Monthly Archives: January 2015

A Modess Proposal

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Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Bone of Contention – Pick a contentious issue about which you care deeply — it could be the same-sex marriage debate, or just a disagreement you’re having with a friend. Write a post defending the opposite position, and then reflect on what it was like to do that.

This post is by no means meant to be directed towards all men. It is just that certain sort of man that it is meant to depict. (Who? Me? Hyperbolize?) To all the gentle men of the world, you will know at once that it is not you of whom I speak below.

A Modess Proposal

A woman should be shrouded, silent, pregnant, dumb.
All her private places cut off, sewed up, numb.
If only we could cauterize those portions of her brain
that let her reason for herself, we men would feel less pain.

Women are so handy as vessels for our sperm
that thinking of them sleeping with each other makes us squirm.
They have no need for credit, independence or a job
lest by gaining power, our power they might rob.

If women gained control, they’d likely choose to end all warring
and other games we men must play to make our lives less boring.
They might ban all blood sport starring dogs or bulls or men,
substituting yoga or other pastimes Zen.

We might find even television affected by their censure.
No slasher movies, torture, war or action and adventure.
They’d probably insist then that we give up every gun,
just for the sake of safety, removing all our fun.

Chick flicks would take the place of porno, football, boxing, soccer.
They’d tear out centerfolds and remove pinups from each locker.
No lap dances or girls on poles or writhing bumps or grinds.
They’d all be in university, developing their minds.

Better that they’re burqa’d, locked up in a cage
or on the floor, weeping, as we express our rage.
We men need our whipping posts and women serve so well.
It’s a little bit of heaven to put them through such hell.

You men who speak for women’s rights? You’re all a bunch of queers.
It would be much better if you’d stick up for your peers.
Go away to boot camp to learn to be a man—
to pillage, plunder, murder and rape women (if you can.)

These women with their placards are certainly excessive.
Their lobbying for equal pay is getting most obsessive.
The Bible says the man is boss and woman merely chattel.
Like other livestock meant to serve—like horses, sheep or cattle.

Best off if we could brand them and keep them in a pen
and when an urge needs satiating, go and let them in
to cook and scrub, tend children, and iron in each crease.
Then sell them off when they grow old and lazy and obese!

This world has gone all crazy with its call for women’s rights,
which causes men to beat their wives and get in barroom fights.
International warfare, terrorist actions and their likes
are all the fault of women—those ball-breakers and dykes.

Everything was better before this women’s lib,
when women alternated between kitchen and the crib.
If females took their proper place, shrouded to the eyes,
The world could be as God intended—a haven for the guys!

Thanks Be to Sara Lee

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I just couldn’t get going using today’s WordPress Daily Prompt—someone else’s first line—so I elected to follow another prompt, now that we have this option. In response to The Daily Post’s earlier writing prompt: “Thank You,” I am reposting a parody of “Pied Beauty” (better known by its first line, “Thanks be to God for dappled things.”)

“Thanks Be to Sara Lee for Appled Things” was the irreverent first line that I wrote for its parody for NaPoWriMo in April of last year. I think this was before most of my followers knew who I was, so I’m hoping you won’t be too put out by it.

By way of explanation, I will tell you part of a story—that story being that I actually read a poem to one of my favorite authors of all time today. I won’t interfere with her privacy by naming her or revealing how I happened to meet her, but it was scary and thrilling at the same time. This is how I have come to be sitting here at 4 PM, still not having posted a blog entry for today. This time I can’t blame it on the lack of a computer or the presence of a computer that speaks a different language. It is just me, still a bit dazzled from meeting this very nice, down-to-earth friendly lady who possesses one of the finest minds of our century. So fine that for today, at least, I feel unable to write. All I am thinking is that yes, she liked my poem. (I read “The Ways I Do Not Love You” which was also posted earlier as a NaPoWriMo poem.) I just couldn’t bring myself to read one of my silly ditties in front of someone whose writing I respect so much, fearful that she would think this was all there was to me! How can it be that at this age I still care what people think of me? At least it is to my credit that it was my words I was worried about, not my hair or my weight or what I was wearing. I guess I’ve made some advancements with age. “What are you, sixteen?” my super-critical alter-ego is whispering in my ear right now. “Exactly!” the real me shouts, and wishes it could fit a swim in before dinner.

Okay, here is the NaPoWriMo prompt: Our prompt today was to write a curtal sonnet in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ famous poem “Pied Beauty”. This form consists of a first stanza of six lines followed by a second stanza of five, closing with a half-line. The rhyme scheme is abcabc defdf. I chose to make it a parody of “Pied Beauty” as well.

Here is the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

And now, my version:

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced—place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

Voice

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In Good Faith.” Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality — or lack of — for the first time.

Voice

The stranger on an airplane in the seat right next to me
never said a single word, and so I let her be
until our arrival, when I prepared to stand
and she produced a paperback—put it in my hand.

“It’s time for you to read this,” she said, then went away.
I didn’t say a word to her. Didn’t know what to say.
That book, however, changed my life and attitude and choices—
encouraged me to listen close to interior voices.

Buscaglia, Jampolsky and all of Carl Jung’s books
drew my mind away from appearances and looks
and into that finer world of instinct and of mind;
then drew me westward to the sea and others of my kind.

After a writer’s function, a stranger sent to me
“The Process of Intuition,” which I read from A to Z.
I read it twenty times or so, then sent it to a friend.
Then bought up every copy left to give as gifts and lend.

I don’t remember talking to the one who sent it to me,
but if I need a proof of faith, I guess that this will do me.
For I believe there is some force that draws the next thing through me
and if I follow instincts that hint and prod and clue me,

they are the truths that guide me on the path towards the new me.
The signs are there in all our lives if we choose to see.
No, I don’t believe a God guides our destinies.
I don’t believe in lifelines or spirits within trees.

I don’t believe in any faith that has a name or church.
I do believe, however, that I’m guided in my search
by something that unites us and sets our pathways right
so long as we listen to our own interior sight

that urges us to follow the right side of our brain
even though those choices are logically inane.
I know that it takes many types of brains to run the world,
but for me it’s intuition that when carefully unfurled

guides me best—towards art and words and unplanned days and oceans
and prompts me make a Bible of what others may call notions.
And so to simplify I’d say that I must have faith in
that voice we’re all a part of that speaks to us from within.

Who Knew?

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompts: New and Skills.

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 roller skating 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 roller skating 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 1½ hour massage after which I plop into the hot tub. I love spending hours in my 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.”

Notes from a Hammock

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Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt:  Oasis – A sanctuary is a place you can escape to, to catch your breath and remember who you are. Write about the place you go to when everything is a bit too much.

Notes from a Hammock

You’re born, you learn, you travel, marry.
You work and breed and dodge and parry.
From stage to stage, you rarely tarry.
All the burdens that you carry?
Some fall away and some you bury
in your mind or in the mortuary.
The Easter Bunny or Toothless Fairy
are lost to minds that have grown wary,
that know that life gets sort of scary;
and so from Maine to Tucumcari,
when life decisions become hairy,
start to pine for sanctuary.

Life has put us through our paces
as we walked her walk and ran her races,
scored all the goals, rounded the bases.
Squeezed by her molds, strapped by her laces,
we show her marks on legs and faces.
Our backs are curved, bent by her braces.
We yearn to live on another basis,
opting for life’s finer graces—
sort out the jokers from the aces.
Old dreams fade and leave scant traces
as we grab our passports and suitcases
to seek our personal oases.

We have a facelift, buy a yacht,
thinking happiness may be bought,
but soon discover that it’s not
found within the course we’ve sought.
With indecision our lives are fraught.
We always wish for where we’re not
as we rush from dot-to-dot
leaving everything we’ve got—
those things and issues for which we’ve fought—
to live new lives but find we’re caught
in the net of how we have been taught,
regretting what the past has wrought.

Now that I’ve found my Shangri-La—
that place where I relax my jaw
and learn to live by another law,
when petty grievances start to gnaw
and worry me with their thrusting maw,
scraping my mind until it’s raw
and I find it sticking in my craw
to just let go, a breath I draw
and release it in a long soft  “Ahhhhhh.”
When the world reaches out with unsheathed claw,
my sanctuary is to think “Bah,”
climb in the hammock, and just say, “Hah!”

Noted or Notorious?

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Turnabout is fair play.  I asked you to tell me what your favorite post has been, prompted by the WordPress Daily Prompt, that asked me to do the same. A couple of you did post your favorites so it is only fair that I do the same.

I don’t know why I like this one. It is kind of silly, actually, and I guess I wouldn’t want to be known primarily for it, but I like it and I’m too lazy to go further back. Well, I may, but for now, see what you think about this light post: Plus One: The Eighth Deadly Sin: (A Dating Primer for Errant Males).

Okay, I did find one more poem, a more serious one, that I like, partly because I haven’t seen my dogs for 7 weeks and also because it creates a complete memory of the morning I wrote it. I also like the fact that each line has both internal and end rhyme—something most readers don’t notice, but that contributes to the effect of the lines. I hope you enjoy it and I promise, no more suggestions. Here it is: The Dogs Are Barking.

Remember Me By This

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “For Posterity.”

The Prompt today was to write a post that you want to be remembered by. I’d like to try something different.  Instead of my telling you what post I’d like to be remembered by, would each reader please post a comment telling which post you would most remember me by?  It’s possible to search by topic if you don’t remember the title, or you can just scroll back through two years of prompts until you find your favorite.  This would be very very interesting to me, might help you find some posts you’ve never read, and also give me a day off from the frustration of searching and searching for ways to learn and remember PC ways.  Yes, I’m getting there, and I am beginning to think there was a reason for this painful lesson that forced me to learn how to coexist with my Acer.  Last night my Mac came alive for a few minutes several times before shutting off, which led Duckie to believe the problem might be in the fan. It has resided in the rice bag for most of the time since it came back from Daniel the dismemberer and is back there now, with my camera, which I also got to work for a few minutes, so perhaps not all is lost and praise be to the restorative powers of rice.  Remember this if you ever soak your camera or computer! I think the salt air is also a big contributor to computer demise. My next-door-neighbor Daniel (different Daniel) says his computers usually only last a year!  Okay, on to your assignment.  Please, please.  Judy (aka Jury)

Update: I finally answered the prompt as written here.

First Day Without a Computer, and Then It Got Worse!!!!

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It’s Sunday and the hoards who descended upon the beach after Christmas have suddenly disappeared. The campgrounds are now nearly deserted. They must have gotten up very early to pack up and get on the road or else they did so yesterday in the late afternoon or evening. This was the case with the huge open-sided canopy installed ten days ago in front of my neighbor Daniel’s house. It completely blocked the view of the nightly tequila sunset crowd, who had started moving over under the canopy as soon as the family who erected it left for the evening.

Any other morning I would not leave the house until I’d posted my blog, but there was a death in my family yesterday and both the one human occupant (me) as well as all of the techno gadgets that reside here with me were thrown into the throes of mourning, which made me rather dizzy and discombobulated with the loss.

The story of our loss? Stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, I had put a full plastic glass of Diet Coke, heavily weighted with ice, on the table beside my computer and of course, stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, knocked it over onto the keyboard of my Macbook Air which was plugged in and turned on and which did go immediately black. Long story short, it did not survive the 4-hour-long resuscitation attempt by another Daniel, the local computer guy. And that is why I am sitting at my favorite morning wifi spot writing with pen and paper instead of my lovely, slim, nearly weightless Mac Air!

Last night, still in heavy mourning, I had turned to my Kindle Fire for consolation. Everything went wrong. I never could get on either my blog or Skype. Both Hotmail and Yahoo refused to recognize my passwords. After hours of their sending codes to other emails I seemed not to have the passwords to enter, either, I finally got on Hotmail thanks to Duckie, who demonstrated incredible patience in trying to help me deal with problem after problem.

At any rate, once on Hotmail (via my Kindle) I attempted to write to Duckie, but my Kindle threw a temper tantrum and I swear, started speaking Czechloslovakian!

“I can’t get signed in to WordPress,” I wrote to Duckie, my co-administrator, editor, critic, best friend, nightly cyber-companion, debater of Oxford commas and apostrophe advisor.

“czeltophlztxyvich” typed my Kindle Fire.

“This Kindle has been changing my words,” I screamed in type, pounding those tiny keys with inappropriately-sized fingertips.

“prostovichzertylich” glowed eerily from my screen.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!!!!” I thought in screams, and typed as well.

“sczerchloxyxy!” my Kindle reported back to me. Earlier, it had started out suggesting alternate words; then, in frustration over my never choosing its word choice, it had started inserting its own words in lieu of ones I’d typed. “Judy,” I had signed one airmail. “Jury,” it had insisted and recorded for posterity. And that was the last half-way recognizable word it typed for the next ten minutes, at which point I gave up and tried to call Duckie, only to be told that his call forwarding or message service was not functioning, whereupon I tried to call his home phone only to be told in Spanish (I think) that I was out of minutes.

I gave up. Perhaps I’d just watch one of the nine movies I’d purchased in the street market two days before to watch on my computer. The rental agent had brought a new TV (promised 5 weeks before) the day before Christmas. I’d never watched it due to the fact that it had no cable hookup and no DVD player, but I suddenly realized I had both a thumb drive with movies on it and a DVD player for my computer and so I tried plugging both into the TV, only to discover it didn’t recognize either.

At this point, I decided that technology had turned enemy and that I was probably in great danger if I meddled with it further; and so I went to bed early and tried to read a book, but my glasses kept steaming over and soon I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke to discover that WordPress suddenly recognized me as the author of my own blog and that Kindle was pretty much willing to have me publish my own recognizable words I had written and edited, although the editing took longer than the writing. In the end, I breathed a long and tremulous sigh of relief and signed off, “Judy.”

“Jury,” Kindle typed, and for old-time’s sake, half in superstition, I let it lie.

Miss you all,
Jury

Yesterday’s WordPress Prompt: First! Tell us about your first day at something — your first day of school, first day of work, first day living on your own, first day blogging, first day as a parent, whatever.

(Gently edited by Duckie/okcforgottenman)

Two Saves

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(Note to new readers: I have been at the beach for seven weeks now, which might make you understand a bit better how isolated I am in present circumstances explained below.)

(Update by okcforgottenman: Here is today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Daring Do – Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?)

The prompt today, which I cannot copy here because I don’t know how to do it on the pc I have been using for the first time, or trying to, over these past two days since I murdered my (sob) Mac Air laptop, has something to do with some time when you have saved someone.  After thinking long and hard, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to use the document software on the pc and then realizing I had no way to transfer it to my blog, anyway, I just decided that some power in either me or the universe (which is really the same thing) has decided that it is time for me to back away from technology for a time. If you don’t believe this, take into account that after both my Mac and my Kindle stopped working, then my phone did so also.  Thinking it was probably that I needed to buy more time, I resolved to do so only to find that its charger has absolutely vanished from my life.  I’ve turned the house upside down and it is nowhere.  Ah well, I’ll concentrate on photography, thought I, then realized I had no place to put the photographs.  After stumbling around for about 4 hours, I almost by mistake got them downloaded to this (devil) Acer pc, which promptly told me none had been downloaded.  A few hours later, I stumbled upon them but have no idea how to get them onto my blog…and, deciding to just give up on writing or talking to anyone I know outside of my immediate proximity, I took camera in hand…only to discover that my camera, also, is absolutely unoperational.  I think I wrote about this last night and sent it to a friend to post for me, but it was never received, so I won’t bore you with the details, other than that my camera has become a little turtle, constantly extending its head and neck only to withdraw them again, forever, until the battery wears out. Slip in a new battery and the same happens. I put it out of its misery, removed the battery and stuck it in a bag of rice, where it is keeping company with my Mac. Countless people tell me this is a remedy for waterlogged nonhuman entitites. I don’t know what is wrong with the camera, but that big bag of rice was sitting there handy, so why not. Anyway, this is why I am incommunicado and not posting .  Instead, I made a salad and chicken soup for a dinner I’m giving for departing friends tonight and got in the hammock with a good book, dozing a bit just in time for a friend to come by, jar me awake and ask if I was sleeping, then depart (her, not me) for a walk up the beach. So, what does this have to do with saving anyone?  Nothing.  Just a chance to unload on someone other than Duckie, who has been bearing the brunt of my frustration.  I do, however, have an answer to the question.

I have, in fact, saved two babies from drowning.  One was at a housewarming party given by my boyfriend’s son in California.  We’d all been given the tour, including the garden and hot tub, which was up on a raised patio out of view of the house.  One of the couples had a two-year-old child and I noticed he was not with his mother. Looking in the other room, I saw he wasn’t with his father, either, and I suddenly had a strong feeling that something was wrong. I ran out of the house and into the garden just in time to see him at the top of the stairs leading to the hot tub.  He walked over to the side, fell in and sank like a stone.  I ran up the stairs, jumped in the hot tub and fished him from the bottom before he ever bobbed to the surface.  I remember the entire thing in slow motion and have a very clear memory of the fact that it seemed as though his body had no tendency to float at all, but would have remained at the bottom of the deep hot tub.  The parents reaction was shock.  I can’t remember if they left the party or if they really realized how serious it was.  I know they didn’t thank me, which is of no importance other than a measure of either their inability to face the fact that their child had been within seconds of drowning or simply their shock and the fact they were thinking only of their child.

Strangely enough, this had happened before, at a stock pond just outside of the little South Dakota town where I grew up.  Everyone went swimming there, as there was no pool in town.  When I was still in jr. high, I’d just arrived when I saw a very tiny girl—really just a baby—fall into the dam (what we called a pond) and sink straight down under the very heavy moss that grew on the top of the water.  Her mother had her back turned, talking to a friend, and no one else noticed.  I jumped in and fished her out, returning her to her mother, who quickly collected her other children and left.  Again, no word of thanks.  It is not that it was required, and I mention it here only because it happened twice and, having not thought about this for so many years, I am wondering if it wasn’t embarrassment and guilt on the part of the parents that made them both react so matter-of-factly.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

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(This is a follow-up to Judy’s computer is kaput for awhile.)

I finally got on as an administrator of my site but it is slow going on a Kindle which won’t charge as I type and when it gets low on battery, starts substituting random letters for what I type. The truth is that I tipped a full glass of Diet Coke on my Mac Air and after 4 hours of watching a young Mexican man removing 222 microscopic screws and then disemboweling my most treasured nonhuman essential element in my life, I was given the sad news that by my careless action, I had slain my motherboard!  Somehow, in spite of not being able to post, I had the second highest number of viewings ever, so I am hoping folks will still view me—either randomly choosing a past posting, or perhaps Duckie would assume a roll of blog jockey and post a link to a past post each day. Can it be that this is nature’s way of telling me to get a life? I must admit I was utterly traumatized by this all day yesterday. Today I have chosen to wax philosophic. Let us see what happens, but please, please continue to visit. Keep Duckie busy and away from the bottle and if they ever publish another prompt,  will someone send it to me?  In alternate states of shock and mourning. —Judy

DUCKIE, please edit and add tags? Kindle instructed people to rabidly choose a.post to read. You didn’t catch that, ed. I Changed to randomly.

(Edited by Duckie)