Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown

Risking It

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The Prompt: Envelope Pushers—When was the last time you took a risk (big or small), and pushed your own boundaries — socially, professionally, or otherwise? Were you satisfied with the outcome?

Risking It

What risks are left in life at 67? That big risk of childbirth far behind me (and since I said no to it, so is the risk of my life being detoured by the products of it); travel no longer the thrill it once was; too tired to build and decorate any more houses; and love seemingly something that is going to be experienced in online spurts for the rest of my life; it seems as though the only risk left is that big one. And I fear it. Actually, resent it. I don’t want for life to ever be over.

I can’t stand the thought of fading into nothingness. Yes, my “work” might live after me, but my work is just the rumor of me. It is only the part of me I have been able to express. What about that entire unexplored rest of me? Where will it go? Will it ever have another chance? I feel the press of my own potential. Have I let it down? Will Hell really be the fleeting awareness, as I fade away, that I have left the most delicious offerings on the plate of life untasted?

I am not an athlete. I was never a mother. Although I have made some brave decisions in my life, nonetheless, I have feared too much. I fear being laughed at, rejected, passed over—so much so that at times I haven’t even tried. Like so many others, I have too often escaped. The power of books and films is that they afford us the opportunity to live vicariously those risks we put off taking in our own lives.

Then, the internet. Finally, the opportunity to control our fantasy lives—to create personalities for ourselves where we can leave out the parts we don’t want to face. We can always be 40 on the internet. Frozen at 145 pounds. Our successes are there on our cyber page for all to see and we can simply neglect to mention our failures. The internet is like a scrapbook with all of the faces we don’t want to see, ever again, relegated to Facebook, where we can block them with the push of a button.

Online, we get to think before talking, or at the very least, a chance to review and edit before hitting the “send” button. We are able to choose greater exposure with fewer risks. Or, one can opt for the “voyeur” stance—simply watching and imagining without ever taking the risk of exposing ourselves.

There is a swimmer a hundred yards off shore who swam by going in the opposite direction a half hour ago. A kayaker paddles by as close to the shore as she can safely travel without being swamped by waves. Two more kayakers come into view 500 yards out, paddling for shore.  It is not only the large decisions in life that expose us to risk, but there is risk, also, in the everyday details. You rent a kayak, yes, but how far out into the bay are you willing to paddle it? You go to potentially dangerous places, but to how much of that risk are you willing to expose yourself? We are all here at the same place at the same time, but I am sitting on my porch, well-shaded by the palapa roof.

The tern bobs just beyond the surf line, ducking his head underwater now and then, in search of any fish who are dumb enough to make it easy for him. Up above, magnificent frigate birds are executing their perpetual ballet—this time on our stage. Even clams stick their necks out now and then, albeit to their peril. Younger women and men jog by. Buxom grandmothers plod by. Children draw hopscotch patterns in the sand and poke at a large dying fish. I want to tell them to leave the fish alone as the child touches the eye, but when the fish doesn’t flinch, I hope it signals the end of its too-long death, gasping for air it can’t draw in now that it is surrounded by too much of it.  Simply by going after his own breakfast, he has taken a risk that will lead to his becoming someone else’s.

Part of taking risks is going into worlds we are not familiar with, to risk the discomfort of adjusting ourselves to that world. I think the secret is, however, to find familiar worlds within every world we take ourselves off to. It is not that we are rejecting the new, but rather that we are clinging onto those parts of ourselves that make us “us.” When I come to the beach, I occasionally meet with other writers. This keeps me reassured that I am sane to spend so much my life in recreating that life in words. It keeps me less lonely. It gives me a timeline and a goal. Without these touchstones that remind us who we are, we can all too easily become wanderers without purpose, going on to the next place in search of ourselves.

Sitting here on the porch, I am not necessarily any safer than the man or woman swimming so far offshore. It is my own risks I’m taking. I risk telling you something that will make you like me less. Something that will make me look foolish, deluded, poorly-informed, naïve, even crazy. A bigger risk is that in this writing I might see a part of myself I don’t like. This prompt today has done that: raised a question I don’t want to answer, even though I know the answer is hiding there somewhere within me. I know what the risk is that I’m afraid to take, but like the name of that acquaintance whose face I know so well but whose name suddenly eludes me, I just can’t quite put my finger on it. There is at least one risk left to take before that final risk formerly alluded to. Now I just need to set about trying to remember what it is.

Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

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The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—write a thank-you note to your guiltiest pleasure

Okay, I challenge you to find a better excuse than I have for not getting posted until 7:10 at night.  I’m told by the owner of the little palapa restaurant I’ve come to after not being able to get online all day that it is probably because of yesterday’s eruption of Colima Volcano about 80 miles northeast of me.  Frustrating but exotic, no?  At any rate, here is my “real” post for the day…Judy

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Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.

Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed

the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.

The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.

Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.

But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.

Angular

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Photo Challenge Prompt: What does “Angular” mean to you?

 

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Take Me Back

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 Take Me Back

I was born and raised in South Dakota, and every summer both of my older sisters went to MYF camp in the Black Hills. For as long as I could remember, I would ride along as my parents drove them to camp and always, at our first sighting of the Black Hills peeking up from the flat Dakota prairie, we would sing this song. Eventually, it was my turn to go to camp from age 11 to 18 and into my early twenties, when I became a camp counselor. To this day, long after we’ve moved away, my sister and I still sing this song every time I cross the state line back into South Dakota:

The Prompt: Cue the Violins—If your life were a movie, what would its soundtrack be like? What songs, instrumental pieces, and other sound effects would be featured on the official soundtrack album?

 

Beached!!!

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Ten women including Judy Reeves as the workshop director. Fabulous writing. Fabulous time. An hour after this picture was taken, six of us were up on the bandstand backing up the guitar player/singer. Yes, I was up there with them, but I’m behind the camera in this shot!!!

Beach Writing Retreat, November 2014: Ten of us spend 3 days together writing, critiquing, learning, growing. (Eating, swimming, dancing, laughing, walking, listening, singing.)

Tomorrow, we’ll add shopping to the list as we take an hour or two off to go to the great outdoor weekly market.

Still Life With A Small Town Girl

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The Prompt: Sparkling or Still—What’s your idea of a perfect day off: one during which you can quietly relax, doing nothing, or one with one fun activity lined up after the other? Tell us how you’d spend your time.

Still Life With A Small Town Girl

For many years when I was small and far into my teens,
my summer days were filled with little else than magazines
and books and all the other things a girl in a small town
brings into her summers just to make the days less brown.

Day after day of reading soon led to dreaming, and
my shade beneath the cherry tree became a foreign land.
I did not know the name of it, but in this foreign place
the people did such lovely things. They kept a faster pace.

There were many things to see and people who liked doing—
circuses and carnivals, badminton and horse-shoeing,
imaginings and plays and travels. People who liked dancing.
Instead of trudging down the street, these people would be prancing.

I dreamed such dreams of bigger towns, and far-away towns, too.
All summer, I lay in the grass, dreaming what I’d do
when I was so much older and could go out on my own.
I’d wander off into the world. Explore the great unknown.

Now six decades later, I have done it all—
so many of those things I yearned to do when I was small.
I’ve been to places far and wide—Africa and Peru.
In England, France, Australia—I found so much to do.

Plays and concerts, dances, films, museums, garden walks.
Lectures, movies, workshops, classes, roundtables and talks.
Tours and treks and trips and sorties—guided meditations.
Somehow life seemed fuller packed with exotic vacations.

But now that I am sixty-seven, I’d appreciate
if all this activity would finally abate.
I dream of slower days that I’d spend dreaming in the shade
where all my memories of days spent doing would just fade

into the past and leave me to dream here in this place,
swinging in my hammock, at a slower pace.
Leaving my activity to stream from head to pen.
Filling up the page with all the places I have been.

And making some sense out of why I had to go and go,
speeding up the days that back then seemed to me so slow.
I guess I had to travel to find others of my kind
to teach me that life’s riches are mainly in the mind!

Fruit Salad

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Fruit Salad

It was 1973. I’d been in Australia since September of 1971 and was ready to travel again. You’ve heard part of the story—the hard and adventurous part through Timor— but I was now in Bali, which was an undiscovered paradise at that time. I spent over a month there, sipping “magic ice juice” and trying to avoid durian. We were living well on $1 a day. 25 cents for bed and breakfast, a quarter for lunch and 50 cents for a lobster dinner at night. Pot and magic mushrooms were available by the grocery bag full and were not yet a hanging offense. Everyone was high all the time!

We stayed in a house with a man who had 4 wives, but was the loneliest man in Bali, afraid to spend time with his beautiful new wife lest his oldest wife find out and demand equal attention. If he bought one wife a gift, it was the law (of both his religion and his house) that he buy an equal gift for all of the others, and feeling financially challenged, the result was that he stayed away from home and his “crony wives” as much as possible. He took us to the rice paddies to see where the village bathed and was disappointed, I think, when we didn’t remove our clothes and join them.

We toured temples where signs said, “It is forbidden to enter women during menstruation” and visited elephant caves, the homes of famous artists, had massages and avoided bare-breasted old women who kept trying to raise our blouses to see what our breasts looked like. Certainly there must be something wrong with them that we kept them covered all the time. One of our fellow-travelers, a very large-breasted woman who was a practical nurse from New Zealand, posed nude for a Balinese batik artist, but we never saw the fruits of his labor.

On certain evenings, the entire town of Kuta turned into one huge gamelan orchestra with the floors of entire small buildings covered with kneeling players, mallets in hand. Processions would wind through the street toward temples, the women with high stacks of baskets and floral offerings, the priests making animal sacrifices of small chickens—everyone in the trance of the music and the occasion, some of us still under the trance of the magic mushrooms we’d consumed in an omelet 3 days before.

You couldn’t eat the salad, but the fruit, the music, the rice paddies, the temples, the sacred monkey forest, the art, the people and the price—you couldn’t beat.

The Prompt: Salad Days—Is there a period in your own personal life that you think of as the good old days? Tell us a story about those innocent and/or exciting times (or lack thereof).

Hello, Madam

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Hello, Madam

My story begins years ago, when the gringo woman first bought the palapa house that fronts the beach in our village. It is many years now since that day I first passed her walking on the beach—heading south as I headed north. I saw her falter when I drew close enough for her to see the machete in my hand. It was held down by my side, as this is how I always carry it, so I think perhaps she didn’t see it until I was quite close. I saw her alter the cadence of her walk, start to turn around, then instead, veer out into the water so as to cut as wide a swath as possible in our passing. I bid her good morning, trying to be as non-threatening as a six-foot-tall Mexican man carrying a machete could be on this deserted section of the beach. No other people walk in the dawn darkness before the sun comes over the palm trees and palapa rooflines.

She bid me good morning as well, saying “Buen dia,” in our fashion, instead of the usual “Buenos dias,” that would brand her as a gringa. Not that anyone would have mistaken her for anything else. She wore the sackish coverup that many norte americanos adopt as their bodies get older and wider. Her skin was white, her hair straw-colored. She carried a big bag and stooped often to retrieve shells, stones, driftwood and other objects from the beach that she made into art. I have seen these objects spread out on the palapa-covered front porch of her house on the beach, very close to the water. Sometimes when she was not outside, I had peeked at her new constructions and after our first month of passing daily on the beach, I held out to her a small treasure I had found: a seahorse, bright orange, no longer than half my thumb. It was dead but still pliable. When I held it out to her, she was at first taken aback. Then I saw the pleasure on her face, as though I’d handed her a rose. The next day, I handed her a small rock imprinted with the fossil of a shell. It was gratifying to give these small ordinary things to someone who found them to have value.

The third day, I gifted her with three seahorses I’d found lying side-by-side on the beach, as though ready for a communal funeral. After I gave them to her, spread out to dry on a small section of a palm seed sheath that I had hacked out with my machete, it was she who initiated a conversation by asking why I carried the machete; and this is what I said back to her:

“Hello Madam. Someone has already told me that you are looking for stories, and knowing that I have many that I remember well and also have been said to share interestingly enough, he has recommended that I seek you out. In spite of this, do not think that our meeting on this beach was anything but coincidental. I have walked here every morning at this time for many years. It is fate that engineered our introduction, not I.

I am Fernando, but everyone here calls me “The Machete.” There is a story to this, of course, as there is a story to everything in Mexico. Sometimes I think our country is composed more of stories than of flesh or blood or clay or concrete. Stories and dreams and reality. Almost always, it is hard to know the difference.

Many years ago. Well, not really so many years—maybe twelve or fifteen—it was not as it is now. Few gringos lived in our community. Instead, there were dogs. Many wild dogs who roamed the beach. Sometimes some of them were rabid and there were at times problems when people carried food onto the sand. A few times, they even invaded the restaurants that opened onto the beach, rushing past tables, grabbing arrechera from plates and sometimes catching a hand or leg in the process. This brought a good deal of fear because of the fear of rabies, and everyone was talking to those who ran our pueblo, asking them what they were going to do about it. Finally, some of the men of the pueblo took guns and machetes and went in search of these dogs, disposing of many of them. For a while, peace reigned on the beach, but every few years, another wild pack would form and people would again be afraid to go onto the wilder parts of the beach—those parts where you and I like to walk.

Since I live a few miles from the place of my labor, it has been my practice for all these years to walk to work on the beach and as you might have guessed, this machete was my weapon against the wild dogs. Through the efforts of the many gringos who now live in our town, and the free spay and neuter clinics they provide twice a year, the problem of the wild dogs has disappeared; but I still carry my machete. It is as though my body has altered itself to accept this extra weight on my right side, so that without the machete, I cannot walk right. I cannot stride. I am not as sure-footed. This daily encumbrance has become a part of me, so always I carry it by my side. The story is simple. This is all there is to it.”

We passed on then, each in our particular direction; but I believe we parted as, if not friends, at least as congenial acquaintances. This was my first conversation with this woman who would one day have such an impact upon my life. It seems an inconsequential thing—this exchange of four seahorses and an imprinted stone—but these simple objects of seemingly no value were to be the golden key to my future—a story I will perhaps tell you one day if kind fate should set us in each others’ path.

The Prompt: Golden Key—You’ve been given a key that can open one building, room, locker, or box to which you don’t normally have access. How do you use it, and why?

This is actually Chapter Four of my novel.  I used today’s prompt as its starting point…Actually, its ending point.  Yes, I’m doing the novel but still can’t figure out how to post it on NaNoWriMo.  If anyone can give me some pointers about this, I would appreciate it!  Duh.

Eight Months Wait

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Eight Months Wait

Today’s the day I’m leaving to spend two months at the beach
to try to write a novel that‘s been just beyond my reach
since I wrote the first three chapters when last I spent time there;
but since I returned home, I’ve just been tearing at my hair
searching for the next word—the next turn in the plot—
in vain for though I’m waiting, the words seem to be caught.

And so I’m going after them. I’m driving there today
to see if at a different spot, I’ll have something to say.
I don’t have any friends there, or any obligation.
Understand, I’m going to work, and not for a vacation.
I’d thought to start two weeks ago, by joining NaNoWriMo,
but couldn’t figure out the site, though I knew where to go.

And so I’ve just kept writing my daily blog instead,
deciding that with just three chapters done, the book was dead.
That may be so, but nonetheless, I guess I’ll try once more
and so within the hour, I’ll be walking out the door.
My alarm clock didn’t function, so I am already late,
but I could not let you wait in vain for our daily date.

Will I be here tomorrow? My mind is most conflicted.
I really shouldn’t, but I fear that I’m badly addicted.
I get up early at the beach to dodge the morning sun.
By 8 ‘clock, my daily two hour walk is always done.
Perhaps while I am walking, my book will find me there
so I will find the plot again—and grow back all my hair.

So it’s adieu for now, perhaps. We’ll see how I will do
at writing words for chapters that I fear have been too few.
Just how it will all wind up, I do not have a clue.
All I know is that I’ll sorely miss the lot of you.
Pine for your fine company and all your ideas, too,
I’ll miss my daily visits to this lovely WordPress zoo!

The Prompt: Waiting Room—“Good things come to those who wait.” Do you agree? How long is it reasonable to wait for something you really want?

Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

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Our Own Little Universes: Pains, Rips, Stars, Itineraries and Insights

Yolanda and Pasiano must have thought I was crazy when I started packing a week ago for my 2 month trip to the beach. First, all of my clothes piled on the bed in the spare room, then art and jewelry-making supplies piled on one end of the other bed, computer and photography needs piled on the other end. Bags full of other art supplies. Then two days ago, little piles of spices and kitchen tools, canned goods, disinfectant for fruit and veggies, bags of papers I’ve been wanting to sort for 13 years. (There will be time at the beach, where I know no one.)

But now it was the night before and with the car mostly packed with suitcase and bags, I still had hours more of sorting and packing to do. I knew it would probably mean a late night, and I’d have 5 or 6 hours of driving to do. Could I get enough sleep so I wouldn’t be driving sleepy, by myself, with no one to spell me?   I have been rushing around trying to get dozens of details finished before I leave and I was so tired last night, with still a half-dozen things to do, that it occurred to me that there was no law decreeing that I have to leave today!!!  So, I’m putting off leaving until tomorrow morning. That way I can finish packing at my leisure, sort out what I’m doing re/ the illustrations for the book and whether to take the scanner or not and get a full night’s sleep before driving to La Manz.

I don’t know why I get these mind sets about how things “have” to be done.  Such a relief and so glad I decided to do this because I was up three times with severe leg cramps during the night–sometimes both ankles, once my inner thigh and opposite ankle…Such agony that a hot shower couldn’t ease. If I had neighbors, they’d think I was either having the best sex of my life or that someone was killing me, because I was moaning and screaming out at great volume!  Then I thought to get in the hot tub and they eventually eased.

The third time this happened, about an hour ago, I almost fell asleep in the hot tub, but woke up, thought I needed to get out, and glanced up to see the quarter moon perfectly centered through a tear in the umbrella I’d positioned over a side of the hot tub.  You know what happened.  I had to get up, naked, dripping, cold, and go get my camera and then back into the hot tub to try to capture that phenomenon.

Dozens of shots later, with flash and without, I’d gotten a few barely effective shots, but realized how these pains of life sometimes lead to highly personal insights and experiences, so although the camera did not catch exactly what I’d experienced, my mind and memory had, and it might be that thing I remember in my last hour or last moment and gain strength or hope from.  So intimate, these night experiences with ourselves.  Those times when we realize we really are our own universes.  Our own little gods, having the final power over ourselves.

In short, although if I thought I had to drive alone to La Manzanilla today, I’d be so worried that I would fall asleep at the wheel, instead I don’t have to worry.  I can do my final packing today and then get a good night’s sleep.

I’ll leave tomorrow.