Tag Archives: superstition

“Selective Superstition,”For MVB, Sept 13, 2024

9 Replies

Selective Superstition

I don’t believe in messages delivered by astrology.
I think my personality’s a matter of biology.
Images in crystal balls I’m sure are just projections.
I’m not about to spend my dough on engineered reflections.

But still I pluck at daisies. Does he love or does he not?
And I check out daily the Tarot cards I bought.
Every scattered grain of salt I throw over my shoulder,
and I won’t step on sidewalk cracks now that my mother’s older.

I’m flexible, I guess you’d say, dealing with superstition.
I want the ones I follow to match my disposition.
If I’m the one in charge of the ones that I am choosing,
I tend to have control of what I’m gaining or I’m losing.

MVB prompt: Superstitious

Solar Eclipse, October 14: Seeing Red––”Everybody Knows VI”

11 Replies

I was searching for the keys to take Yolanda home when she suddenly perched against the edge of the couch and stopped me in my search. Now I must admit that we do pretty well on short simple conversations, but she was excited and launched into one of those longer narratives where I captured about every tenth word. In this case, the first word I captured was “eclipse,” which is more or less the same in Spanish as in English. The second was “rojo” which I knew meant red.

Suddenly, I understood the essence of what she was telling me. After a few more questions and repetitions, I learned that I was to find or buy some red material to tear into strips to tie around all of my fruit trees: the banana and lime and papaya and mango. My lime tree was producing large fruit but my bananas were still in a period of gestation–about half the size they should grown to, and If I neglected to do this to protect them from the eclipse, all the fruit would fall off, or at the very least, my bananas and other fruit not ready to be picked would be stunted. As a last warning, she directed me to stay inside. Better to watch the eclipse on the television or on my computer.

Just last week, I had read that a solar eclipse was to occur on October 14 and I had mentioned to a friend that years ago, they tied red ribbons to the gate of the chayote field across from the graveyard and I noticed red strips tied around the necks of horses and cattle and dogs to deflect eclipse rays. I remembered a race down main street and had wondered why I hadn’t noticed any of this during more recent eclipses.

Yolanda then explained to me that any animal or tree or fruit in gestation needed to be protected. Women of childbearing age were told to wear red garments or even red underwear. During the last eclipse, a woman in town who was pregnant had neglected to wear red and her baby had been born with a bent nose. Yes, a race would probably be run but I was not able to understand who would run this race. Perhaps pregnant ladies? It seemed as though that could present further problems. What if someone fell? Would it mean a baby with a bent nose in spite of red underwear or a red sash?

Nonetheless, On October 14th, although I am past the age requiring red underwear, I will be careful not to look directly at the sun and just in case, or perhaps just to please Yolanda, I’ll dip into my Christmas decorations in search of my reel of red ribbon.

For other “Everybody Knows” stories about local legends, stories and gossip, see:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2023/07/01/everybody-knows-v-the-day-that-death-came-to-town/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2023/09/12/everybody-knows-iv-the-drunken-dog/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2023/07/01/everybody-knows-iii-the-martyr-dog/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2023/06/30/everybody-knows-ii/: The Caguama

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2023/06/28/everybody-knows-i-the-night-the-vet-died-for-one-liner-wednesday/

ON THE DIME or “ON THE NICKEL?”

10 Replies

If F.D.R. was our 32nd president and Trump our 45th, what is the difference between? Good old unlucky #13.  Is it any coincidence that 13 presidents later, after one of our best presidents was elected, one who is definitely our worst was elected? Our culture needs to smarten up and start putting people first, money somewhere down the line. What good is a good economy if only the richest profit from it???? With our economy, our health and our morale at an all-time low, too many have gone “on the nickel” under Trump’s administration. Whereas FDR led us out of a depression, Trump has determinedly led us into the threat of one.

“On the Nickel” refers to 5th street in downtown Los Angeles, which is a location where many of the homeless hang out.  A mission on 5th street is known as “The Nickel,” taken from both the name of the street and the phrase “on the nickel” which describes someone homeless and perhaps begging for nickels.

In the song “On the Nickel” (Heart Attack and Vine) Tom Waits sings: “And what becomes of all the little boys who never comb their hair? They’re lined up all around the block on the nickel over there.” This is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs. Listen to it here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvCKEi0cAFo

 

Selective Superstition

6 Replies

 


Selective Superstition

I don’t believe in messages delivered by astrology.
I think my personality’s a matter of biology.
Images in crystal balls I’m sure are just projections.
I’m not about to spend my dough on engineered reflections.

But still I pluck at daisies. Does he love or does he not?
And I check out daily the Tarot cards I bought.
Every scattered grain of salt I throw over my shoulder.
and I won’t step on sidewalk cracks until I’m somewhat bolder.

I’m flexible, I guess you’d say, dealing with superstition.
I want the ones I follow to match my disposition.
If I’m the one in charge of the ones that I am choosing,
I tend to have control of what I’m gaining or I’m losing.

 

Prompt words today are image, dough, message, astrology and personality.

Blind Potential

Leave a reply

Blind Potential

This trail of salt reveals to me you’re led by superstition.
Eyes shut tight, you stumble on, following tradition.
Like a deer in headlights, you are blinded by the light
that others cast, refusing to be guided by insight.

There is a light inside you that will lead you much more surely.
That little nudge that prompts you will guide you more securely.
Trust that spark within you to tell you what to do.
You need not fear those  instincts you carry within you.

They are the wisdom of the universe, trying to get out.
If you do not heed their whisper, you may later hear their shout.
What you deem as accidents might be communication
from that inner part of you, prompting your education.

Although those outer voices may continue to deride,
trust your inner voices. They are firmly on your side.
What you find within you may be genius that’s unknown
that won’t come to fruition until it has been sown.

You are its only guardian. Only you can plant and tend
and bring these new world miracles to their fruitful end.
Do not let superstition or fear of the what could be
keep you from that within you that is your destiny.

 

The Ragtag prompt is superstition.
Fandango’s promt is fear.

Lighting a Candle for San Antonio: Five Days, Five Photos, Five stories, Day 1

15 Replies

Five Days, Five Photos, Five Stories, Day 1

Lighting a Candle for San Antonio

IMG_3790

When I arrived home and found the candle burning next to the virgin of Guadalupe on the counter between my kitchen and dining room, I took a fast survey.  It wasn’t mother’s day as there was no photo of my mother next to it.  The celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe was months away.  It wasn’t Dia de los Muertos.  What could this new conflagration represent?

I had left soon after Yolanda arrived in the morning. She had run out to the car with coffee in my go mug and a bottle of water.  Sweet Yolanda, who was half mother, half sister.  She had been helping me since I moved to Mexico fourteen years before: cleaning my house, bringing a local healer to my house when I was ill to “cure” me via massage, now and then bringing her babies for me to dance around my house as she cleaned or ironed or washed clothes.

We had a wonderful symbiotic relationship.  She made my house a home and relieved me from tedious tasks so I could write.  I was her chief bank and no-interest loan officer…loaning the money for their new house, more land, a new used car when theirs was totaled by a drunk with no insurance. She always paid me back, either via installments deducted from her salary or in lump sums sometime down the line.

Yolanda, Pasiano my gardener, their families and I went on short vacations together to the Guadalajara zoo or to see the wildflowers in Tapalpa, loading up my full-sized van to capacity. This happens in Mexico.  Your gardener and housekeeper become your extended family and you become theirs.

So it is that Yolanda occasionally sets me right in the world as well.  The first year I didn’t build a Day of the Dead altar for my husband, she queried.  “Oh, so you no longer miss your husband?”  I built a shrine.  On mother’s day, she was the one who moved my mother’s picture from the guest bedroom onto the counter next to the virgin and lit a candle.

What was the candle for this time?  I asked her on Wednesday, when she arrived for one of her three-times-weekly three hour sessions.  This time, Senora, it was for San Antonio.  He was the finder of lost things, and we had been searching in vain for weeks for the lost cord and microphone for my amplifier.  The bowl of water under the glass with the candle in it was to cool the glass so it didn’t shatter.

I had let the candle burn all day until I went to bed.  When Yolanda arrived two days later, she lit it again.  Then hours after her arrival as I still sat at my computer blogging my blog, she came into the room carrying a large Ziploc plastic bag.  It was the cord and mike!

“Where did you find it?”  I asked.

“It was in with the sheets,” she answered.

“We’ve been losing a lot of things lately,” I said.  “Remember when we looked for weeks for my bag of lost keys and I found them in the drawer with the light bulbs?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “And do you remember that I lit a candle that day as well?”

Let me say right now that I am not a religious person.  I don’t pray, although now and then in a really stressful situation, I will address the God of my youth.  But, I am coming to have faith in Yolanda.  When she tells me to light a candle, I do so. And I’ve never missed a Day of the Dead Shrine since her last reminder.

I was nominated by Irene Waters for this challenge.  You can see her first day’s submission HERE.

*