COURAGE – Day 40 in a year of …..

Posted on August 31, 2016 by hafong

Day 40, August 31, 2016 @8:36 pm

Sometimes I feel I’ve been in denial and fear most of my life. This is my brave moment – the awaking and seeing clearly and acknowledging. It is a great moment. At last, maybe I can let go of the frivolous, little petty things and be free to live the authentic life. That’s what I’m thinking, sitting before the fire, listening to the flames crackle, telling their stories to me.

What stories are you telling on this beautiful evening. I know. My stories are getting shorter. Maybe tomorrow I will have more to say.

DEAR RUTH

Posted on March 22, 2016 by hafong

Here I am, a little later and slower than yesterday. Some days are harder/easier, slower/faster than others. It’s taken me this while to show up for myself. Saving the best for the last as the saying goes. But that’s just a saying, not necessarily the truth. Every bit of life’s journey is the best. I realize the truths when I’m here, tapping out my stories. It’s like the times I have coffee with my mother and Tuesdays with Morrie. Stories have the magic of revealing the things we couldn’t see before. It’s in the telling that the lightbulb gets lit.

There are so many stories. Some are easy and some are hard to tell. I could fill a whole book about my neighbours who have come and gone over the years. I’m sure we all could. The thing with neighbours is that when they come and go, it’s often with sad stories. That is how it has been on the street where I live. Somewhere out there, there’s a song about this, I am sure.

This morning I found a copy of a letter I had taken great pains with to a neighbour. I had forgotten the ugly details of our relationship. Reading the letter reminded me it was bad enough that I thought of selling my house and moving. It was that toxic. Most people didn’t really believe my stories. They thought it was me. Some have told me that they were glad that they didn’t live next to me. I took all those things hard and personally and felt very bad about myself.

What I am learning about myself in telling this story is that I had no confidence in my own judgements. I believed what others tell me who/what I am. I see now that I listened and believed too much of their stories. I listened and took in too much of my neighbours’ woes, sadness, blame. Our fences did not put up any boundaries. Their troubles and sadness were not mine but they became mine.

We can gain wisdom in telling our stories. Sometimes it is only in retrospect that we see how silly we are. I was pretty silly, let me tell you! I am but a small Asian woman. I am not all that powerful. I am not God. Yet I have felt responsible for so many people, things, circumstances. It is only now I recognize I must stop doing this. It is funny how a letter can be such a lightbulb moment.

Thank you Ruth for inspiring me to write the letter. I see by it that I was/am a thoughtful and considerate person. I was not responsible for you.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

Posted on October 16, 2015 by hafong

It is exactly Frinday and time for Friday Fictioneers. We gather each week to tell our stories of approximately 100 words inspired by a photo prompt. We are hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields of Addicted to Purple. Here’s my 100 words this week. My story is inspired also by being lost most of my life. I have no sense of direction. Sometimes it makes for good stories. Thank goodness for Google map.

PHOTO PROMPT -© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The rain came in torrents, drumming down on the roof. She could hardly think. She covered her ears with her hands, lowering her head on the steering wheel. Thank God she was alone! There was no witness to her inepitude.

She sat. There’s no need to rush. There’s no place to go. She was lost! Worse, she couldn’t figured out which button/lever to turn on the wipers. There was no manual. She checked. She couldn’t find the radio either.

She should have checked it all out before she left the rental place. Should have, could have. The beat goes on.

AFTER THE PARTY

Posted on September 18, 2015 by hafong

After the party is over, after all the drinks are gone, after all the speeches have been spoken, after everyone has gone home… We can relax and let our smiles fall. We can take our shoes off and drop our clothes on the floor. We can sigh, breathe and let our shoulders drop. We can wash the weariness off our faces, smile again, remembering the moments, faces, toasts and stories, feeling grateful that we have friends and family to invite and share.

After the party is over, after we can take no more, after we have come home, we can let our faces fall. We undress, hang up our clothes and stumble to the bathroom. Under the warm shower, we breathe and sigh with relief and contentment. We smile at the memories, stories and happy faces, feeling grateful to be invited.

After the journey is over and the dog collected, after the bags are unloaded, after a cup of tea and a glass of wine, after a meal cooked and ate, after a good night’s sleep…..After the bags are unpacked, the clothes laundered and hung, I am able to sit here, feet up, tap, tapping on the keyboard, feeling grateful for the journey, the hills and valleys, the laughter, the tears and the people who travelled with me.

THE CANYON OF MY MIND

Posted on July 8, 2015 by hafong

It’s been such a long while since I’ve flexed these fingers over the keyboard. The movements have become awkward and unfamiliar. It’s like losing touch with one’s close friends. After awhile you find you have nothing to say to each other. You look at each other and wonder how it happened – this strange awkwardness. And so, I am sitting down with my old friend.

Can we get re-acquainted? Can I get the Midas touch and let the letters and words flow from my fingertips again? I hope so. It’s been lonely without words and pictures and stories they tell. There’s no reverberation. I only hear the sound of one hand clapping. It echoes in the canyon of my mind. You can hear a pin drop in its grey emptiness.

I rouse myself from the lassitude that I have fallen in. How I got here, I do not know. But it has lasted long enough. Time to get up, get dress and show up. Time for the words to march across the page to tell the stories. Time to show a little colour and life. There’s a person living on Preston Avenue. See how her vegetables and flowers overflow their beds and pots? See the brilliance of the greens, pinks, blues and purples? Then there is the orange of the lilies, blooming in defiance of the drought. We are having a very dry summer. Forest fires are raging up north and the military have stepped in to help.

The morning is beautiful. The smoke has cleared and the sun is coming through. Won’t you step around to the back and see what I have growing there? There’s peas in the pod, grapes on the vine, the scarlet runners climbing the tower, green tomatoes and little cucumbers. The broccoli is flowering and cabbages forming under cover. The petunias are nodding their approval from above.

Oh, there’s the Bing Cherry bush, too. It’s covered with fruit. Sheba has discovered she likes sleeping outdoors and made her bed beneath it. I wonder what else she has discovered as she sleeps with nature in the night. Maybe if I can quiet my mind and open my heart, they will come to me.

onethousandandtwo

Looking at Infinity

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