Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

A New Year Poem Attributed to Khushwant Singh but Really Written by Charles Gavan Duffy

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Khushwant Singh died at the young age of 95 years. He was a prolific Indian writer, famed journalist, well known author and acknowledged tippler!! A man who lived his life to the fullest.

Update: When I discovered this poem, it said it had been written by him at the age of 92, but I received the below message regarding it from Patrick Schiermeyer:
This site claims Khushwant Singh wrote poem: “The horse and mule….” at age 92. He died in 2014 so the poem was supposedly written in 2010-2011 timeframe. This cannot be true. I have a copy of this poem I received in 1978 while working in Saudi Arabia. He may have written it earlier or it may be incorrectly attributed to him.

I did some further research, and this is the comment I sent back to Patrick:
Patrick, I spent about a half hour trying to run this poem down after reading your comment. I can’t find it associated with anyone else’s name but his so I’m wondering if he sent it as a New Year’s greeting and people took it that he had written it. I saw one other person post it without attribution and the most posts saying he had written it. I agree now that you have pointed it out that he could not have written it at least at the time he is said to have written it. If you know when he did write it, or who else did, I’d appreciate the correction. Thanks.

So, if anyone has further information about the author of the below piece and when it was written, I would appreciate knowing the full story of its origin.

On July 17, 2021, I received this message from Shristi: “It was written by Charles Gavan Duffy, an Irish poet. Mr Khushwant Singh Sir had just quoted it.”

I checked this out and he is right. Thanks, Shristi, for finally solving this mystery!!!! This poem has been quoted so often and attributed to Khushwant Singh. Thanks for setting the record right. Below is the poem:

The horse and the mule live for 30 years,
And know nothing of wines and beers;
The goat and sheep at 20 die,
And never get a taste of Scotch and rye.
The cow drinks water by the tonne
And at 18 is mostly done
Without the aid of gin and rum.
The cat in milk and water soaks,
And then in 12 short years it croaks.
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for others, then dies at 10.
All animals are strictly dry,
They sinless live and swiftly die.
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten,
And some of them, though very few,
Stay pickled till they’re 92!

My Life As A Dog

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My Life As A Dog

The time in the upper right corner of my computer screen blinks over to 8:30 a.m. and the dogs are still quiet.  But for some reason, whenever I think or type that thought first thing in the morning, Frida immediately whines at my door and then the other two stir in their cages. It happens as soon as I finish typing the sentence, reaffirming my belief that we are tied psychically. She has moved to just outside my door now, her heart broken by the fact that I have not immediately answered her demand to be let into my presence.

I roll out of bed, bemoaning the crick in my back that reminds me I have recently traveled–lugging the heavy cases down from the stoop outside my compound gate myself, knowing that if I let the taxi driver in that he will be rushed by the dogs who are half anxious to see me but even more anxious to escape the confines of their comfortable home to roam the wild mountain above in search of the scent messages left by generations of other dogs.

Now I open the door that leads from the hallway to my room and Frida rushes in to be let out to the lower garden from the sliding glass door in my bedroom.  I try to return to my bed, but Morrie moans his distinctive complaint that zooms from high register to low in a message that conveys impatience, heartbreak and demand all in his own particular language.

Diego simply claws at the latch to his cage.  I go out to the doggie domain––recently completed after two months of cement dust, sledgehammers, and concrete sponges chewed and distributed in tiny pieces over the entire yard and terrace by the dogs.  Peace once again reigns except for the demands of the pups, spread evenly over the day from mealtime to mealtime.

“Let me out to pee,” they say.  Then “Feed me.”  Later it will be, “Throw my toy one hundred times in a row for me to fetch,” or “Might you forget and give us another dog biscuit even though you gave us one two minutes ago?” or, more loudly–in fact as loudly as three dog voices could  possibly declare themselves––”Get those wayfarers out of our street!!!  Wayfarers–be off. Get away now.  Take your dogs with you!!!”

I carry on, knowing I can get away with a few more moments of blogging before it will be necessary to give them their morning kibble.  Diego and Morrie tussle outside my open (but screened) sliding glass doors.  Growling, leaping, rolling over in  doggie sideways double somersaults, they could go on like this for hours.  It irritates Frida, old girl like me, who, although she wants to be no part of it, still resents the extra attention given to the new dog, Morrie, by her former partner Diego.

For years Frida has been bothered by the attentions of the younger and more playful and active Diego, but now that he has a companion with equal if not more energy, she resents it and is permanently crabby towards the newest addition to our family.  After seven months, this has not changed.  When I arrive home and the garage door opens, There is the loud cacophony of Morrie barking to be noticed, Frida barking to tell him to get away from “her” mistress, Diego’s barking at Frida to tell her to let the smaller dog alone.  It is deafening, and I add my louder shouts for them all to be quiet.

Once, when a friend follows me home in his car, he announces that my cries are more disturbing to him and probably the entire neighborhood than the barks and growls of the dogs could ever be, and I realize that in this house of canines, I have probably reverted to my animal nature.  I growl.  I bark.  Do I tear at my food and secretly lust for bones to gnaw upon?  Probably not.  My behavior as influenced by my housemates is probably more metaphoric than actual.

I pull myself away from my compulsion.  As necessary as sealing Morrie’s throw toy away in the metal chest where I also lock away their extra dog food is my closing of the lid of my laptop.  It is time to be away to other things.  Feeding the dogs. Running errands in town.  I could throw sentence after sentence off into cyber space for as many hours as Morrie could fetch his toy, but there is more to life––a life that needs to be lived both for itself and the dogs’ hunger as for the necessity of having something to write about tomorrow, or this afternoon or evening–whenever I can find the time to throw my mind out to see what I will retrieve from my life to bring to you eagerly, seeing what you will throw back to me.

(My apologies to the excellent movie by the same name as this post.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  It is in my list of ten favorite movies of all time.)

The Prompt:Write Here, Write Now–Write a post entirely in the present tense. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/write-here-write-now/

Zooming in: White Poinsettia–Flower of the Day, Jan 2, 2016

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Zooming in: White Poinsettia

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http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/01/flower-of-the-day-january-2-2016-amaryllis-bud-flower-day-7/

A New Monthly Challenge: Times Past

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I love this prompt question asked by Irene Waters and want to encourage friends and other bloggers to participate.

Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist's avatarReflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

Times Past © irene waters 2015

Happy New Year to everyone on the first day of the month. I’d like to invite you to join with me in a prompt challenge that will give us social insights into the way the world has changed between not only generations but also between geographical location. The prompt can be responded to in any form you enjoy – prose, poetry, flash, photographs, sketches or any other form you choose. You may like to use a combination of the two. I will also add a series of questions for those that would like to join in but don’t know where to start.

Heading your response please put what generation you belong to.

The Generations that I think may possibly be blogging:

Greatest Generation

G I Generation: 1901 – 1924 Experienced WWII in adulthood.

Silent Generation 1925 – 1945 Experience WWII in childhood

Baby Boomers 

Boom Generation/Hippie…

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Thunbergia: Private Property–Flower of the Day Jan. 1, 2016

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Since my flower bank was completely empty, I went out and took dozens of shots of different flowers today, but at I was going through them––cropping, sharpening, nudging this way and that––this is the one that most captured my interest.  So, here it is––a photo so evocatively personal that I feel as though I’m invading the plant’s privacy in sharing it. This is a purple/blue Thunbergia Grandiflora undressed.  Its petals have fallen to ground leaving other beauties exposed.  Soon there will be a new bud for a new year that I wish you happiness in!!

http://ceenphotography.com/2015/12/31/flower-of-the-day-january-1-2016-amaryllis-bud-day-6/

New Year Wisdom

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New Year Wisdom

After going to a New Years party for a few hours, I came home to welcome in the New Year online with okcforgottenman. I was railing on about the fact that a prompt site for which I wished to download an app only had apps for phones and tablets. When I asked if they had an app for my Mac computer, they said no, the place they went to set up the prompt site didn’t have a setup for a Mac computer.  This, in addition to the fact that more and more apps and software are being set up to accommodate the tiny screens on cellphones and tablets without taking into consideration that some of us are on computers has caused me to wonder if  computers are becoming obsolete!

The fact that many baby boomers are now well into their sixties and approaching their seventies means our eyesight is not going to get any better, and frankly, I need the bigger screen. In addition, somehow those born in previous generations (at least mine) seem to have been born with larger thumbs than more recent generations, for I find it is physically impossible for me to navigate a phone or Kindle or tablet keyboard with even my fingers, let alone thumbs.

I then mentioned how everywhere I went, people were all on their phones—playing games, talking to people other than the people they were with, reading the news or blogs or email. No one was where they actually were! He replied that this didn’t bother him but then seemed to do an about-face by admitting, “I think something big is going to happen that will bring about the end of civilization, but I don’t necessarily know what it is. It might be Isis and it might be iPhones!”

What he has just said has the ring of truth to me. I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing, but never put it so well. I am frightened about how smart phones have taken us away from our surrounding people and environments. We are no longer one place at one time. Even if we are not talking on the phone, there is the potential of every person we know calling us at any time and any place. And most of us make that call a priority over whatever is going on at the time.

Okcforgottenman then told me about a new app that photoshops the faces of those talking on the computer, fixing the glitches, covering up all those details that Photoshop is so adept at covering up. Again, I had a feeling of déjà vu,  because I’ve been reading Ultimate Jest by David Foster Wallace, and just today, he talked about a time in the future when people on social networks are able to download an app that Photoshops their faces.

Eventually, the app makes changes to the point where people no longer really want to meet in person, because they feel they have become the false representation of themselves—or at least prefer it. No need to put on makeup, comb your hair, get dressed. Virtually, they will be perfected!! The trend reaches its zenith when in time, the app doesn’t even bother to start with the real image of the speaker but instead uses the image of a movie star or other “beautiful person” who most resembles the speaker–eventually coming to the place where what they have in common is four limbs and the same color of hair!

What he describes is so close to what okcforgottenman describes to me that I get a chill down my back and the brain freeze I always get when I’m faced with a startling truth I’ve never thought of before. Is there any science fiction that will not eventually become fact????

David Foster Wallace describes a turn that eventually makes people reject their fake personas and to go back to voice-only conversations that do not even present any images at all. In time, those who use the visual phones with face and body altering apps come to be seen as narcissistic, gauche and behind the times. This is something I cannot imagine happening as our dependence on cyber unreality becomes more and more prevalent.

As we retreat more and more into fantasy and living in the far distance, what will happen to the immediate world around us? Will it cease to have importance as anything other than providing for our immediate creature comforts such as food, bed, warmth, water and medical attention? Will all of our psychological, artistic, amorous, social and familial needs be met through our online devices? And as these devices get smaller and smaller, will we ourselves evolve into miniature beings capable of managing them? Are we evolving back down to subatomic size, and is this a cycle? Has it happened before?

Ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous. And yet who among us, born in the forties or fifties, would have ever imagined we could communicate with both words and pictures through the air, watch a movie on a device smaller than the hand piece of a telephone, or that people would be living their “real” lives out and even choosing husbands and wives on TV for all to see? How do we tell the difference between what is possible and what is  impossible anymore? I’m afraid it is hard to predict with any confidence at all.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/stroke-of-midnight/

Dining Out

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Perhaps considering my next order?

Dining Out

I do not remember the first time I ate out at a restaurant, but I have heard a story over and over about the first time I ordered for myself.   I couldn’t have been over two years old when my folks took me out to a movie and then to Mac’s cafe for a drink and a visit with town folks afterwards.  We lived in a town of seven hundred people in the middle of the South Dakota prairie.  Our sole entertainment, other than church and school ballgames, was the Saturday or Sunday night picture show in the small theater on Main Street.  It was the social event of the week, and visiting with friends afterwards at Mac’s Cafe across the street from the theater was as much a part of the evening as the movie.

Later, in college, one of my best friends was the granddaughter of the man who owned the theater and she revealed to me that it never had made a profit.  He just kept it running to give the folks in the town where his wife had taught school as a young woman something to do.

Probably 200 of the 700 citizens of our town were members of a pentecostal church who didn’t believe in dancing, movies,  or even TV, so at twenty-five cents per ticket, I’m sure if everyone in town had gone to a show one time a week, it still would not have paid the overhead, so we should have figured that out long ago, but we hadn’t thought of it––at least no one in my family ever did.

I had two older sisters, so if I was two when this story happened, one must have been about six and the other would have been thirteen.  They ordered Cokes.  My folks ordered coffee, and when it came to me, I responded in the only way I knew to respond in a restaurant.  “Amgooboo an tabey dabey!” I ordered.

The waitress looked puzzled.  “She said hamburger and potatoes and gravy,” said my father, deadpan.  The waitress looked at my mother.  If that was what I wanted at ten o’clock at night, my mother was all for it.  The waitress left and my family struggled to keep straight faces but it just didn’t work.  They all exploded in laughter, which was fine with me.  I’d been entertaining them for as long as I could remember–and I think perhaps I still am to this day!


The Prompt: Tell about the first time you ever ate out in a restaurant.

Art Deco–Thursday Doors, Dec. 31, 2015

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Art DecoIMG_0875 I loved the art deco details  of this theater in Peoria, Arizona.  The movie it led us into was fabulous as well.  See “The Danish Girl.” I think there will be at least one Oscar in the works for this one!  Brilliant acting (effervescent!), writing and camera work.

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https://miscellaneousmusingsofamiddleagedmind.wordpress.com/category/thursday-doors/

That Point

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That Point

It was at that age
of worrying about others
of feeling not enough
of looking for a pattern that was myself
that I put words down
fearing them
or if not them, fearing those who read them.

At that age when I didn’t know what I thought,
I was astonished that the hand that wrote
knew more than I did
and taught that I must be brave,
fearless on the page in a way I had not yet learned to be in life
so that I became a writer to teach myself.
To have someone I trusted as a guide.

It was at that age when I wanted to be admired––
that age when I sought to be loved––
that age when I yearned to be thought a thinker,
important, listened to––
that I somehow was led to listening to myself.

There are these times we are led to by life
that become turning points
so long as we continue.
That sentence. That first sentence stretching
into the future, into now.


I found this poem on my desktop, and although I vaguely remember writing it, I can’t find any evidence of having posted it on my blog.  For some reason I feel it ties in with today’s prompt and so I’m going to post a second response to the prompt today.  Happy 2016 to all.  I hope we all come closer to discovering our best selves in the year to come!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/a-brand-new-you-effective-tomorrow/

 

Composing Myself

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Composing Myself

The Prompt: A Brand New You, Effective Tomorrow––Tomorrow you get to become anyone in the world that you wish. Who are you? You can choose to be anyone alive today, or someone gone long ago. If you decide to stay “you” share your rationale.

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How could I choose to become another when I’m still trying to become myself?  Start all over?  I don’t think so.  Every person is a puzzle bent on solving itself.  Perhaps for some the puzzle comes fully assembled, but if so, they are people I’ve never met.  Why would I want to begin a new puzzle before the one I’ve started is completed?  Finish the job, I say.

Perhaps in another life the chance to construct a new life will be provided, but in this life, we are given only one life to solve.  No one knows the reason why this life is not perfect from the offset. That puzzle is one for philosophers to solve.  In the meantime, I  am busy enough figuring out what goes where today and in my own life. I’ll leave the assembling and breakdown and reassembly of the world at large to others.