Tag Archives: Death

Epitaph of a Fulfilled Poet

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The Prompt: Quickly list five things you’d like to change in your life.  Now, write a post about a day in your life once all five have been crossed off your to-do list:

Find an agent/publisher
Get all children’s books published
Write a line of adult picture books
Lose weight
Find someone to dance with

“Epitaph of a Fulfilled Poet”

Fulfilling all these book orders just seems to keep me hopping.
Without the time to cook or shop, my weight just keeps on dropping.
My clothes just hang around me, from my body they keep flopping.
I’d buy some smaller ones if I just had the time for shopping!

Five children’s books are published and my agents want some more.
My grief book they can’t keep in stock—It flies right out the door.
Libraries and bookstores just keep clamoring for more,
and still my weight keeps dropping till it’s really quite a bore.

Now that I am skinny—lithe and trim and toned,
no one has to make excuses that I’m just big-boned.
And I must wrap this up soon for a suitor has just phoned
who wants to take me dancing—so perhaps I should be cloned.

Then one of me can write that line of adult storybooks,
while the other stays at home and plans my meals and cooks.
The third has time to shop for clothes and tend to things like “looks,”
and the other goes out dancing with a brand new beau named “Snooks.”

As you can see, my rhyming prowess now is wearing thin.
The last word of that last stanza I admit is just a sin.
Frazzled and with much to do, I’ve broken out the gin,
fell off my pool ladder and badly bruised my shin!

Okay, I’m really hard up for more sentences that rhyme,
so I think that I’ll stop now and just write another time.
Perhaps tomorrow I can write of something more sublime.
But for now, I think my drink could use a squeeze of lime.

Our goals just keep us going—they propel us through this life
and keep attention focused through the problems and the strife.
I’ve always kept on working as both single girl and wife,
slicing through my problems with my words used as a knife

to trim the boredom from my life and go wherever I please,
to make my living with my wit instead of on my knees.
Taking care to always mind my q’s as well as p’s.
and extract all the fun from life that I have found to seize.

Now that my life is near its end and I’ve time to reflect,
I do not choose to pray about it or to genuflect.
I don’t crave meditation or to join a church or sect.
I‘ll find my own atonement and a way to resurrect.

I’ll do it through my writing, for I’ve found that is the key
to figuring my pathway while remaining true to me.
I’m just as I have written. I’m exactly as you see.
My words have all been written, and I’m finished—“a” to “z.”

Leftovers

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Leftovers

When my father died forty years ago, it was in Arizona, where my parents had been spending their winters for the past ten years.  They maintained houses in two places, returning to South Dakota for the summers. But after my father died, my mother never again entered that house in the town where I’d grown up.

Our family had scattered like fall leaves by then—my mother to Arizona, one sister to Iowa, another to Wyoming. Both the youngest and the only unmarried one, I had fallen the furthest from the family tree. I had just returned from Africa, and so it fell to me to drive to South Dakota to pack up the house and to decide which pieces of our old life I might choose to build my new life upon and to dispose of the rest.

My father’s accumulations were not ones to fill a house. There were whole barns and fields of him, but none that needed to be dealt with. All had been sold before and so what was to be sorted out was the house. In that house, the drapes and furniture and cushions and cupboards were mainly the remnants of my mother’s life: clothes and nicknacks, pots and pans, spice racks full of those limited flavors known to the family of my youth—salt and pepper and spices necessary for recipes no more exotic than pumpkin pies, sage dressings and beef stews.

Packing up my father was as easy as putting the few work clothes he’d left in South Dakota into boxes and driving them to the dump. It had been years since I had had the pleasure of throwing laden paper bags from the dirt road above over the heaps of garbage below to see how far down they would sail, but I resisted that impulse this one last run to the dump, instead placing the bags full of my father’s work clothes neatly at the top for scavengers to find—the Sioux, or the large families for whom the small-town dump was an open-air Goodwill Store.

It was ten years after my father’s death before my mother ever returned again to South Dakota. By then, that house, rented out for years, had blown away in a tornado. Only the basement, bulldozed over and filled with dirt, contained the leftovers of our lives: the dolls, books, school papers and trophies. I’d left those private things stacked away on shelves—things too valuable to throw away, yet not valuable enough to carry away to our new lives. I’ve been told that people from the town scavenged there, my friend from high school taking my books for her own children, my mother’s friend destroying the private papers. My brother-in-law had taken the safe away years before.

But last year, when I went to clear out my oldest sister’s attic in Minnesota, I found the dolls I thought had been buried long ago–their hair tangled and their dresses torn—as though they had been played with by generations of little girls. Not the neat perfection of how we’d kept them ourselves, lined up on the headboard bookcases of our beds —but hair braided, cheeks streaked with rouge, eyes loose in their sockets, dresses mismatched and torn. Cisette’s bride dress stetched to fit over Jan’s curves. My sister’s doll’s bridesmaid dress on my doll.

It felt a blasphemy to me. First, that my oldest sister would take her younger sisters’ dolls without telling us. Her own dolls neatly preserved on shelves in her attic guest bedroom, ours had been jammed into boxes with their legs sticking out the top. And in her garbage can were the metal sides of my childhood dollhouse, imprinted with curtains and rugs and windows, pried apart like a perfect symbol of my childhood.

Being cast aside as leftovers twice is enough for even inanimate objects. Saved from my sister’s garbage and cut in half, the walls of my childhood fit exactly into an extra suitcase borrowed from a friend for the long trip back to Mexico, where I now live. I’ll figure out a new life for them as room décor or the backgrounds of colossal collages that will include the dolls I’m also taking back with me.

Mexico is the place where lots of us have come to reclaim ourselves and live again. So it is with objects, too. Leftovers and hand-me-downs have a value beyond their price tags. It is all those lives and memories that have soaked up into them. In a way, we are all hand-me-downs. It’s up to us to decide our value, depending upon the meaning that we choose to impart both to our new lives and these old objects. Leftovers make the most delicious meals, sometimes, and in Mexico, we know just how to spice them up.

The prompt: Hand-Me-Downs—Clothes and toys, recipes and jokes, advice and prejudice: we all have to handle all sorts of hand-me-downs every day. Tell us about some of the meaningful hand-me-downs in your life.

 

 

Woodstock Redux Redux : The Watchers

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To understand the below poem, which was written to a prompt from okcfogottenman (who wanted me to address the subject of the broken tree limb) you need first to read my Woodstock Poem

Woodstock Redux Redux : The Watchers

Jimi and Janice sitting in a tree.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
Janice got so carried away
that the limb began to sway.
And though spirits don’t weigh much,
not so the limb that they both they clutch.
So as they vanished into vapors,
I felt the aftermath of their capers.
When the branch came crashing down,
It barely missed my fragile crown.
Lucky these greats of rock and roll
Didn’t have me as their goal.
If I’d been better at voice or guit,
that tree limb might have scored a hit,
and I’d be playing at the pearly gate
with other greats who’ve met their fate.
With tie-die halos above our hair,
We’d stage a heavenly Woodstock there!

Wood Stalked (at the 45th Anniversary of Woodstock Celebration) August 16, 2014, Ajijic, Mexico

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The Prompt: Take a look at your bookcase. If you had enough free time, which book would be the first one you’d like to reread? Why?  My answer:  I would read Woodstock: Three Days that Rocked the World, and also dust off my Mastering the Tarot and I Ching books. For the reason why, please read below!

Wood Stalked
(at the “45th Anniversary of Woodstock” Celebration)
August 16, 2014, Ajijic, Mexico

45 years after Woodstock, all the hippies came back out to play
as the old folks all pulled out their tie-dye and folded their spandex away.
When we entered they gave us a name tag. Is this how they did it back then?
Did Janis consent to a name tag with her name neatly written in pen?
We sat in the shade at a table most far from the music by choice.
Regretting its decibel level and regretting its lack of a voice.
No Arlo, no Jimi, no Creedence. No Richie or Ravi Shankar.
Somehow I fear that the music was certainly quite under par.
I brought out the I Ching and Tarot. I thought it fit in with the age.
It had been a long time since such pastimes were considered to be all the rage.
Though I read off the Tarot to one friend and threw the I Ching with one more,
the party we got here at three for still hadn’t started by four.
Most had made a great effort with Afros or falls of long hair,
yet nobody ended up naked. Nobody ended up bare.
Most people sported a peace sign and many had felt tip tattoos;
and though no one lined up for the dance floor, everyone lined up for booze.
By five, thanks to fruit margaritas of mango or kiwi or cherry
the band began sounding much better and the vocalist sounded like Jerry!
Most folks flooded onto the dance floor to gyrate in front of the band
while I still remained at our table, arranging a new Tarot hand.
I dealt out the ten cards correctly after asking the question I wished—
willing to read my life’s menu of whatever providence dished.
My cards did not read as I wished them. They did not turn out to my taste.
Yet the final card said I’d be lucky, though I fear that I viewed it in haste.
As a crack split the air up above us and I heard a great crash on the ground,
Everyone looked up from tables to see what had made such a sound.
Then people began to rush over and I, too, looked in back of me
to discover a huge branch had fallen from the very top part of our tree.
The branch that had fallen was heavy as a twenty foot branch may well be,
and this branch that had fallen just seconds ago had gone down only inches from me!
If I had been two inches nearer, I probably would now be dead,
for the branch that came down in such furor must have passed just that close to my head!!!
I folded the Tarot cards up then and tucked my I Ching coins away.
I’d had all the luck that I needed, for I had survived one more day.

(For an Addendum to this poem, go Here.)

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Dreaming A Path

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Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.

The prompt: Freudian Flips. Do you remember a recent dream you had? Or an older one that stayed vivid in your mind? Today, you’re your own Freud: Tell us the dream, then interpret it for us! Feel free to be as serious or humorous as you see fit, or to invent a dream if you can’t remember a real one.

Note in response to this prompt: (When I think of dreams, I think of Jung, not Freud, and he continues to influence my thoughts and actions much more than Freud ever did.)

 

NaPoWriMo Day 13: Wish Wagon

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Wish Wagon

Hear the clanging pots, the squeaky wheels?
Over the rise comes the peddler’s cart––
horse with head down, pulling the load,
the jolly man just dangling the whip over her flanks.

Pitchers, fry pans, mops and brooms,
a doll for sis and kites for the boys
who run to greet this week’s happening,
hoping that Pa has spare bills in his wallet this time.

Now hear the “Whoa, Nell!” and see Zeke, the peddler,
swing his bent frame down from his high perch,
Ma drying her hands as she emerges from the kitchen door,
sis attached to her skirts, shy but drawn irresistibly from safety

to see the wonders that the peddler draws from his wagon:
penny candies by the jar and safety pins.
Needles, spoons and dime novels.
Cloth for Ma of calico and new boots for Pa.

Rag rugs made by Ma and traded for a bucket
and a wash pan his last trip here
that haven’t sold and so he won’t need more.
Jangly bracelets like the city women wear.

Her brief laugh scoffs at them.
The very idea. But one finger runs them round
before it draws away. And in her eyes
there is a wistfulness we will not see again

for thirty more years, until another wagon
crests the hill and drives away with her,
that look again frozen on her face
for eternity.

 

 

Our optional prompt for today was to write a poem that contains at least one kenning. Kennings were metaphorical phrases developed in Nordic sagas. At their simplest, they generally consist of two nouns joined together, which imaginatively describe or name a third thing. The phrase “whale road,” for example, could be used instead of “sea” or “ocean,” and “sky candle” could be used for “sun.” I used my kenning for the title.

NaPoWriMo Day 8: Slack One Lying On the Cobblestones

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Our prompt today is to write a poem based on another famous poem. The poem suggested is this one written by Cesar Vallejo and translated by Robert Bly:

Black Stone Lying On A White Stone

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris–and I don’t step aside–
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday,
setting down these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

César Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

with a rope. These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads. . .

This is my version of Vallejo’s self-eulogy:


Slack One Lying On the Cobblestones

I will die in Mexico, on a zany day,
on some day when memory fails me.
I will die under the feet of a burro––as I don’t step aside––
perhaps on market day, as today is market day, in a fall.

It will be a market day because today, market day,
buying new shoes, I have put them on
the wrong feet, and never so much as today do I find myself
having problems negotiating all the cobblestones ahead of me, alone.

Remi is dead. That burro walked on her
although she never did anything to him;
he tromped her hard with his hooves and hard also

with his trailing rope. This is what was left:
her shopping bag, the bones of her dignity,
her bolillos, her new huaraches, and the road. . .

(Note:  Remi is my preferred name to be called by friends, although few consent to do so.)

Poem written after the Celebration of Life for Nina and Eduardo

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 The ceremony for Eduardo and Nina was full of the loving thoughts of friends, details about their lives given from many perspectives, a few tears but even more laughter from remembering the good times.  It was only on the road home that the contrasts in the peaceful happy setting I saw around me and the events of a week before hit me.  The first lines of this poem ran over and over again through my thoughts and I had to pull over by the side of the road and write this poem.  Part of me wonders if it is exploitative to write about this sad event, but I’ve found that many of my writer friends who were friends of Nina and Eduardo have been driven to do the same.  It is as though I no longer know how to think about things unless I do so through my writing or my art.  Somehow, the only way to process a hard truth of life is to make use of it creatively and to try to create a message that makes sense even though the deed never will.

After the Ceremony: Driving Home

The streets are filled

With ice cream and cerveza

and the wildly patterned legs

of senoritas.

It is a day

of sunlight and red flowers

and fuschia flowers and blue.

A slight wind

 strums the swaying branches

of the palms,

but no other sounds

compete with the passing hum

of oncoming traffic streaming

 from the city to our shores,

 seeking safety, quiet,

the gentle lap of water against willow,

hypnotic bobbing of the pelicans

between the undulating liria––

a lazy day away

from the cares of urban life.

I pull to the side of the road to watch

 these visitors to our world.

 Have they not heard or

have they just forgotten

the breaking glass,

the knife, the club,

the red screams

slicing the midnight air?

The ones who were the screamers

 are very quiet now––

part of the calmness

of this afternoon.

Their darkness

is dispersed by sunlight.

Yet all of their fear and pain––

the terror of their leaving––

now gone from them,

is kept like a souvenir

within the hearts of friends

whose turn it is to remember

for a while what we, too,

had forgotten.

Our happy world

lies like a blanket

over a bed made messy

by pain and loss.

It is the world’s bed,

and deny it as we will,

we all have lain in it

and will again.

                                                                              –Judy Dykstra-Brown      February 24, 2014

A Celebration of Life for Nina Discombe and Eduardo Kular

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A Celebration of Life for Nina Discombe and Eduardo Kular will be held on Monday, February 24, beginning with coffee served at 10 a.m. in the Oasis Cloud Café and followed by a community healing/guided meditation from 10:30-10:45 in the garden. The guided meditation is for those in the community who wish to focus on how to cope with grief and loss of dear friends who were killed violently. Beginning at 11 a.m. will be readings from Nina’s work and personal sharing of memories of both Nina and Eduardo. You are invited to participate in this celebration with your own special memories of Nina and Eduardo.

The location is the Oasis Cloud at Calle San Luis #330, Riberas del Pilar.

Directions from Ajijic: Take the Carretera toward Chapala. Turn right on San Diego, which is the first street after Mirasol, and then take the first left on San Luis. The Oasis Cloud is one and a half blocks down San Luis on the right at #330.

Directions from Chapala: Take the Carretera toward Ajijic. Turn left on San Mateo, which is next to the 7 Eleven, and then take the first right onto San Luis. The Oasis Cloud is one and a half blocks down San Luis on your left at #330.

Those who wish to bring flowers, photos or special objects for the altar are encouraged to do so shortly before 10 a.m. We are asking friends who want to contribute cookies, scones or pastries for the coffee hour to contact Patricia Hemingway at (patriciahemigway@gmail.com) to tell her what you are bringing and the quantity. Please bring them before 10 a.m., or arrange to give them to Patricia ahead of time. Patricia is also looking for a few coffee makers to use for making the coffee and hot water for tea. She will need the coffee makers by Sunday, the 23rd. (You can take them home with you after the ceremony.)

If you would like to share a memory or anecdote about Nina or Eduardo or have any questions, please contact Judy Dykstra-Brown at (jubob2@hotmail.com). If you are unable to attend the event and wish us to present your thoughts, we would be glad to.

We have no idea how many people will attend this event. The Oasis Cloud has 50 chairs, but if you want to assure seating for yourself, it is best to bring a folding chair. It might also be smart to carpool as parking is limited.

Letting the Media Replace the Heart

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I wrote this on Facebook in response to a friend who thanked me for telling what she called the “true story”:  “I’ve posted some untrue info as well, but then the next day it turned “true” again. We all want to know and yet after awhile it becomes an obsession and we get so caught up in the soundbites that we forget what they are really about. Guess this is our world in microcosm. We need to remember that it all started because we lost two friends. I know there are those much closer to Edward and Nina than I was. I knew her for many years and was in three different writing groups with her where I heard her read her writing, which is sometimes the best way to get to know someone. Edward contacted me to ask if I’d like him to read and comment on my grief book before it went to the printer even though we were just friendly acquaintances. I think it would have been hard for someone even closer to do what I’ve been doing. No one else did and that’s why I have. Somehow, I got caught up in the middle. At any rate, for all of their even closer friends, I hope the hype stops and we turn to more comforting matters. As soon as I have official word from the venue, I’ll post information about the memorial. If you want to do true tribute to Nina, buy her book. That would have made her so happy.”  You can find her book, “The Leprous Veil of Love” on Amazon. She also has stories in a women’s anthology “Agave Marias” which is available in Mexico and online with secondhand book dealers. (This information was requested by someone who read this blog.)