Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

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?

Clouded

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Clouded

How many family albums have been thrown away
to make room for Tonka trunks and ruffled dresses,
Tinker Toys scattered across closet shelves?

Of what use are lives lived fifty years ago or more?
Store them neatly on computers,
sealed behind glass for all to easily see,
taking up space
only somewhere
in a cloud–floating above

so if the cloud is ever broken,
they will float down like rain
to soak white sheets hanging on clotheslines,
or onto windshields to be scraped away
by wiper blades–
like fine gnats or raindrops–

vertical memories
floating onto our horizontal world,
bringing the past to soak into the present.
Falling action becoming forward motion,
carried to the future.  All things indivisible.

Everything still here–
even if as ash
from burning albums,
curling crisply
and blown away.

The Prompt:  Do Not Disturb–How do you manage your online privacy? Are there certain things you won’t post in certain places? Information you’ll never share online? Or do you assume information about you is accessible anyway?

Second Chance

I wish that I’d been wilder and freer in my day.
Had imaginative friends to join me in my play.
I wanted to stage circuses and playact vivid scenes,
but schemes like this were always far beyond my means.
There wasn’t enough zaniness in anyone I knew
to dream my dreams or want to do what I yearned to do.

We’d play school or hospital or house when we were smaller,
but this imagination palled as we grew taller.
I wish there had been classes in writing and in art
to allow  that side of me to flourish from the start.
Instead, I had to search for whatever it might be,
never finding anyone who seemed at all like me.

What was it I was lacking? Where was the rest of me?
I didn’t have a clue about what I was meant to be.
Half of my life I think that I was trying to fit in
to places and activities where I’d never win–
achieving just enough to make my life appear successful,
yet still I felt unsatisfied–unfulfilled and stressful.

Since I was nobody’s mom, nobody’s loving wife,
at thirty-one I ran away to find another life.
I quit my job and sold my house and caught a westbound train.
Perhaps I’d find in water what was lacking on the plain.
So I went to California and took a writing class.
Then another and another, until it came to pass

that I finally found the playmates lost to me in youth.
They were irreverent, creative, clever and uncouth.
Here, at last, I finally felt like I had found it all.
Words were the playthings that we tossed among us like a ball.
My own life now surrounded me–securely, like a bowl.
Here I felt a part of things–a section of the whole.

Later, I discovered I was an artist, too,
All my life, I hadn’t known.  Hadn’t had a clue.
It took someone just guessing and pushing me that way.
Then I had two mediums for saying what I say.
Art filled out the rest of me ’til I was full at last.
It took almost forty years to find how I was cast.

And then all of those playmates lost to me as a child
began to pull me out with them–out into the wild
to paint myself and write myself anew each dawning day–
discovering those hiding parts in what I sculpt and say.
Every day, like hide-and-seek, I find another part–
all those portions of me I’ve been seeking from the start.

I know that second childhood is a derisive term,
but I have found in fact it is the apple, not the worm.
It is the food I feed upon, the fruit I’ve always sought.
It is simply what I am instead of what I’m not.
It’s filled with messy, juicy things like paint and flux and glue.
Explosive things like nouns and all those verbs like “am” and “do.”

What I missed in childhood, I found when I was thirty,
and it was simply glorious: naughty, messy, dirty.
I rolled around in words and paint with others of my ilk–
these artful things more nourishing than bread or mother’s milk.
At forty, fifty, sixty, I’ve become what I can be–
found what I lacked in childhood: friends that are like me!

The Prompt: is there anything you wish had been different about your childhood? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/childhood-revisited-2/

Mysteries in our Middle Lands

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If you want to know where I came from, drive about 135 miles east from Rapid City, South Dakota, on Interstate 90 and look for the Pioneer Auto Museum signs!

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This is the old Highway 16 that parallels the Interstate and that brings you into town.
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This is the house I grew up in. It once had a very big front porch that extended across the whole front.  My dad planted all the trees. My friend Joyce, who bought the house many years after my family left, added the fancy front door, shutters and brick steps.

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The old water tower still stands, but two more modern towers now store water from the Missouri River 60 miles away.

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The widest and perhaps emptiest main street in the world is not just an optical illusion.

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Head out of town past the cemetery and you’ll find the gate to the last house my parents lived in on the left.

IMG_0115IMG_0107What you won’t find anymore is the house, that blew away in a tornado.  The little shed is on the neighbor’s land.

IMG_0122IMG_0150The The time zone change between Central and Mountain Time Zones that used to run right down the middle of our main street has been moved to the county line, fifteen miles to the west.

IMG_0135   IMG_0145As soon as you leave Murdo, heading west, start looking for the signs for Petrified Gardens and Wall Drug.  You won’t be able to overlook them!

IMG_0155Nor will you be able to overlook the beautiful badlands.  Veer off the Interstate for a better view.  I’m including a few shots from the Interstate.
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If you don’t know about Wall Drug, read about it HERE

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Plenty of beautiful scenery as you head for Rapid City, The Black Hills and Mount Rushmore.

So, that’s the rest of the story!!! I’m now back in Sheridan after driving thirty hours on the road–1758 miles in 5 days.  Great visits with my nieces and older sister, old school friends in three different towns,  and my cousins Sharon and Lisa in a fourth town…Talk about a whirlwind tour!!!  Rain most of the day for two days–today a rain of insects that almost completely covered the grill and windshield of the car…Always a new thrill in what looks like tame country.  Thanks for following along! And thanks, Patti, for doing most of the driving and planning!

You may click on these pictures for larger views.  Bet you knew that.

The Prompt: Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma/

Late Check-Out

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Late Check-out

The camera battery left in its charger in a motel in St. Louis,
my batik sarong left gracing a hostel bed in Jakarta,
my only pair of shoes in Timor.
A pair of Levis in Singapore,
my diary in Tanjung Pinang,
my swimsuit in Sri Lanka.

I am lost all over the world,
and this is why, five minutes after
my sister has gone down to check out of the St. Paul hotel,
I am rechecking the beds and desk tops of our room.

My bag packed and zipped at the door,
my purse and computer case propped next to it,
I sift through soggy towels in the tub,
open the closet door once more
to rattle empty hangers,
check each plug socket on each wall.

The Prompt: Baggage Check–We all have past histories. When was the last time something from your past influenced a decision you made in the present?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/baggage-check/

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Music is a mirror, not a map. Looking in it we may see what we are and what we were, but looking at someone else’s song as a prediction of our own future is like looking in a fun house mirror and believing it is reality. All representations are a fun fiction–a hope, a faulty remembrance.  If you want to know your future, just live it.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Mix Tape” –-Put together a musical playlist of songs that describe your life, including what you hope your future entails. 

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The Window

opens onto an empty lot.
Guamuchil trees and wild castor beans
rise from its slope to lift toward
where I sit above, hands engaged
in taking me away to a place
far beyond ideas.
It is that destination dreams only point us to–
that place where, perhaps, I’ll float
after the feared moment
when I’ll leave this world for good.

I dread it so, that zone,
and yet if what my fingers have just told is right,
it’s where I choose to go again and again,
escaping to that little house
down in my garden
where I keep my tools and paint
and ten thousand small objects
all of which have a particular place they want to be fastened.

I am just here to help them go where they want to go.
Where they have, perhaps, been created to go–
taking me with them to the zone,

all of us
headed toward
the inevitable.

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“The little house” is my studio, here seen from the garden. The earlier view was of the wild lot next door, seen from the window of my studio.

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A message from the zone. Click to enlarge, then hover over objects and click again to see more detail..

The Prompt: Tell us about your favorite way to get lost in a simple activity — running, chopping vegetables, folding laundry, whatever. What’s it like when you’re in  “The Zone?”

Linger

It is those times
over dinner
when we have lifted a glass
or two–

those times
without husbands, who are home
watching a game
or out with gun and skeet–

those times
with long-ago college schemes
or scandals
remembered–

when, although no longer hungry,
we nonetheless order a dessert
with three forks
as an excuse to linger.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Linger.”