Tag: SoCS

Blather · nonsense · Writing

A Poetry Prompt and a Stream of Consciousness Prompt Met in a Bar

Sally2 Comments

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday word this week is notebook.

The W3 prompt for this week was to borrow the first line from another poem to use as the start of your own.

What if, I wondered this morning, I take those two prompts and mush them together?

For instance: Two roads diverged in a yellow notebook. (Sorry, Robert Frost.)

What would that look like? I picture an artist drawing a notebook — because that’s what they happened to have with them when they encountered a scene they wanted to remember. So they started drawing one road coming up from the left hand corner and another road coming up from the right. Where would they meet?

Oh wait, I just made the roads CONverging, not DIverging. I’d have to turn my notebook upside-down.

How about this one: Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight notebook of Paul Revere. (Sorry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.)

What if Paul Revere was not a man of action but a man who believed that the pen was mightier than the sword? I mean, I DO believe that words are mighty, but I’m grateful that Paul Revere rode to every Middlesex village and farm to spread the alarm instead just writing his grievances in a notebook.

How about: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s notebook? (Sorry, William Shakespeare)
A lot of the romance is gone in that one! As much as I love notebooks, I would NOT want to be compared to one, even a summer one.

Here are a few more (without my blather). Submit your own in the comments —

i thank You God for most this amazing
notebook
(e.e. cummings)

The notebook is too much with us, late and soon
(William Wordsworth)

So much depends
upon
a red note
book
(William Carlos Williams)

Ooh! One more — but it’s a children’s book (one of my favorites)

Once there was a notebook….
And she loved a little boy
(Shel Silverstein)

That one has a lot of potential for a story about a future writer, don’t you think?

Thanks, Linda Hill, Josie Holford and David Bogomolny for a fun prompt!

aging · Life · poetry · Writing

Mask

Sally17 Comments

We all wear masks
Yes, we do
I’ll admit it
How ’bout you?

My mask these days
Is wrinkled, gray
My costume’s wrinkled
It’s my way

Frumpy comfy
Nondescript
For fancy clothes
I’m ill-equipped

About my mask
Hmm… let me think
In the mirror
Above the sink

There is a face
Looking back
Good God, it’s old —
I cry, “ACK!”

“You’re scaring me,”
I say to it
But ’tis my mask
I admit

Inside I’m young
You just can’t see
If you could
You would agree

The wrinkled face
Is just a mask
The frumpy clothes?
Hmm — don’t ask

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: costume.

Writing

Election-ish

Sally4 Comments

One fish, two fish
Red fish, blue fish

One-ish, two-ish
Red-ish, blue-ish

Brave-ish, scared-ish
Not despaired-ish
Hoping, praying
Election’s fair-ish

I wish, I wish
With all my heart-ish
Our country will not
Fall apart-ish

So, dear friends,
Please go and vote
Then pray and pray
We stay afloat

Today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt is words that end -ish.

What can I say? Dr. Seuss was my favorite as a kid. And I’m worried for our country.

family

Here’s the wind-up..

Sally2 Comments

And the pitch!

I encouraged my kids to play either of two sports: swimming or soccer. They’re both fairly easy to understand.

In swimming the person who touches the wall first wins (assuming they swam the proper stroke legally).

In soccer, one team is heading toward one goal, the other toward the other. Kick the ball in the correct goal and your team scores a point. (Of course there are other rules, but that’s the general idea.)

Baseball, on the other hand, is not so easy.

I grew up on baseball, living in Cooperstown (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and alleged birthplace of the game) and having a father who made annual pilgrimages to Fenway Park in Boston. I can still name Red Sox players from those days: Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Conigliaro, Rico Petrocelli, Carlton Fisk.

After my father died, a man told me the story of how he first met my father — they were both driving to a spot outside town (the dump) where they could pick up WBZ to listen to the Red Sox game in the car. When Keith realized that my father was listening to the same game, he tapped on the car window, introduced himself, and thereafter they listened together and became friends with the common bond of Red Sox baseball.

But baseball is hard to understand. Just ask a tee-ball coach. They’re the ones trying to explain the hitting, running around the bases, fielding, tagging the runner, etc. etc etc.

I’ve watched the little faces of the players go blank as the coach loses them in his explanation.

I’ve watched kids run around the bases in the wrong direction because the coach neglected to mention that requirement.

I’ve watched players making dandelion crowns in the outfield because they don’t understand that they are still playing the game even though they feel like they are just standing around far from where the game is actually taking place.

Yep. Baseball fails to hold the attention of young people.

They won’t understand for a decade that the pitcher (when they’ve moved beyond tee-ball and actually have a pitcher) and the batter are really two chess players trying to outthink and thereby outplay the other.

No – a lot of them will be swimming or playing soccer because their mom was bored with baseball.

Still, I love watching that moment when the pitcher is leaning in, resting his hand with the ball on his back, studying the batter, watching the signals the catcher is giving him, deciding in a moment which pitch to throw. Meanwhile the batter is mentally running through the pitches he has seen the pitcher throw and deciding how he will respond to each one.

Yeah, I love that moment.

But, honestly, I love watching the hand hit the touchpad in pool even more.

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciouness Saturday prompt: pitch

Life · Music

Autumn Breeze

Sally2 Comments

[Verse 1]
See the leaf piles scattered in the side yard
As I pull into the driveway Friday night
Happy gray squirrel gatherin’ up the acorns
While above me geese are in their flight

[Chorus]
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind

[Verse 2]
Red and yellow, orange, rust-brown
Color palette whirling ‘cross my drive
So I walk on up to the doorstep
Breathe in brisk air, happy I’m alive

[Chorus]
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind

[Bridge]
Sweet days of autumn, October full moon
Seasons are changing — I love this tune
And I move on, life moves on with me too
And I have friends who help carry me through

[Verse 3]
Dinner cookin’, chicken in the oven
Talk about the day that we’ve both had
Sharing hopes, and sharing memories
Life is changing, but it isn’t all bad

[Chorus]
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind
Autumn breeze makes me feel fine
Rustlin’ through dry oak leaves in my mind

First, serious apologies to Seals and Croft. I stole your song and made it mine.

Second, apologies to Linda G. Hill. You asked for Stream of Consciousness writing — meaning no editing — but I confess to some. It’s just that when I saw the prompt this morning — Breeze — I had this song running through my head. Seals and Croft wrote Summer Breeze in 1972, but here, 54 years later, I have an Autumn Breeze running through my life and mind. So I looked up the lyrics to Summer Breeze and changed them.

Life

Typo

Sally4 Comments

Man, oh man, oh man, oh man — Could there be a more appropriate prompt for Stream of Consciousness writing for me today???

The truth is that I had a misunderstanding yesterday with someone based on a typo.

Well, not really a typo. I dictate my texts.

What I say and what Siri hears are two different things. Usually, I proof and correct after I dictate — but yesterday I didn’t.

That ^^ is what Siri heard.

One period does NOT belong. I wanted to tell someone that what they were thinking was incorrect. I didn’t think that they would do something incorrectly.

A misplaced period totally changed what I was saying. I WANTED to say, “It really isn’t that I thought you wouldn’t do it properly.”

But that one period made the sentence, “I thought you wouldn’t do it properly” stand alone.

Honestly, I didn’t think that.

Really.

Honest.

Truly.

The trials and tribulations of a typo. A single misplaced period.

family · Music

Roamin’ in the Gloamin’

Sally4 Comments

The music we hear as a child shapes us, doesn’t it? Last week, I wrote about “Night on Bald Mountain” in response to the Saturday Stream of Consciousness prompt. I can still picture the sleeve for the vinyl record we had.

This week, as soon as I saw the prompt, starts with gl–, my mind went to a song that my father used to play. He loved a Scottish tenor named Kenneth McKellar. If I close my eyes, I can still hear “Roamin’ in the Gloamin'” sung in that magnificent voice.

I remember asking my father what gloaming is. It’s evening or dusk. The song is about a fellow walking at that time of day with his sweetheart.

I think dawn and dusk ARE the prettiest times of day. There’s something about the liminal time, when it’s not quite one thing or the other, that makes it magical.

As the song says, “When the sun has gone to rest, that’s the time that we love best — Oh, it’s lovely roamin’ in the gloamin’.”

Music

Night on Bald Mountain

Sally2 Comments

Today’s SoC prompt is Bald, Balled, Bawled. I fell asleep last night trying to think about the last time I bawled so I could write about it. When was it? I couldn’t remember.

When I sat down to write this morning, bawled was out the window and bald was in. This is what came out —

A few weeks I was in Maine. On one of the days, we hiked and reached an overlook that had one of those pictures that identified the mountains we were seeing. One of them was called Bald Mountain — and immediately I was transported to my childhood.

We had a vinyl record that I listened to often. On one side was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Fantasia, and, because of that, Mickey Mouse was on the album sleeve. On the other side was Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.

I started singing Night on Bald Mountain to my friend — DAH DAH Da-Da-Da-DAH DA-DA da-da-da-DAH DAH! He looked at my like I had two heads. How does one sing a piece of classical music?

Truth be told, the Mickey Mouse side — The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was too scary for me, so I preferred the foreboding music of Bald Mountain.

And the day we were on the hike, the weather kept thinking about raining, although not a thunderstorm. Still the vista was cloudy and gave me the sense of potential storm, as on Bald Mountain.

This may or may not be the vista that identified Bald Mountain, but it was from that same day.

If you’re not familiar with the music, take a few minutes and listen to the Mussorgsky piece. Picture a little girl putting it on the record player in her room and falling asleep to it. That may explain a lot about me.

nonsense · Writing

Sometimes

Sally1 Comment

Sometimes I am lazy
And use imprecise words
Instead of wrens or robins
I just refer to them as birds

Sometimes I can catch myself —
I know what I should do!
But sometimes I say “sometimes”
Instead of “yesterday at two”

This is my stream-of-consciousness ditty brought to you by the prompt “sometimes.”

family · Grief · poetry

Ode to a Plastic Box

Sally4 Comments

My brother’s ashes
(I only really looked at them once
So my memory may not be accurate)
Were in a plastic bag
In a plastic box.

The bag was held shut
With a twist-tie.
I like to think it was green,
The color of life.

The rectangular box —
Neither orange
Nor brown
More the color of a dead autumn leaf —
Snapped shut
Like a pocket watch
Safely holding time inside.

It stood upright on the mantle
For at least year.

I whispered to it sometimes,
I miss you, Stewart. 
But he didn’t answer.
He smiled placidly at me
From the photograph
Beside the box.

We placed it in the Columbarium —
It seems like only yesterday —
But it was rainy
And spring
Not frosty
And fall

Tomorrow
The man will bring a new plastic box
Because my mother wouldn’t have wanted an urn
Jim joked about Cool-Whip containers
My mother would have liked that reuse
But I suppose it’s undignified
So she’ll have the box
That comes free
With cremation

She always appreciated a bargain.

This piece was originally written 11/18/2015 — two weeks after my mother died. I guess I never posted it because I found it in my draft folder while I was searching the word “miss” — Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Yes, miss is there — “I miss you, Stewart.”

I had looked at Linda’s prompt last night thinking maybe it would simmer during the night, like my mother’s soups used to on the woodstove. She made the best soup. She really did.

In the wee hours of the morning, the only miss I was thinking on was how I was missing sleep. I suppose I could have written a post on that.

Instead, I decided to give myself a hand by searching drafts. I have over 300 of them! This one hit home because I just had a conversation with a good friend (and this is the Stream of Consciousness part of the post.) It went something like this:

Friend: I suppose I should check on (insert person’s name). Her husband’s dying. He’s probably gone.

Me: You should definitely do that. Especially if you want to go the funeral.

[Note: he had served in Vietnam with the man who was dying.]

Friend: I don’t go to funerals.

Me: Even for someone you’ve known so long?

Friend: I don’t go to funerals. I only go to Celebrations.

I confess. I was judgy after that conversation, but reading this piece about the plastic boxes, I was reminded that grief is so individual.

We, as Americans, don’t have just one way to deal with death. Some have elaborate affairs and big funerals. Some celebrate the life. Some cremate. Some bury.

It seems to be a mix of honoring the person who died, and those left behind saying good-bye. I feel like my family did both with funerals.

And it’s Father’s Day on Sunday.

I miss my father.