much as I have.  If you've already read it, let's chat, let's journal. Happy Reading!

More Stimulating Conversation

"Oh now you wanna move? Now you wanna do something?" I knew that would sting you worse than any worker bumblebee, and like the Queen Bee does, I knew it would sting you more than once".-Adversary

"Sure, it stung me, it left some swelling, itchiness and redness at the site of the sting; BUT, the discomfort, well it only lasted for a couple of hours.  My comfort, it never leaves me, it doesn't swell and then goes away, HE stays swollen ALL THE TIME, ready to strike and protect HIS own, at any time. So take that week attempt of an attack back to the pits from which it came" -Me, the protected one.

We Are Reading!

Cinnamon Kiss: A Novel (Easy Rawlins Mysteries) by Walter Mosley

It is the Summer of Love and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it's a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time. He has to track the disappearance of an eccentric, prominent attorney. His assistant of sorts, the beautiful "Cinnamon" Cargill, is gone as well. Easy can tell there is much more than he is being told-Robert Lee, his new employer, is as suspect as the man who disappeared. But his need overcomes all concerns, and he plunges into unfamiliar territory, from the newfound hippie enclaves to a vicious plot that stretches back to the battlefields of Europe. - Amazon.com

A great read thus far.  Have you read it?  If so let's journal. 

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

 

 

 

 

How many times, have we started out on an adventure, our own adventure, to enjoy the life given to us?  That's not a bad thing, in fact when we are given a new day, we are prepared for it; it is given to us with a new amount of grace, sufficient enough for us to learn, and to achieve countless amounts of knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

It is we ourselves that get in our own way, stumbling over our own feet, knocking ourselves out of God's divine purpose for us.  Many times, (me, a big offender) we get ahead of ourselves and God, and we leave the paths that he put us on, in search of preparing a place for us; one prepared for us in our own timing, trying to fix every little thing.  And we mess up. 

In John 14: 1-6, Jesus said (New International Version (NIV))

14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God^[a]; believe also in me. ² My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. ⁴ You know the way to the place where I am going.”  ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

After reading this, and understanding this, I choose to rest in Him.  The same Him that said "HE is going to prepare a place for me".  He never said that i should prepare a place for myself. I'm getting out of my own way, and especially His way.  I wait patiently, knowledgeably, assured that I am safe in Him, as He prepares my place.