Suspended between her life and her death, she measures the intervals from breath to breath, noting the bed cover’s sinking and lift, wondering when life will set her adrift.
After a lifetime of effortless health, she is surprised by the contrasting stealth and the strength of the grip of what waits at her ending, no matter what care friends may take in her tending.
As the sands of her life escape through her fingers, she treasures each grain that stubbornly lingers. She cannot give up. She has to hold on until the last grain is fallen and gone.
All of those pleasures that cling to her past are pleasures now gone. Such pleasures don’t last. Her life like a book, pages grown stiff with age— it grows harder and harder to turn the next page.
Her life has turned gritty––a pain and a pleasure. Each grain that remains both a curse and a treasure. Afraid to give up what she has for what’s next, she can’t see the ending. She can’t read the text.
There is no escape and there isn’t a cure, and though every day goes by in a blur, yet these last scraps of life still act as a lure not to give up on life. To simply endure.
The prompt today is curiously similar to yesterday’s. It is “adrift.”
Just try to convince me that this thunbergia isn’t sky blue! The first photo is of a thunbergia flower on the vine near my studio. The second is a mistake shot I took of the sky seconds later. I was amazed at how the colors matched!
Be it a mariachi’s guitar or a detail of my friend Larry’s guitar, I love the artistry of musical instruments. Then, I couldn’t resist adding photos of one of the guitars whose artistry I attempted to augment.
Please click on the first photo below to enlarge all photos and view as a slideshow.
A hand releases mooring lines and I go floating free.
Unmoored and unamóred, I float upon the sea.
Each time I find a tether, it lets loose of me,
for nature seems to be at odds with propinquity.
Nothing lasts forever or even long enough.
Each time the tattered sleeve of time shakes me off its cuff,
I am again amazed that the rules won’t change for me.
Each time I am newly surprised by mortality.
So many friends and lovers, so many family members
who once were bonfires in my life, flicker down to embers
then fade to ashes in a jar sitting on a shelf.
and once again my tether becomes only my self.
It is a cruel truth of life, this ephemerality
that severs every hawser as ones we love go free.
No matter what allegiance, what solidarity
is promised, still the vow that lasts is mutability.
I……………
walk………
down ……..stairs ………..into my sleep
with parts of self I need to keep.
I take them there to other places
of worn out lives, departed faces.
What would these dear ones think of me
if they were given powers to see
into this future where they’ve not gone?
While I have wandered over yon,
they have remained there behind—
away from future’s relentless grind.
Frozen there, they do not judge
or carry with them any grudge.
I am stitched in every mind
as I was when they were left behind.
So in dreams I show them me
as though they might furnish a key
to how I’m doing now that I’ve changed.
Have I grown better as I’ve ranged
away from who I was back then?
On awakening, I take my pen
and see if I can recall reams
of words extending from my dreams.
All those adventures, all the stories
of hidden rooms and moving lorries,
ghost friends who orchestrate, it seems,
advice for me from within dreams—
kinder friends who try to wrest
the parts from me that they’ve found best.
They are my teachers, born in mist
to guide me while I can’t resist.
One alters out unneeded parts.
Another makes room for the starts
of what I could be, given time.
With innuendo, symbols, mime,
they hint at where to sew each hem
so though I barely recall them
when I awaken, still there’s a sense
that my life has grown more dense.
Just scraps of them go with me so
I have an inkling where to go
next in life. Each word I write
is a little beam of light
that reminds me, as I sew the seams,
of patterns hinted at in dreams.
(jdb photo) I’ve used this photo that I took a few years ago twice before in my blog, but it is one of my favorites and was just right for this blog, so I hope you enjoy seeing it again as much as I always do.
I woke up with the lyrics, “Hey, good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’? How’s about cookin’ something up with me?” going through my head. Later in the morning, Yolanda caught me holding the paws of Diego, sort of dancing back and forth with him and singing the same lyrics to him, giving him a kiss on either side of his jaw between each line. I must admit, this went on for longer that just one repetition of the entire song. As a matter of fact I think I recall singing it at least three times. He was a willing recipient of all this attention and entertainment.
When Yolanda finally could stand it no more and had to exit out to the patio, smiling broadly and laughing at my antics, it brought an end to the silliness. I restored Diego’s paws to their rightful resting place on the stone floor of the terrace and went back to whatever normal activity I was engaged in before the lapse into the Busby Berkeley imaginative actings-out of my youth.
But, around ten o’clock last night, those lyrics staged a return engagement in my brain with the result that I just had to bake a cake. Now, I must admit that I haven’t baked a cake in at least 15 years—probably longer, but since I had grated carrots as well as eggs in the fridge, carrot cake seemed a reasonable goal. Further checking of ingredients revealed that I lacked four of the key ingredients: crushed pineapple, butter, raisins and agave nectar. In addition, I’m sure the flour in my freezer was at least a couple of years old if not, in fact, 15 years old. My nutmeg was sadly out of date, but luckily I’d been prescribed cinnamon in capsule form to combat cholesterol, so I merely broke open a few capsules for the required tsp. and a half.
By now, it was firm in my mind that carrot cake was indeed what I should be cookin’, and so I figured out the proper substitutions. The solid canola-oil low-calorie spread would sub for butter. Cranberries would be better than raisins, and a mixture of low-calorie maple syrup, honey and sugar would do in lieu of the agave nectar. The closest I could come to crushed pineapple was a can of mandarin oranges which I cut into tiny pieces. I cut up a cup and a half of nuts, creamed the sugary products and eggs, poured spices, getting at least half on the floor, mixed ingredients and filled the cake pan.
Two hours after I had started, I pulled an almost-perfectly cooked carrot cake out of the oven–– Perhaps just a tad too dark around the edges, but firm in the middle and not really burned. Success! Now for the powdered sugar glaze. I tried three versions. The one mixed with pina colada soy milk tasted soapy. The one with orange juice and vanilla was too acid, the one with the juice of mandarin oranges too metallic. Finally I settled on green apple soy milk, a splash of vanilla and powdered sugar. By now I was almost out of powdered sugar due to my former testing of flavors, so I just sorta drizzled it over the top of the cake before cutting a section out of one corner. Hmm. It tasted not sweet enough, too light in texture and rather dry. The solution? I sprinkled the rest of the box of green apple soy milk over the top and popped it into the fridge to cool down and sog up a bit.
Well, yes, of course I cut a piece to taste first. Then another. I’m not sure, but perhaps later I came back for a third. Each time it tasted a bit better. I had a sinking sensation that instead of 1.5 tsps. of cinnamon that I’d added 1.5 Tbsp., but all-in-all, it wasn’t the worst cake I’d ever eaten. There was something about it that reminded me of the rather strongly odd-tasting cakes my 90ish year old grandmother used to bake. Once she had mistakenly substituted liniment for vanilla, but I think that was not her usual practice.
Yolanda had been in earlier and this is what the kitchen looked like after she had cleaned:
And this is how it looked after I finished “cookin’ something up with me . . . “
Actually, it looked even worse than this, but I had already cleaned up half the mess before okcforgottenman demanded that I take a photo. You know okcfm? He’s the one who a minimum of two times a day tells me, “That would make a good blog post. Did you take pictures?” Well, sometimes I take his suggestion, and this is one of those times.
Here, by the way, is the cake:
okcfm says the words carrot and cake just do not go together in his mind. Has he ever actually tasted carrot cake, I ask him and he says no, and he never will. His loss, I think, but actually I’m not too sure I’d want to break him in on this one anyway.
Here’s my inspiration. Have a listen. It may make you want to bake a cake. Or dance with a dog.
This strange walking stick insect found its way to the top of the hat of the woman walking next to me in the Amazon rain forest. I love his almost human stance.
