This lovely pair welcomed us home yesterday. I fumbled to extricate my camera from my purse and then its case. I missed the initial perfect shot, but they sat still long enough for one fast shot,
then flew away.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/on-the-way/
Clouded
How many family albums have been thrown away
to make room for Tonka trunks and ruffled dresses,
Tinker Toys scattered across closet shelves?
Of what use are lives lived fifty years ago or more?
Store them neatly on computers,
sealed behind glass for all to easily see,
taking up space
only somewhere
in a cloud–floating above
so if the cloud is ever broken,
they will float down like rain
to soak white sheets hanging on clotheslines,
or onto windshields to be scraped away
by wiper blades–
like fine gnats or raindrops–
vertical memories
floating onto our horizontal world,
bringing the past to soak into the present.
Falling action becoming forward motion,
carried to the future. All things indivisible.
Everything still here–
even if as ash
from burning albums,
curling crisply
and blown away.
The Prompt: Do Not Disturb–How do you manage your online privacy? Are there certain things you won’t post in certain places? Information you’ll never share online? Or do you assume information about you is accessible anyway?
I’ve been playing around with my new camera and the new photo editing program on Apple. At first I hated it but I’m starting to understand it a bit better. I still miss some features of iPhoto but guess it is the way of the world to change and change. The alternative is petrification. At any rate, I like the much-altered photo above. Want to see the original? Look below.
And here’s another edited color version:
Thanks, Cee, for this black and white challenge. Due to you, I’ve developed a new fondness for black and white photography. I love seeing the difference that alteration makes. Hard to believe these three are actually the exact same picture with just simple editing.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/05/28/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-take-a-new-photo/
(If you are viewing on the Reader or in Facebook, there is one more picture below you won’t see unless you click on the title.)
Passed this scenic view “on the way” to Sheridan, Wyoming, yesterday, coming from Moorcroft. Ahhhhhh.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/on-the-way/
Second Chance
I wish that I’d been wilder and freer in my day.
Had imaginative friends to join me in my play.
I wanted to stage circuses and playact vivid scenes,
but schemes like this were always far beyond my means.
There wasn’t enough zaniness in anyone I knew
to dream my dreams or want to do what I yearned to do.
We’d play school or hospital or house when we were smaller,
but this imagination palled as we grew taller.
I wish there had been classes in writing and in art
to allow that side of me to flourish from the start.
Instead, I had to search for whatever it might be,
never finding anyone who seemed at all like me.
What was it I was lacking? Where was the rest of me?
I didn’t have a clue about what I was meant to be.
Half of my life I think that I was trying to fit in
to places and activities where I’d never win–
achieving just enough to make my life appear successful,
yet still I felt unsatisfied–unfulfilled and stressful.
Since I was nobody’s mom, nobody’s loving wife,
at thirty-one I ran away to find another life.
I quit my job and sold my house and caught a westbound train.
Perhaps I’d find in water what was lacking on the plain.
So I went to California and took a writing class.
Then another and another, until it came to pass
that I finally found the playmates lost to me in youth.
They were irreverent, creative, clever and uncouth.
Here, at last, I finally felt like I had found it all.
Words were the playthings that we tossed among us like a ball.
My own life now surrounded me–securely, like a bowl.
Here I felt a part of things–a section of the whole.
Later, I discovered I was an artist, too,
All my life, I hadn’t known. Hadn’t had a clue.
It took someone just guessing and pushing me that way.
Then I had two mediums for saying what I say.
Art filled out the rest of me ’til I was full at last.
It took almost forty years to find how I was cast.
And then all of those playmates lost to me as a child
began to pull me out with them–out into the wild
to paint myself and write myself anew each dawning day–
discovering those hiding parts in what I sculpt and say.
Every day, like hide-and-seek, I find another part–
all those portions of me I’ve been seeking from the start.
I know that second childhood is a derisive term,
but I have found in fact it is the apple, not the worm.
It is the food I feed upon, the fruit I’ve always sought.
It is simply what I am instead of what I’m not.
It’s filled with messy, juicy things like paint and flux and glue.
Explosive things like nouns and all those verbs like “am” and “do.”
What I missed in childhood, I found when I was thirty,
and it was simply glorious: naughty, messy, dirty.
I rolled around in words and paint with others of my ilk–
these artful things more nourishing than bread or mother’s milk.
At forty, fifty, sixty, I’ve become what I can be–
found what I lacked in childhood: friends that are like me!
The Prompt: is there anything you wish had been different about your childhood? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/childhood-revisited-2/
If you want to know where I came from, drive about 135 miles east from Rapid City, South Dakota, on Interstate 90 and look for the Pioneer Auto Museum signs!
This is the old Highway 16 that parallels the Interstate and that brings you into town.
I
This is the house I grew up in. It once had a very big front porch that extended across the whole front. My dad planted all the trees. My friend Joyce, who bought the house many years after my family left, added the fancy front door, shutters and brick steps.
The old water tower still stands, but two more modern towers now store water from the Missouri River 60 miles away.
The widest and perhaps emptiest main street in the world is not just an optical illusion.
Head out of town past the cemetery and you’ll find the gate to the last house my parents lived in on the left.
What you won’t find anymore is the house, that blew away in a tornado. The little shed is on the neighbor’s land.
The The time zone change between Central and Mountain Time Zones that used to run right down the middle of our main street has been moved to the county line, fifteen miles to the west.
As soon as you leave Murdo, heading west, start looking for the signs for Petrified Gardens and Wall Drug. You won’t be able to overlook them!
Nor will you be able to overlook the beautiful badlands. Veer off the Interstate for a better view. I’m including a few shots from the Interstate.
If you don’t know about Wall Drug, read about it HERE
Plenty of beautiful scenery as you head for Rapid City, The Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.
So, that’s the rest of the story!!! I’m now back in Sheridan after driving thirty hours on the road–1758 miles in 5 days. Great visits with my nieces and older sister, old school friends in three different towns, and my cousins Sharon and Lisa in a fourth town…Talk about a whirlwind tour!!! Rain most of the day for two days–today a rain of insects that almost completely covered the grill and windshield of the car…Always a new thrill in what looks like tame country. Thanks for following along! And thanks, Patti, for doing most of the driving and planning!
You may click on these pictures for larger views. Bet you knew that.
The Prompt: Tell us something most people don’t know about you.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma/
Holy Spaces
They are the social centers of a small town–
our excuse to get together
for as long as is comfortable
for both of us.
We trade hellos or more,
all on our way to someplace else, eventually.
No one has to worry about anyone
leaving too soon or staying too late.
Bars, churches and post offices–
places to meet those
you’ve known for a lifetime.
Each a holy place in its own right.
Note: This is very hurried–more later! On the road again.
My camera conked out completely today so my sister insisted that we stop for me to buy a new one at Best Buys in Sioux Falls, SD. I snapped a few pix with my new Canon as we neared my home town of Murdo, South Dakota, where I was born and attended first through twelfth grade.
We made it!!! As this picture will prove:
I took more pictures when we met old friends in the Buffalo Bar and Restaurant. Others soon joined us and there was lots of laughter over old tales.
The salad table was much as it was fifty years ago—orange salad dressing and lots of choices to add to chopped up iceberg lettuce. Potato/hamburger soup, chicken fried steak and a chocolate creme de menthe sundae followed.
During dinner CJ, Patti and Loretta kept me entertained and I reciprocated…Nothing more satisfying than belly laugh after belly laugh. I needed this. Wish I could remember the stories. Perhaps tomorrow?
Afterwards, we retired to the bar again and Richard strolled in and joined us to regale us with more stories of moving two entire churches 45 miles down the wrong side of the Interstate to his 1880’s town outside of Murdo. I’d heard this story 4 years ago from another person’s perspective and although the story varied, it was funny and interesting both times. Then home to rest up for tomorrow’s drive and more visiting along the way. Some of these stories will make it into future blogs but for now sleep is called for.
Late Check-out
The camera battery left in its charger in a motel in St. Louis,
my batik sarong left gracing a hostel bed in Jakarta,
my only pair of shoes in Timor.
A pair of Levis in Singapore,
my diary in Tanjung Pinang,
my swimsuit in Sri Lanka.
I am lost all over the world,
and this is why, five minutes after
my sister has gone down to check out of the St. Paul hotel,
I am rechecking the beds and desk tops of our room.
My bag packed and zipped at the door,
my purse and computer case propped next to it,
I sift through soggy towels in the tub,
open the closet door once more
to rattle empty hangers,
check each plug socket on each wall.
The Prompt: Baggage Check–We all have past histories. When was the last time something from your past influenced a decision you made in the present?
Small Reunion
At the piano, the music chords easily.
The soprano’s voice slides smoothly from her throat
while we others strain until “Dear Heart” syrups our vocal chords
and we slip with less effort up and down the scale–
old friends singing even older songs.
The small dog snuggles in,
balancing on the plush chair back.
The mother of the pianist and the soprano
observes from her frame atop the piano.
All husbands out and about other business.
Old letters reread, old memories pulled from forgetfulness,
each of us left at the end richer–hearts refilled
from a shared past. Every word
a song of its own.
Our notes blending together
into perfect harmony.
Disclaimer: I obviously haven’t mastered the art of taking pictures with my cell phone, so these are terrible, but they do convey a bit of the action and mood, so I’m including them. Unfortunately, I had the camera on video during the entire singing session, so no photos…too bad.
