Dear Reader
Once deprived of wanderlust,
I feared that I might mold or rust.
I needed some means of expression
to stave off that deep depression
threatening to swallow me
and dull my former ecstasy.
In short, I tended to be wary
of a life more sedentary.
I wondered how to bring the world
into my life, more tightly curled
than it had ever been before.
These walls, these ceilings and this floor,
this garden, studio and pool
formed a place where I could rule.
Safe from a world run by a fool
senseless, ignorant and cruel.
Within these walls surrounding me,
I settled down to simply be.
But simply being can be tough.
It simply didn’t seem enough.
I felt the need to generate
something to resuscitate
the challenges that used to drive me—
something new that could revive me.
Simply “being” made me numb.
I needed something to become.
So my computer became the tool
helping me to fight the duel
between a lack of energy
and mind that still yearned to be free.
Words became the way I traveled,
the way my mind became unraveled
from the knots of consternation
all that mental constipation
that turned toxic all those ponderings.
All those lonely mental wanderings.
Thoughts like these require ears
to work out puzzles, conquer fears.
And that is why each written word
I write—profound, fearful, absurd—
I send out to the universe—
a means to try out and rehearse
those words that seeking, lightly humming,
signal all that I’m becoming.
My days of travel far behind,
I seek my wanderings in your mind.
The words of the day were challenge, expression, wanderlust and generate. Here are the links in case you’d like to use one or more of them in your own blog:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/rdp-63-challenge/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/02/fowc-with-fandango-expression/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/wanderlust/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-30/ Generate
The monsoon rains come like a blessing, relieving the hot humidity, building the lushness of the rice terraces. Green everywhere. Energetic monkeys in the sacred monkey forest grab my postcards from my hands, leave teethmarks that will delight your children more than anything I might say in the postcards I send as recompense for the father I have taken off with me to another part of the world.
We grow into these long hot humid afternoons that are washed away for a mere hour or so by the seasonal rains. Shedding clothes like years, we live naked underneath sarongs wrapped tightly for security. You sit on the porch, your soon-to-be-old man’s furry pot belly proudly obscuring the tightly wound tuck of your sarong. Over twenty years later, it is that sarong made into a jalaba that I now wear almost daily, hiding my soon-to-be-old lady’s pot as well.
How I cope with growing old without you is to sift through these memories like playing cards or photos fallen from old albums that have lost their ability to secure. As gullible as upon our first meeting, I wipe away your inadequacies as I’m sure you would have forgotten mine if you had been the one left sorting the fallen memories in the bottom of the album box.
Monsoons, I have been told, blow both moist and dry, as we did over those fifteen years. But we endured and built each other, coping as all of those in marriages judged successful by their lasting power do. Today you are the photo fallen from the album to the floor. Quickly, as you fell from my life, I tuck you back securely into your correct place, placing on top new albums with new memories built on the foundation of you and all those memories a life, in the end, is made of. You slip into that middle place old loved ones eventually are relegated to. Our way to cope. Our way to live life instead of merely remembering it. Because that is what life is. We keep trying. We keep on.
The grab bag of prompts today were cope, monsoon, gullible and energetic. Here are the links in case you’d like to play along:
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/welcome-to-daily-addictions/ (Cope)
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/rdp-62-monsoon/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/01/fowc-with-fandango-gullible/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/energetic/
Because I finally found this photo of my mother that I’ve been looking for for years, I had to put it on my blog. I just love how young she looks, wonder what prompted her lifting up my stroller, love the depiction of the new neighborhood we’d just moved into that lacked even graveled streets, let alone paved ones. I’m wondering if she lifted me up to show off her spectator pumps? Pretty fancy for a mother in a housedress holding her chunky baby aloft complete with heavy metal stroller. This is my all-time favorite photo of my mother and me so I just had to share it. That’s the Masonic Temple in the background, by the way. My mother was 37 years old. I must have been between 10 months and a year old.
In case you are curious, here are a number of poems, essays and stories I’ve written about my mother over the years. Bet you can’t read the whole bunch!! But if you want to read just one, let it be the first one, which gives the most complete view of her.
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/04/25/napowrimo-day-25-she/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/04/12/family-secrets/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/03/19/the-emperor-of-chocola/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2017/03/02/i-imagine-dverse-poets-prose-poetry/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/22/believe/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/20/generational-drift/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/01/30/china-bulldog/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/10/17/mommy-talk/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2018/04/24/elegy-for-eunice/
Cee Neuner, from Cee’s Photography, and host of her widely popular Share Your World weekly prompt, is on vacation for a few weeks. So Melanie, from Sparks From a Combustible Mind, decided that she would step up to the plate and post an “unofficial” Share Your World prompt this week.
Have you ever been in a food fight?
Yes. My friend Rita and I once spent hours making and decorating a birthday cake. We even bought sugar roses from Mrs. Swanson, who really was a cake decorator. After we finished it, we tasted it and it was terrible. If I can find the photos, I’ll show you the result. Food fight!!!! (Unfortunately, although I found this photo of the cake we made, I couldn’t find the one of Rita’s face after the food fight!
How do you deliver bad news?
Usually by phone as I’m usually living far from most loved ones.
What (if anything) do you think is beyond the stars?
A huge kid staring into a globe in which he has created the universe as a science experiment.
What unsophisticated activity do you like to do?
Fly kites, although I haven’t done so in years, Watch teenage movies. (Don’t tell.)
Is there a scary scene from a movie (or book) you viewed as a child that still haunts you?
When I watched the exorcist, I had to call my sister on the phone and keep her on the phone as we both watched from our own houses. Later, I put the receiver on the pillow beside me and we stayed connected until I fell asleep. I was in college!!!
Seal’s ‘Kiss From A Rose’ was the theme from which film?
Never saw the film, never heard the song.
I’m not sure where to post this. Hope this works:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/31/not-cees-share-your-world/
https://sparksfromacombustiblemind.com/2018/07/30/unofficial-syw-7-30-18/
Click to enlarge photos.
The quadrille form has only one rule: that a poem be exactly 44 words long. The other prompts for this poem are the words pulse, deadline, succinct and access. Think I can do it in 44 words? Can you?
Poetry Press.
I fear this poetry deadline will make my pulse rate rise.
No time to access dictionaries or to dot my i’s.
And to top it off, I have to be succinct? Absurd!
For quadrilles say that I must stop here at my forty-fourth word.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/rdp-61-pulse/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/31/fowc-with-fandango-deadline/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/succinct/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/ access
https://dversepoets.com/ quadrille (44 word poem)
Hand-Me-Down Advice
May I speak with candor? It may be that those pants
looked fine on your mother, your grandma or your aunts;
but drawstrings are for knapsacks and snaps are to call waiters.
And it’s been 50 years or more since fashion sanctioned gaiters.
I know that they are comfortable but another thing
is that they’re lacking in panache. They haven’t any zing.
And just to finally seal the deal, dear, men just don’t make passes
at girls in baggy bloomers that exaggerate their asses.
The prompt words were comfortable and candor.
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/30/fowc-with-fandango-comfortable/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/candor/
It may be I will live to rue
the day I wrote each clerihew.
They may invite derisive snorts,
yet here they are with all their warts!Below is a reblog from three years ago. The Daily Addictions prompt word today was “rue.”
Clerihew Two-on-Two
The word is out that Geoffrey Chaucer
never bothered with a saucer,
for though he raised many a couplet,
he always held them fully uplet!
Some have charged Truman Capote
with writing that is too emotey.
but though he was no macho stud,
I know that he wrote in cold blood.
The prompt today was to write a clerihew. A clerihew has the following properties:
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