Thanks to Where’s my backpack? Travel Theme Photo Challenge: Colourful!!!!
Michoacan artist’s colorful paint collection.
Even the babies are more colorful in Mexico!
La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico sunset. It actually was this brilliant!!!
Nuestra Senora de Undies!
I understand why the Virgin would be invoked for safety while one sleeps, but why a rabbit????
The Prompt: Spinning Yarns—What makes a good storyteller, in your opinion? Are your favorite storytellers people you know or writers you admire?
The very best storytellers are those who are not aware of a distinct line between fact and fiction. My father was a storyteller of the first order, which might tell you something about the dependability of his details. From telling to retelling, distances multiplied and facts grew in magnitude. This is why as he grew older, his tales grew more and more spectacular.
When Colima volcano blew a few days ago, I was 50 or so miles away, but if my father had been alive and had been telling the tale, he would have had me standing at the rim, dodging boulders, with lava lapping at my heels as I fled down the mountain. Barefoot.
Yes, I inherited my father’s storytelling propensities, but as in everything, inheritance is a matter of degrees. The fact that my father did not squander the fruits of his life’s long efforts and so passed some of them on to me has contributed greatly to my comfortable retirement. What he seems to have used up is the family quota of exaggeration. So it is that I try to refrain from hyperbole as much as my genes will allow me to. Still, with many of my stories, I worry about whether people will believe me. That is where cameras come in handy. Oh that I’d had one those nights when I saw the flying saucers!!!!
The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—write a thank-you note to your guiltiest pleasure
Okay, I challenge you to find a better excuse than I have for not getting posted until 7:10 at night. I’m told by the owner of the little palapa restaurant I’ve come to after not being able to get online all day that it is probably because of yesterday’s eruption of Colima Volcano about 80 miles northeast of me. Frustrating but exotic, no? At any rate, here is my “real” post for the day…Judy
Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210
Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.
Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed
the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.
The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.
Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.
But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.
The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—Whether it’s a trashy TV show, extra-pulpy fiction, or nutrient-free candy, write a thank-you note to your guiltiest guilty pleasure
Okay, okay. I’m guilty of posting a link before I finished my blog entry, but I’m grateful I got online at all. This on-again-off-again internet connection at my beach palapa rental somehow got the link established but didn’t get the actual posting included. At any rate, it is lost and this is the new posting for what it is worth and there will be more later. My writing workshop group is leaving this morning. We meet at 8:30 for breakfast and then they are off. I woke up at 5, restored the deck to its usual order so Tom, my upstairs neighbor, can be restored to his usual habits…his table and chair in one corner of the porch, my table and chairs in the opposite corner, in the shade, nearest the house. I am so grateful for the experience of the past few days. Judy Reeves conducted the best writer’s retreat I’ve ever attended. If you and a few friends are in need of inspiration, consolation and direction, she might be your solution. My friends and I hope she’ll come back for another session in 6 months. This time, at my house. Beach will be too hot. So, until I can think of a more weighty (or frothy) response, I’d say I am feeling grateful to Harriet, who conceived of the idea that we should have a retreat, and for this place I love to come to at least once a year for a month or two to find myself again and I do not have an ounce of guilt about it at this moment. Nor will I, ever. You have to establish your priorities and there is not one of the ten women I’ve spent the past few days with who would not say the same! More later…the beach is stirring and so is the room behind me. Judy
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “New.”
Who Knew?
When new was new, I was crazy about it. A new friend, new dress, new favorite food. But what I liked best was new places. I yearned to travel, even if it was just to the next town. Strangely enough, as tiny as the towns were in my part of South Dakota, people from neighboring towns did not mix. We went rollerskating in Draper, 7 miles away, but when our eyes chanced to stray to Draper boys, we were taken aside by several of the “popular” Draper girls–the cheerleaders, in fact, and told to stay away from their boys. This really happened. We played their school in sports, went rollerskating every Sunday in their school gym, even went to movies in their tiny theater, but we did not mix. When we tried, we’d been warned.
I think I visited Presho, Vivian and Kennebec–all 20 to 40 miles away–no more than once in the 18 years I lived in Murdo, population 700. White River, 38 miles away, we more regularly visited since they had shows on Mondays as well as weekends, and the movies were just ten cents, whereas ours cost twenty-five cents! But, never did we ever socialize with White River girls. The boys, however, were a different matter.
The first boy I ever kissed was from White River, and we went steady for two years. I think I’ve told the story of that first kiss in another blog posting. Suffice it to say that after putting it off until age 16, it was about time. And, it worked. I was literally dizzy and he had to hold me up for a minute afterwards. He had opened my car door, helped me out, then folded me in his arms and kissed me. I was so discombobulated that instead of walking to my own car, I opened the back door of his car and started to get into the back seat. Not for the reasons you might think. My best friend and a boy who (as I recall) later turned to cattle rustling were already in the back seat. I just did so in utter confusion. And no, I had never had a drink in my life at the time.
At any rate, this story has veered off in a direction unintended, so just suffice it to say that after that, life continued to present new after new and I accepted most of them. I traveled widely, loved a few loves, pursued a few careers and wound up in Mexico. Now, at age 67, I suddenly find that new isn’t as necessary to me. The older I get, the more I realize that everything is everywhere. You just have to look for it closely.
No longer is it necessary for me to travel to faroff third world countries. It is exciting to take the same walk on the same beach day after day since the sea presents new treasures each day. I love getting up each morning and writing first thing, having Pepe come each Monday to give me a 1 1/2 hour massage after which I plop into the hot tub. I love spending hours in the studio and sometimes hate having to leave home even for activities I have enjoyed in the past.
The point is, that the older I get, the more I want to spend all my time doing what I love most. Writing. Art. The fact that each endeavor creates a new piece is getting to be enough “new.”
(A half hour to write, three hours to post. Will I ever learn how to use this PC?)
I was born and raised in South Dakota, and every summer both of my older sisters went to MYF camp in the Black Hills. For as long as I could remember, I would ride along as my parents drove them to camp and always, at our first sighting of the Black Hills peeking up from the flat Dakota prairie, we would sing this song. Eventually, it was my turn to go to camp from age 11 to 18 and into my early twenties, when I became a camp counselor. To this day, long after we’ve moved away, my sister and I still sing this song every time I cross the state line back into South Dakota:
The Prompt: Cue the Violins—If your life were a movie, what would its soundtrack be like? What songs, instrumental pieces, and other sound effects would be featured on the official soundtrack album?
Ten women including Judy Reeves as the workshop director. Fabulous writing. Fabulous time. An hour after this picture was taken, six of us were up on the bandstand backing up the guitar player/singer. Yes, I was up there with them, but I’m behind the camera in this shot!!!
Beach Writing Retreat, November 2014: Ten of us spend 3 days together writing, critiquing, learning, growing. (Eating, swimming, dancing, laughing, walking, listening, singing.)
Tomorrow, we’ll add shopping to the list as we take an hour or two off to go to the great outdoor weekly market.
The Prompt: Sparkling or Still—What’s your idea of a perfect day off: one during which you can quietly relax, doing nothing, or one with one fun activity lined up after the other? Tell us how you’d spend your time.
Still Life With A Small Town Girl
For many years when I was small and far into my teens,
my summer days were filled with little else than magazines
and books and all the other things a girl in a small town
brings into her summers just to make the days less brown.
Day after day of reading soon led to dreaming, and
my shade beneath the cherry tree became a foreign land.
I did not know the name of it, but in this foreign place
the people did such lovely things. They kept a faster pace.
There were many things to see and people who liked doing—
circuses and carnivals, badminton and horse-shoeing,
imaginings and plays and travels. People who liked dancing.
Instead of trudging down the street, these people would be prancing.
I dreamed such dreams of bigger towns, and far-away towns, too.
All summer, I lay in the grass, dreaming what I’d do
when I was so much older and could go out on my own.
I’d wander off into the world. Explore the great unknown.
Now six decades later, I have done it all—
so many of those things I yearned to do when I was small.
I’ve been to places far and wide—Africa and Peru.
In England, France, Australia—I found so much to do.
Plays and concerts, dances, films, museums, garden walks.
Lectures, movies, workshops, classes, roundtables and talks.
Tours and treks and trips and sorties—guided meditations.
Somehow life seemed fuller packed with exotic vacations.
But now that I am sixty-seven, I’d appreciate
if all this activity would finally abate.
I dream of slower days that I’d spend dreaming in the shade
where all my memories of days spent doing would just fade
into the past and leave me to dream here in this place,
swinging in my hammock, at a slower pace.
Leaving my activity to stream from head to pen.
Filling up the page with all the places I have been.
And making some sense out of why I had to go and go,
speeding up the days that back then seemed to me so slow.
I guess I had to travel to find others of my kind
to teach me that life’s riches are mainly in the mind!
The Prompt: We all have that one eccentric relative who always says and does the strangest things. In your family, who’s that person, and what is it that earned him/her that reputation?
It’s true that I’ve been withdrawn since the day that I was born.
So I don’t write about myself. I do not toot my horn.
And that is why my post today will be unusually short.
My natural loquaciousness I will have to abort.
The one who does the strangest things within my family?
I cannot talk about because I fear that person’s me!!!!
Judy’s note: This is the first day of our writing retreat. Looking forward to it! Ten women, a palapa on the beach in a country that produces all of the tequila in the world! What could go wrong????
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 