Writing My Mind.com: November 2018

# 118:

Stubbing your toe is God’s way of
testing your vocabulary.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 119:

Though the elements of cultural decline
may be momentarily popular,
they will not escape the verdict of history.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 68:

What if we have come here
from the future, not the past?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 105:

You know you’re getting old when you have a lifetime supply of paper clips.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 94:

Poetry: What it means is more important
than how it’s dressed up.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 40:

Instinct is another word for God.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Under The Bed

I remember seeing a white, colonial building fronted with columns on the day I was left at the orphanage.

At least this memory was always in my mind, but knowing how insatiably curious I’ve always been about my biological parents, my biological circumstances, I knew that I may simply have been filling in the blanks of the great mystery that was my first two years of life. After all, I have absolutely no memory of the mother I'd lived with more than a year.

Then one day when I was in my early twenties, I went there. It was the first time since being left for adoption. I'd phoned a social worker who agreed to meet with me, to tell me some basic “non-identifying” information about my parents. As I approached the address, the building came into view. It looked exactly as I’d remembered: A white building, colonial style, columns and all.

What followed is a blank. I don’t remember the foster family I lived with for the next six months and I don’t remember being taken home by my new parents. Many years later, my grandmother told me that for the first few months, every time the doorbell rang, I’d run and hide under my bed. It took me a long time to shake that fear, and even now, I still get the urge once in a while.

~ by Russ Allison Loar
~ Painting by Erin Payne
© All Rights Reserved

# 109:

Learning is a series of constant beginnings.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 114:

However inspired they may be, your holy books were not written by God, they were written by men. However inspired your holy books may be, they do not represent the will of God, they represent the will of men, and so are flawed, imperfect—human. Read them, learn from them, see their strengths and see their weaknesses, then set them down and continue.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 95:

# 34:

# 45:

Suburban Twilight

Suburban twilight,
Punctuated by porch lights
Welcoming weary workers home.

“Hello darling,”
She says,
“I missed you,”
Her bare shoulders
Framed by the thin straps,
Too loose,
Of her tiny, translucent dress.

This never happened to me.

A bunch of soccer ball boys,
Too young to go on a date,
Stand together in a jagged circle
On a grass-dirt field
While their parents lie to each other
About nothing in particular,
Waiting for the game to begin.

Back on the boulevard
Commuters swim upstream,
Fighting their way back
To the suburban spawning grounds
For a few hours of fun
Before it all shuts down in sleep,
And regret.

~ Poem and photograph by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 37:

# 246:

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