Look closer… is this a scrap of garbage or a profound revelation about process? Ironically, I found it while taking a shortcut. Words are alive, and I believe we owe them the dignity of an audience before they are ground down and pulled back into the belly of the Earth. Oh Xena Warrior Princess game manual technical writer, what wisdom doth ye have to bestow? Continue reading
Author Archives: Cymbria Wood
Writing out of the box
We write ourselves into boxes all the time: check which box applies, keep your signature within the lines, what do you “do?”, etc. We wedge ourselves into these tight but cozy places and bend ourselves double to reach their reassuring absolutes. Every box is a story we’ve learned to believe. And there, fully contorted in the dark and stuffy air, we wait. For what? More closet space? Continue reading
The good girl vs bad girl dish soap face-off
Why are we forced to choose? One man, one definitively flattering cut of denim… one dishwashing liquid. Why? When the character of every day is so different. Is it to make it easier for the rest of the world to pin us behind glass? To make us safe and predictable? I am not safe. I am not predictable. I am a woman, which is so much more fun! Continue reading
A cup of tea on the edge of the abyss
What deals have you negotiated within yourself? What if it’s time to honour them? Leaning out over the abyss, I strain to find form beneath the morning mist. There’s a chill in this mountaintop air; my teacup is chattering in its saucer. Continue reading
Letting go of Sex and the City
We mold our womanhood from a thousand bits of clay, not the cool wet river mud of our deepest stories, but countless social scripts that shape our permissions. We learn to bypass our biology and ignore the quiet moments with our mothers in favour of the symbols and rituals of an artificial construct. But bring time into the equation and that construct begins to fade away. Continue reading
Born in a Walmart parking lot… The Urban Yoke
It’s been 10 years of blogging!! Here’s a vintage SavingCymbria post to celebrate this month’s milestone…
Ever notice how a shopping cart is almost exactly the size of a car’s trunk? Both can comfortably fit a body and/or the spoils of a Sunday morning mission to Walmart. This revelation came too late for yours truly, who recently found herself stranded in the middle of a snowy Walmart parking lot with a cart’s worth pile of loot heaped at her feet, but no car, no trunk, and no options – and stubbornness can only take a girl so far.
Just then, a small sedan pulled up out of nowhere. The driver opened his door and leaned out. “Are you ok? Do you need a hand there?”
Now, I’m a great believer in chivalry; I take an opened door with all due grace and appreciation. But I draw the line at accepting rides – however fortuitous – from strange men in Walmart parking lots, men who quite possibly…
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3 Dreams that are getting in the way of your dreams – Part 2
After defining the three types of dreams that keep us from pursuing our own – Part 1 (click to catch up!) – it’s time to get down and dirty about resetting our brains. Because why let how you woke up keep you from the glorious blank canvas morning you deserve! Continue reading
3 Dreams that are getting in the way of your dreams – Part 1
The world we wake up to is so often a hazy mix of dreamworld and reality. Fortunately there are ways to prevent the taint of the following three types of dreams from lingering until lunchtime: Continue reading
Warm Portobello salad: A mushroom faces his mortality
Men do not deal well with mortality, especially on Mondays. Virile and meaty, with an impressive masculine girth, Don had always stood his ground as king of the crop. He was the last great hope for the weakened mycelial network that had shot him forth, the magic coupling of hyphae now depleting the nutrients that had brought them together. Continue reading
To all the men who’ve tried to save us
Did you really think it would be so easy? Insert here and watch us born again, in your own image no less? But why are we still playing along? We are a culture intent on destroying our women by middle-age. We work too hard and we care too much. Go, go, go, go we tell our girls, achieve, be beautiful, be good. Screw that! Continue reading
Blank Canvas Living 