Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Lord, let me be a full moon
I fear I am but a crescent
May my actions
Reflect You
This is in response to the W3 prompt this week:
Write a Naani poem — “Naani is one of India’s most popular Telugu poems. Naani means an expression of one and all. It consists of 4 lines, consisting of 20 to 25 syllables. This form is not bound to a particular subject.”
Reena, the poet of the week, also provided the image as inspiration.
“Does this picture inspire you to write something?” — Sadje’s question for the What Do You See prompt (WDYS)
Immediately Bohemian Rhapsody was playing in my mind —
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Freddie Mercury, Queen
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see
And then I went on to listen to song after song by Queen.
A friend asked me the other day what my favorite music was. Sometimes a question just stops me in my tracks. This was one of those questions. I stopped to ponder.
“I listen to Celtic folk music all the time,” I told her, which I do. The Corries, the Sorries, Dougie MacLean, Old Blind Dogs, North Sea Gas, Celtic Rovers, Malinky — and the list could go on. Whenever I hear another group I like, I just add them to my Celtic playlist.
But if I was stranded on a desert island with one piece of music to listen to for the rest of my days it would be Dvorak’s New World Symphony. I decided that years ago and it still holds true. Bucket list item: hear that symphony played by a full orchestra.
I told my friend that.
That conversation led me to think about a top five or top ten that I would take to that desert island.
This morning’s dive in Queen made me fully aware that Queen would make the list. Man, oh man, Freddie Mercury could sing, couldn’t he? And the lyrics are rich and full and hard to get to the bottom of, right?
Would I choose Bohemian Rhapsody? I don’t know, but I do know I could listen to him sing forever.
Andrew Peterson would make the list. I’d have a tough time choosing one of his songs, too. He would make it for different reasons than Freddie Mercury. Andrew is one of the most genuine, sincere, kind, generous people I have ever met. His songs reflect that. And he knows my name — which is pretty huge to a hide-in-the-background-stay-behind-the-scenes kind of person. He has no reason to know my name, but he does. Or did at one point — which counts, right?
When it comes to the Celtic music, I would choose a song, not an artist. Dark Lochnagar is based on a poem by Lord Byron and speaks to a longing for the wild freedom and beauty of Scotland.
… England ! thy beauties are tame and domestic
Lord Byron
To one who has roved on the mountains afar:
Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic !
The steep frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr !
Yep, love that song no matter who sings it.
Sadje asked if the picture inspired me to write something. It inspired me to fall off the edge and delve deep into the music that I love.
Rabbit trails are crazy like that, aren’t they? Photo of an illusion —> Bohemian Rhapsody —-> Freddie Mercury —> music on a desert island. Makes sense, right?
I was asked to describe shingles pain. Is it worse than childbirth? Hmmm….
The comparison is off. It’s not comparing apples to apples. It’s comparing apples to pricker bushes.
One is ultimately good — who doesn’t like a delicious apple?
The other is annoying. All those scratches from a pricker bush semi-hurt, semi-itch, totally-annoy.
The worst physical pain I ever experienced was not childbirth. It was a gall-bladder attack.
Childbirth is a means to an end. I guess it was painful? The truth is that I look back and don’t remember the pain at all. I remember holding that new little person for the first time and studying his or her face.
Shingles is annoying pain. It’s fairly constant. It’s unreachable as far as relief. It’s exhausting.
Several months ago, I had a woman come in my office, ostensibly about getting a membership to the gym or something, but she started weeping. Her husband was rapidly descending into dementia. She couldn’t leave him home alone. She couldn’t leave him with someone else. She was his everything — and he needed so much from her.
Now there’s a pain that’s worse than childbirth AND shingles.
I had the same conversation a few weeks later with a young woman whose father had just moved in with her. He, too, was descending into dementia. She, too, wept while talking to me.
In both of those moments, I was profoundly grateful that I could be there to listen. In a strange way, I was also thankful for what I had gone through in caring for my parents, especially my father.
I guess all pain IS a means to an end. When we share a painful experience with someone else — one we’ve been through and they’re going through — we can offer help and support that others cannot.
So many people have reached out to me about Shingles because they remember. They remember their discomfort. Now they’re on the other side of it cheerleading me on. “It’s awful, but you’ll get through it!”
The other night I woke up thinking about the W3 poetry prompt, which this week involved using opposites in a poem. I was in so much achy pain that my brain couldn’t comprehend there could be anything other than that in life.
“Siri,” I called to my phone on the nightstand, “what’s the opposite of pain?”
She responded in her matter-of-fact way. “The opposite of pain is pleasure.”
I couldn’t fathom pleasure at that moment. My middle of the night conversation with Siri did lead to a mediocre poem for W3, though.
Someday I’ll be able to sympathize and empathize and be an encouragement to someone else going through this. I can look forward to that.
In the meantime, I’m telling everyone to get the vaccine.
Pain that is hard to express –
Distress! I cannot measure
This constant dull ache and itch;
It’s a bitch, not a pleasure.
After I came down with this —
Yes, I was remiss, and more,
I pooh-poohed getting this shot!
I know it now — not before
This is in response to the W3 prompt this week:
Compose two verses according to the following specifications:
I chose to try again at a Welsh form: Awdl Gywydd
This is also in response to having Shingles — which aren’t an emotion, attitude or mood, but they sure do provoke a lot of those.
Strawberry-rhubarb crisp for breakfast.
I can easily rationalize it. There’s oatmeal in the topping, fruit (strawberries) as a mainstay, and rhubarb — whatever food category that fits into — in there too. Surely it’s healthy, right?
The truth is my appetite has been off. My whole everything has been off. When my son’s girlfriend made peanut butter blossoms — those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss pressed in the top — I politely declined. Oh, I eventually ate a few, trust me — later. They are hard to resist. But I didn’t woof down six at a time which I might have done had things been different.
Last weekend, or maybe it was last Friday, I started feeling achy. My back hurt. I thought I had slept on it wrong. It was my left scapula, and it was weird. Not the ordinary I-slept-on-something-wrong feeling.
Before the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, I left for a flight to Roanoke. I was picking up one of my daughters from school. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a small rash just below my left breast. That’s weird, I thought.
Got to Roanoke. Got the rental car. Got together with my daughter, but I was exhausted. I left her mid-afternoon to go nap in my hotel room. The rash had grown, too, and was itchy-painful.
Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.
It was either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning that it hit me that I had shingles. No, I hadn’t gotten the vaccine.
I contacted my primary care provider, but, as it turns out, they can’t do a tele-health visit with me if I’m out of state at the time. Ridiculous, right?
Initially, shingles was (were?) just annoying. “I don’t have time for this,” I said more than once to more than one person. I mean, it’s the holidays. Sheesh.
But, by Thursday, I felt like excrement. You know what I mean, right? I did a tele-health appointment, was prescribed an antiviral, and stayed in my room all day. Mostly.
The next day, same thing.
My appetite has been way off with this.
Last night, my son’s girlfriend was making strawberry-rhubarb crisp. “Do you want some?” they both asked.
I politely declined. I didn’t like strawberry-rhubarb crisp on a good day. My mom used to make it and it was not my favorite.
However, this morning when I went down for coffee, there was the baked crisp on the counter. I could see the oatmeal in the topping. Breakfast food, for sure.
I dished out a small bowl, and it was, literally, just what the doctor ordered. (She’s a doctor.)
It was so good that I went back for more.
Maybe rhubarb has healing qualities.
One can always hope, right?
“Where is Jolly — again!?” asked Starlight, the chief elf in the workshop.
Twinkle and Doodle looked at each other. Each mouthed the same words to the other — Tell him! Each vehemently shook his head at the other in disagreement.
Starlight looked back and forth at them as he spoke. “I’m going to find out,” he said, “but you can tell me now and any extenuating circumstances.”
“What does ex-ten-tu-tat-ing mean?” asked Doodle. When he heard things, his brain doodled around the words adding flourishes and confusion.
“Extenuating,” repeated Starlight. “It means sometimes there’s a reason for doing something that needs to be taken into account.”
Neither elf responded. Starlight wasn’t sure they understood.
“Twinkle,” Starlight said, “you’re heavy-handed with the glitter in the workshop, but that’s your nature and how you got your name.”
Twinkle looked down at the glitter that was on his hands, shirt front, elf pants, and shoes. Other elves would have scolded him, but Starlight never did. Twinkle knew he understood.
“Doodle, your curlicues and smiley faces in your signature?” Starlight asked.
Each elf signed their work and Doodle’s signatures were, well, doodle-y.
Doodle and Twinkle looked at each other. Finally, Doodle spoke, “You know how Jolly is so happy? This time of year, he taps a keg in the break room. It’s how he gets through. He sneaks down there and –“
“Sometimes he passes out,” said Twinkle.
Starlight bolted out the door. Jolly needed help with his extenuating circumstance before it killed him.
Unicorn Challenge — base a 250 word (or less) fictional piece on the photo.
Forgive me if this piece sounds preachy. I have two new friends who are very active in AA and talk about their struggles quite openly. So when I looked at the photo, my first thought was, What if one of Santa’s elves had a drinking problem?
Don’t ask my why I thought of that! My elf name would be Questions. I’ve got loads of questions and few answers.
“What are you struggling with?” my friend/spiritual director asked me.
I didn’t have to think hard on that one. “Peace,” I said. “It’s always hard to find peace this time of year.”
She nodded knowingly, then asked, “What does peace look like?”
I stared at the candle’s flame and the assortment of little knick-knacks she had placed on the table. I thought and thought, but couldn’t come up with an answer. One of the things that I love about her is that she allows silence.
What does peace look like? I rolled the words around and around in my head.
She interrupted the silence with another question. “What color is peace?” she asked.
Immediately, I went to watery colors, my absolute favorite. Water is my go-to. For me, water is place that allows me to be supported, and held, and still move and exercise and be me.
What color is peace?
I thought of a night not long ago when I had gone for a walk with a friend. We had walked and walked in the cemetery. Now, there’s a peaceful place for you.
As the sun set, and the temperature dropped, we walked down toward the lake to a bench that overlooked the water.
The water was dark and still, with a crescent moon reflecting on it.
Occasional ripples appeared from who-knows-what. The tiny breath of a breeze? A fish beneath the surface who didn’t know winter was approaching? A night bird I hadn’t noticed?
Suddenly, I knew exactly what color peace is — it’s the color of a moonlight lake. Dark and light at the same time. Calm and rippled at the same time. A friend next to me. Crisp air around me.
Is that a color?
To me it is.
Moon photo reflecting on the road — but not from that night and certainly not the same as the moon reflecting on water:
This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Prompt: “To me“
“Three swans means danger is near. So what do four swans mean?” Fiona asked.
“Ach, no, Fiona,” said her mom. ” The three swans must be flying to signal danger. Those four swans, swimming — well, that’s a different story. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes, please,” Fiona said.
As they trudged along the beach toward home, Mom began. “The King of the Swans had a beautiful daughter named Eala. Male swans, you know, are called cobs, and two cobs were always assigned to be with Eala, one of either side of her. When either cob sensed danger, they urged her to fly to safety. They flew in that three swan formation. That’s how the three-swan story came to be. The cobs had a keen sense of nearby trouble.
“When cobs from other flocks tried to approach Eala, her guards sensed them coming and helped her escape.”
“How did they know about the other cobs?” Fiona asked.
“Guard cobs have an intuition,” Mom explained. “They can detect evil intent better than any other creature.”
“So how did the fourth one get there?”
“Ah — only a cob that is pure of heart gets past the guards and is worthy of the princess.”
“So he’s good?”
“Yes — he passed the test,” Mom replied. “Eala was the first swan to have guards, but it continues today.”
Fiona furrowed her brow. “I think I want cobs, too.”
“Ah, my Fiona, you don’t need cobs. Human girls are given that intuition, Learn to listen to it.”
250 words.
My submission to this week’s Unicorn Challenge, whose only requirements are base the story on the picture and limit yourself to 250 words.
I read somewhere that three swan flying in formation portends disaster. Is it true? Is a black cat an evil omen? How about broken mirrors? Who knows.
And I certainly don’t know about cob guards — total fiction.
Should girls listen to their creep-meters? YES!
Oh, and — Eala is the Gaelic word for swan.
Do you remember that teenage girl
You talked to years ago?
Instead of oyster, you saw pearl –
She was a tough one though!
She pushed against all that you said
When you tried to reaffirm
That she had value –No! Instead
She tried to worm and worm
Her way away from your kind words
Why didn’t you give up?
Why not say, This is for the birds?!
But no, you filled her cup —
And now my life reads like a long and wondrous book
If he wants to know the good he did, dear God, let him look
This is in response to the W3 prompt for this week — to write a memory poem. Here are the instructions:
I don’t know if I did the whole memory poem thing correctly. First, it’s only 98 words.
But — true story — in my early teens, I was a pretty mixed-up kid. I was part of a perfect family, but I was pretty less than perfect. One summer, when I was making all sorts of bad choices, these two guys came from Cornell to spend the summer working in our county with the 4-H program. One of them started a summer band.
Indirectly, I suppose, music saved me. I got involved with the summer band and then got roped into other activities with a different group of kids and a more wholesome focus.
I think I was 14 years old. I remember swearing at the one guy in a long tirade about I-don’t-know-what and he just took it. He didn’t scold me. He didn’t kick me out. He just took it.
And continued to treat me nicely.
Of course, I didn’t keep in touch with those guys. I was a kid. They were Cornell students. At the end of the summer, they went back to Cornell. Honestly, I can’t even remember the band guy’s last name.
But, what a difference he made in my life!
Aidan was yelling.
Again.
Aidan always yelled but this time seemed different. “MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM!” he said.
Elspeth stopped washing the dishes as Aidan ran in the room. She looked at him expectantly as he skidded to a stop beside her.
“MOM!” he yelled. “THERE’S A TARDIS IN THE BATHROOM!”
“What are you talking about?!” she asked, wiping her hands on her jeans as she turned to face him.
“THE DOCTOR IS HERE! I’M SURE THE DOCTOR IS HERE!” He tugged at her still damp hand to drag her to the bathroom.
She followed behind him, laughing and confused. “Do you even know what a TARDIS looks like?” she asked.
“You said it’s a big blue box! It’s bigger on the inside! Right?! Right?!” He was so excited he could barely contain himself as he pushed open the bathroom door.
There stood a huge blue safe right next to the toilet.
Elspeth started laughing. “Aidan,” she said, “a TARDIS is a phone box. Yes, it’s blue, but it’s a phone box. This is a safe.”
“But how did it get in our bathroom?” he asked.
She stopped laughing and pondered the question. How did a large blue safe get into their bathroom. She furrowed her brow and stared at it.
Just then, the safe door swung open.
How did it just do that, she wondered, without hitting the toilet?
Out of the safe stepped a man, wearing a neat bow-tie and a natty brown tweed jacket.
Elspeth fainted.
This is in response to the Unicorn Challenge: no more than 250 words, based on the photo prompt.
Jenne so kindly checked on me because I had missed it the last few weeks. Sometimes inspiration hits and sometimes it doesn’t. Right?
Anyway, I was so touched that she reached out to me. This is a somewhat lame response to her prompt, but I did it. For her.
I’ve tried to explain to people about the blogging community. I will, in all likelihood, never meet Jenne — although, maybe, when I make my lifelong-dream trip to Scotland I’ll track her down — but we’re still part of a community.
And she checked on me.
And it almost made me cry.
Thank you, Jenne.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 