Sandra Lynn Sparks

The Footprints of 9/11

2011-09-11T04:59:00.000-07:00

Everything stays in place in memory. August 30, 2001, I awoke from a dream of walking out of a desert cantina to find myself facing an amazing sight: two slender straight columns of clouds, one black, one white, standing tall against a blazing sunset. I turned on the television to see the beginning of an old Lionel Barrymore movie I had not seen since I was a child, about an old man capturing death in a tree. I turned it off quickly. It scared me. Later on that day I heard of the death of a friend's husband, and thought - that must have been what I was picking up on. I played the harp at his funeral a few days later. He had died too young.

He had been born on September 11.

I felt edgy for the next week. In the morning hours of September 10, I dreamed I was on an elevated train, sitting in the front car that was white and shaped like the cockpit of a plane. You could see a long distance from that car, until billowing trees in a park surrounded the tracks and you couldn't see anymore. The track ended. An African American woman sitting in the car with me looked at me in horror. I rose from my seat, but couldn't find my shoes. That concerned me. Being barefoot, for me, is a personal symbol that a dream has a message about death. I woke up in my dream, and went looking for answers. I found a solemn faced conductor and asked him what was going on.

"It's the end of the line." I tried to see why, but I couldn't, because of the thick billows of the leafy trees.

I woke up from the dream but, disturbed, I sent myself back into dreaming for more answers. This time I was at a Halloween festival (an even bigger symbol of death for me) and walked away from it into a part of the park that led into a field. The middle of the field had a huge ravine in it, as if something gigantic had plowed into it. This shocked me, and I couldn't stand to dream anymore.

That day I was too antsy. I came home from work and started painting to channel the energy. But what I painted - I hardly ever have a plan when I paint - horrified me -

Imagine this painting in shades of black and white and grey, with the most evil face you can imagine. The hair billowed out like clouds of ash; the woman was an evil ghost. I was startled by what I painted, and hid it away, planning to repaint it (which I did) later on.

The morning of September 11 was beautiful in Atlanta. We walked through the doors of Athe diamond wholesale business I worked for, at 8:50 am. Within minutes my boss, the wife of the diamond dealer there, called from home. The first plane. Another call after we tried to get the news on the radio. Another call. The second plane. What? A third call: The Pentagon. The diamond dealer shouted, frightened, "we're at war!"

The next half hour was a scene of panic. The diamond dealer hid in his office. We couldn't get enough news, so I went downstairs where I knew a television would be. I arrived just as the first tower collapsed, on air. A good man named Joe Earnest stood behind me and held me by the shoulders as we watched the tower become a column of ash. A straight white cloud...

I ran back upstairs. The panicked diamond dealer had spent a half hour grabbing all the hidden cash and diamonds and jewels he could, stuffed them in bags, and was locking the door. He hated me for needing to get my purse out of the store. He hated me for what happened. As usual, I was handy to hate. Any respect I had ever had for him ended that day. He ran to the elevator like a waddling child under the weight of his jewels and money, and disappeared.

The transit trains were closed - no one knew where another attack might happen. I got on a bus full of people who had not yet heard, an hour and a half after it happened. I stepped on, and found myself facing the first boy I loved, someone I hadn't seen in 30 years. I was the one who told him what had happened. I was the one who spread the shock to the bus. And when I stepped off the bus again, the world changed forever.

Changing Years On People

2011-08-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

l-r: My sister-in-law Sandra Wilson Sparks, my sister Barbara Clark, me , my niece Laurie Sparks

I began celebrating my 60th year yesterday.

I turned 59 years old.

Yes. I know, that's confusing. Lots of friends and even family thought I meant I had turned the big 60. That happens next August 28. We are given the number of our age when we have completed the full year.

But I wanted to celebrate the 60th year of my life from day one, and I'm doing it.

25 years ago I thought I had no future, and would never again have a single day of my life I could call a good one. Then everything began changing. Over the next year I'm going to be sharing the stories of my life here, in little bits and pieces. Similar things will happen on my other blog, BEING Home, which is about my current life and path. I hope you'll enjoy them.

We should look forward to all our years, not just celebrate that they have passed. One thing thing I will celebrate from that past today. My sister Barbara returned to me the only toy left from my childhood: a present from my first birthday party. Say hello to Peter Pan. He's come home from Never Never Land...

St. Nicholas Day

2010-12-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

Through the gate I pass to child again,
Searching for ivy in strange pastures,
Finding rabbits still exist,
And holly truly is a tree,
Not just silk illusions.

Christmas is real.

The Morning Song

2010-11-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

November 10, 2010

Sunrise;
And there is caw, and cry, and whoosh!
The flying songs...
Life excited that
It is just, simply, day.

Spreading the music again

2010-07-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

This week I released a compilation of the best tracks of my earlier music work on reverbnation.com, and did a few more music videos to promote the work. It was especially a pleasure to be able to remaster some tracks from Susan Hickey's and my live tape, Ramble in the Grass - I always disliked the way it was originally mastered. I am still learning how to master things, but Colcannon, in particular, came out much, much better than it originally sounded, and I'm pleased - I've loved that song since I first heard it performed by The Black Family.

In other news: The video of Twa Corbies on youtube will soon edge over the 15,000 views mark, and keeps breast to breast with the video of the Steeleye Span version.

I have gotten full drafts done on four plays this past four months. They are full plays, but - a play is never finished until - I guess until the playwright is dead! ;) They will sit for awhile, then the rewrites will begin yet again. I can write drafts very quickly, but then i always ask myself these questions: how mature is this? How much have I pulled my punches (especially with the Shakespeare cycle - I know things about him people will shy away from - how much can I actually show?) or how much have I hammered on? I was always much better at taking someone else's story and making it come alive; I am pretty challenged about taking personal stories and turning them into fiction. We'll see how it finally all turns out -

But first, I have to finish the book Going Past, and work a bit on some other books. My sister wants me to publish my poetry - at least putting that together is easy, one page a day, I have more than enough. It's for the family more than anything else.

But I've worked way too hard the past few years on writing. I'd rather spend time with people now. All those months of isolation in Kentucky may have brought forth a lot of work, but it made me an ill and lonely person. I love being home again.

2010-03-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

he is moving across a dark room
lit only by paper stars and neon moonlight
dancing with the baby faced girl who can't stop dancing
I check the girl for red shoes
she can't stop

we are laughing three to the dance
though I lie on the sofa watching
every move he makes brings out something
in me that reaches
for him

until

he makes one holy familiar gesture with a long hand
your hand comes to mind
how your face
changes and dances when my tongue slips between your fingers -

Shiver, slight and low to the bone.

Just one moment back to you
until he laughs and turns to me
and I remember where I am.

2010-03-25T07:02:00.001-07:00

True love makes you fearless.

When I found you,
I stopped being terrified
I had left the kettle on.

2010-03-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

You are the one I can barely speak of.
I have to forget every time I have seen you.
It takes me days to stop feeling your eyes
on my face
more
inside my own eyes
refelcting and unreflecting
what my own eyes see.

It is difficult to deal
with so many intangibles
bound up in a man more real to me
than I have ever known.
There is a bridge between us
that is steady and sure
but cannot be crossed,
because I feel that if I step too close to you
I will fall forever.

I have no fear of falling.
You do.
So I stay bound to a cliff of nothing.
I spend whole years alone
just to face again,
in a single unexpected hour,
all the love I ever wanted
inside one elusive man...

2010-03-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

One turn of the head
and it has begun:
a moment turned to meaning
in a lifetime,
in many lifetimes.
What god chooses our meanings?
What piece of man?
What makes what happens a brick of existence,
or just a piece of sand?
Intention and chance marry.
In the wedding band, gold.

The Dark Eyed Orpheus

2010-03-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

January 27, 1988.

Lines for the dark eyed Orpheus
Changed from matter into motion by the dying of his lungs:
Singing as the organs stretched tight as strings
Making music until suddenly he was music -
more fully than ever he was man.

And oh, I love.
That has not changed.
Some would shake their tears off
and turn their new washed eyes on some other man.
My clean eyes opened and saw music everywhere.
It glistens in the air
on snow
on leaves
on grass
in the dust of my table
on my skin
and hums, love, sometimes loud and sweet,
but, even whispered, always there.

Accepting this boundless thing, I pass it on.

And oh, I love.

That changeless thing.

The dark eyed Orpheus accepts from dreams.

Revisiting old writings: Intuition and prodigy

2009-12-21T16:17:00.001-08:00

This was part of a discussion done on alt.support.depression on August 11, 1998.

We had been talking about religion and reincarnation and how it influences creativity.

Someone wrote about how people seemed to keep hitting the same notes in their beliefs, that religion was limited by such limited ideas of God: there were just a few basic variations on religion just as there were only seven basic plots in fiction writing. I replied:

...And twelve notes to the musical scale...all we can do is take what we have remembered trhough our experience and our blood and recombine those memories into new shapes and sounds that might strike a chord in someone else, because it has grabbed them by a similar memory.

The other person made a comment about creativity comes from the meat, but didn't explain what she meant by that. I asked:

Creativity comes from the meat - what is the meat to you?

To me, the meat is memory.

Intuition is simply an ability to reach farther down into the memories of the collective consciousness than we are aware is possible. We remember through our experiences, our DNA, and the collective consciousness as a whole. Intuition never moves through unexplored territory.

The seed of a poem is written in the feeling, not the structure. Though sometimes we think we've got the whole structure right there in the moment, if we leave it alone and come back to it when the steel is cold we almost always find that e've got to blast it in the furnace again, and give it more form.

2009-08-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Oh, this was written a long time ago, 1995, when white envelopes were being exchanged between two dressing rooms and two different generations of man and woman - a lovely thing I'll never forget...

I swore off. I really did.
I am old and you are young -
Don’t kiss my neck that way!
This is not our season;
for you it’s only play.
Do not use my feelings so -
young man, young man - no.

Young man, young man - yes.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
I thought my every impulse
had long dried into dust.
But you have come and wakened just
a kiss - a yes, but really, no...
Do not use my feelings so.

Last young man to turn my head,
I will not take you to my bed.
But on my neck and on my lips
I wear your touch like jewels.

Making things work

2009-07-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a wild few weeks!

I have started a business, which seriously follows the saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket." I have spent my life doing a number of things, highly specialized things, but I let myself be pushed back from doing anything serious with my gifts by people who either wanted to drive home the idea "you can only do one thing well" or people who were jealous that I could do what I do.

I believe all talents are like troubles - we are only given what we can handle. The emphasis is on the word GIVEN - I didn't create my abilities, I was given them for a purpose, and I was meant to share them - so I do.

If I give a little every day, I feel good. If I do what I do, and I am who I am, without any effort I spread that good feeling.

Try it. Don't worry about what someone else is doing, and don't compare yourself to them. Just be, and do, as you are.

That said: here's my website: see what you'd like to have a share of, and pass it on:

http://sandralynnsparks.com

The Complications of New Creations

2009-06-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

I am starting a new business, and it is such a tangled and amazing web - that is a pun!

There is so much to put in order and link through a single website, but slowly everything is coming together.

Follow the process on sandralynnsparks.com during the next few weeks...

Stunned by a dream from years ago

2009-05-07T16:46:00.001-07:00

I am slowly clearing out papers, choosing what of my journals I should let go of, and what not to let go of. Out of my dream journals, there are a few choice things I know to keep: dreams that came from my loved ones who had died, for the most part. Dreams written on scraps of paper all over the place.

I found this dream:

June 23, 1993:

I dreamed I was visiting Tom, who, in spite of being very tired, was working at a computer, writing something down.

"I have something for you," he said.

"What is it?" I waited, but he just kept typing. I knew he was dead, but I knew he was really there; I could feel his essence. I waited. He kept typing.

"Here it is."

And I got the feeling he had given me something of benefit, but I had no idea what. I woke up.

I was puzzled when I read it, until I looked at the date. I had the dream exactly 100 years after the date I have given for the play, The Magic Circle. The play is loosely based on our former lives as Esther Waterhouse and William Logsdail. June 23 is also the birthday of someone who is important to both of us, for many reasons. Earlier in that year, during another dream in April, Tom had introduced me to this person and told me: "go for it!" though I wasn't sure exactly what he meant! I would not meet the person until the next December, having forgotten the dream, and would not remember until a few years ago, during another paper clearing, when I read the description of the man Tom showed me, and knew it was the man who would energize my writing in a way no one else could, and bring me forward to what I really needed to be doing with my life.

Existence is more of a magical thing than any of you realize. I trust the magic.

The Madwoman Wakes

2009-05-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

The Madwoman Wakes 2006

It's difficult to break through anything, but hardest to break through the walls we build around ourselves.

I am breaking through walls of memories I put onto paper...

I grew up in what I have thought of as a walled dark garden. It was my own place. Outside of its walls was an invalid's house; that invalid was my mother.

Terrible word, that. Invalid. InVALid. I think that's how my mother felt, and that is what she became.

She kept me for company, and a televison and books to occupy her time. Her mind was brilliant, but I never got to see that while she and I were together. She had shut off the tap of it before I came along.

She wanted to be a writer. She could have been a photographer. All of that died before I was born.

She lived in Alabama country for the first half of her life. She married a handsome and talented man who also could have been a writer, who also could have been an artist, but the main thing he wanted to do was fly. The thing they did together was have three children, and got to the usual work.

After years of depression era living, paid for by farming and working in factories and mills, World War II gave my Dad the chance to learn the skills to become an airplane mechanic for a living. He already knew how to fly. He kept flying away, but always returning. One day he flew away to Georgia, started working for Delta, came back for the family, and moved them here.

Mom tried to keep some purpose for awhile, but couldn't manage it. Depression was hidden in illness that a doctor diagnosed as a heart condition, and she believed him. She behaved accordingly. She took to her bed when I started school, and never quite left it again for the rest of her life. My Dad kept flying away. He was there and not there at the same time.

I was just there. I lined up her medicine bottles like soldiers, and sat down by her side. With only brief escapes, I stayed there for the better part of thirty years, as the illness became something deeper, mental, locked in a concrete we could not break because the three of us were in it together. We slept with our eyes open to pass the time.

I finally got up, somehow, and told her I had to wake up. Not wanting to wake up herself, she died.

Sometimes we wake up to our lives early. Sometimes we wake up to our lives late. God help those who stay in their beds and never wake up at all.

I cannot imagine never waking.

A dream from January 13, 1988

2009-05-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

He was dead a year. My mother was dead, six weeks. In a year someone else I loved would be dead too.

Sleep was hard during those years, because all the dreams were full of death and dying.

I found this note tonight:

A dream:

I went to some dormitory style living place filled with Celtic musicians. The piper's death was still fresh on us; I was crushed, but I could not tell anyone how I felt. A friend glossed over it; strange young men ignored it.

His lover was coming to clear his room.

Ghosts were everywhere. Even the moon was a ghost. His lover was thin skinned, on the edge of hysteria. I asked her if I could help clean his room. She didn't want to do it herself, but she screamed no.

I got down on my knees and begged, telling her that I loved him, that I knew and had nothing of him. She gave up and let me come in.

His room was my mother's old room. It was filled not just with his things, but his ghost was there, and so were the monsters of death.

His lover froze in fear. I walked forward and beat at them and yelled " Go away!" But I could only beat them back under the bed.

He walked forward then, half invisible in a Celtic cloak, then he put his hands on my shoulders and said, with the voice of Aisling (my spirit guide): "Remember what we were."

I sat down, writing down the incident, and saw the lyrics of Richard Farina's "Reflections" beside it.

I looked at the note. I can't remember that dream now. It was written down just before he started coming to me regularly in dreams, becoming my spirit guide. In three months he would come and stand beside me as a presence in my waking life, putting his hands on my shoulders and pointing out a dark haired young man I had just met: Go with him. Learn with him. The young man became more than the young man wanted to be, and as much as I needed. But that is another story.

When I read the dream again, I didn't know what it meant by Richard Farina's "Reflections." I didn't know the song.

I just found the lyrics tonight. Now, the internet makes it easy.

Reflections in a Crystal Wind by Richard Farina.

"If there's a way to say I'm sorry, perhaps I'll stay another evening, beside your door, and watch the moon rise, inside your window, where jewels are falling, and flowers weeping, and strangers laughing, because you're dreaming that I have gone.

And if I don't know why I'm going, perhaps I'll wait beside the pathway where no one's coming, and count the questions I turned away from, or closed my eyes to, or had no time for, or passed right over because the answers would shame my pride.

I've hear them say the word "forever", but I don't know if words have meaning, when they are promised in fear of losing what can't be borrowed, or lent in blindness, or blessed by pageantry, or sold by preachers, while you're still walking your separate ways.

Sometime we bind ourselves together, and seldom know the harm in binding the only feeling that cries for freedom and needs unfolding, and understanding, and time for holding a simple mirror with one reflection to call your own.

If there's an end to all our dreaming, perhaps I'll go while you're still standing beside your door, and I'll remember your hands encircling a bowl of moonstones, a lamp of childhood, a robe of roses, because your sorrows were still unborn."

The Corn King

2009-04-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

The Corn King
The madness in his eyes marks his duty;
He has no other purpose in him.
One step. Then another, toward oblivion;
He makes his peace knowing death’s within.
The male, now female, bears a child,
death pains are birth, a birth for all the living.
This is the sacrifice: the dream becomes real.
The madness passes; the corn is revealed.

August, 2007

Anger Prayer

2009-04-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

Anger, taken as a tool,
chisels new meaning out of memory stones,
carves creation out of destruction,
fires the forge of change,
and consumes itself in its usefulness.

Anger taken as a weapon,
breaks itself upon the stones.
The fire is cold before it is born.
It hides in an illusion of a heat it cannot have.
If we cling to it for warmth,
it freezes the heart in mid-beat.

The anger that is willing to change the world
Never loses its real heat,
Only its hardness.
Let my anger be a heat without edge.

Let it keep someone warm on a cold night.

The Madwoman Files August 8, 2007

2009-04-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

It’s difficult sometimes breaking through anything. Hardest to break through the walls we place around ourselves.

I grew up in a walled dark garden. It was my little room, filled with my thoughts. Outside of its walls was an invalid’s house, and that invalid was my mother. Ugly word, that. Invalid. In-VAL-id. I think that’s how my mother felt, and that ‘s what she became.

She kept me for company, with a television and books to occupy her time. Her mind was brilliant, but I never really got to see that. She had shut off the tap of it before I came along. She had wanted to be a writer, and she was a wonderful photographer. She developed her own pictures. Did a great job of it.

But the stories - no. The meaningful difference just wasn’t there. I think that was because she never got to find the brilliant things that you break off in order to grow your own brilliance. She lived in the country most of her early life. She married young. She had four kids. At first they were farmers, but my dad was a pilot who built planes, so he kept flying away. That’s how a man leaves without leaving. At least that’s how my Dad did it. He was there and not there at the same time.

When the farming days were done, and the flying started paying all the bills, Mom tried to keep some purpose for awhile, but couldn’t manage it. She took to her bed when I started school, and stayed there for the rest of her life. Thirty years. Guess who stayed there beside her. But I finally got up. I told her I was ready to wake up. Not wanting to wake up herself, she died.
Sometimes we wake up to our lives early. Sometimes we wake up to our lives late. God help those who stay in their beds and never wake up at all.

Once I could not imagine waking up. Now I cannot imagine being asleep, excepts for dreams that build the waking. Perspective is what you believe. That changes. That’s something we can do. We can change.

Adding as I lessen.

2009-04-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

I've been writing for years; as I clear out my life, I have found myself faced with boxes and boxes of things I have written, that I must go through. What a task!

Much of it can go, but in order to know what to keep, it all must be read. All the reasons I wrote these pieces will also be remembered.

Some of the reasons will be very difficult. Some will be amazing. Yet even when I have gone through periods of my life that seemed an absolute desert, I have not had a dull life.

Some of the things will come out of private feelings and pain. I will not reveal the names of the others involved. Don't assume, as you read, that what I write is about one or two people - there will be so many. I won't tell you when or where the incident happened, or describe more than I have to. The only reason I will share these things is that I feel my experience is something you can relate to. Learn from. Say yes to. Wonder about.

If a person is a famous figure, I will tell you the name. What I remember is not awful; the meetings gave me insights into people you may know, and may have not thought about beyond what makes or made them famous or well known. I don't do this to name drop - I think we forget the humans behind the names.

Even in the middle of periods of depression, something I have to deal with every day, I have known how amazing is. I deal with depression by creating with it. I enjoy my life because long ago I learned to redefine joy.

I will also tell you things you may not think are possible. That's okay; read anyway. Take away what you can enjoy, and leave the rest. Always.