Thursday, May 21, 2009

Color my world....with words....


Our handsome and gifted Adnan Mahmutovic has written a review that I said somewhere else is "so organic I could plant it in the ground and up would sprout a forest..." *smiling* Beautifully done. He has a novella out, ILLEGITIIMATE that is a stunner. I should save all this for a "Presenting!" day, though. Yes.

I've been so very lucky with reviews....or maybe I shouldn't say lucky. Maybe luck has nothing to do with it and there is something else, another word, to use.
Now, I leave you with a post taken from the Year of Gratitude post that Angie Gumbo Writer and I, along with Nannette Croce, Barb Quinn, and Patresa Hartman, were writing last year.


I awake with the colors of hovering just above my face, twisting and turning and shifting and waiting for me to pull them into myself where they mix with my blood, swift through my veins, and out they’ll come, through my fingertips, from deep inside of me, mixed with my own juices the colors are both yours and mine and the universe’s. I arise, full of color, full to the spilling point, full to the overrunning waters point, full and bloated with color, and I float to my writer’s room and spill the colors out for you to see, right onto the page I pour myself out to you.

As I write, my synapses fire off, pulse alive with energy in reds, pinks, yellows, oranges, all the colors of a blazing sunrise against an appearing blue sky, all the colors of the universe bend towards me in fractured kaleidoscopic beauty. My world in images compose the five senses—all explode about me in shattered prisms of dark and light, words drip and ooze, deep mysterious endless as a heavenly black hole where things are lost, and then hope-to-be found again by the bright intense white that rip my retinas with intensity, brilliant as any distant star flaring alive.

A meal is in front of me set on a white plate—alabaster yogurt piled high with delicate fresh raspberries and crunchy brown walnuts, along with black Deep Creek Blend coffee poured into a sea-green mug pitted with the potter’s fingerprints. I love the taste of color—round fat blueberries, strawberries bursting juice and tiny seed, crunchy peppery radishes, silky dark chocolate, sour limes, and the blackberries I pick on my mountain until my fingers are stained purple-black. I taste the colors; the shades coat my tongue and recall the hues of salty, tangy, sour, the bitter and the sweet.
I lift my head from the writing. Why, the evening is arriving! I’ve spent this day opening my veins and spilling colors. The sunset shouts into the sky, the seeming coming end, as all is fading to what is perceived as the absence of color—to black. Yet, the dark holds the colors within, as a backdrop for the swollen moon white and gray, the stars bright changling angels. In the dark, the day’s less apparent shine. But, I am ahead of myself, first the sunset amber, garnet, amethyst, coral blaze fire across the sky. The circle of life-colors, beginning with the sunrise and ending with the sunset. This is gratitude’s day; the color of life.

5 comments:

Michelle said...

Well...yes. I couldn't have painted it better :)

xxx

Missy B. said...

Beautiful, Kathryn! BTW, my WV born and bred mother just read TG...in 2 days, I might add...and she absolutely fell in love with Virginia Kate and her brothers!

:)

Debra Lynn Shelton said...

Beautiful bouquet of colorful wordsmithing. Well done.

Sandra Leigh said...

Look at those blossoms! Fabulous.

Your gratitude post - you're doing it again, writing so vividly that I want to stop and read aloud.

Debbie said...

What a sweet comment from Missy about her WV mama reading your book! Will you even remember us when you are so famous?