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 Tropical Illusion

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Building Paradise

A Tropical Illusion

They’ve spiffied up the island. It was a piece of cake.
No one will ever know that the volcano is a fake.
No amount of protest would stay them from this action
even though of course there was a non-supportive faction
who thought  the former real grass was better than the new
which never needed mowing and was such a lovely hue.
The battle raged throughout, but in spite of it, by June
They had all the equipment for the holographic Moon.

They’d planned their big Grand Opening and advertised online.
From all the folks who liked their ads, they knew that they’d do fine.
They’d made their Island great again. Not one guest disagreed.
Every problem engineered, there was no lack or need.
An homogenized vacation, a prefab honeymoon—
Every month of every year went by the name of June.
Ships came in and ships went out and zombies came and went.
on simulated adventures where life was just for rent!

Prompt words for Thursday are cake, ship, island, battle and amount.

Haynaku for NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 10 (Kitten on the Keys)

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Kitten on the Keys

Four
months gone
or maybe more

still
she hears
a closing door

thinks
it’s him
walking the floor

but
all is empty
space and time

no
kisses fond
or words sublime

footsteps
are but
creak and groan

she 
lies here
listening all alone

footsteps
on the 
roof top rafter

found
in type
the morning after

once
a wife
no regrets sold

she
doesn’t know
the story told

kitten
paws heed
no man’s barriers

make
the perfect
love note carriers

 

This is a true story. Today while cleaning and organizing my art studio, I found a bag with old notes from my husband in it. Included was this message found typed out on my computer a few months after he died. The kittens loved to walk over the keys and I had heard Talulah or Annie do so the night before. What came out was gobbledygook with “once a wife no regrets sold.” typed out in the middle of it. For nineteen years, I’ve been trying to figure out what the “sold” was about unless it was that we’d put our house up for sale and bought one in Mexico three weeks before my husband died. This message was received as I lay on the floor on an inflatable mattress in the bedroom of the house we would have shared in Mexico. Nope. No regrets, ever, concerning the move to Mexico, but it took me 8 years to stop feeling married.
This is Annie about 16 years later, perhaps remembering her one successful message on those keys she walked over so many times in the 19 years she shared here with me. She was just a kitten in the time period this poem describes.

 

The day 10 prompt for NaPoWriMo is to write a haynaku. Six word stanzas with lines of 1, then 2, then 3 words.

Asparagus Fern Macro: FOTD Apr 10, 2020

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Asparagus Fern Floral Branch

This is the size of the branch of flowers above compared to my little finger. I think I need a manicure. I used this finger because most of the other nails are broken off. Hard work being isolated!

 

For Cee’s FOTD.

Experts Agree Long Weekend Just A Fucking Insult At This Stage

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This essay by Paul Duncan is both funny and brilliantly done..don’t miss it.

Paul Duncan's avatarThe Out And Abouter

img_4351Global holiday experts, known as “the employed” in most countries, have today agreed that the timing of this year’s Easter weekend “is a direct and pointed insult to anyone who has in the past relied on this holiday to maintain their work-life balance, and are now left with just life, and no work. And no balance.”

“It’s like someone giving you a set of new tires to help you get over crashing your car,” said Chase Lounge, an upper-level sales manager at I’se The B’y Office Supplies, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. “I like a long weekend as much as the next guy sure, but after spending the last few weeks plumbing the disturbing depths of my addiction to human fail videos, I say no thank you sir.”

“It’s an odd surplus to be sure,” agrees Tom O’Furlough, a former bartender in Dublin, Ireland. “It’s like someone throwing you a shot…

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Rebellious Hibiscus: FOTD Apr 9, 2020

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In this time of isolation, these hibiscus blooms decided not to comply and showed up in a group. As usual, you can click on photos to enlarge.

 

For Cee’s FOTD Challenge

“Who Am I Under Here?” Mask Contest. Cash Prizes!!!

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Be sure to come back here again after you click on this link and then the link that pops up below it to see the video that goes with the below photo:  https://defectivehumor.net/?p=877


” Who Am I Under Here?” Mask Contest. Cash Prizes!!!

I had to go out the other day to take photos but my iPhone suddenly would not respond to my demands. It took me awhile to realize that it was activated by facial recognition and I had my mask on!! Ha!

I wonder how many others have had this same thing happen and it set me to thinking that I’d like to sponsor a mask competition for decorating an actual mask worn to fend off the coronavirus in two categories.

1.  In one, for a mask that is painted to actually look like the parts of your own face covered by the mask so you look as much like yourself as possible in the mask as without. This needs to be done on an actual mask you’ve been using for health reasons. In this category, the winner will be determined according to skill of execution, appeal, likeness to your own face or perhaps humor if you are using a gimmick. A $50 prize will be awarded in this category.

2.  The second contest is for the most imaginatively painted or decorated mask. Again, it needs to be an actual mask that you have been wearing. The medical mask, particle mask,  homemade cloth mask or whatever you’ve been wearing needs to be the base but you may embellish it however you wish,  paint on it or both. In this category it need not be painted to be an extension of your own face. In other words it should not be painted to look like you but it must be wearable. The winner will be determined according to originality, skill of execution and appeal and perhaps humor  if this is your intent, but need not be humorous to win. A $50 prize will be awarded in this category
 
 

If you do not have a blog or website, please post a photo on my facebook page, not as a personal message . If you do have a blog or website,  post in your site with a link to this blog at: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/04/09/who-am-i-under-here-mask-contest-cash-prizes/ If it is linked to another posting on my blog and it isn’t linked to this particular blog, I may not see it. Just put a comment with the URL of your blog where your photo is posted.

Two $50 first prizes will be awarded, with the understanding that you give permission for me to publish a photo of your mask in my blog. ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY APRIL 24.

Set in Concrete

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Below is a collage of concrete poetry I’ve done over the past six years. Please click on images to increase the size and read the poems.

 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a concrete poem. Here are a few.

Plumbing the Depths

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Plumbing the Depths

They call him the professor because of his great wit.
Everything he says has perspicacity in it!
The way he wrangles words should be no great surprise,
for he’s a modern Shakespeare in a plumber’s rough disguise.
Once he unplugs your loo, he is not finished, but instead
he shares a legendary quip to clear out his own head.

Word prompts for the day are: perspiscacity, wrangle, surprise, legendary and professor

Patchwork

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Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor

Please click on photos to enlarge.

Patchwork

I’ve put my life together
like a patchwork quilt,
and almost finished.
It is beautiful—
the lawn freshly groomed,
drawers organized,
all of the pictures straightened on the walls.
Friends, travel, career, family, art, writing–
a happy life that 
I have stitched together,
hiding the pain under the seams.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is  to peruse the work of  a twitter bot, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem.  “Under the seams runs the pain.” is the line from a Mary Ruefle tweet that I selected as my seed. When I Googled it, it said that it was a quote by  Anne Carson in Autobiography of Red,

For some reason, my Photos system has gone crazy on my computer and I can’t preview or edit them or get them down to size, so I’m publishing this and will try to add photos later. Thanks to Forgottenman, we now have photos.  I hope.

Frank Bruni’s Opinion Column in the NYT

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View in browser|nytimes.com

Continue reading the main story
https://www.nytimes.com/FrankBruni
April 8, 2020

If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.
Al Drago for The New York Times
Author Headshot
Opinion Columnist

I didn’t expect Donald Trump to turn eloquent overnight, nor is that necessary. Strong leadership doesn’t require it.

I didn’t expect him to stop complimenting himself. Bragging is as central to his existence as swimming is to a whale’s. It’s what propels him. It’s what sustains him. At this point it’s not merely reflexive. It’s autonomic.

I didn’t expect him to start telling the truth. I’m an optimist, not a fantasist.

But what I did expect, or at least hope for, was that this once-in-a-generation pandemic would tamp down his pettiness and meanness. How could it not? How cold he behold the scale of the suffering and the dimensions of the challenge before him and not realize that he finally had to be bigger and dig deeper?

There is no such bigness in Trump, no such digging. There is just the usual martyr complex, the familiar tirades and the same old passing of the buck. I’m forced to conclude that he’s not just a man ill equipped for this moment. He’s a man whose soul went missing.

I said as much in a column published a few days ago, and I winced when I wrote it and cringed when I sent it to my editor, because I don’t want to feel this cynical about an American president, certainly not now. I want to be pleasantly surprised. I want to be forced to reassess all prior misgivings and to apologize for selling him short, because that would mean that he was ably and nobly guiding us through this nightmare. Get something this important right and you’re forgiven all wrongs.

But as I explained in the column, which assesses Trump’s behavior over the past month, he isn’t finding the grace in crisis that other presidents did. He doesn’t even seem to be trying. I can’t fathom that. And I definitely can’t swallow it.

Laments like mine won’t change him. His rot is too fundamental for that. But they do, I think, serve a purpose: They nudge us past any lingering illusions that the direst of circumstances will transform the false prophet into a benevolent god.

No, this prophet just demands an even greater magnitude of worship. And he grows all the more furious when he doesn’t get it.
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