Vashkrieg: Journey to the Epicenter

"You and I were friends from outer space

Afraid to let go, the only two who understood this place

And as far as we know, we were way before our time….."

~This Ain't Goodbye by Train

You will forever be a piece of me

A sliver of warmth wedged deeply into my heart and my psyche

You taught me to love deeply and risk greatly

Believing in the truth and not the norm

Allowing me to be the ‘me’ that was hidden away

Unpeeling the layers like the leaves of the artichoke

Until my essence was exposed

So glad that we have reached that pinnacle

That defines success for each of us today

Music and literature will forever tie the pages

Of our lives together

So glad that you won’t be traveling that road alone

So raise a glass to “the only two who understood this place”

I'll see you on the other side.

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010

Rocking My World

One day you will stumble upon this page

And you will be carried back in time

Slowly you will breathe in my words

And one by one, the cylinders of your brain will kick in

As the memories fire up the engine of yesterday

Once upon a time and long, long ago

You touched my life

You changed me in a metamorphic way

Your presence challenged me to change my view on the world

As you turned my universe upside down

We knew each other as much as any two humans can deeply decipher

Yet, a key element was missing that made our attachment

All the more remarkable

Years went by and memories faded to the dark recesses of our minds

But the words remained

Along with the power to tell the story from long ago

So take your time and choose carefully

Most of what you will find is about your life and our time together

The rest is left unwritten……

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010

Be My Winding Wheel

You never cease to amaze me with your dichotomous ability

To wax and wane in my life

One moment you are anger and fury pointing a crooked

Finger at the past

Months of eerie silence follows

As I wonder if you are destroying the life

I worked so hard to save

Then out of the blue you emerge and ask me:

“Do you recall ‘Be My Winding Wheel’ by Ryan Adams?”

Good Lord, of course I do

How could I forget……

There is an enormous history between the three of us

Sharing his music, discussing his lyrics, reading aloud to each other

From Ryan’s book of poetry, “Infinity Blues”

And then the magic occurs as you pull out your acoustic guitar

And play the song while soulfully singing out the lyrics

I haven’t heard you sing for me in years, yet it felt like yesterday

But different

Your life is set to the path I helped charter

And it is so very cool that we still debate and philosophize about

Great literary works and gut-touching music

I know your idiosyncrasies and you know my vanity

We share history that has shaped who we are today

And for some crazy reason that tenuous web remains unbroken…

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010 All rights Reserved

Mother/Daughter Time

Mackenzie & I fell asleep as I was reading the short story, Everyday Use, by Alice Walker to her. I'm sure the narrative will reappear in my dreams tonight. The plan was for us to discuss this particular piece of literary genre as she has a test on it tomorrow. Hopefully one can truly learn through sleep osmosis.

I have loved Alice Walker's work from the time before The Color Purple made such a big splash on the world. Reading about characters whose lives I can not even begin to comprehend has been incredibly enlightening.




Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010

It's the End of the Summer!

This was a very relaxing summer season for me as I didn't cram 10 lifetimes into 3 months. Balance was the word and it was heard throughout my household. In honor of the official arrival of Fall, I am sharing this music video "End of Summer" by Theory of a Dead Man (there's gotta be a story behind that band name!).



Unfortunately, all of the yards in Cincinnati are showing signs of intense heat stress and the actual calendar date is doing nothing to dispel the warm weather. It's 93 degrees here and I'm going to grab my popsicle and do some pumpkin placements as the sweat slowly drips down my back....

Welcome Fall!!


Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 201

C3:Creating Connections Consulting

Here's a look a the other side of my life. Welcome to C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC




You can contact us at: info@creatingconnectionsconsulting.com




C3:Creating Connections Consult

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010

No Other Pain Like Losing A Soul Mate

To be connected with every fiber of your being to another person

Is an amazing, but dangerous thing

Feeling like one and understanding every nuance of the other’s persona

While the rest of the world is locked out

The ability to know what the other is thinking and

To predict how they will react in certain situations

Is bred over years of spending eons of hours together

When that connection ends, there is “no other pain, like losing a soul mate.”

Time works its wand and your memory fades

Life goes on and other passions take over

What was, becomes barely a whisper of a late night dream

And the written words have long been locked away in storage

So how cruel to see your picture appear on-line after all these years

At the very same moment that Xavier Rudd began singing

‘Love Comes and Goes’ on XM Satellite Radio

How very cruel indeed…..

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010~ All Rights Reserved

Where I talk to God

Some people go for long hikes stretching up through mountains or snaking through tree-shaded pathways. Others (whom I deem crazy) run marathons for miles and miles passing cheering sweat-stained faces. I choose to find my solitude in spinning. No, I'm not talking the Rumpelstiltskin kind, but the stationary road bike kind with the controls that allow for many terrain type variations. My spinning bike resides in a class room at my local gym. The venue is definitely a class, as it holds up to 26 bikes, but the room is actually a converted squash court.

I love it because it is dark and cave-like and full of an incredible community of folks from diverse ages. The music and bike path varies depending upon the instructor, but I tend to like the Top 40 and Alt Rock tracks with the most brutal of work-outs. I believe in totally maximizing my time, so the more calories I can burn in 60 minutes the better! I have been an ardent spinner for almost a decade. In the years when my schedule was lighter, I had been known to spin nearly 6 days a week (not bad at 600 calories/spin).

I love the cool darkness of the room and like to start my day with an early morning spin. It wakes me up, clears my mind and offers up a quiet space to think, meditate, pray ( I have said many decades of the rosary while pushing my quads to the max!) and to plan my day. It is a gift to myself; one that I treasure immensely.

I also treasure the community of men and women (ok, I have to admit that its mostly women with about a 1:10 ratio) who play an important part in my experience of the exercise. I love walking into a room knowingly looking like crap, only to be greeted by spin friends who ask follow-up questions to news from my life. We share our stories, good times and heartache; our recipes with some tasty samples thrown in, encouragement and even hold the occasional bitch session. No matter what happens between those painted cement walls with the black lights (really purple- think 1970's), we walk out feeling invigorated and refreshed.

And hey they serve coffee upstairs for free!!


Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010

Procrastination is Hell: Write From Your Heart

I have been a writer forever and have a multitude of “pieces” stashed around my home, some published, most just birthed for my eyes only. I probably have enough poetry to fill 5 fairly large volumes. I can close my eyes anywhere, in the middle of a lecture or in the quiet of a dusk-filled room and words will pour forth from me effortlessly. Sometimes I have an idea when I begin, and at other times I go where my muse takes me. One element that is constant is that my poetry and essays tend to be universally based regardless of whether they draw from my life or not.

The one difficulty I have is report style writing. By virtue of its very nature, it requires thought, time and much research. It is information that resides outside of my consciousness and therefore can’t flow effortlessly from my brain to paper. I have to put down a thought, research the subject, find documentation to support my point, add URL links for readers to get a fuller picture, cut it down to under 500 words and make it visually appealing with images and/or video. Oh, and let’s not forget the whole SEO function. The title needs to be catchy and optimized and the key words need to be optimized as well.

When I write poetry, not only does it flow beautifully from my brain to the page, but I really don’t give a flip if anyone reads it. Just as running is a release for the athlete, writing is a release for me. It is a personal gift to myself, if someone else reads my words, then it becomes just an added gift, but not really necessary. Often when someone tells me that they have read my work, I react with surprise. I genuinely forget that I have several blogs that others actually can and do come in contact with. There is something about writing on a computer that makes you feel as if it only you and the page that exist, even after the enter button has been pushed.

So why am I sharing this? It’s an exercise in how I can write this blog post in 2 minutes as I put off writing some business-related blog posts. Procrastination is hell…………………………….

You can find my creative pieces on this blog and my procrastination, errr I mean my business/social media pieces here and here.


Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2010 ~ All Rights Reserved