Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown

Money Optional

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The Prompt: Work? Optional!—If money were out of the equation, would you still work? If yes, why, and how much? If not, what would you do with your free time?

Since I am already retired and spend most of my day making art and writing, I guess my answer is yes. I do it because I feel it is my reason for living and without that work, life seems to lose its importance. I do it because it forces me to look closer and to think more deeply. I do it pretty much every minute I’m not sleeping. Really, I always did what I wanted to do without taking into consideration what would sell and that still seems to be the case since I’m not getting wealthy on what I do, but I swore when I retired that I would stop doing all those parts of making art that I hated: the applying for shows, the promotion, the pictures, the resumes, the mailing lists. Now I just enjoy the creation and if I am sending them out to an unaccepting universe, nonetheless, I’m having the experience of creating, which any serious writer or artist will tell you is  the most important part and why we really do what we do.

Today is my 221st post, and since it is a short one, please scroll back and read an earlier post you haven’t read before and if you have the time, please comment. 

For instance, if you’d like to know why I ended up in Mexico, read this: Foreign Tongues or, if you want a love story with a happy ending, read this: The Ballad of Poor Molly.

Thank you for reading my blog.  Although yes, I do it for myself, I can’t help but feel gratified when others find what I write to be of consequence or enjoyable.  Judy

Let There Be Light

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Let There Be Light


My mind is a growling dog.
While I stew and fuss,
fulfilling lists,
she jumps the screendoor,
beckoning.
Rude me, to turn my back
on the only playmate
who wants to play
the same games I do
every day, every hour,
because I fear that initial
plodding through silt
page after page
in search of the stream
of words.

Sometimes boredom
yawns so wide
that I have to enter it,
to wander its inner closet
where for decades
only cobwebs
have stirred.
In some dark corner
where I spank the dog
or search the bedside table drawers
of a lover called out at midnight,
I find the river’s source,
but then
the phone
rings and I’m off
gathering crumbs from a forest path,
leaving lost children
stranded in their own story.

Stray puppies—I collect every one,
wild orange funnel flowers
and guava
washed in an afternoon kitchen
just before the invasion
of five o’clock sunlight.
All of them I carry back
to hidden places
to rub against each other
and ignite
into the language of this place
where life goes in,
plays dress-up,
but emerges
nude,
like poetry.

 

The Prompt: Is there a cause — social, political, cultural, or other — you passionately believe in? Tell us how you got involved . The cause I most believe in is getting in touch with your authentic and true inner voice.  This is what I do when I write. Would that more people involved in making decisions that will alter our world would do so. This poem is really about the creative process where, when done right, there is only truth. It is also about all the things that get in the way of this process.

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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DSC07563

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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Compulsion to Peel

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Chair labels
Compulsion to Peel

In the courtyard, the music’s fine.
Chair by chair, we sit in line.
Row on row, we listen to
the opera, a lovely stew
of mezzo, baritone, soprano,
cello, violin, piano
performing favorite opera tunes
sans the oboes and bassoons.
Yet my attention seems to be
on the back of the chair in front of me
where a label’s firmly stuck
where I can see it—just my luck!
For each thing to me revealed
that can be unstuck or peeled,
(price tags, nail polish, wrap that clings—
all things stuck to other things)
calls out to me to come and pick.
It’s a compulsion I can’t kick.
I’m mesmerized by the plastic chair
of this woman with long blonde hair.
When she turns her head, the sticker’s there.
At other times, obscured by hair.
On other chair backs, I see labels.
I’d pull them off if I were able.
Yet most are just too far away
and in my seat I have to stay.
But if that woman would swish her mane,
I’d peel this label that is the bane
of my existence for now I feel
even more compelled to peel!
The performance over, the audience claps.
In their applause there is no lapse.
They stand and catcall, stomp their feet.
That woman rises from her seat
to show her wild approbation,
and thereby ends my consternation;
for when she stands in front of me,
I grab the label and pull it free!
Quickly the audience stacks the chairs
in stacks of sixes, fours or pairs.
Polite of them, for it saves time,
but still I feel less than sublime;
for as they stack them chair on chair,
it hides the stickers still stuck there.
And really, if I had my druthers,
I’d stay and peel off all the others!

Chair label

Today’s prompt was to tell the story of a badly-timed annoyance.  Those labels stuck on the back of most of the chairs at a local gathering spot/performance center have long been an annoyance to me.  Slowly, over the years, I have been peeling them off one-by-one as they appear in front of me at various events.

“You Don’t Send Me Flowers Anymore”

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The Prompt: Secret Admirers—You return home to discover a huge flower bouquet waiting for you, no card attached. Who is it from, and why did they send it to you?

No Roses Left Inside my Gate

He didn’t leave me flowers, instead he sent a cake.
Not the smartest choice that he will ever make.
The problem was, he left it inside my compound door
where the dogs could get it.  Now it is no more!
My dogs have diarrhea and I have no dessert.
Little bits of cardboard are carpeting the dirt
and grass and bricks and tiles and every patio chair—
with every bit of frosting licked from them with care.
I cannot blame my friend for this ungodly mess.
The blame is only mine, I’m driven to confess.
My friend’s a loyal reader and I’m a foolish girl.
You’ll understand more clearly if you read this URL:
https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/popsicles-and-tuberoses/

Mostly Nameless in Mexico

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The Prompt: The Name’s The Thing—Have you ever named an inanimate object? (Your car? Your laptop? The volleyball that kept you company while you were stranded in the ocean?) Share the story of at least one object with which you’re on a first-name basis.

Mostly Nameless in Mexico

Though Apple named my laptop “Mac,”
I don’t name things that don’t talk back!

(Since my prompt is longer than my poem today, hope you’ll go back and also read one of my earlier prompts.  There are 211 others posted prior to this shorty!!)

 

Railroaded and Blended: Thirstless in a Bloodthirsty World, Sober in a Laughless One

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Railroaded and Blended: Thirstless in a Bloodthirsty World, Sober in a Laughless One

Every day, our children are mesmerized by computer games where they hunt down and kill. TV shows go from violent to horrific—all echoing a world made increasingly more warlike as the war games of children grown into the war games of politicians and financiers who seek political and financial gain by first vilifying and then “going after” their enemies.

It is not my dreams, but rather my waking world that’s tortured by the bloodthirst of our world. At night, in my bed before sleeping, I fear for my own breathing and have to go outside for the comfort of cool night moving air. That scene from “The Bridge” where a child is buried alive with water slowly filling his crypt—will not go away. I am stuffed to strangling with earth’s cruelty.

My dreams remain my own, so it is not sleep I fear, but rather that time before sleep when I release hold of my consciousness and let my mind drift into worlds I am half-conscious of. That’s when I give way to thoughts of my own death, jerking myself back from fears of what comes next.

I don’t share the world’s appetite for torture, violence, killing and revenge. I want to scream “Please! Stop!” and run in the opposite direction, for I can’t follow where the world’s mania leads us. And this is why, when a friend asked me to go to a movie with her and suggested “The Railway Man” with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, I pleaded for a chic flick instead. My uncle died in the death march on Bataan. I saw the “Bridge on the River Kwai,” “A Town Like Alice” and have read about how the real life and death of women prisoners of war was minimized by “Paradise Road.” I’ve read of the horrors of those Australian nurses marched into the sea and shot, the rapes, deprivation, starving and executions.

This is why I said, “No more!!!” when my friend asked me to see that particular movie, wherein former POW Colin Firth goes in search of one of his Japanese captors. This year I have read two books dealing with the tortures of the slave trade and two more about the Spanish inquisition. I simply cannot take any more tales of torture and man’s inhumanity to man, and so it was that I chose the movie “Blended” starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler and my friend agreed to attend this “light comedy” with me.

This is how we came to be sitting in a theater in Ajijic, Mexico, with approximately ten other viewers similarly misinformed as to the utter dross and simplistic humorlessness of this movie!!!!! (Suffice it to say that all tortures are not physical in this world.) This was the singularly worst movie I have ever seen in my life. I love Drew Barrymore and most of Adam Sandler, but the script and acting in this movie were horrible! Add to that the ridiculous slapstick of the sterotyped African Disneyland that passed as an African adventure. I would add “offended” to the other adjectives that describe my reaction to this movie: namely, “unamused, bored, sickened and amazed.” The children were obnoxious, the plot implausible, the African characters one-dimensional stereotyped farces. What was that African singing group that showed up at any given moment furnishing a (not-funny) Greek chorus effect during various mini-climaxes during the movie?  Not since the black-faced minstrel has such an offensive stereotype been presented.

I must admit that my friend loved the movie. She laughed throughout, and must have wondered why I sat unsmiling and laughless throughout the entire movie. There is a certain amount of insult in finding fault with a book or movie or TV show that someone else loves, and I felt like a Scrooge when I was asked how I liked the movie and had to admit I HATED IT! Fed up to the eyebrows with the violence and torture that seems to be increasingly necessary to hold our interest in both our media and games, it was I who had suggested we go to this movie instead, and perhaps I was forced to pay for my need to bury my head in the sand for a few hours.

Not wanting to be influenced by what I read, I have deliberately not gone to IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes to see whether the critics agree with my review of this horrible movie, but as I draw toward the end of my diatribe, I will now do so and be right back with some of their thoughts:

Rotten Tomatoes Review: “Lurching between slapstick and schmaltz without showing much of a commitment to either, Blended commits the rare Sandler sin of provoking little more than boredom.”

Washington Post, Stephanie Merry: Each sweet moment is inevitably punctuated by some in-your-face joke that’s at least as stupid as the preceding moments were heartfelt. Blended has other problems, too, including some faulty editing and a typically predictable finale.

Reel Views, James Berardinelli: “What’s missing from Blended? Two key ingredients: it doesn’t touch the heart and it doesn’t tickle the funny bone (at least not often enough). “

Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Labrecque: “In Blended, his (Sandler) comic flab has never felt as thick, and this hackneyed “family-friendly” entertainment feels less like a movie than a bad sit-com re-run.”

Portland Oregonian, Stephen Whitty: “He(Adam Sandler) plays it so low-key there’s nothing much for him to do, apart from the clueless-dad shtick and some awkward comedy.”

NY Times, A.O. Scott: “Most of Blended has the look and pacing of a three-camera sitcom filmed by a bunch of eighth graders and conceived by their less bright classmates. Shots don’t match. Jokes misfire. Gags that are visible from a mile away fail to deliver. “

Meta critic, B. Jackson: “I loved earlier comedies by this duo but this looks like they were here just for the paycheck. Also, based on the screenplay, the writers must have been working on a tight deadline for their high-school drama class.”

USA Today, Caludia Puig: “You have to work hard to make an African vacation seem unpleasant. And Adam Sandler nearly pulls it off in Blended.”

Not all critics hated this movie and some fans, including my friend, loved it. Having lived and traveled in Africa for years, I perhaps found the Africa scenes more insulting and deprecating than most. But this movie lost me long before it got to Africa!

The Prompt: When was the last time a movie, a book, or a television show left you cold despite all your friends (and/or all the critics) raving about it? What was it that made you go against the critical consensus?

Lear’s Fool or Harlequin?

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The Prompt today is “A Bookish Choice”—A literary-minded witch gives you a choice: with a flick of the wand, you can become either an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades, or a popular paperback author whose books give pleasure to millions. Which do you choose?

Lear’s Fool or Harlequin?

Obscure or popular? That witch
creates a choice that is a bitch.

For, if at fame I had a chance
only if I wrote romance,

I’d prefer to be unknown,
in my corner, all alone,

writing words they’ll find profound
if in fact they’re ever found.

But wait. Have we two choices only?
Trite and read/genius and lonely?

Where is it written I must depend
upon a witch to plan my end?

Since when has either witch or fairy
determined what is literary?

Once I took a little breather,
I decided I’d choose neither!

Rebellious thoughts swirl through my head.
I’ll simply write my blog instead!!!

Wrinkle

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Wrinkle

Once when I was younger, poundage was the thing—
as I obsessed about the growth calories might bring.
Every morning on the scale, I checked for extra girth.
Any extra poundage was how I gauged my worth.
But now that I am older, I check the mirror first
before I stop to weigh myself or slake my morning thirst.
First thing on my agenda, if I have the chance,
is to approach my mirror to have a daily glance.
Now every little wrinkle, every little line
viewed within my mirror brings a little whine.
But when I step upon the scale, there’s less there to regret.
If I’ve gained a pound or two, I vow just to forget.
For if I’ve found new wrinkles, all that I can say
is every extra pound I gain just stretches them away.

The Prompt: New Wrinkles—You wake up one day and realize you’re ten years older than you were the previous night. Beyond the initial shock, how does this development change your life plans?  Actually, I don’t worry much about wrinkles, but for the sake of rhyme and humor, let’s just pretend!