Comments are appreciated and answered.
Current Photo Friday theme: Radiance.
This was a photo I posted on Instagram in 2022 to go with a Magnetic Poetry® poem I composed in 2011 from a group of randomly pulled words. Here’s that poem:
the language of perfume
makes a body divine
wakes the blind
drives us to floral lust
Sometimes, it’s all about poetry. Bottom left, my three new sticker books with words and phrases that can be arranged into poetry or thoughts. The Magnetic Poetry™ refrigerator tin that holds words and also provides a fridge “door’s” magnetic surface for assembling them. A Write The Poem book that offers many writing prompts. Three works of contemporary poetry to get me away from my go-to poets like Dickinson, Frost, etc., and read (or re-read) and enjoy Lynn Domina’s Corporal Works; Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems with over 101 contributors; and Aaron Fagan’s Garage Poems. Joseph Fasano’s The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone.
Finally, my Inspire Journal, because I intend to use all these different means to write a poem every day this week which directly corresponds to the voices or experiences of characters in the Neverending Saga.
Today, I used The Healing Words Kit™ from Magnetic Poetry™ to pull words and arrange them on a magnetic board for one of the four main voices in my series. In case you have trouble reading from the photo, her poem is:
©Becky Cochrane, 2025
Because of Photo Friday, I didn’t post anything about crafting yesterday, but I did work on something. As I’ve mentioned, the large sketch book where I collect my completed coloring pages will be full soon, even though when I got to the back of the book, I began putting colored pages on the backs of used pages. I wondered if I had another sketchbook as large as that one, and I do, but the front cover isn’t made of reinforced paper or cardboard, so I don’t know if it will hold up to collaging and a lot of use, like the current one.
It’s an old sketch book of our late friend Steve’s. It only has a couple of sketches he started it in, but I’d forgotten I used it back in June of 2012, when I did the 30 Days of Creativity challenge. If you were around then, you might remember that I’d sketch something on a page, then use it for a backdrop with my wee plastic ram being a director of dolls or action figures, etc., doing scenes from different movies. Like, for example, one I did for the movie The Secret Life of Bees. On Friday, after running errands, including having photos printed from those 2012 challenges, I added the photos and explanations to the original sketches. Like this.
After a visit to Texas Art Supply on Thursday, I also started something else that I finished today. I’d found sticker books there with words and phrases that could be turned into poetry (like Magnetic Poetry, but more permanent).
I love these and put together a poem in my Inspire journal (all its pages are related in some way to the Neverending Saga and its characters). I finished that page today. I’m glad I did something creative to end the week, because today (March 8) is Riley’s birthday. One of the ways to resist, overcome, and stay steady when the world is full of chaos, confusion, conflict, and catastrophe, is a far more important “C” word: CREATE. I know Riley would be the first to agree with this. His life was often a series of struggles, and that’s when he sat at the piano or picked up a guitar and turned it all into music and lyrics. And even if the world, or at least some part of the world, will never acknowledge this, humanity does need art and find it healing. Sometimes it feels like the real division in the world is between haters and healers. I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple of months.
One more thing I did today, in recognition of International Women’s Day, is post this composite to Instagram, described as “just a few of the women who nurtured, mentored, and taught me over the years, expanding my heart, mind, and soul. I thank them and all the others whose photos I don’t have.”
I pulled out all the tiles from my Magnetic Poetry® Wood Words box. From the moment I began to assemble my poem from among them, I knew exactly who and what inspired it. When I placed a specific word, I also knew what photo from my archives I hoped to find to share with the finished poem.
From September 2009, based on a challenge from television’s “Project Runway” for my website’s “Runway Monday” series, I found her. She’s in fashion I designed for her of silk, satin, polyester, tulle, and crepe. A sheer coincidence only a handful of people will understand: I’d named this doll Maggie and said she was dressed as a Time Traveler. I’m grateful to my Muse and this Mattel Model Muse doll. I hope she likes the role she plays. There’s no role I’d rather have in my world than writer.
Here’s her poem, destined to be named “Time Traveler.”
Today is the anniversary of the date Riley died in 2008. The L.A. fires and their consequences have kept me emotional for the last week already, so this year, Riley’s loss feels a little sharper. The other night, Tom and I watched The Last Waltz, which I haven’t seen probably since the late seventies, when it was released. I still remembered the songs, the performers (band members and musical guests), and some of the conversations with members of The Band as they talked about how the concert (the focus of the film, as directed by Martin Scorsese) was bringing to an end their sixteen years of performing on the road.
Though most of the members worked together again, they never again performed live as a group with Robertson. Now all are gone, except for keyboardist Garth Hudson, who’s 87 and has been reported as a resident in an assisted living facility since 2022, when his wife Maud died. ETA: Garth Hudson died on January 21, five days after this post.
I think the footage of The Band singing with Bob Dylan got to me the most, maybe because Riley loved him so much and considered him a songwriting muse. I had a lump in my throat listening to “Forever Young” and “I Shall Be Released.” So many memories. In an alternate life, Riley and I might have ended up in L.A., friends sharing a house in a neighborhood like Altadena, while I pursued all the things that would have informed my fiction and he played everywhere anyone wanted to hear a guitarist, pianist, and songwriter. I’m not sure either of us ever wanted fame and fortune as much as the chance to create and be true to ourselves. Riley did play all over the Southeast (I’m not sure about his time in Nevada), and he wrote a lot of songs. I never lived further west than Texas, but I’ve had fiction published, and what I’m working on now includes real settings (many of them decimated by the fires) and celebrates my fictional artists (none of them native-born Angelenos) of Los Angeles.
I’m so grateful for the years of friendship Riley and I shared. Though we aren’t the Muse and Time Traveler of the poem, Riley’s part of why they exist.
Because of comments on this website, I decided that today’s topic is Blog Nostalgia. Here are blasts from the past.
“From September of 2014 to July of 2016, I, Snoopy, used to be a big deal around these parts on Saturdays!”
“Hi, it’s me, Katnip. For over a year, I tried to decipher clues that sent me and my sidekicks John Riley and Cuddle on 58 adventures to find something called ‘Lil Eddy.’ Finally, on March 10, 2014, as pictured here, I was about to meet my destiny. And the story and posts just…stopped. It was fun while it lasted.”
“Bon jour, remember us? We were the LiveJournal blog’s original Runway Monday models. We kicked off twelve seasons and helped add dolls models to someone’s collection–more than anyone wants to count. Then our designer decided to put away her scissors and needles or she stopped watching “Project Runway” or something. JUST LIKE THAT, we were mostly out of jobs except for occasional cameos. These days, a few of us pose as doll models for a writer’s characters. The writer looks a lot like our designer–except ten years older.”
“EXCUSE us! Some of us ALSO appeared on seasons of Runway Monday, three of them in fact. Same designer, same sad relocation to bins after the flood destroyed the bottom of our display cabinet. Don’t ignore our contributions just because we’re monsters.”
“At least all you dolls came through the flood okay. We were part of the Magnetic Poetry 365 project in 2011. Some of us didn’t make it out of the Harvey flood. It’s okay. Magnets may vanish, but words and poetry are forever.”
“We’re the Legacy Writing banner from 2012. Yep, an entire year of nostalgia featuring photos representing memories, family, and friends. The best part is… We STILL make frequent appearances here. Sorry to the dolls and action figures who were ‘retired.'”
“It’s me. Roxanne. NO NEED TO SING THAT SONG, please. I kicked off a series called “Pet Prose” in January 0f 2017. It featured rescued dogs and cats who are writers. You’d never guess we weren’t written by a human because we chose to tell regular stories, not be ‘talking animals’ writing about ‘animal things.’ By December, 56 of us had a chance to be creative and use our voices, even as we found new and safe homes to live in. We think it may have been the thing the content creator enjoyed the most, but DON’T TELL THE OTHERS.”
“This little happy book series goes waaaay back, a chance to be interactive with readers on Wednesdays from 2008 into 2010, and later guest appearances on special posts. You picked the numbers, the book gave you answers. And sometimes, the content creator gave you photos with your answers.”
Hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane.
In April of 2020, I posted about this idea I found: The Coping Skills Toolbox. I shared the above photo of the box I put together to help me with quarantine anxiety (not only was the world gripped by a pandemic with no preventative medication and few effective treatments for some populations, including my own, but I was laid off from my job of six years due to the pandemic).
Looking back at that post reminds me that I’ve been forthright on this site for at least the last four years about how anxiety has been a lifelong struggle for me. I was prescribed medication for it when I was eighteen that I never used. In 2022, I was prescribed medication on an as-needed basis, which I used very little of. I will occasionally take medication to help me sleep.
Medications are rarely my first option. What I have to take for my physical health, I take. But I’ll always try to manage anxiety in other ways. This is not in any way a judgment about people who manage their physical and emotional health through medication. For a variety of reasons, it’s simply not my first choice.
I still have that “toolbox.” I’ve long-since rewatched the comfort movies and reread the comfort novels that were in it, so they’re no longer in there. It still holds my Magnetic Poetry Journal that I sometimes put poems in, along with the magnetic board I can use to arrange words. It still holds a small coloring book and two tins of coloring pencils. The toys–Superman, Batman, and the tiny plastic cars–are still in there. The bottle of bubbles is not.
After looking at the book I often use as ideas for my Tiny Tuesday posts (shown above, on the right), I decided to add to the box again because of two things I found listed in the book.
This morning, I added my Magnetic Poetry Haiku Kit and a movie. I don’t know if Sliding Doors is a classic at twenty-six years old, but it’s a comfort movie for me. I watched it earlier, and it inspired the haiku I created which is now written in the journal, too. As you can see from my photo below, all the words I wanted weren’t available to me, so I added them to the photo. The haiku goes with the theme of the chapter I’ll be writing when I can get my brain directed that way again.
There is a quote from the movie that’s one of my favorites, when one of the characters says, “I’m a novelist. I’m never going to finish the book.”
Hope you’re all having a good Tuesday and being kind to yourselves.
The second week of August, I recorded some intentions in my “Inspire” Journal and posted them here.
A couple of weeks ago, I remembered and decided to revisit those. First off, I stared at the list and wondered, What is TC craft? What is TC song? What was I talking about? I don’t write songs. I have characters who write songs, but… Then I realized. Something happens with one of those songwriter characters in Topanga Canyon in the third or fourth book of the Neverending Saga. “TC” unlocked!
To update:
1. I did finish this craft piece based on the novel and gave it to Lynne when she was here in September. I think it’s hanging in her house.
2. I haven’t written the song, because I haven’t written in that character’s voice in a while. I’ll get to it maybe in the seventh book, or when the time is right.
3. The MagPo box is restored. More about that in a minute.
4. I’m not using the inspiration journal (different from the “Inspire” journal) to plot the seventh book because I’m using a big yellow sketch book Lynne gave me that I’ve been using since… 2019? to tape photos and jot thoughts and ideas for the series. Currently, it’s staying next to me when I write.
5. Schedule physical (routine annual exam). Completed in December.
6. Schedule fall vaccines. Done and received in September.
It feels good to know I completed almost all these goals I set for fall.
About the Magnetic Poetry box. It took water during the Harvey flood and subsequently began to rust.
I knew Tom was taking vacation time the week between Christmas and New Year’s and asked if he thought some Rust-Oleum® would help if he had time to work on the box. I explained that I wasn’t looking for perfection. I didn’t care if it was obvious the box had been restored. In fact, imperfections are part of its history. I just wanted the rust to become a thing of the past.
And so it has.
It made me happy enough that I pulled out my Healing Words MagPo kit to create a poem, a reminder to myself that it’s great to set goals; the challenge is in the work. (Sometimes, even if it’s asking the person who’s right for the job.)
Current Photo Friday theme: Serene
For the second week of the “Serene” theme, I used my Magnetic Poetry “Little Box of Happiness” to write a poem about things that make me feel serene. I invite you to use the collection of words to make your own serene poem.
Tom cleared the space where the Christmas tree will go and brought it in from the Lean To.
When I left to run an errand (also Christmas related–picked up the stationery and envelopes for the 2023 Christmas letter), he’d started putting on the lower branches. When I got back–voila!
He paused before stringing the lights to watch the Alabama-Georgia game, which I’ve been trying not to hear–except I have the score updating on my phone, and it looks like Alabama just gave Georgia their first loss in two years. That’s the extent of football chat here on An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff). I’d pulled up my manuscript to work on while cooking dinner, but my mind is very much elsewhere, so instead I wrote a poem.
I used a prompt from my Write The Poem book, but only used one of the suggested words because I drew words from my WoodWords set (made by the same company who’s brought us Magnetic Poetry for all these years). I think I was true to the spirit of the prompt, however.
Here’s the poem.
Now hoping to work on the novel. I’ll add my writing music playlist later.
Yesterday morning I stepped outside just after daybreak and looked toward the tall trees on the other side of our back fence. First, I noticed the dance of tiny hummingbirds in and out of the top branches. Then I saw one of my favorite sites: a tiny sliver of the moon. This one’s a waning crescent moon, which makes me think of fall (a welcome prospect).
I mentally began composing a poem to that moon, but when I came inside, there were dogs to feed, meds to be given and taken, and the busy-ness of the day at hand. By late afternoon today, hopefully I can remember my thoughts from yesterday morning and get that poem on paper. If not, maybe I have a moon collection of magnetic poetry to dip into.
ETA: Though I wished him a happy one in messages, today’s Jim’s birthday, and I will always happily celebrate him. I love you, Jim! 