by Bela Johnson | Jan 27, 2015 | family, healing, inspiration, personal, philosophy, Uncategorized
How could a spirit prepare to come into the world fully formed and armored, Athena sprung from the head of Zeus? How to conceive the weight of carapace needed to ward off powers of intoxication foisted by the damaged, visited upon progeny? These are not pretty...
by Bela Johnson | Dec 23, 2014 | family, nature, poetry, self awareness, Uncategorized
The past cannot be changed and so be it. Memories are tricky, colored through the lens of a woman decades removed from the frightened confused child that once inhabited her flesh. Reflection proves hindrance to repeating history indelibly seared into grooves of a...
by Bela Johnson | Dec 9, 2014 | compassion, family, inspiration, lifestyle, Uncategorized
My mother didn’t touch me, but you can’t give what you didn’t get. ~ Maria Shriver Why has it taken me most of my life to understand parents as fallible human beings rather than the perfect archetypal models my Inner Child yearns for? Don’t I already understand that a...
by Bela Johnson | Mar 4, 2014 | family, musings, personal, poetry, relationships, Uncategorized
It’s complicated. I think of her lying in bed alone, ridged shit-stained fingernails and the blue bulge of veins under translucent skin; bony hands curved inward, silently cursing agility they can no longer manage. Silk lily of the valley embedded in white...
by Bela Johnson | Jan 28, 2014 | family, personal, poetry, Uncategorized
She drops down, swipes over polished floors, repeating back and forth motions, elbows cracking, jaw set and grimaced. It would be, could be zen, though it’s clearly frustration in motion, the drudgery of repetition maintained for decades. I, too, witnessed the...
by Bela Johnson | Jun 4, 2013 | family, personal, relationships, travel, Uncategorized
The tall, well-nourished Japanese man smiles as, with a tight smile, he manually indicates that it’s okay for me to sit near him in the Parlour Car. A somber looking ten year-old sits across from him, raven hair spilling into dark eyes riveted upward. It’s clear he’s...
