Category Archives: Daily Life

Gifts

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Gifts

Every day
is the anniversary
of something,
our lives a potpourri
of past occasions
left to dry in memory.

We traverse
the calendar of our lives
like a game of hopscotch,
dipping into pockets
for a means to play the game
and one day finding chocolates,
the next bitter almonds, 
one made sweeter by that other
that is made more bearable
by the promise of  its opposite.

Today is the anniversary
of seventy-two other days
that added to the rest of the days
granted me by a generous fate,
add up to 26,403
 anniversaries
and a life that daily 
has been given to me
like a present
whose contents
I get to choose.

Prompts for today are anniversary,potpourri, generous, traverse and chocolate.

IMG_4795The Old and Unrested

The old and unrested return to their beds,
propping their pillows under their heads.
Pulling their blankets up to their ears,
they let up on the gas and go into low gears.

Setting their brandies or porters or gins
on their bedside tables, they settle their chins
upon their chests and watch some TV
on laptops that sit where their boobs used to be.

Life is confusing when you are too near it,
especially ’cause it is so damn hard to hear it.
Then when you’re alone, it’s entirely too loud.
These neighborhood noises should not be allowed!

They turn up the volume to drown out the noise
of the car alarms, weed eaters and screaming boys.
They lie all morning, secure in their beds.
Life is much easier lived in their heads!

Before the protests start to roll in, I have to say that this is meant in fun.  I was feeling contrary In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Young and the Rested:” When was the last time you felt truly rejuvenated and energized? What made you feel that way?

No.  I never ever drink gin in the morning.  Hardly ever.

What Should Be and Be and Be

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What Should Be and Be and Be

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I don’t really believe in fate because I don’t think life would make much sense if we were just following an unknown preordained script; but I do think some things are more likely to happen if we follow our intuition.  If quantum physics is fact, I think our intuition is what guides us back to our other parts. This is why some people seem so familiar when we meet them and so right.  And perhaps why others seem so wrong from the very beginning.  How boring a game is life if we are fated.  What an engaging game if life after life it is a game of go seek! It is not a case of what will be but rather a case of what “should be”

Prompt: Que Sera Sera--Do you believe in fate or do you believe you control your own destiny?

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Simply the Best.” NASA is building a new Voyager spacecraft that will carry the best of modern human culture. What belongs onboard?

*A copy of the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
*A recording of Townes Van Zandt’s “Snowin’ on Raton” performed by Gretchen Peters & Tom Russell
*A video of the birth of a child
*A video of children playing a nonviolent game
*A video of a sunrise and sunset
*The recipe for baking powder biscuits
*An Apple MacBook Air
*A pair of Crocs sandals
*A bottle of Bacardi Anejo Rum
*A glass jar of chocolate pudding plus a recipe for making it,
*A recipe for dark chocolate ice cream
*A book showing pictures of flowers
*The picture of a tree
*A satellite video of an entire revolution of Earth
*Pictures or videos of a representative sample of the animals on Earth
*Life-sized replicas of a human male and female and a video of their movements and speech
*A copy of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
*A copy of the human bill of rights
*A video of a performance of Swan Lake
*A video of a performance of break dancing (Or whatever is current. Sheesh, am I out of it!)
*A video performance of “The Voice.”
*A sealed glass jar of seeds from flowers, grass, trees, vegetables and fruits.
*A pair of Levis
*A lock of human hair
*A jar of nonpolluted air
*A jar of water
*A solar panel
*A sampler of bills and coins from several nations
*A Credit Card
*A profile from OK Cupid
*An art book of famous paintings and sculpture
*A picture of mountains
*A home video of a family interacting
*A copy of the film “You’ve Got Mail”

I could go on forever with this, so I’m just going to stop.  I had lots of other things indicative of life on earth and then saw that it was supposed to reflect the “best” of modern culture, so I took out the jar of polluted air, the jar of petroleum, etc.  Interested to see what others have said and to see what i’ve left out!!

 

F

Re”tire”ment

When I was younger, my mind turned on a dime.
I did what I had to do in very little time.
But now that I am older, things don’t go so fast.
I’m not “spur-of-the-momentish” as I was in the past.

I don’t throw big parties as I did in former days,
for dealing with the details just puts me in a haze.
I can’t do many things at once without getting confused.
Now I simply write my blog while once I danced and boozed!

At first I felt ashamed of how my life is slowing down,
hating that I do not seek the company of town.
But then I noted patterns in nature around me
and saw that this is simply how our lives are meant to be.

Each thing in its season and each thing in its time
is how our lives are ordered—to accept this is sublime.
Why do I need to live my youth and middle age again?
Why not just accept that this is how my life has been

and go on to the next stage without sadness or regret—
going on to see just how much better life can get?
Yes, it is the pits to get arthritic, slow and hazy;
but we are compensated by excuses to be lazy!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Heat is On.” Do you thrive under pressure or crumble at the thought of it? Does your best stuff surface as the deadline approaches or do you need to iterate, day after day to achieve something you’re proud of? Tell us how you work best.

Happily

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Happily

Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.

Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids.  Cotton has its weevil.

There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re given–flush or straight or fold–
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.

Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.

The Prompt:“And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/happily-ever-after/

My Town

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Two Poetry readings at La Rueda Coffee House in San juan Cosala and of the “Not Yet Dead Poets” at the Old Posada.

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Shots from the Raquet Club in San Juan Cosala, where I live.

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A small town on a large lake about an hour from a large city. A few hours from the ocean. Lots of flowering trees.  Horses grazing. Mountains in the background.  Birds overhead. Dogs underfoot. People who care planning and maintaining reasonable rules so I don’t have to. A community swimming pool heated by natural hot springs two blocks away.  Lots of music, poetry, art, theater.  Friendly people open to invitation. Nearby geological and archeological features ready to explore.  Lots of secondhand stores. Open plazas with restaurants to sit in and watch others walk by.  Outdoor markets.  Organic markets. Weekly street markets.

A place where people sit on chairs in front of their houses at night to watch their neighbors walk by. An affordable place to live where someone else happy for the job mows my yard and trims my vines and waters my plants. A place where I can afford to hire someone else to clean my house for me while I do art and write.  A community where people are invested in helping others and both give their money and time to support orphanages, schools for kids, old folks homes and to give medical help for those in need.

A place with temperate weather where people smile and say “hola” or “adios” as you pass them on the street.  A place 45 minutes from a major airport where airplanes hardly ever fly over. Cattle. Raspberry fields. Corn fields. Pelicans. Fiestas. Saints Day processions. Dia de los Muertos. Fish restaurants. Taco stands. The best ice cream in the world. Arrechera. Chicken mocojetes verde. Burritos. Flautas. Chiles en Nogada. Rainy season. Virgin of Guadalupe celebrations.

I’ve found my almost perfect society. So why am I traveling elsewhere?  Because there were other idyllic places in my past that are a pleasure to revisit. Because one of the less than idyllic things about the town I’ve lived in for the past 14 years is that so many of my favorite people and relatives do not live there.  So I travel to California and Wyoming and Minnesota and Alabama and Maryland and Missouri and other parts of Mexico, but so far I have always returned home.

for videos go HERE  or HERE or HERE

The Prompt: Describe what you consider to be an idyllic community.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/idyllic/

Power Failure

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Sapphics are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

As luck would have it, my power–restored after a 32 hour off-and-on outage–clicked off completely just after I received this prompt and so there was little else that entered my mind to write this poem about. A very difficult form, by the way, and not a stellar accomplishment in terms of theme, but at least I did the assignment. But, on the positive side, the electricity has been on for one hour now without faltering and I see  my internet is now streaming boldly in.

Actually, now that there is electricity again, this day is turning out to be all that it was cracked up to be, and this poem luckily also fits in with the WordPress daily prompt, as well, so here it is!

Power Failure

Would that I had power to run my life with–
turn on my computer or cook my breakfast–
charge my phone or open my own garage door.
It’s not happening!

One day stretches after another, without
help for one imprisoned within her casa.
Fridge that drips from every hinge and juncture.
Loos unflushed by any means but by bucket
hauled from swimming pool.

Other folks do not have to light these candles,
locate flashlights all in some hidden drawer,
fish out ice cubes quickly from freezer section,
hoard computer time.

Yes, I do love Mexico more or less–
more for weather mild and the constant sunlight.
Less for lights that flicker and fail at night and
do not light again.

Oh that ladder placed in the kitchen aisle,
found in darkness, when perchance stumbled over.
Glass in hand dropped, shattering to each corner.
Perils multiply.

Now I shuffle through the dark house to locate
matches, candles, dustpan and broom to sweep up
further dangers, accidents bound to happen.
All things difficult.

Here I sit just thirty-six hours in darkness.
Help will come in one hour or perhaps thirty.
Beeps from starving phones sound from every chamber.
Growling stomach groans out a matching rhythm.
Help comes haltingly.

Hours since the outage are forty-two now,
Lights flood on and do not dim shortly after.
Please, dear God, let this be the end of darkness.
Wifi? Wunderbar!!!!

The NaPoWriMo Prompt: compose a poem in Sapphics.

For the Ragtag Prompt, STELLAR

IMHO

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 The Prompt: IMHO–Link to an item in the news you’ve been thinking about lately, and write the op-ed you’d like to see published on the topic.

IMHO

I gave up reading the news years ago. I just got too depressed when I did so. Certainly, stories filter through and then I hear the pertinent details or look them up online, but gone for me are days spent listening to and watching repetition after repetition of the same facts, many later found to be untrue or exaggerated.

So, this prompt is one that sent me out into the news Internet, looking for a story. The first one that came up was of the French pilot who it seems deliberately sent his plane careening into the Alps, killing everyone on board. Then I found a story about Korean twins, separated at birth, who never even knew of each other’s existence but who found each other over Facebook. Then a story about a woman who transforms abandoned Bratz dolls that look like hookers back into dolls that look like little girls.

Then back to President Obama’s Iran negotiations, a small girl born with two heads, The Voice finals in Australia, a letter of thanks gone viral, written by the mother of an autistic child to a businessman who had put away his papers and played with his seatmate for the 2 ½ hour flight. I flipped through dozens of other stories on the way: about the royal family, dogs, cats, a cow furnished with prosthetic legs and saved from slaughter. This hodgepodge was heartwarming, heartshattering, overwhelming, and two hours later, I had still not chosen a news report to write an op ed piece on.

I guess, instead, I will write it on how the internet seems to be substituting for our lives. This flood of information furnishes the vicarious existence once limited to The Soaps: The Edge of Night, Another World, General Hospital. I still remember the day Joan Lenzi came running into our room in college, tears streaming, shouting “Laura died, Laura died!” My heart flipped over in dread as my mind searched madly for a mutual friend named Laura, only to discover, once Joan had collected herself a bit, that a character on our favorite Soap had just departed our after-lunch afternoon.

No more skipping Astronomy to experience the next vicarious thrill. Without Laura, who was Luke? With no further excuses to skip, I dropped Astronomy, insuring the necessity to attend summer school to catch up.

Now it is harder to avoid excuses. When one internet heroine or villain passes from sight, there are ten thousand others to take their place. Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, OkCupid, Match.Com, Christian Singles, Pinterest, Blogster—ad infinitum. There is so much to fill our lives and furnish excuses for what we don’t want to do that it is no longer really necessary for us to assemble a life around ourselves at all. So long as we can somehow manage to feed, clothe and house ourselves, the rest is available online.

When I suffered a debilitating migraine lately, the first to know it were internet friends. My Skype near-romance phoned my oldest friend, now rarely communicated to other than through Skype or online Scrabble games. She talked me down from a near-panic attack and I eventually fell asleep. The next morning I wrote about it (Here) and had a flood of sympathetic comments from blogging friends. Another friend who lives in the town where I live Facebooked me the name of a medication that might forestall future headaches. No neighbor arrived on my doorstep with chicken soup or offered to feed the dogs, but cyber friends gathered round, giving me that warm feeling formerly reserved for a down comforter.

I had to look up IMHO before I wrote my response to this prompt. It’s a term often used in the past by my Skype near-romance. But every time, I forget this initial-speak. It’s as though life has been shortened enough. Emails have become Tweets and emoticons have replaced phrases of opinion, affection, disgust or frustration. Hyperlinks replace restatements and hashtags replace the social organizations where we used to gather for coffee or a coke and a good old-fashioned in-person gab session.

In my humble opinion, everything is finally short enough. If we become any smaller, we are going to implode. Computers now fit in the palm of one’s hand and I’ve heard of technology where one day they will be implanted into our eyeballs and transmitted to our brains. At that point, what do we become other than human robots? Perhaps it is all a plot by the machines of the world to be the next step of our evolution. Perhaps what the most far-out science fiction writer once imagined has become our world. In my humble opinion, we have gone far enough. We are able to know too much by doing too little. Experience too much by doing nothing at all. The time has come where observing life is more interesting than making it happen. Time to stop!!! But that is just “my humble opinion,” expressed as a full statement—railing out against this too-short world.

Note: Once more, my NaPoWriMo and Daily Prompt subjects seems to have intersected, so to read my other short post today, go HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/imho/

Now, Voyager

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                                                          209a3984-32bf-375b-99f0-3a7c774a75b0      Now, Voyager

I love transformation movies: ugly ducklings turned beautiful, wallflowers who become the belle of the ball, villains turned saviors, shady ladies turned good girls, wild horses tamed.  If you can name one famous example of each from the movies, you win the prize, but for me the top entry in the first category would have to be Bette Davis in “Now Voyager.”

I’ve always been surprised that they haven’t done a remake of the film, but on the other hand, I don’t think they could probably equal the romantic pathos of the dowdy, overweight, aging and submissive spinster Bette Davis, living with her dominating mother, her one rebellion–cigarettes sneaked on the sly.  As her mother slips the noose of control ever tighter, Bette is “saved” by a nervous breakdown and a visiting psychiatrist who persuades her mother that she must be sent to a “rest farm” where the transformation takes place.

The resultant makeover, sea voyage, love affair and. . . but wait . . .  I’ll tell no more, for if you haven’t already seen the film, it is a must-see and I don’t want to issue further spoilers.  As a matter of fact, if you have seen it, we should both probably see it again.  The last time I saw it was in VHS form ordered from Amazon twelve years ago and yes, I still do have a VHS player hidden away somewhere in the highest reaches of my house.

At any rate, I have been diverted by the film review when my real intention was to talk about the title and plot itself and the significance it has in my own life; for I, too, seek a transformation.  Just once I would like to be that stunningly glamorous, thin mysterious stranger who turns all heads.  Yes, superficial, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to experience being that woman who could have any man in the place.

For too many years, books and movies seemed more real than the world around me.  My boring existence in a small town could not be all there was to life.  Surely, if it were, then all those exciting books and movies would never have been written, for where would they have come from except from the patterns of other places and other lives that contained more possibilities than a small dusty town in the middle of South Dakota prairie?

Yes, I did eventually voyage off into life and I found places more exciting–more in line with my own interests.  And although I had love affairs, married the man of my dreams, had careers I felt adequate at, traveled to exotic climes and never had trouble making friends, at age 67, I have still never been the femme fatale of my childish and teenage and middle-age dreams. I have made starts and even accomplished some of the goals.  I’ve lost weight, found the perfect haircut, bought more stylish clothes.  I’ve gone to clubs and danced unabashedly, joined internet introduction clubs, gone to singles parties. But still, at my best, there is some quality lacking in my makeup–some ineffable clue that I am available, sensual, smart and fun to be with.  What is it?  My entire life I have wondered why, with a few notable exceptions, I will invariably be the last woman at the table asked to dance. For years I believed it was because of my weight and at present that may be so, but even at my skinniest, there was some signal I sent out that made me unapproachable or unappealing or uncharismatic to most men, and as old and wise and introspective and analytical as I have become in my middle-to-old age, I do not know what it is.

Have you ever known someone who is doing something wrong and who just can’t get it right?  Everyone knows what it is but no one tells them, for fear of hurting their feelings.  And so they go on in life, never quite getting what they want and not having a clue why that is.  Why don’t we just tell each other?  It would be so much simpler.  But, the truth is that we probably would not listen even if our friends told us.  We would find excuses. We would not believe them, no matter how many people told us the same thing, because there seems to be some radar causing us to become who we are–strengths, talents and faults all combined.

A complete stranger sitting next to me at a banquet once said to me, “You don’t need that!” when I reached for the dessert held out to me by the waiter.  I was astonished, insulted, irate.  I wanted to take two desserts and put the bastard in his place! But the truth was, maybe he was that one person in my life who decided to tell me the truth.

Today when I got up to let the dogs out and give them their morning meal, I saw the dusty blistered card of diet pills on the kitchen island.  I broke one off and swallowed it with a long drink of water.  Perhaps I’ll start again that journey towards sylphdom.  I’ll lose dress sizes, get a facelift to deal with the resultant sags and wrinkles, fit into sexier clothes, go back on OkCupid, meet another stranger grown familiar through words over the internet.  Maybe it’s still not too late to be an object of desire. Or, perhaps I’ll just write about it.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/642826/Now-Voyager-Movie-Clip-I-Met-A-Doctor-In-Rio.html

The Prompt:Silver Screen–Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the title of your post. Now, write!  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/silver-screen/

Strangely enough, this post also ended up answering today’s prompt so I’m posting it there as well: But No Cigar–Tell us about a time things came this close to working out… but didn’t. What happened next? Would you like the chance to try again, or are you happy with how things eventually worked out? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/but-no-cigar/