Time-Lost

My cat enjoys being time-lost far more than I do. She also enjoys sleeping on my partially-finished quilt top.

The dream-time of narcolepsy... a month passes in an instant and I am left wondering where I've been. My creativity goes into overdrive but I can't find the energy to utilize it. I spend my nights semi-sleep, and my days semi-awake. There is not always a clear division between dreams and reality and I differentiate what I have really done and what I have dreamed. Spiders drip from rippling walls, disembodied heads float above my bed -- these are the paralytic hypnogogic hallucinations that spring forth in the darkness when I am caught in the asleep-awake threshold. I occasionally have hypnopompic hallucinations as well, but those are rarer.

I lose time. I live it, I function within it, and I remember most of it, but time undulates in an irregular pattern that sometimes leaves me frustrated. During these periods, which usually last several months, I become hypercreative in visual endeavors instead of literary. All the while, I remain frustrated that I can't focus my fatigued mind enough to write. I don't often recognize I am time-lost until dissatisfaction over my writing failures peaks. Eventually, time flips over and the visual is eclipsed by the cerebral as my focus returns and I slip into a less aggravating phase of my disorder.

Time-Lost

I'm adrift between awake and asleep,
Halfway to nowhere, regrettably languid.
Worlds and stars spin around retrograde idioms,
Askew, and dripping microseconds into annihilation.
I careen to avoid another day, another nebulous morning,
Where the time-lost slip into Lethe and drown,
Forgetting the hours, the days, the purpose,
An abeyance of everything, continuance of nothing.
Find me if you can, capricious Time,
For I am caught in the maze of the narcoleptic void.
Awake, asleep, and egregiously haunted
By the fickle visions of an effulgent stupor.
Arise from the shade, little muse, little whim,
And recover my lucidity from meandering seasons,
Unbind my perception from sidereal rambling,
And spin my balance away from dream-time.

Dust

Those who dwell in the snake plant hide behind sun rays and dance upon starlight. On the backs of cardinals, they ride to battle against the dust sprites who lurk under the pothos. The lords of the purple passion plant look on from the mantle, amused but uninvolved. The tiny denizens of the herb seedlings on the countertop count the weeks until their training is complete and they can step forward to end the scourge of dust and mystery debris the humans wake to every morning. Their plan is dependent on the seedlings reaching maturity. This event seems unlikely, given the black thumbs of the humans who reside in the home realm. Frailty means certain death. The herb seedlings will perish, and along with them the tiny denizens. The creatures of the pothos and snake plant will live on, resilient, and the dust will continue to plague the home realm.

Housekeeping

I've been doing some maintenance on my blog today because I found some errors. A couple of the pages weren't working so I fixed them. When I fixed Published Novels the other broken pages seemed to right themselves, which was convenient. If someone can click through the page links below the blog title and ensure me they are all working, I'd be greatly appreciative.

I also fixed the link to my Malora Pinterest board. I changed the name of the board a while back but didn't think to change the link on the Social Media page above.

And now for something fun...

So I don't clutter up this blog with the vegan recipes I've been writing, I created an offshoot blog called Twigs, Leaves, and Grass. Yes, I am still obsessed with the Oxford comma. The new blog is a work in progress so its look will be changing as I figure out how I want it. My recipe writing is a totally different thought path than my fantasy writing, so I thought it deserved its own realm. If you scroll all the way down to the first post, you will find the three original recipes I created for my family's dinner tonight.

Oat Flour Banana Bread

I'm trying to get into the habit of writing down my recipes so I can transfer them into a little vegan cookbook. This banana bread recipe is soy-free, egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and wheat-free.  It is also flax-free to avoid an allergy in my extended family and almond milk-free because my daughter may have an almond allergy. That's a lot of free, but I assure you it is still tasty.

Oat Flour Banana Bread

1/3 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 ripe bananas
2 cups oat flour (or oatmeal run through a food processor until very fine)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup coconut milk (the beverage kind, not the canned. I used coconut nog that was left over from the holidays)
1 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon and brown sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a hand-held mixer, cream the coconut oil, sugar, and bananas in a mixing bowl. Mix in the oat flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and then add the coconut milk and vanilla and mix well. Pour batter into an oiled 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 bread pan. Smooth the top of the batter, then sprinkle with a little cinnamon and brown sugar. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out dry.

The Broken Laptop

My laptop is broken so I'm going a little crazy. I can only handle hand-writing for short periods of time so I started sketching out cover ideas for the work-in-progress trilogy. I like the minimalist look right now. I hate typing on a tablet, bit that is all I have to post with right now. This is the first time I've posted via mobile device and it's a huge pain.

I also sewed a couple of dresses for my daughter. I'm most amused by this one...

Snippet Sunday: Mayfly Requiem

Do you still remember that spring we found the nest of baby birds blown down by the wind? They died in our hands, naked, vulnerable, infinitely fragile. I cried for days. Such precious life, created and snuffed out in hardly an instant. When we were children, time ran by too fast, but now we are ancient and every day is a slow crawl toward an indeterminate finish line. Our neighbors, our friends, our lovers have become those baby birds. Their lives are fleeting, but that does not make them any less precious. They are meaningful and beautiful. We used to be, but now I am the living damned and you are a breathing, clouded myth. We have nearly faded from all memory, but here we are, alive and forgotten. I like it better that way. It is quiet, tranquil except for my remorse and the ticking, the constant reminder I have of my servitude. The quiescence gives us the opportunity to be... well, be a little bit human. I wouldn't exchange it for anything at all. Except, of course, the opportunity to undo my final mistake as a Time Child. What have I done? What horrors have I brought upon myself and the world? Dia, I'm just as terrified and bleak as those dying baby birds, and as fleetingly fragile.

-from Mayfly Requiem

Six-Sentence Sunday

Bethel was universally respected even as his sons were reduced to nightmares suffered by wayward children. It was the same for us everywhere and I never became acclimated to the automatic assumption that I was to be feared. I certainly was a fearful creature, but when you tell your children to stay away from the spindly little boy from the forest, you are working a little too hard at inciting the rage within that spindly little boy. I was just a kid, after all, no more mature or developed than a Drey or a human ten-year-old. I learned early I was something to be feared and those early whispers and rumors have clung to me through the years. People create their own monsters, and it's hard not to become what everyone wants you to be when they push your inner nature to overtake your mind.

- from Sand into Glass, Book 1 of the Emergence Trilogy (Book 6 of the Malora Series)