Tag Archives: Daily Post

                                                                     Prairie Grass

IMG_0108Prairie grass waves over the spot where my parents’ house used to be. Its roof was blown away in a tornado years ago and the house leveled, the basement filled in. What physical remnants of my past remain beneath this dirt I’ll never know as members of the family were all far-distant when the tornado hit and no one ever went to clear out items stored in the basement. I’m told townspeople came in and scavenged in the basement before it was filled in.  A friend took my childhood books for her children.  I have no idea where other letters, books, trophies and assorted treasures from my past ended up. Perhaps they are buried there.

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Across the dirt road is the cemetery where we all will lie beneath prairie grass one day. Yes, I was moved to tears both by the beauty and the inevitability that all our fuss and bother will result in this simplicity. We rise from the earth, feed on it and in return are fed upon. No person is so special as to survive the inevitable leveling force of nature.

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Daily Prompt: In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Moved to Tears.” Describe the last time you were moved to tears by something beautiful.

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Between

I like the middle seasons, the rising and falling.
As in a good novel or a good life,
that is where the excitement is.

Summer’s heat and brittle winter
are for avoidance and snuggling in,
protection from the extremes.

For me it is the in-between, when flowers bud
or leaves turn brilliant and fall to cushion the earth
and blanket it from the cold comforter of December.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Seasons change so quickly! Which one do you most look forward to? Which is your least favorite?

Crisis Reasoning

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I’ve often thought about how I might react in a crisis and generally I have feared that I would become scattered and rattled and not be of much use.  When I think back on past crises, however, it seems that I act the opposite of how I project I would act in future crises.  What I have done in the past is to calm down and think very quickly of possible responses to the situation, settle on one and act.  The fact that I am still alive is testimony to my actually being able to act very calmly in a crisis.  I think I’ve described all of the situations in past posts, so rather than repeat them here, I’m going to try to find links.

Kidnapping in Africa: Naive in Africa
Shooting incident in Africa:
Trapped Outside in a Mountain Blizzard in Wyoming:

Well, due to my terrible tagging, I could only find a link to one of the stories.  I’ll keep searching, but in the meantime if anyone else can find a link to these other stories, please HELP.  I’m trying to remain calm in spite of my frustration over this crisis!!!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In a Crisis.” Honestly evaluate the way you respond to crisis situations. Are you happy with the way you react?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/in-a-crisis/

Overhear No Evil

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Overhear No Evil
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Hear No Evil.”

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I was having a conversation with a friend in a restaurant many years ago when it became obvious to me that the woman at the next table was taking in everything we said. She had that waxy glaze in her eye and that unmoving stance that just signalled eavesdropping. When I ceased talking and fixed her with a steely stare, she started, blushed, and immediately admitted, “I really wasn’t trying to overhear your conversation. I just sort of over-listened.” (Here I’ve copied an earlier response to a similar prompt.)

I’m sure I’ve been guilty of listening in to conversations in restaurants.  In fact, I’m sure I have strained to hear a particularly interesting conversation.  The problem is that my memory is as poor as my hearing, which makes retelling you the subject of any of those conversations a problem.  But, since I’m presently sitting in an outside restaurant, I’m going to try to overhear some snippets..Strange, but everything seems to be a cacophony. I can’t seem to separate sounds.

We’ve been without electricity at my house for 12 hours now–the result of a colossal thunderstorm last night, so we came in to Ajijic to try to have breakfast and use the wifi in the plaza Jardin restaurant.  We came inside so my friend could plug in her dead computer.  Now two tiny sparrows have hopped in after us and wait expectantly for what crumbs may fall from our breakfasts.  Fat chance.  I’m having avena (oatmeal) and my friend is having some grassy looking drink that looks healthy but doesn’t appeal to my tastebuds.  I like to lie in unmown green and drink orange or red.  Yellow is for accompanying chutney and black requires lactose free not fat white.

In my middle years (ahem) I have become pickier about what I eat and drink, as has my body.  My tastebuds, like my hearing, have plugged themselves to new imput.  If someone were eavesdropping on what I think, they would be hearing “No green juice!”  And if people around me were talking louder and more distinctly, I’d be writing to the prompt, but in lieu of this, I’ll ramble on, or perhaps I’ll do you a favor and just stop.

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individual Ingredients

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My magic ingredient in the kitchen is originality.  I am incapable of following a recipe without adding at least one new ingredient.  To my sister’s stroganoff shepherd’s pie, I added chopped and sauteed green pepper. To cookies and cakes, I add nuts.  To my favorite spaghetti sauce recipe, I added a dollop of red wine and chopped green olives.  It’s as though following a recipe exactly is a challenge to my creativity. It would be fun to post a recipe and ask every viewer to vary it a bit and tell me the results.  Perhaps I’ll do this!

Actually, even more fun.  I’m going to start a cumulative recipe.  I’ll start with one ingredient and ask each successive commenter to add instructions about what to do with that ingredient and then to add one more ingredient.  By the end, we should have one delicious recipe.  Are you game?  You’ll have to read my post and each comment to see what stage we are in.  Be a sport.  Participate!

My ingredient is 4 medium-sized white potatoes. The first commenter should tell me what to do to prepare them and to add one more ingredient.  The second commenter should tell how to prepare that second ingredient and add an ingredient of his/her own.  At some point along the way, cooking instructions should be added. Let’s see where this leads!  Be sure to look at comments before you add your ingredient for this will be one recipe…not a number of them.  Bon appetit!

DAILY PROMPT: Ingredients–What’s the one item in your kitchen you can’t possibly cook without? A spice, your grandma’s measuring cup, instant ramen — what’s your magic ingredient, and why?

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Mountaineer

I am a mountain waiting to be climbed,
its slopes slippery and rough
with fortifications.
Each poem is the face I am inviting you to scale,
not taking the clearly defined path
that prose would provide,
but a harder course with handholds and footholds
that will not give way if you
use your mind to select a wise course.

If I did not trust you so, I would give you a secure railing
like one provided in showers and bathtubs
for the elderly;
but I know, if you have made it this far,
that you have the stamina to make it on your own.

Every mind is both a mountain waiting to be climbed
and a climber sometimes bent on climbing,
at other times, content
to stand at the mountain’s base,
waiting for the scree to come to him.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “I Am a Rock.”— Is it easy for you to ask for help when you need it, or do you prefer to rely only on yourself? Why?

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/

Stink Think

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Stink Think

Scotch broom makes me nauseous. Roses make me sneeze.
I abhor the scent of jasmine on an evening breeze.
Room deodorants should be banned, as should scented candles.
I’d rather smell my brother’s sneakers or a vagrant’s sandals.

Now that we want each thing to smell like something it is not,
there’s a different odor on everything we’ve got.
There’s perfume in detergent, in dryer tabs and soap.
Scented toilet paper makes we want to mope.

Unscented’s getting almost impossible to find
It leaves allergic folks like me in a real tight bind.
Gardenia in my hand lotion or chamomile or peach.
Hairsprays  smell as fresh as air or like a summer beach.

Floor cleaners smell like forests of freshly gathered pine,
as though without this pungent scent our floors would smell like swine!
These odors leave me gasping and running for some air.
Their vapors make my eyes run, causing much despair.

I do not want my table waxed with lemon or “fresh scent.”
I believe that everything should smell as nature meant.
I’ve done a lot of research, and  I’m fairly sure
that perfumes out-stink everything they’re meant to obscure!

The Prompt: Smell You Later–Humans have very strong scent memory.  Tell us about a smell that transports you.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/smell-you-later/

 

Be Cause

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                                                                    Be Cause

I felt such a resistance to today’s prompt that I decided I probably should write about it to determine the reason why.  The prompt was: “If your day to day responsibilities were taken care of and you could throw yourself completely behind a cause, what would it be?”

The truth is that I already have day to day responsibilities taken care of.  I am single, retired, and live in Mexico where it’s possible to hire people to clean and do yard work; so there are really no responsibilities I have to do except the normal ones of hygiene, taxes and day-to-day life.

I have reached out with volunteer activities and do vote in every U.S. election, as difficult as this sometimes is, living in a foreign country.  But as for “throwing myself behind a cause,” I’ve gotten to the stage of life where I balk a bit at this.  What usually happens is that I get caught up in cause after cause and eventually start finding my life squeezed to the point where I resent not having enough time to devote to writing and art.  Then I draw back, drop activities, and get back into a more hermit-like existence.  After a while, I feel as though I’m sealing myself off from life too much and I emerge again to become too “busy” with scheduled activities that again squeeze out my other needs.

I’ve always had this problem with balance in my life.  I don’t know how to do things simply, with no fuss. This is why projects and volunteer work tend to consume my life when I get involved.  I’ve tried to remedy this by not volunteering for activities that require a rigidly scheduled demand on my time.  After years of operating to a schedule of shows and exhibitions, this is just what I have to do to keep from feeling that panic of approaching deadlines that were my life for so many years. I volunteer at the information desk of a local cultural center, but only as a fill-in for those who need a substitute.  At times this has led to weeks of volunteering, but it is still not an obligation I know I’m going to have to fulfill forever.

In like manner, I’ve suspended a weekly arts workshop I did last year at a girls’ orphanage. Here, the reason was not because I needed the time back (although I really felt I did) but because time after time I arrived to find they’d scheduled another activity without telling me and the time spent planning the projects, assembling materials and driving to the next town was all for naught. Since they did not answer phones, I couldn’t even call up to check myself. Then I realized these girls, as abused as they’d been, now had so many people volunteering to provide activities that they actually had more advantages than most of the kids in the village, so my efforts have turned toward helping in a summer camp for the most underprivileged kids in two villages this summer and continuing with little art workshops in the pueblo where I live.  It isn’t much, but it is something that I can fit in with my own needs taken into account.

I taught school for ten years and although I have no children of my own, I’ve been involved with children, to varying degrees, my entire life. My husband had 4 small children when I married him and all of them came to stay or live with us for varying lengths of time during our 15-year relationship; but since he’d already had 10 children when we met, it was his desire to have no more. Although at the time I would have loved to have had children, I complied with his wishes; but I’ve thought since that perhaps the fact that I no longer can handle weekly scheduled volunteer activities reflects a selfishness that also contributed to my decision not to have children.

I have given up feeling guilt over this. We all do what we can do in this world in the manner that we can do it, and this is what makes us individuals. I do bit by bit, as it occurs, living my life and trying to be of benefit to others in situations as they occur naturally in my life.  If someone asks, I help. If I see a need, I fill it, trying to leave room for my own needs as well.

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Blogger With a Cause.”

Please read Anglo Swiss’s post before mine.  You may find it in the Reader or HERE.

A Leader Reader

Politics distress me. They send me to my bed.
I prefer the nightmares that I conjure in my head.
For to get over nightmares, it is a piece of cake.
I simply give up sleeping and remain wide awake.

But the world situations that most bother me
do not disappear when I turn off the damn TV.
They just go on mouldering when they’re not in my view
while all our fearless leaders just do and do and do.

I think that the solution might just be to tell them, “Stop!!!”
Every nation on the earth trying to be cop
for all the other nations seems somehow not to work,
for sometimes the one supervising is the biggest jerk!

Though I don’t know the answer, perhaps the Swiss are right.
Perhaps yearly elections would do less to incite
pork-barrel legislation when each man has a vote
the needs of common men might replace needs of men of note.

The only problem we might face, doing so much voting
is that it just might interfere with our TV remoting.
It might be necessary to replace “reality” shows
with just plain reality–where everybody knows

each bill that’s passed and all the facts of governing our nation,
so we would grow up wiser each succeeding generation.
Voting done on cellphones or Android application
might bring out the vote at last, much to the consternation

of politicians dependent on propaganda’s lies,
hoping that the real facts never come before our eyes.
All this campaign financing a phantom of the past
while we’re presented with the truth–finally, at last!!!

(I cite poetic license, folks, as my excuse for this poem. I realize this is a simplistic solution to the world’s problems.  Our government in the U.S. is perhaps too large and too complicated for the Swiss system of governing, so it is  best this world is not governed by such as I!!!)

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: Dear Leader–If your government (local or national) accomplishes one thing this year, what would you like that to be?