Reality Redefined
(From Reality Shows to Reality Politicians, the meaning of the word seems to have shifted to its opposite.)
Your underwhelming comments on my photographs should shame me, but if they foster apathy, you really cannot blame me. Timeless snapshots can’t be made of subjects that are boring, and ordinary truth, it seems, leaves viewers merely snoring.
“What seems to be” has turned into the new truth that we seek— reality becoming something we can tweak.
A pantomimed emotion, sadly, I must confess, if one is good enough at it, is good enough, I guess.
So bring on the kitschy actor, the reality show clown.
Their entertainment value will bring them wide renown. They are what is called for in this modern cyber world. “Reality’s” new meaning therein has been unfurled.
Her silken robes sway gently to the oscillating fan. She is in her element when around any man. They are what makes life savory, the salt to any dish. The doorknob slowly turning denotes her fondest wish. There’s not a single male faction that would not agree that when it comes to men, she is the sugar in their tea.
The housewife and her classmates have staged a small reunion to munch and drink but mainly talk—an annual communion wherein they build a campfire and the drunker that they get the more that they tell stories they’re afraid that they’ll forget if they don’t repeat them yearly, so they tell them to their spouses, who, I must admit, wish they’d remained home in their houses. Yet, most don’t blame their loved ones for their memories of the past, although they know they’ll hear them for as long as memories last. They are ambassadors of patience as they hear each tale again, about the wild and zany things their spouse did way back when.
I’ll be going back to my class reunion/ town reunion in less than two weeks, but alas, with no spouse in tow. Stretching the truth a bit above. They only occur every 5 years and actually not that much drinking goes on. Poetic license, you know. The photos are, however, from my town and class reunions of the past.
Unearthly nutrition is on its last legs. How often have you been served deviled eggs? Ambrosia they say was the food of the gods,
but to be served it now? Just what are the odds? And only when faith causes us to unleaven are we ever gifted with mana from heaven. Heavenly hash and devil’s food cake are dishes that only a cougar would make to lure her young lover into her lair. Wherein she’d seduce him with her angel hair pasta to help him to bolster his energy— her clever plot to improve their synergy! But, if you’d like to start a new trend, by reprising old recipes, then read on, friend. A *karma cocktail or a **devil’s brew? Now and then it won’t hurt you to have one or two.
*A karma cocktail is made with Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, Triple Sec, Orange Juice, and Lemon Lime Soda!
To make a**devil’s brew : In a shaking glass, add vodka, triple sec, melon liqueur, peach schnapps and lime juice. Shake well. 3. Gently add ice to serving glass and strain mix over before layering ever clear on top and lighting.
“Halo everybody, Halo. Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair, so Halo everybody, Halo!” The remnants that dangle on the edge of memory when I awaken from a barely-accessible dream are not ones that my conscious mind sees fit to shove to the front of the crowd of past retorts, compliments, taunts, scraps of poetry, lines from old movies and musical ditties that upon occasion drift across it, but when the word “halo” is also repeated as a prompt in the first blog I look up to gather my prompts for the day’s poem, it seems too much of a coincidence to be coincidence.
This terrific Internet roadway that has led me to a worldwide circle of friends, combined with the scrap of memory from my dream, has led me backwards in time to an early morning seventy years before. My dad is long gone, out to feed the cattle or survey the wheat crop, my older sisters have vanished across the street to their classrooms at the first pealing of the school bell, my mother sits in my dad’s deserted rocker with coffee, toast and the morning paper, and I lie on my stomach in front of the Victrola, switching on the radio.
It is that time of the morning when Mother and I are content to let the morning languish away for awhile. It is a terrific time of freedom for my mother, who often insists she is lazy at heart but who in fact makes sure there is always a meal on the table, skirts hemmed, sheets ironed, Christmas presents piled under the tree in time for them to be admired for a week or more before Christmas, Easter eggs hidden just carefully enough in nests that peek out a tiny bit from beside the sofa or the bottom edge of the curtain.
And for me, it is a time when I have total control over what station the radio in our console record player/radio will be tuned to. Every morning, the Halo Shampoo song issues cheerily out into the morning air and already, in the dawn of media commercials, I have been influenced by what I hear. I have persuaded my mother to invest in our first bottle of Halo shampoo, and although I am five now and old enough to know the difference between metaphor and truth, still some part of me imagines the halo that will waft lightly over my head next Sunday as I flip my hair at the corner before setting out to cross the one street between our house and the Methodist Church. God will know the difference, I am sure, and at lunch after Church, when Mother serves Devil’s Food Cake, I have convinced myself that the former will surely cancel out the latter.
Mankind has been no bargain. They’ve scorched the living earth, determined to exploit it to improve their worth. Bargaining for diamonds, drilling for fossil fuels— with each new excavation, proving they are fools.
They release noxious gases into the atmosphere, and with each new admonition, shift to a higher gear. Who will console our children as they forge ahead following our example after we are dead?
We leave them with a dying world, and who is to blame? First, off, those politicians who see it as a game to increase their power in spite of consequences, building up their war toys, strengthening defenses.
Extending greedy fingers, needing ever more. Selling off our future, profiting from war. While the wise men warn us, who in power listens? Too busy filling pockets with everything that glistens.
The crush of humanity, swell of the crowd, demands a new edict. No pushing allowed. Thus turning the scene a tad melancholy, whereas in the past it had been pretty jolly.
The policy depended, primarily, on shaming certain well-known revelers I won’t be naming, by branding them careless , ill-mannered and rude and other crass labels that I won’t include.
Suffice it to say that this official labeling contributed much to their social disabling. Now they sit home getting flaccid and flabby, watching old episodes of Downton Abbey.
“Any gremlins hereabout?” a tiny woman queried, inspecting piles of autumn leaves for any bodies buried. I’d feared she was a tenderfoot when she had signed up for this Halloween adventure, but I evilly quipped, “Yup.” Every freckle popped out as her face blanched to pure white and her muscles tensed up to prepare for fight or flight. She surveyed every shadow on the path that led us up to the haunted mansion where the group of us would sup. The scene was dark and moonlit and the shadows all reached out. A most effective scary atmosphere, without a doubt. The spooky creaking of the door as we reached the house was echoed by the squeaking of every resident mouse. The furniture was draped with ghostly sheets covered with dust, and every metal object wore a crumbling scab of rust. Eerie portraits on the wall. Thick drapery that soon we’d draw back so the diners could view a harvest moon as they supped on boiling cauldrons of steaming witches’ stew and rich red wine in lieu of blood would simply have to do. What is it about Halloween that makes folks crave a scare so much that they would pay us to bring them to this lair? Mortals are so gullible, and now the time draws near when they’ll become the spirits who’ll conduct the tour next year!
Prompts today are tenderfoot, scene, gremlin, hereabouts, freckle and furniture. The photo is of the Lord Crewe Arms in Scotland, an abbey built in the 12th century and later turned into a hotel. My mother and I slept in its haunted room overlooking the graveyard in 1985. If you want to hear what happened, go HERE.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 