Category Archives: Uncategorized

Degrees of Possession

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Degrees of Possession

When a ghost is newly dead and lacking in his knowledge,
is it perhaps required of him to go to haunting college?
Does he become a boogeyman, thereby saving face
only when he’s studied hard and learned to glide with grace
up the stairs and down the stairs and way down to the basement,
polishing his scary moves and practicing debasement?
Will he then earn the esteem of every other ghoul
who passed his apprenticeship at apparition school?

Prompt words for the day are haunting, college, boogeyman, esteem and grace.

Yes, that’s me scaring my sis Patti way back when I was trying to earn my spook degree. If you can think of a better name for this poem, please suggest it. This was as good as I could do.

Night Sky Over Lake Chapala, Oct 28, 2021

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Tryst

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Tryst

The smell of his aftershave, his looks and wit,
the chemistry, passion, charisma and fit
of her putative lover had gained such renown
that his legend was spoken all over the town.

Through her bedroom window he climbed after dark
as she stilled her dad’s dogs–their bite and their bark.
With scraps of her dinner she lured them away
as her lover sneaked into the bedroom where they

would make love to the music that swelled on the breeze
of her imagination, there on her knees
playing out that wild scene in her hopes and her dreams,
through want of reality, stretched to extremes.

No passion, no music, no lover’s embrace,
her only caresses, the moon on her face
as it slowly rises, extending its beams,
and creeps through the window to enter her dreams.

Prompts today are the bedroom window, music, wit, putative and smell.

Preparations for Day of the Dead, Oct 27, 2021

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These are the vicious winged insects that have infested the ground and air next to my adopted graves.
Plants cleared and time for the broom and mop and bucket to come out
This is the abandoned plot I adopted 5 years ago.
Ajijic Tengo, a local restaurant gets into the spirit of DOD.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

There doesn’t seem to be the frenzy of activity in the Pantheons (graveyards) that there is usually at this time. Workers are clearing away the mud from the slides and some of the rubble. Oscar cut the tall weeds away from my adopted graves but could not clear the small plot next to it as it is filled with huge black and orange  winged wasps or bees, a picture of which I tried to capture in a photo here, but they are so fast that I wasn’t too successful. On the 28th, I’ll take  broom, mop and bucket and clean off the graves. My friend Leslie and a number of friends want to come help make offerings on October 31 to avoid the rush on Nov. 1 and 2.  For earlier posts about these graves go HERE and HERE. To see how the graves looked before Oscar and Yolanda cleared them away, go HERE.

Why this compulsion regarding DOD? Because I have lived in Mexico for 20 years and that compulsion is infectious.What better way to remember one’s departed loved ones than to make a celebration of it?

A Sunset Stroll on the San Juan Cosala Malecon with Traffic Jam and Rainbow

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Please click on first photo and then arrows to the right of each photos to enlarge pictures and to read the captions.

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Then one of the vaqueros decided to stop at a little store to buy some necessity, so his friends just waited for him, as did we.
and by the time we got to the lake and started out on our walk, they were the first thing we saw.
going about their maneuvers,
practicing their routine for some horse event, no doubt.
Some of the riders were very young, but this was their dashing captain.
And his dashing steed.
Showing another maneuver to one of the young men.
Meanwhile, back at the old corral,
Hats seemed to have earned a vacation.
And, in spite of the fact that there had been only a few sprinkles early on during our walk,
which grew more brilliant as we walked.
Beautiful silhouette of the mountains south of Lake Chapala.
And the colors began to flow.
The orange sky,
the pink clouds,
shadows collecting,
Everchanging weather–either a blessing or a curse.
and then that fabulous orange.
Almost dark.so we went home.

In a Spuddle

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Forgottenman is the first to add his photo as one. Then Dolly at Koolkosherkitchen contributetd her feline spuddler. Who spuddles! Next?

In a Spuddle

You may think that “spuddle” isn’t a word,
and I agree that it sounds most absurd.
When unsubstantiated, I agreed
that it was unlikely that I’d ever need
a word whose best rhyme turned out to be puddle
or cuddle or muddle or fuddle or huddle,
but when I embarked on an examination,
I found that it wasn’t a mere fabrication,
and though I admit that it seems an anomaly,
as out-of-date as a needlepoint homily,
if you need a word for when you’re forgetful,
fresh from your dreams and still rather fretful,
when you’re befuddled and  in a slight muddle,
the word you might need to describe you is “spuddle.”

Prompt words today are spuddle, unsubstantiated, forgetful, anomaly and examination.

Spuddle: a useful verb from the 17th century that means to work feebly and ineffectively, because your mind is elsewhere or you haven’t quite woken up yet.

 

So, when trying to illustrate this, I had a bit of a problem finding an adequate photo so I had to stage this one. Can you help me out by contributing one of yourself, fresh from sleep or feeling especially feeble or ineffective? Be warned that I’ll add it to make a gallery above, but could be fun.

Additions: a spuddled cat by Dolly at Koolkosherkitchen. Thanks, Dolly!

To Be Enlightened

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I wanted to share with you this informative and thoughtful article by Fandango published on his Flashback Friday Blog:

To Be Enlightened

Image result for kid with a gun

“I don’t understand,” Hal said. “It’s just a handgun and I got it to protect our home and family.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll enlighten you,” Rosemary said. “Statistics show that a gun in the home is more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used for self-defense.”

“Oh come on,” Hal responded. “That’s fake news.”

“No, it’s not. It’s true,” Rosemary said. “Having a gun in the home is eleven times more likely to be used for attempted or successful suicides than for self-defense. It’s seven times more likely to be used in criminal assaults and homicides, and four times more likely in unintentional shooting deaths or injuries.”

“But we’d use the gun exclusively for self-defense,” Hal objected.

Rosemary sighed. “Did you know that, on average, nearly 5,000 children in the United States receive medical treatment in an emergency room each year for a gun-related injury? And about 21% of those injuries are unintentional. Almost 1,300 children die annually from a gun-related injury in this country.” (more)….

To read the rest of this excellent article go HERE.

Before

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Click on photos to enlarge.

My friend Leslie is here visiting from the states for a month. Two years ago, she helped me decorate the graves I have “adopted” in the Ajijic cemetery for Day of the Dead, and she wanted to go see how they were faring this year. As you can see, they have become very overgrown again, so I’ve hired Yolanda’s sons to go cut down the year’s growth. Yolanda and I will go clean off the stones and Leslie and her friends want to come help me decorate them–perhaps on Halloween. I had heard the cemeteries will be closed again on November 1 and 2 because of Covid, as they were last year, but rumor has it that that restriction has been lifted. Both Ajijic and San Juan Cosala are having their plaza celebrations, so I guess things are back to normal. I’ll post more photos after the graves are cleared and decorated. Below are links to two earlier posts about past years:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/11/02/pantheon-afternoon-dia-de-los-muertos-ajijic-mx-2015/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/10/27/r-i-p-jnws-halloween-challenge-graveyard/

The inhabitants of the graves that I have adopted are:

Frances Cutting Fletcher, born 1901, died 1966.
Katherine Root Fletcher, born 1873, died 1957.
Charles Arnold Fletcher, born July 19, 1893, died October 4, 1970.

I did extensive research and finally figured out the relationships, but can’t find the notes I took two years ago. Trying to research last night, I discovered from census and military records that there are three generations of Charles Arnold Fletcher, so we never could figure out the exact relationships, but I’ll keep searching.

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Grave

Keeping Up

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Keeping Up

Celebrations in one’s seventies require an appointment
with your favorite doctor for a painkiller or ointment
for sprains or aches or bruises from one’s excesses of being
a good sport about camping out or ice skating or skiing.

What once you took for granted may now be an act of will
to engineer that final run or execute that hill.
Trying to be a kid again may put you out of touch.
The x-ray that they’ll take today will indicate how much.!

 

Word prompts today are celebration, x-ray, appointment.

Spooning

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Please click on photos to enlarge them.

When Re-Farmer published a blog about making his lovely wooden spoons, I had to make a comment about how much I love all of the handmade wooden spoons and other wooden implements that I have purchased over the years and the Turkey with holes all over it that I bought years ago and ended up using to display some of  the wooden spoons, knives, forks and spatulas I’ve purchased over the years. I have been using some of them for over 30 years and they are all still serviceable.

I remarked that I’d like to send him photos of them but in the end, the easiest way seemed to be to publish them on my blog. Holding some of the implements with handles too large to fit in the holes of the turkey is a hand-carved buna (coffee) holder that I bought in Ethiopia in 1973. The other wooden implement is my grandmother’s lemon squeezer. See Re-Farmer’s  spoons HERE.