It wasn't a "scream" as such...

"Four times! What a dud cat..." 
"You screamed, Mum." The smirk in my daughters voice.
"I did not. I don't do "scream", Teags..."
Snickering, "You screamed."
"It moved! Who wouldn't be distressed?!"
'It was just a rat.."
"Just? Just a rat?!"
Teagan, laughing "Whats wrong with rats?"
It came out in a hasty, malformed but meaningful, single word, collaborative of: "Bites, rabies, foaming-at-mouth, disease-ridden, bites, filth, wealth-of-bacteria," and a few more blurry additions.
Earlier I had hammered through the house at top speed, yelling for the cat, "Mooch! Mooches Mooch! Kids, where's the Mooch?!!"
Then I sprinted back through the house with cat in arms, collecting the kids in my wake like a high speed pied piper...

There it was.
I stood in the doorway pointing out the rat to Mooch, who, not at all interested, was instead using all cat devices to draw blood from my forearms for disturbing his sleep.

Failing his interest or even acknowledgement I then threw him, like dropping a feline bomb, from the doorway into the room near the rat.
Landing in a four-footed soft thud he turned, not even seeing it, Mooch cast a filthy look of disdain at me then tried to sashay out. So I picked him up again...
And tossed.

Four times! Four times I threw the bomb/cat at the rat, Mooch failing to deploy each time.

Finally I threw a sock at the rat, which moved, (hence my "small cry" (not scream) of distress, a little running on the spot holding the babies as high up in the air as possible (think of a Riverdance technique here with arms overhead). 
(Lets face it, they are the rodent version of huntsman spider, aren't they?) 
and Mooch, finally seeing the rat, pounced like the legend hunter he usually is.

There was growling. There was blood. Then there was crunching...
and to the tune of all of our "Ewww! Mooch!" we left him to his well deployed, no-longer-failing, feline devices.

"Screamed"? Pffft

Mooch - Cat Grenade 

i am

i am the incomprehensible silence

and the memory that will not be forgotten

i am the voice whose sound is everywhere

and the speech that appears in many forms.

i am the utterance of my own name.

i am the hearing in everyone's ears

i am the speech that cannot be heard

i am the mute who is speechless

great are the multitudes of my words.

hear me in softness

and learn me in roughness.

i am she who cries out

and i am cast forth upon the face of the earth

i prepare the breath and my mind within.

i am known Truth.

i am the one whom you have reflected upon

and the one you have scorned

i am unlearned but from me all people learn

i am the one from whom you have hidden

and the one to whom you reveal yourself

yet wherever you hide i appear

and wherever you wish to reveal yourself

there i will vanish.

for i am the first and the last

i am the honored one and the scorned

i am the whore and the holy one

i am the bride and the bridegroom

and my husband is my father

i am the mother of my father

the sister of my husband

my husband is my child

my offspring are my own birth

the source of my power

what happens is set sacred

give heed give heed give heed

then you, hearers

and you also, angels

and those who have been sent as new spirits

risen now from the dead.

i am the one who alone exists.

there is no one to judge me

for though there is much sweetness in passionate life,

in transient pleasure,

finally, finally sanity comes

and people flee to their place of rest

there they will find me

to live and never to die again

Words from The Thunder.

Perfect Mind, Nag Hammadi

The True Crisis in this World

The crisis of consciousness. The inability to embrace humility.

The question is posed: "Is this an "age of empathy?""

With this popular marketing catch cry "age of empathy" being bandied across the globe, the question was posed to Melissa,"Are we in "the age of empathy"? 
Do you feel we have we reached such connective depth?
 Melissa offers her perspective on this topic in this 3 minute excerpt from interview. 

From YouTube channel QBI333

Buy Melissa's Book

From an Ocean of Drafts...Reborn

Actually, I do write as Benedict Smith scribes it. 

I simply don't share it all publicly. 

However, now, from an ocean of drafts, this personal writing blog is reborn.

Shared 

For You

Melissa Hocking Hughes

Image via The Writers Circle

Pondering of truth and perception...

Quietly pondering, slowly sipping the divine double espresso in hand...

So many claiming to be on or guide us upon a "journey to the truth".

I ponder...

Are we not truth at our core?

Perhaps we have just in fact wandered, a ventured meander from the truth.

Can there can be such journey without truth anchoring the journey itself?

Could the misconstrued correlation of perspective as truth perhaps be the greatest disease of humankind?

And this is just early Monday morning's pondering. What shall the week unfold?!

Melissa ;)

As One, Let Us Cry Against this Violence "May Day!"

" Any woman, walking alone, is inviting being attacked..."

May 1st.
May Day.
An anniversary for me whereby only few years ago I, myself, cried "May Day" in a last, desperate, death-is-imminent call for help.

Yesterday, here in Australia a seventeen year old girl was raped at knifepoint in broad daylight. While many other crimes and tragedies no doubt occurred yesterday it is this assault that the media has latched on to. And the quote I opened this piece with is the "authorities'" response to what women should accept from this assault.

" Any woman, walking alone, is inviting being attacked..."

On this day a few years ago I was six months pregnant with identical twin girls to a man that claimed he loved me. Pregnant with the babies he had begged me to have.
On this day I called the police after he had physically beaten me, pinning me to the wall by the neck screaming in my ear that he was god and I should "submit to him or die". Thirty kilograms lighter than him and heavily pregnant it took all of my skill to get him off me and croak
"This time I'm calling the police..."
His response? He left the sole print of his size thirteen shoe bruised across my pregnant belly.
He was arrested and removed from our home and lives permanently.
I went to hospital fighting for my own life and the lives of my unborn girls.

The bruise from his final blow across my pregnant belly.
Image taken in evidence by Victoria Police.

My abdomen drawn tight with two babies growing within, that bruise shrouded my baby girls right up until the very day they defied him and were born healthy, strong and exquisitely beautiful.

Note that I said, "This time I'm calling the police."
This wasn't the first physical beating I received from him. No.

I never imagined that I would know empathy of domestic violence. Yet here I am.

According to VicHealth; "Violence against women is the leading contributor to death, disability and illness of women aged 15 to 44 years". 

For men in the same age bracket it is heart disease. 

It is time for all of us to cry "May Day!" against violence toward women. 

I am a sole parent to five children, four of whom are my daughters. While I raise my girls to be capable, I will not raise them to fear men. I will not have them believe what the so-called "authorities" that are employed to care and protect them are claiming; 

 "Any woman, walking alone, is inviting being attacked..."

This day is a celebratory anniversary of our survival and freedom for my children and I. We overcame foul abuse and violence in our own home. We've long since restored it's sanctuary.

Yet this day, with the news of the protective parties wiping their hands of their duty of care and demanding women walk in submission and fear... 

It is clear.

Never more than now do we need to stand as one and cry 

"May Day!" against violence toward women.