Note: If you looked at my morning’s post and it was empty, please look again HERE.
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Ephemeral.”
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/ephemeral/
Tightrope: Talking to Myself in the Mirror
Life is a delicate balance–just toe in front of toe.
Make too grand a gesture and down you’ll surely go.
Tormented thoughts may enter but they’re sure to also pass,
so do not let them spill you onto your impetuous ass.
Try to think before you speak angry words and cruel.
Too often, though they’re warranted, they’ll make you out a fool.
Try to strike a balance between what’s kind and true.
Your mouth is way too tiny to accommodate your shoe.
Diplomacy’s not lying, it’s just choosing the right word.
To spill out everything you think will brand you as absurd.
Of course we’re only human and of course there will be slips
from time to time from angry, hurt or tactless lips.
But, no matter how chaotic the thoughts are in your head,
it’s best that you don’t follow them everywhere you’re led.
It’s one thing to say words that are weak, untrue and truthless,
and another just as bad to tell the truth in manner ruthless.
We can all be poets in choosing the right way
and time to say the things that we feel we have to say.
As much as it’s important to say what’s on our mind,
The world works so much better when we’re also being kind.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “I Walk the Line.” Have you got a code you live by? What are the principles or set of values you actively apply in your life?
Needless to say, the prompt was to show pictures in which we just couldn’t resist tilting the camera. I got a bit carried away with these strings of papel picada on a windy day. Believe me, there were dozens more and I exercised great restraint in only showing three.
I took two versions of this shot of the appetizer tray at Tres Leones B&B Restaurant. Believe me, this one with a diagonal slant was by far the more interesting.
This beautiful blue-footed booby washed ashore early one morning. I’ve shown another full shot in an earlier post, but I also love this detail.
Now, VoyagerI love transformation movies: ugly ducklings turned beautiful, wallflowers who become the belle of the ball, villains turned saviors, shady ladies turned good girls, wild horses tamed. If you can name one famous example of each from the movies, you win the prize, but for me the top entry in the first category would have to be Bette Davis in “Now Voyager.”
I’ve always been surprised that they haven’t done a remake of the film, but on the other hand, I don’t think they could probably equal the romantic pathos of the dowdy, overweight, aging and submissive spinster Bette Davis, living with her dominating mother, her one rebellion–cigarettes sneaked on the sly. As her mother slips the noose of control ever tighter, Bette is “saved” by a nervous breakdown and a visiting psychiatrist who persuades her mother that she must be sent to a “rest farm” where the transformation takes place.
The resultant makeover, sea voyage, love affair and. . . but wait . . . I’ll tell no more, for if you haven’t already seen the film, it is a must-see and I don’t want to issue further spoilers. As a matter of fact, if you have seen it, we should both probably see it again. The last time I saw it was in VHS form ordered from Amazon twelve years ago and yes, I still do have a VHS player hidden away somewhere in the highest reaches of my house.
At any rate, I have been diverted by the film review when my real intention was to talk about the title and plot itself and the significance it has in my own life; for I, too, seek a transformation. Just once I would like to be that stunningly glamorous, thin mysterious stranger who turns all heads. Yes, superficial, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to experience being that woman who could have any man in the place.
For too many years, books and movies seemed more real than the world around me. My boring existence in a small town could not be all there was to life. Surely, if it were, then all those exciting books and movies would never have been written, for where would they have come from except from the patterns of other places and other lives that contained more possibilities than a small dusty town in the middle of South Dakota prairie?
Yes, I did eventually voyage off into life and I found places more exciting–more in line with my own interests. And although I had love affairs, married the man of my dreams, had careers I felt adequate at, traveled to exotic climes and never had trouble making friends, at age 67, I have still never been the femme fatale of my childish and teenage and middle-age dreams. I have made starts and even accomplished some of the goals. I’ve lost weight, found the perfect haircut, bought more stylish clothes. I’ve gone to clubs and danced unabashedly, joined internet introduction clubs, gone to singles parties. But still, at my best, there is some quality lacking in my makeup–some ineffable clue that I am available, sensual, smart and fun to be with. What is it? My entire life I have wondered why, with a few notable exceptions, I will invariably be the last woman at the table asked to dance. For years I believed it was because of my weight and at present that may be so, but even at my skinniest, there was some signal I sent out that made me unapproachable or unappealing or uncharismatic to most men, and as old and wise and introspective and analytical as I have become in my middle-to-old age, I do not know what it is.
Have you ever known someone who is doing something wrong and who just can’t get it right? Everyone knows what it is but no one tells them, for fear of hurting their feelings. And so they go on in life, never quite getting what they want and not having a clue why that is. Why don’t we just tell each other? It would be so much simpler. But, the truth is that we probably would not listen even if our friends told us. We would find excuses. We would not believe them, no matter how many people told us the same thing, because there seems to be some radar causing us to become who we are–strengths, talents and faults all combined.
A complete stranger sitting next to me at a banquet once said to me, “You don’t need that!” when I reached for the dessert held out to me by the waiter. I was astonished, insulted, irate. I wanted to take two desserts and put the bastard in his place! But the truth was, maybe he was that one person in my life who decided to tell me the truth.
Today when I got up to let the dogs out and give them their morning meal, I saw the dusty blistered card of diet pills on the kitchen island. I broke one off and swallowed it with a long drink of water. Perhaps I’ll start again that journey towards sylphdom. I’ll lose dress sizes, get a facelift to deal with the resultant sags and wrinkles, fit into sexier clothes, go back on OkCupid, meet another stranger grown familiar through words over the internet. Maybe it’s still not too late to be an object of desire. Or, perhaps I’ll just write about it.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/642826/Now-Voyager-Movie-Clip-I-Met-A-Doctor-In-Rio.html
The Prompt:Silver Screen–Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the title of your post. Now, write! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/silver-screen/
Strangely enough, this post also ended up answering today’s prompt so I’m posting it there as well: But No Cigar–Tell us about a time things came this close to working out… but didn’t. What happened next? Would you like the chance to try again, or are you happy with how things eventually worked out? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/but-no-cigar/
http://jennifernicholewells.com/2015/03/24/one-word-photo-challenge-mauve/
Silvestre
The passion of the wallflower
pressed between the pages of
her garret room
may range farther
than the wildflower.
She hides it by day
under her mattress,
the only evidence of it–
ink bled into her fingertips.
Through the long night,
her pen spills her to infinity
with the wild stars
on the other side
of closed shutters,
immersed in waters
she has never stepped into–
plunged into by words
that she gives over to
night after night
after long year.
Words so sensual
that her father,
if he sees
from that dark Hell
any fair creator
would have sent him to,
must not be capable of haunting
or he would.
She imagines him
watching her submit
to a different lover
every night–
her back bleeding black
from the ink of the passion
he has pressed her to.
As if her submission
were the most dynamic
of all works;
as if no one
had ever said Yes
like that.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Third From the Top.” The Prompt: Go to your blog reader. Scroll down to the third post in the list. Take the third sentence in the post, and work it into your own post. (The line taken from my reader is the last italicized stanza of my poem. You can see the entire poem by Luci Shaw that it was excerpted from HERE.) And my poem is fiction, folks!
I woke up with the word “Silvestre” streaming through my mind. I knew that I knew what it meant, but in the end I had to look it up. Of course. It means “Wild” in Spanish. Even before I looked at the prompt, I knew this had to be my topic and as it turned out, it worked with the quote I was given. Thus, the name of the poem which might better have been named “Wild Words” but I like “Silvestre” better, and Patti, it is only coincidence that it is also our father’s middle name. I would never assign our father to Hell nor accuse him of the implications in this poem. Thus, this disclaimer when normally I feel no words should have to be explained.
Bear Cub or Raccoon? Found Art
Dilly Bird Found Art
Beach Dragon
Beach Dragon with St. George
Peru Sunset Still Life
Patina by Salt Air
Candelabra Island Bird Sanctuary, Peru
Still Life with Beach Wood and Stones
Beach Still Life with Bubbles
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/03/24/cees-fun-foto-challenge-weathered-wood/
The Prompt: Weaving the Threads–Draft a post with three parts, each unrelated to the other, but create a common thread between them by including the same item — an object, a symbol, a place — in each part.
Rings of Saturn
I had taken off my wedding ring years before. How typical of me that I would finally put it on again after he died. I don’t know why I do these things. Perhaps it was easier to be married to a dead man, or perhaps I felt he had finally atoned for his bad behavior, but suddenly that symbol had more significance than it had come to have in life. That sainthood of departure. I’d seen it happen again and again, but I had never been one to run with the pack and so it surprised me so much when I looked down one day and saw his ring on my finger again that I took it off and it has resided in that heart-shaped jewelry box ever since. That jewelry box with the little slit-compartment for rings that my sister’s friend had brought as a hostess gift when she had come to visit during that long year after his death when everyone came out of the woodwork to come visit.
Draw a ring around the old. Ring in the new in multiples. Duplication has become such a science–the craftsman thrown out of the ring. With the new three-dimensional copier, what cannot be duplicated, if plastic is your creation material of choice? A plastic gun—complete down to the bullet in its chamber. A perfect functioning model of anything with moving parts. Can each grain of gunpowder be duplicated? One ringie dingie, two ringie dingies. Floating away on the surface of the lake of forget. Is that giving up? Ringing the final buzzer? Burning the evidence in a ring of fire? Burning bridges? A phone rings and rings in the distance. It has that ring of authenticity, but that does not mean it is real.
Ring of thieves. One by one, the days steal my life away. Time is that one thing no one has control over—even Einstein or Hawking who perhaps understood it more than anyone. Estee Lauder, Timex, Time, Incorporated–all profit by time but none have conquered it. We are all in the ring with it whether we know it or not. Others may take the black eyes or sound the buzzer, but we are all really fighting the same fight. The smoothest face still wrinkles and the most beautiful voice grows shrill with age or disappears. Buzzers go silent and the arms holding up the signs go saggy. Ring around the rosie. Ring around the rosie. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/weaving-the-threads/
Here is my week 4:
Contrast, 53, Saturation 100, Definition 100, Sharp 100, Temperature 13
My first three weeks:
I didn’t realize until after I posted that week 1 was supposed to show the first edit of the photo, so I have shown both first and second edits in week 2.
For my first three weeks, go here: https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=6429&action=edit
https://robynsfineart.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/one-four-challenge-march-week-4/
Boxed Salad
The story of my life is like a salad–more palatable when someone else does the cutting up and the mixing. I don’t know what to leave out of a salad. I put everything into it every time–lettuce chopped so fine it’s better eaten with a spoon, carrots, celery, purple onions, avocado, apples, walnuts, cranberries, green olives and croutons, blue cheese, balsamic vinaigrette. All chopped up and blended to within an inch of its life so that each bite contains a bit of each. Delicious, yes, but not enough variety between bites, perhaps. All of the elements mix up so much it is impossible to taste the flavor of each. They blend into a fresh hash that becomes another thing entirely.
And this is what my life is like, as well. Everything is remembered in such detail that I can’t sort out the relevant facts. No one thing stands out as being the thing to feature. I can’t get the gist of events. What does it mean–that year or more in Africa? Somehow, after a lifetime of reading books that imply reasons for things, nothing in my own life makes sense anymore.
I try to look at myself objectively. What in her makeup made her fall in love with a man who would become her stalker? What makes her leave places where things seem to be working out fine to jump into a new location and situation where she is thrust once again into the role of stranger? Does she think, perhaps, this time she will come closer to finding herself? Or does she think it will be a chance to try out a new life without the censure of friends who expect her to be the same person she was yesterday or last year?
What writer more competent than myself could find the pattern where all these pieces fit together into a recognizable whole? Perhaps Barbara Kingsolver could determine more easily how I fit in to my time or Joyce Maynard could extract those details that would make my life read like a mystery. Anne Tyler could describe those eccentricities that make my family readable, even if they aren’t from Baltimore; and I could certainly use the help of Abraham Verghese in writing the portions of my life that took place in Ethiopia. But undoubtedly, these favorite writers are all embarked on projects of their own, so it is not likely that any will be forthcoming in helping me to solve the conundrum of my own life story.
It’s like all of the details of my life are jumbled together in one of those big boxes out in the garage that I haven’t opened in fourteen years. Even if I could bring myself to open those boxes, how could I ever make sense of them? Yes, there are all these little boxes as well–where I’ve sorted the very best details into stories or poems or essays.–but where do those little boxes fit within the shipping container of my life?
In spite of a lifetime of writing, I have to face the fact that I don’t have the skills to write my own biography. Perhaps my task was to get famous enough to prompt someone else to do the deed, but it is getting late in my life and that seems unlikely to happen. My chances to become infamous are equally long past, or at least I hope they are. I have no wish to become famous due to my misdeeds or eccentric behavior. Perhaps it is enough to unpack these tiny boxes one by one on my blog–like little parts of the entire tossed salad of my life. Not biography. Just bites.
The Prompt: Ghostwriter–If you could have any author –living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose?
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 