CHARLESTON, NC

Can’t get there without crossing water as one of the natives said. Couple of big bridges, lot of smaller ones and causeways, even drawbridges.

Ran the Cooper suspension bridge

Don/t know whether you’re crossing river, bay, creek or marsh at night. Length height and smell are tell tale signs, marshes are dank and muddy and a little fishy at low tide.

The food is great. In fact one could spend the whole week long vacation burping from one “must go to” seafood, bib and shell bucket eatery to another.

We sat at a table with several little brass medallions nailed to the surface with little brass nails. Each had the name of some celebrity.

I had a bit of lark envisioning John McLain sitting at this same table Hootie and the Goldfish; I’m sure it had been on different occasions.

I sat in the Hulk Hogan seat and got my picture taken with my arm on a mermaids shoulder

The older and squeaker the dining rooms floors, the more “Charleston’s Finest” awards clutter the walls.

Speaking of walls I believe every spring or other tourist season there must be a contest to determine on which restaurant/bistro walls thereon are hung the most celebrate pics. The older and more funky the better.

Went to the “Slave Market”. Asked one Charleston store owner at the “Charleston Market ” where the SM was. Peering over her babble decorated chain secured reading glasses and out from behind her array of Charleston souvenir shot glasses she very promptly corrected us that Charleston did not, yes she repeated it “Charleston does not have a Slave Market!

Since she was so adamant we were wrong we were determined to find it tomorrow.

Gotta get out of here. Go for a run on the beach; fly a kite and kayaking yet this pm.

Doggone sobriety is great! Joyous and Free.

Jim

WHAT WILL IT BE?

Good friends, friends who know your warts and still love you to pieces.

Friends, closer than family, who

I suspect know us better than ourselves

after all

They’ve got a ring side seat; only thing missing is the popcorn

Why am I concerned with what they think or for that matter what I think?

God knows, and yet continues to include me in Creation.

I’m a critical and unique link or just a metaphor.

Are my worst mistakes my best contributions or is it those times when I scored myself a perfect ten?

How much and in what way does my laughter and my tears contribute one iota to anything..

Am I part of the spit that keeps everything together?

Or am I a particle of tension keeping everything from colliding.

What is it?

Am I this or that or…am I this and that?

My bumbling speech? My misspelled and mistaken word?

My gravity dragging actions?

Is it in spite of them or because of them?

Is it my experiences stacked high with age or is it my ignorance of tomorrow?

After three quarters of a century under my belt are the few remaining years to contain my main event?

Will I recognize it or will it be like so many others in the past just another day at the office?

Will I participate or sit idly by?

Will I sit on my comfortable old ass or get up and take the risk?

God what ever is your will use my love hungry heart, my memory filled mind and my love –to-tell-a-story tongue as instruments of Your love and Your peace.

JIM

Fellow Spiritual Travelers

Stopped by and visited with a new friend of mine. Interesting guy. Lost his wife a year ago. Writes poetry almost daily since losing her a year ago; his grief still runs deep.

Since then it's amazing on how he changed. He knows it. No hostility, no anger just a calmness, a peace, "a new me." He says nothing upsets him, acceptance has set in. As he pats his chest he says "she lives on here." Yet he acknowledges "its more than a circumstantial change, it's deeper and broader than that, I'm a new me. Totally different."

His poetry, like his new and exciting "new me" and his relationship with his Higher Power is bursting at the seams. He admits to a "spiritual awakening," his words not mine. We agree that when we first met we could feel the energy, the spiritual energy, that energy that goes beyond words and explanations, we were and are one.

One, because in God we are one. God has always been there we are the johnny-come-latelies who have discover this truth. I experienced it when I entered my first AA meetings. An old friend in the program always insisted that "upon entering a AA meeting or encountering a fellow alcoholic on the street there was a electricity, a recognition of a fellow spiritual traveler."

My new friend and I talked for quite a while in his place of business; he ignored the ringing phone. We were talking about his new found love of writing poetry. I shared with him my own passion.

We agreed poetry brings out or manifests the feminine in us. We also agreed that the male is incomplete until he discovers and integrates the feminine within. We have come to the realization that it sometimes take a jolt, a traumatic experience to jar lose the masculine grip. To make known the masculine's vulnerable self. To deflate the masculine ego and let the feminine heart do the "thinking."

Since the feminine is linked to the heart, it follows that the metaphor,creativity, caring, compassion, suffering and love are also present; that's poetry.

Higher Power

Got up this morning wanting to post a note. Lot on my mind to share.

Instead during prayer and meditation time got out of my mind and followed my heart into the following.

Knowing You

If You are everywhere

Then why are You so hard to find?

If You’re the very breathe I catch

Then why can’t I hold You longer?

Some say You’re within

A light brighter than the sun

Then why can mere skin bar the sight of You?

Some say You’re in nature

In majestic mountains and towering trees

Then why can mere distraction

Blot You from sight?

If You’re everywhere

Why do I have to seek You?

If I can’t see You

Why do I look and look?

Why explain Yourself

If You’re who I know You to be,

You’re a mystery and

This mere mortal would

never understand.

This knowing You....

I know.

It’s experiencing You

That overshadows

Mere knowledge of You.

Jim

Book Launch--Joyous & Free

I'm back again. The last time I came back I thought I would be able to settle back into a routine of posting and dabbling with prose and poetry. I was wrong, the preparation for the book launch was mild and less time consuming than the actual launch.

This summer has been one hell of roller coaster ride. In future posts I'll share with you my summer adventures of book signings,conventions and speaking engagements.
These occasions have been a source of true joy. I have met and made friends with hundreds of wonderful folks and with this I am a wealthy man.

In this post I want to thank all those I met and for their overwhelming acceptance of Joyous & Free .

Thank you all for your more than generous postings on and for the many emails comments that I have published in the 2nd Edition due out this week.

Thanks again for your participation in Joyous & Free exceeding all expectations.

I will continue to post.

James Frederick

Last Resort

Finding myself at a turning point, my belief in a Higher Power and my life in tatters, friends suggested, to mend my ways, I reached out, prayed as they advised. ”God if there is a God help me” and put Him to the test. Later I had to buy my first used car. Once more I listened to my friends, prayed and did a test drive.


LAST RESORT
I was desperate,
why else would I turn
to you?
They said
you were reliable,
could be trusted.

Wavering,
I opened the door.
Stepped in.
Got behind the wheel.
Turned the key.
Shifted out of reverse
into forward.

To me, you were
just another used car.
I kicked your tires,
tested your steering
on open road
and congested streets.

I found you
to be like no other.
No rattles, no shakes.
Balanced and aligned
your timing perfect,
you purred in cruise
and when pedal to metal
you roared.

With a fresh belief,
trusting your handling,
experiencing your power,
I bought You,

bumper to bumper.

Jim

Journey and Destination

Sometimes we're blessed with the awareness that we're experiencing some precious and wonderful moments. We are conscious of an infinite moment. Trapped in linear time and space the beauty of the moment passes however it's not lost but is capture by all our senses for all time.

This pass week we were gifted with a flood of these moments attending a week-long Dream Conference between the awesome delight of crossing and recrossing the Smokies and the Appalachians. We could have taken the interstates and been there within hours. We opted for the "scenic route", 118 curves in 11 miles at one stretch. We choose the clear air, waterfalls, white water, trees and more trees, embracing shear cliffs and slow traffic (mostly under 40mph)to the intimidating broad-sided diesel belching 18 wheelers.

At the conference we met old and new friends. With the "old" we shared the laughs and the tears of the past year. With the "new" we relived the excitement and expectations of "first- timers". We sang, ate, prayed and shared dreams in our lake-side wilderness retreat.Laughter was the music of the week. Even the ducks waddled up on shore to add their "quakling" voices.

The frosting on the cake, being a first time author, for me was the announcement from the podium to the approximately 200 assembled that my book and ebook (Kindle) "Joyful & Free" was now available that day on Amazon.

Needless to say I was overwhelmed with gratitude to my life-time mate and all the wonderful people who who have helped me over the years to have such a week.

Who says we have to die to experience heaven.

Jim