Words For Thought

Shayleia Designs
Shay White
Copyright 2008
All Rights Reserved

The Sands of Time . . .

Shayleia Designs
Shay White
Copyright 2008
All Rights Reserved

Ghost Girl Captured on Stairs of Abandoned House

Click on the photo for a larger image. Can you see the ghost on the stairs? What about the misty stuff in the hallway? Has a ghost been caputred on film in this old abandoned house?

Image Copyright Shay White

O'Shay's Irish Pub

The Bubble Fairy

Artwork copyright Shay White

Midnight Madness

Artwork Copyright Shay White
All Rights Reserved

Lynchville, Maine signpost.

These are actual towns and actual mileage.

Baby Bird

One of two baby birds I had to rescue after they were captured by one of my cats and unceremoniously dropped on our enclosed porch.

I am not sure if the baby birds were beginning to practice their flying techniques when she caught them or not, but both seemed to be a bit "wobbly" on their wings.

However, although they were both a bit shaken up from their harrowing ordeal, neither appeared to be injured and after about half an hour or so they flew off to safety of the tree line surrounding our property.

A Different Perspective . . .

This artwork creation was made by my neice who is 9 years old.

She made it by using the AdobePhotoDeluxe Business Edition 3.0 program.
I thought it looked like a giant yellow flower in full bloom. Such a beautifully created piece of art from the talented mind of an imaginative young artist!


Alexandra King
Copyright 2008

Day Lily Calendar 2008

The picture (behind the calendar) of an Orange Day Lily was taken in the West Quoddy Head State Park in July 2006 with black and white film using an Olympus 35 mm camera.

Shay White
Copyright 2006

Goren & Eames

A friend sent me this photo because it seemed to go with the other two so I thought I would share it. I am not sure where it came from but it sure is cute! Does this pose look familiar to any LOCI fans?

Return of the Canadian Geese

These wild Canadian geese were not at all afraid of people and were more than happy to walk up close and personal to my camera.

Key West Sunset

The clouds looked like a giant hand reaching across the sky this evening in Key West, Florida.

This photo was taken from the roof top of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Photograph copyright 2004 Shay White

Video Junkie

This is a picture that was drawn by one of my nephews when he was nine going on ten (as he tells it).

It is a picture of his brother playing a video game. I just loved the imaginative use of movement to illustrate how much his brother likes to play video games and how it affects him.

Kids have such great perception at such young ages, don't you think?

Anticipating Spring . . .

Theatre De La Renaissance

I just liked this poster image so I thought I would share it here on my blog.

What the Freck?

Today is the second official day of spring and it feels more like its still mid-winter! Yesterday, the first day of spring we got rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow and high winds. Nice . . . NOT! Last night the temperature dipped to the mid-teens.

Today the temperature is around freezing before the wind chill and the wind is blowing so hard that it is bending and breaking the branches on our backyard apple trees. Literally, littering the yard with branches and across the back field the snow is being blown about in gusts of wind that rival a blizzard.

Spring clean-up should be a blast this year.

UGH, bring on the warm spring weather already!

Line drawing from a photograph.

Drawing Copyright 2008 Shay White

A line drawing that I have created from a photograph of actor Vincent D'Onofrio.

If you would like the instructions on how I created this drawing just go to http://www.ehow.com/ and type the name Shayleia into the search box and it will bring up my articles for you.

Yellow Roses

This yellow rose bud photograph taken in September 2007 with my Digital Nikon 8700 Camera just after a summer shower.

Photograph Copyright 2007 Shay White

Fire works display from 2007

I had forgotten I had taken some great photos of a fire works display in Skowhegan in 2007. So when I came across them again today when going through my computer photos I decided to post one of my favorite photos from that night.

This photo was taken with the Digital Nikon 8700 set on the fire works setting to capture the action with an open shutter.

Photograph Copyright 2007 Shay White

The Bobby Goren of the Bird World . . .

Even the birds have gotten in on the trademark GOREN lean . . .

Locks Of Love

The Locks Of Love organization is a wonderful program and I just wanted to say I am very proud of my family for donating over 45 inches of hair just last week.

My 19 year old nephew had 21 inches of his hair cut while his little sister, age 8, had 15 inches of her hair cut off and their mother had 10 inches of her hair cut and all donated to the program.

In previous years I have had two of my other nieces also cut their hair for the program. Both of these nieces specifically grew their hair out for the program and one of those two nieces has donated twice in the last few years.

So, great "growing" guys! I am proud of all of you!

The Bobby Goren of the Feline World

I just couldn't resist posting this picture I found on the internet of someone's cat who must watch a lot of Law & Order Criminal Intent in order to get this move down so well.

All this "cat" needs is a nice suit and tie to make the impersonation complete!

A tribute to the star power of Vincent D'Onofrio, wouldn't you say, when even the Feline world imitates his acting style?

The Ages Whisper Still

All the ages whisper still,
as years have passed over land and sea,
many a story written with the quill,
documenting what has passed to be,
and how the greatest test of human will,
can set a heart and soul so free.

Shay White

Copyright 2007

The Forgotten Dead

The ghosts of years, long since past,
dim now are their memories of lives once vast.
Their blue cloudless skies, have grayed above,
forever silenced from a world so loved.

Apparitions wander the ruins under a crumbling arch,
through fading light of the ages, left to an endless march.
Alone with whispers to be carried upon the scentless breeze,
a murmur of the forgotten dead, speaking from across the sea.

Shay White

Copyright 2007

Time Travel

Have you ever watched a movie and the theme of the film brought you to the realization that living the life of one of the movie characters could be really useful?

I recently watched "Happy Accidents" starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei. I found the movie to be a bit of an unpolished gem from the IFC world of entertainment and even though being an avid fan of D'Onofrio's work was the main reason for choosing this particular movie, I found myself enjoying Marisa Tomei's performance as well, even though I thought the two actors were a bit lacking in their "romantic chemistry". I also found that the theme of being able to time travel back to a time of your choosing, to be of a particular amusing theory.

For a brief summary of the movie to get where I am going with all this; Sam Deed, (D'Onofrio's character) travels back in time to meet and save a woman he fell in love with when he found her picture in an archival database.

Ruby (Tomei's character) being from the twentieth century, of course doesn't believe that Sam is really from the future. But being a sucker for the wounded puppy persona, she falls for his charming and innocent ways, idosyncrasies included. As the comedy and drama ensues, Ruby learns that Sam believes what he says is true and that he truly believes her to be his one and only love and even if she does think he is a bit crazy in the head, she decides to take the chance on him anyway.

Now, back to the integral theme of the movie, time travel. How cool would that be to have the ability to travel back in time to meet anyone you wanted to? Who would it be? Is there a particular person in our history that you would like to say hello to or perhaps an event that you would like to witness or change?

How about going back and meeting the Neanderthals and try to convince them to mend their ways so they won't go extinct. Perhaps then the Geico caveman commercials wouldn't seem so outlandish after all especially if someone simply changed the course of history for the now extinct cavemen?

Or how about going back to meet Nostradamus and telling him that he really needs to be a bit more descriptive in is prophecies so we in our time can figure out if he was really fortelling the future or if perhaps he had just been drinking too much mead the night before?

How about going back in time and convincing Edison not to invent the light bulb, or the Puritans from burning the people at the stake in Salem, or perhaps someone should go back in time and find out if the aliens really landed in ancient Egypt and built the pyramids?

Imagine if someone actually did all these things. We could be presently living in the dark, casting our little spells on other people and doing a little hyper-jumping around the galaxy with little green, or is it gray, beings from another galaxy?

The list could go on forever, like time itself, but if it were all an actuality instead of a wistful illusion of the mind, if Einstien's theory of bending time and space were real, at what point in time would you go back to change the history of our world?

Personally, just to test it out, I think I would try going back to the time just before my cat threw up his breakfast on the floor this morning so I could put him out the door so I wouldn't have to clean it up!

Shay White

Who Would You Like To Meet?

I was recently asked the question: Name three celebrities (alive) who you would like to meet and three celebrities (deceased) that you would have liked to meet and the reasons why for each one.

Now that was a tough question as there are so many celebrities in this world past and present to choose from, that it makes narrowing it down to only six a tough chore. But after a brief few brain cells ruptured thinking on this one, I finally came up with an answer and thought I would share my thoughts.

People that I would like to meet and why:

Stephen King - This man has been scaring the crap out of me since I began reading his early works and I admire his talent greatly. I have lived in the same area for a long time, but have yet to ever meet him anywhere in public. Not that I would bother him, but I would like to tell him thank you some day in person for the many years of entertainment that he has provided me by writing such deliciously scary books! (Not to mention, I would love to get even by hitting him over the head just once with one of the many books that that he has written that have caused me many sleepless nights). I am just kidding, I wouldn't really hit him. I would be afraid too, after all, this is the man who brought us such hair raisers as The Stand, Misery, Pet Semetary and etc., etc., etc. I would think by now his powers would be so great he could just simply look at someone and turn them to dust if they irritated him.

Vincent D'Onofrio - Simply because I find that he is an insanely talented actor whom I enjoy watching immensely, no matter which off-beat role he has immersed himself into. Over the course of his many movies he has made me laugh, cringe, be grossed out, be empathic, be angry and has even made me cry twice with his acting in (Homicide Life on the Streets 'The Subway' episode and The Whole Wide World). Not many actors are able to hit that many range of emotions with me while simultaneously holding my attention over the span of his career. Plus, I am still kicking my own ass because I missed my chance of meeting him in person in the late eighties when he was in Maine filming 'Signs of Life' (which I think is a gem of a movie and so under-rated). If only I hadn't elected to work that day instead of going to the movie set when the offer arose. Who knows, I could've ended up being an extra like the people I knew who went to the set.

Mariska Hargitay - She is my all time favorite actress and how could it possibly get any better for her than being the daughter of Jayne Mansfield? Please, the woman was destined to be a great asset to the acting community by genetics alone. But to give her credit where credit is due, she has a wonderful natural talent that comes across the screen flawlessly making it is easy to forget that her character of Detective Olivia Benson really is nothing more than a figment of someones imagination that she has brought to life from the pages of a script.

Now for those dearly departed souls that I would have liked to meet:

Princess Diana - Her humanitarian work was truly courageous as was her constant struggle with the British throne. Imagine how much more she would have accomplished if not for her tragic accident. She was truly an icon of our era and someone to look up to and strive to be like.

Marilyn Monroe - She led such a tragic life yet she still showed such grace touched with an unmistakable vulnerability about her that has remained to fascinate fans long after her death. She was a true Hollywood beauty, not at all like the plastic Barbie doll stick figures that are heralded today as the "A" list starlets.

Edgar Allen Poe - I am not sure if he really qualifies as a celebrity but he is in my opinion the greatest writer of all time. I began reading Poe before I hit puberty and became entralled with his cadence and style and dark undertones of his writing that has lasted to this day. I can't even remember how many times I have read and re-read his works and 'The Raven' is my all-time favorite poem. It just doesn't get any better than Poe.

Who are your favorites and why?

Could Not Last

The intense relationship that once was so much more,
than the memory of our truth could ever possibly endure.
There was an honesty within those emotions, that time has now

forsaken,
leaving behind more passion, than the purity of love could ever

have taken.

Now forever lost within that once unyielding embrace,
an uncontrollable lust that exploded to make our hearts race.
A surreal physical attraction that has withered away into

nothingness,
Leaving an unconditional love so forlorn, so utterly defenseless.

The struggle to hold on to a tryst that for so long was savored,
a gentleness of a touch lost, sweet memories no longer favored.
A doomed encounter within a time that understandably could not

last,
the reason behind the broken heart, now left forever in the past.

How we dare not become more familiar within such propensities,
as there will never be a way to recapture that insane intensity.
No way to validate the reasons behind the way we now feel,
being left with only a love child, to prove that it once was real.

Shay White
Copyright 2001

My Life, My Mortality . . .

Relax and take a deep breath while you begin to imagine yourself floating down a lazy stream in an old inner tube. It is an overly warm summer day in late July or August and the stream is cool but not terribly cold. Your body, lying in the water through the inside opening of the black tube, has long since become oblivious to the temperature difference of air and water. The tube feels warm to the touch when your hand and arm brush across it as you extend out to trail your fingers in the water surrounding your little cocoon. Your eyes are closed and your head is settled back against the warm rubber tube, and you are comfortable and at peace for the first time in long time.

The sounds surrounding the stream begin to enter your subconscious as you let your mind drift along with the gently bobbing inner tube. The water occasionally making slight gurgling and splashing sounds against your raft and you can hear it slurping against the banks of earth as you slowly float on by. Lapping lazily on the shore of rock, mud and wayward grasses. A larger splash can be heard behind you and even though you don’t see what animal makes the sound, it is more comforting than frightening. Nothing more than a fish or some other amphibian splashing through the surface of their watery world. As your thoughts drift along in a hazy lull, it occurs to you that perhaps it was a warm-blooded creature such as an otter or muskrat, or perhaps a beaver, which is now slinking silently through the lazy waters. The sun overhead occasionally reflecting off its waterproof fur coat and leaving it to glint under the surface of the water as it searches for a mid-day meal.

The sound escapes your mind as your ears pick up other sounds on your slow escape from reality. A blue jay caws as you pass by the tree it has harbored itself in. You know it watches you wearily though it probably isn’t all that overly concerned of your presence. Other birds can be heard flitting from tree to tree and occasionally they call out to a mate that is never far away. Scuttling sounds can be heard just over the sides of the stream bank, deep in the shade of the overhanging tree limbs and bushes. You imagine a gray or perhaps a red squirrel, chewing on a delicious tidbit of food it has just foraged from the damp forest floor. The woodland creature sits down on its hunches and chews on its morsel, turning it slowly around in its forefeet, swallowing some of it before it decides to stuff the remainder into its cheek to take back to its nest. It does a quick survey of its surroundings before it quietly scampers off to find more food to store away for the coming winter months.

The warmth of the sun allows you to enjoy the cooling summer breeze, leaving you with the sensation that your skin is being gently caressed. A slight smell of warm rubber has long since mixed with the over abundant fragrance of the water and earth around you. Your mind and body are left in peace to drift along unhindered on the lazy water filled pathway. Content to listen to the sounds of nature and letting them cloak and protect you in a total sense of well being.

You are certain that you are more asleep than awake during this time, probably the reason it takes longer than usual to understand that the sounds around you are changing. There is an urgency beginning to creep into the will of the water as it carries you along in your subconscious slumber. Your eyes open lazily and it is hard to focus on your surroundings as the blood red of your closed eyelids are replaced with the brilliance of the sun. The first indication that you may need to survey your surroundings in more detail is an extra buoyant feeling of the inner tube, a slight wobble, then an extra bounce or two across a wave that wasn’t there a moment ago. Then you hear it, faintly at first, then more clearly as you seem to be picking up speed on your watery highway.

A slight panic begins to arise without warning. The inner tube, for in all its casualness in protecting you within its serene cocoon moments ago, seems to be gleefully hindering your efforts to pull yourself up and out of its safety to allow you to see ahead of you. Finally, after a bit of a struggle between the weight of your own body and the inner tube, you are able to free yourself enough to see. You realize the gravity of the predicament you have put yourself in by letting the world slowly move you through it without care or consideration on your part. The stream is quickly closing the gap between you and the waterfall of life. A full panic is beginning to settle in and you struggle with your mind to keep your wits and common sense about you.

You have but only a few precious moments to make your decision. Do you hold on to the cocoon that you have carefully, or was it carelessly, put yourself into? Will you hang onto the inner tube and go with it over the waterfall and hope that the once glorious and serene ride it provided earlier will save you if you are able to cling to it tightly enough?
Or perhaps you struggle out of the center of that inner tube and let it go on without you. While, perhaps in vain, you struggle to swim toward the safety of the shore against ever increasingly stronger currents in a valiant attempt to save yourself?

Or will you have the strength to release the inner tube knowing you are freely giving up the safety it has provided you thus far in your life, then gather all your internal strength and use it to swim against the currents towards the shore and the security that it will inevitably provide you?
Or do you simply take your chances and let the waterfall take you without your inner tube over its edge, while you welcome the flashes of your life appearing before your eyes. Letting movie style snapshots flash over your entire existence showing you once again all that you are, all that you have been and all that you are leaving behind. All the while you hope that your will to live will be sufficient enough to convince the waterfall to let you go, so you can swim triumphantly out of the mist unharmed, instead of it forcing you deep within its clutches with its overpowering currents to be forever trapped in the deep end of the pool?

Shay White

Copyright 2007

Welcome to Shayleia's Heart of Secrets

If you find yourself reading my blog and bored to tears, please let me know before you tear off into some other cyberspace blog spot, so that I can learn from the experience and hopefully post something else that might be of more interest to the general public.

Since this is all new to me, and after reading a ton of other blogs out there before committing to my own, I think I can do this, and perhaps even post something that may have some entertainment value now and again.

This is not going to just be an ordinary diary of daily events, I intend to include poetry, commentary, reviews and whatever else that may enter into my head at any given moment so bookmark this site if you think you may be interested in reading such blarney.

Also, if you do visit and find yourself reading my stuff, please leave me a comment so I know you have been here. I will appreciate your comments or your criticism, just please keep it clean as you never know who may be out there reading.

So blog on and thanks for stopping by . . . Shayleia