Dear Reader
Once deprived of wanderlust,
I feared that I might mold or rust.
I needed some means of expression
to stave off that deep depression
threatening to swallow me
and dull my former ecstasy.
In short, I tended to be wary
of a life more sedentary.
I wondered how to bring the world
into my life, more tightly curled
than it had ever been before.
These walls, these ceilings and this floor,
this garden, studio and pool
formed a place where I could rule.
Safe from a world run by a fool
senseless, ignorant and cruel.
Within these walls surrounding me,
I settled down to simply be.
But simply being can be tough.
It simply didn’t seem enough.
I felt the need to generate
something to resuscitate
the challenges that used to drive me—
something new that could revive me.
Simply “being” made me numb.
I needed something to become.
So my computer became the tool
helping me to fight the duel
between a lack of energy
and mind that still yearned to be free.
Words became the way I traveled,
the way my mind became unraveled
from the knots of consternation
all that mental constipation
that turned toxic all those ponderings.
All those lonely mental wanderings.
Thoughts like these require ears
to work out puzzles, conquer fears.
And that is why each written word
I write—profound, fearful, absurd—
I send out to the universe—
a means to try out and rehearse
those words that seeking, lightly humming,
signal all that I’m becoming.
My days of travel far behind,
I seek my wanderings in your mind.
The words of the day were challenge, expression, wanderlust and generate. Here are the links in case you’d like to use one or more of them in your own blog:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/rdp-63-challenge/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/02/fowc-with-fandango-expression/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/wanderlust/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-30/ Generate
Panty Parade Down Main Street
If you’re bent on traveling, if you need to roam,
it’s best to dry your undies before you leave your home.
It must be that both of you are down to your last pairs,
but waving them out of your car can’t help but to draw stares.
I wonder if your dryer quit because your power was gone.
But most of all, I wonder, have you any on?
The monsoon rains come like a blessing, relieving the hot humidity, building the lushness of the rice terraces. Green everywhere. Energetic monkeys in the sacred monkey forest grab my postcards from my hands, leave teethmarks that will delight your children more than anything I might say in the postcards I send as recompense for the father I have taken off with me to another part of the world.
We grow into these long hot humid afternoons that are washed away for a mere hour or so by the seasonal rains. Shedding clothes like years, we live naked underneath sarongs wrapped tightly for security. You sit on the porch, your soon-to-be-old man’s furry pot belly proudly obscuring the tightly wound tuck of your sarong. Over twenty years later, it is that sarong made into a jalaba that I now wear almost daily, hiding my soon-to-be-old lady’s pot as well.
How I cope with growing old without you is to sift through these memories like playing cards or photos fallen from old albums that have lost their ability to secure. As gullible as upon our first meeting, I wipe away your inadequacies as I’m sure you would have forgotten mine if you had been the one left sorting the fallen memories in the bottom of the album box.
Monsoons, I have been told, blow both moist and dry, as we did over those fifteen years. But we endured and built each other, coping as all of those in marriages judged successful by their lasting power do. Today you are the photo fallen from the album to the floor. Quickly, as you fell from my life, I tuck you back securely into your correct place, placing on top new albums with new memories built on the foundation of you and all those memories a life, in the end, is made of. You slip into that middle place old loved ones eventually are relegated to. Our way to cope. Our way to live life instead of merely remembering it. Because that is what life is. We keep trying. We keep on.
The grab bag of prompts today were cope, monsoon, gullible and energetic. Here are the links in case you’d like to play along:
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/welcome-to-daily-addictions/ (Cope)
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/rdp-62-monsoon/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/01/fowc-with-fandango-gullible/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/energetic/
Because I finally found this photo of my mother that I’ve been looking for for years, I had to put it on my blog. I just love how young she looks, wonder what prompted her lifting up my stroller, love the depiction of the new neighborhood we’d just moved into that lacked even graveled streets, let alone paved ones. I’m wondering if she lifted me up to show off her spectator pumps? Pretty fancy for a mother in a housedress holding her chunky baby aloft complete with heavy metal stroller. This is my all-time favorite photo of my mother and me so I just had to share it. That’s the Masonic Temple in the background, by the way. My mother was 37 years old. I must have been between 10 months and a year old.
In case you are curious, here are a number of poems, essays and stories I’ve written about my mother over the years. Bet you can’t read the whole bunch!! But if you want to read just one, let it be the first one, which gives the most complete view of her.
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/04/25/napowrimo-day-25-she/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/04/12/family-secrets/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/03/19/the-emperor-of-chocola/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/03/02/i-imagine-dverse-poets-prose-poetry/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/22/believe/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/20/generational-drift/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/01/30/china-bulldog/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/10/17/mommy-talk/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2018/04/24/elegy-for-eunice/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 