Monthly Archives: September 2018

Travel Light

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Travel Light

After packing all my things, my check-in bag’s so spacious,
I wonder if it’s possible to use one less capacious.
For me, my act is radical. I decide to take one
suitcase I can carry on, so packing was no fun!
I’m carrying no liquids so there’s nothing to secrete
and ooze out of the overhead onto my head and seat.
My actions here are radical—I’ll be gone sixty days.
(After this trip I may find this decision is a phase.)
The quintessence of the matter is I’m not taking a lot—
a departure from the usual of taking all I’ve got.
No toothpaste, shampoo, makeup, hairspray, shaver, hair dryer, pills.
No medicines for indigestion or my other ills.
Only one light jacket  and layers for the cold.
I’ll wear my single pair of shoes, for more my case won’t hold.
My personal item will contain computer, hub and backup,
my purse and jewelry and snacks. I hope that I don’t crack up.
Lugging all this stuff today through four airports  I’ll visit
is perhaps a bad decision. It isn’t sane. Or is it?
United changed its policy, so it makes sense to me.
For this and all my later flights, I’d pay a baggage fee.
Guadalajara to Montana, later Saint Paul and then St. Loo,
Then back again to Mexico. I’d pay more than a few.
I’m really not a cheapskate. It’s the principle of the thing.
I’d rather use that money on a bracelet or a ring—
some tiny thing that I can pack in a space that’s tight.
I’m committed for this single trip to simply traveling light!

 

To be clear, tomorrow alone, I’ll be visiting four airports: Guadalajara, Houston, Denver and Billings, Montana. Then in three weeks to a month, I’ll be flying to St Louis, possibly St. Paul, St. Louis and then eventually back to Mexico.  That’s a lot of checked baggage charges!! In addition, I’ve ordered material to bring back from the States so will have to check at least one bag from St. Louis to Mexico. Thus, the decision. Let’s hear a round of applause for tight packing! Thanks to Yolanda for her assistance.

 

The prompts today are radical, quintessence, secrete and capacious. Here are the links:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/30/fowc-with-fandango-radical/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/quintessence/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/rdp-sunday-secrete
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-39/capacious

Janis to the End!!!

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The Daily Inkling prompt is to choose what song I’d listen to if I could listen to one song before a plane I’m flying in crashes.  I think it would be Janis Joplin singing Bobby McGee! Why not go out in style??????

https://normalhappenings.com/2018/09/30/song-to-end-all-songs-daily-inkling/

Kristina Trejo’s Batik Exhibition

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So much fun! It was a packed house at Casa Domenech and spilled over into the room next door. We went to take it in after the reading for the 100 Thousand Poets and Artists for Change reading at Pat Apt’s Studio. (Photos to follow.) We had dinner, drinks, saw Kristina’s wonderful art, met lots of new people (at least I did) and were the last to leave!

(Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)

Cheap Falls Are a Stunning Solution!

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Cheap Falls Are a Stunning Solution!

She was a parachutist and an avid mountaineer
whereas he viewed such pastimes with a great amount of fear.
Yet, he was so enamored that he issued a proposal, 
using every single cent he had at his disposal 
to buy her an engagement ring, to which she answered “Yes!”
The agenda for their honeymoon? I’m guessing you can guess.
Only Nepal would suit the bride.
There they’d hire a sherpa guide
to climb Mt. Everest and then
parachute back down again!

The groom’s objections were double-fold.
The first was that he was not bold
enough to scale this mountain lest
he meet his end on Everest!
Plus, he had neither credit nor cash
to finance both a wedding bash
and an expensive wedding trip!
He’d spent his stash all on the ring,
not budgeting for everything.

To console himself, he took a nip
and then another little sip
until, too late, he’d had enough.
He found rising a little tough
and navigating down the hall?
He had no skill at it at all.
And so, a few yards from the keg?
I fear he fell and broke a leg!
Nonetheless, the wedding went through.
She said “I will.” He said “I do.”

They honeymooned at Niagara Falls
which cost less money, required fewer balls.
He kept her busy with hugs and kisses,
Giving thanks for two close misses.
Though his cast both cramped and itched,
He never complained, never bitched.
The drinking bout that caused his fall
was the greatest luck of all.
He blessed that final stiff ablution.
Two cheap falls? Stunning solution!!!

The prompt words today are fall, cheap, stunning and solution. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/rdp-saturday-fall/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/29/fowc-with-fandango-cheap/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/stunning/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/solution

Morning Head Shots

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Morning Head Shots

Picture a woman sleeping, words wrapped close around as sheets.
Syllables slipping to the floor, loosed from their midnight feats.
A whole new world evolving as she’s lost away in dream.
All those single actions spilling from the seam
of those reveries she’s wrapped in, meaning more than what they mean.

Click

Picture eyelids opening as light begins to dawn.
See the eyelids close again, her stretching and her yawn.
See the dreams she’s had all night pulled to consciousness–
all tightly wrapped, but wriggling themselves free from all the mess
of what they’ve been bound up in to become what she’ll confess.

Click

See the words all rising from the place where they’ve been sleeping.
See her brow remembering bits it struggles now at keeping.
See her form a paper sheet into a little sack
and use her pen to prod the words back into a pack,
sparring with belligerent phrases that fight back.

Click

See her herding each into its place with little nudges,
overlooking warring words that seek to live their grudges,
making words that don’t belong together somehow fit,
forcing the recalcitrant to want to do their bit
to turn their separate strands into a story finely knit.

Click

Now see the picture on the page where words have come to rest–
stretched out vowel to consonant, best standing next to best.
Brutal words relaxing, flaccid words now showing zest.
Brought recently into the world where they have met the test,
here they stand before you, shaken out and neatly pressed.

Click

Then see the floor around the bed–the words she’s thrown away.
The words that somehow just don’t say what she wants to convey.
See them rising in the air to hover up above.
Words of anger, sadness, envy, honor, lust and love.
They jump, they float, they kiss, they spar, they hug, they joust, they shove.

Click

Tomorrow night they’ll rain back down to form adventures new.
To form themselves into the curious plots that dream parts do.
Picture them assembling into order all their own
or forming groups informally, wherever they are blown.
Ready on the morrow to once more go where they’re sown.

Click.

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This poem seemed perfect for Matt’s prompt about the influence of remembering dreams, so here it is again.  It’s been a long time.  Admit it.  You’d forgotten it! Even I’d forgotten, at long last, this poem about the effect of remembering dreams.  Here’s the prompt URL.  Come play along!

For Daily Inklings: Influenced by Dreams

Creeping Charlie and Chinese Garlic Chives

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They shoulder out my succulents and commandeer my grass.
Perky little coins of green, they have a lot of brass.
Chinese garlic lifts white heads a bit above the fray.
Although they’re uninvited guests, I guess they’re here to stay.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day

Lava

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I saw this wonderful tirade by Audra Alexander on a friend’s Facebook page. I tracked down the author, who generously gave me permission to run it on my blog. Since there was no button on her blog to do so, I couldn’t “reblog” it, so here it is in its entirety. I hope you visit her blog, URL given below, to tell her what you think !!!! I think she’s captured perfectly and in an entertaining if irate fashion what is going to happen when Kavanaugh is confirmed:

Lava

Kavanaugh is going to get confirmed, we all know that. A lot of women will be very angry. Some might even take to the streets. But this won’t be the tipping point. There won’t be a tipping point, there never is. There will just be the subterranean lava flow of women’s anger – slow, blistering, savage and inexorable. We’ll go to bed angry, we’ll get up angry, we’ll drink our coffee and fix the kids’ breakfasts angrily, we’ll drive thru car line and to work angry, our male colleagues will ask each other if we’re on the rag, we’ll eat silent lunches with rage and we’ll pick up groceries on the way home with vengeance on our hearts. We’ll kiss our partners and our kids goodnight wrathfully. We’ll cry hot, silently screaming tears in the middle of brushing our teeth. We’ll go to bed angry. We’ll get up angry…

Nothing will seem to change for you. But the mother of a 32 year old man will suddenly snap at him to “Grow up!” when he complains that he’s pretty sick of frozen dinners lately. That quiet chick 3 cubicles down will show up out of nowhere and tell a gathering of dudebros that she’ll report them to HR if they don’t shut up. They’ll call her a bitch under their breath as she turns around, but she won’t care. The teenage daughter will ask her dad if he’d still find it funny if she was the punchline in his favorite joke. He’ll scold her for talking back and look at his wife, who will look back and say nothing. Another daughter will say nothing to her father – ever again.

The anger will shift, seismic but unseen. Before the lava used to burn us to ash on the inside. It’s bubbling over now. Enough of us have ripped open our bodies to let the boiling soil of our lives out that the heat itself causes fires. Sure, you can put one or two out at a time. A single flame is easy to catch. But the lava is elemental and everywhere. Kavanaugh will be confirmed. And in less than a generation he’ll be a petrified ash fossil, frozen in a rictus of agony in the new Pompeii. Nothing will seem to have changed, until it’s too late. The lava of our anger is going to cover the earth and bury you.

Here is her blog.  Check it out!  https://scarletvirago.com/2018/09/28/lava/

Gradual Justice

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Gradual Justice

Life metes out a gradual justice that we may not  see.
Not choreographed for one lifetime, not designed for you or me,
but rather, for the planet or the universe.
There’s no way to avoid it, circumvent it or rehearse.
We’re a part of something larger even as we make mistakes
as nature covers over the snafus mankind makes.
Great men may be jaunty, swelled up with their great plan,
but nature has more problems than looking after man.
She has the heart of all within, seeing a scope broader
than the needs of man or any other great marauder.
There is just so much for any of us. When we grab for more,
we can be pretty sure we may be headed out the door.
What species will replace us, or how will we evolve
if we don’t act quickly our problems to resolve?
Even all technology is part of nature’s plan.
Perhaps it’s written that robots will take the place of man.
Micro chips for healing and mechanical hearts
are only the beginning. They are only the starts.
Species that overgraze domains bring about their endings.
So it may be with us with all our diggings and our vendings.
Machines poisoning our air and putting poisons on our shelves
May only be the means of making more room for themselves! 

 

The prompts today are justice, heart, jaunty and gradual. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/friday-rdp-justice/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/28/fowc-with-fandango-heart/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/jaunty/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/gradual

From Grieflessons to Lifelessons.

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Bob and I, early 1990’s

Matt asked us to tell him about the origins of our blog name, so here goes:

The original name of my blog was “Grieflessons.”  Why Grieflessons?

When my husband Bob and I bought a house in Mexico in 2001, little did we know I would be moving into it without him. We had our moving sale in the states and packed up our van, but three days before we were due to begin our journey down to our new home, we discovered he had pancreatic cancer. He lived for three weeks. That is how, 2 months later, I came to be lying alone on an air mattress in an empty house in a country where I knew neither a soul nor the language.

I wrote a book based on my first 8 years after his death and originally, I thought this blog would be about grief–how it expresses itself, how I responded to it and how I came to realize that it is a powerful agent for growth and change.  Very quickly, however,  the scope of what the blog encompasses grew beyond my initial purposes. Rather than a blog to help people deal with death, it seems to have become a blog to enable myself and others to deal with life.

A big part of this change was initially due to my participation in National Poetry Writing Month, wherein I published a poem a day for a month.  That led to postings about my life in general, which is why I  changed the name of my blog to “Lifelessons.” I have stated before, but I’ll say again that it is mainly myself that I am teaching through my posts. There is a part of me I never communicate with unless I’m writing, and that is a big motivation keeping me going.

After NaPoWriMo in 2013, I decided I wanted to continue to write and post every day and I have done so with  only one exception (when I spilled a Coke on my computer and was without internet access for a day or two) since April 1 of 2014. Since then I have also begun daily postings to several photo prompts as well and I’m now in search of a support group for addictive bloggers!  (That is mainly a joke.)

Soon I also hope to add a section that shows my sculpture, retablos and other art work.  Life changes and changes.  So will this blog.

 

Here’s Matt’s link in case you want to play along:
https://normalhappenings.com/2018/09/28/origin-story-daily-inkling/