Sharing My World

Some early mornings I share my backyard world with this big old jack rabbit. He mostly ignores me before disappearing under the fence but I still enjoy our time together.

The happiness project is complete (although Jazzy will probably continue to pop up sporadically being her brilliantly happy oblivious wine drinking little self) and it’s time to do some actual writing again.  For a start, I’m joining the world sharers at last, after thinking about it for 36 weeks.

Share Your World Week 37

List three pet peeves.

1.  Public washrooms.

2.  People who don’t wash their hands.

3.  Improperly installed toilet paper rolls.

What makes you unique?

My tendency to give up when someone resists being convinced of something by my brainless arguments.  What?  That’s not unique?  Well forget it then.

What would be your ideal birthday present, and why?

I would like to receive the gift of good health for the next sixty-five years.  Which would make me a hundred and thirty years old with a lot of dead friends and relatives. So forget that one too.  Just give me best wishes.  I already have too much stuff.

Which way does the toilet paper roll go? Over or under?

Well here’s the thing.  It always goes over and down.  If it went under and up it would be defying gravity.  Think of those gigantic toilet paper rolls in public washrooms that are mounted sideways on the wall.  They unwind on the left or on the right.  Depending on your perspective, you think they are unrolling from the top or the bottom, but clearly they are unwinding from the top either way.  Face the toilet paper roll in your own bathroom which you have installed the wrong way and which you believe to be unrolling from the bottom.  Imagine yourself on the other side of it, and you will see it is really unrolling from the top.  Trust me on this, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing it.  You could argue that it’s always unrolling from the bottom too, but you’ll just piss people off because they don’t give a shit.  Hey, it’s toilet paper we’re talking about, I can use my bathroom words.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I am grateful to be de-cluttering at a time in my life when I am very likely to completely forget about the things I’ve packed away and never go looking for them again.  I’m grateful that my house is looking cleaner and brighter and less like a messed up museum.

This week I will survive four more work days and have just six left to live through before retiring to my messed up museum for good.  Or bad, depending on your perspective.

No Looking Back

 

He leans over the balcony railing with her note in one hand and his half smoked cigarette in the other.  Can’t stay, sorry love, pressing matters, no point waking you up to say goodbye… So many lies.  He wants to believe them and doesn’t know why.

The paper crumples in his fist, drops to the patio stone.  He watches it skitter and dance in the morning breeze.  Imagines her leaving, how she walked, the set of her shoulders, the swing of her hair.  Gone, like that.  With no looking back.

He slowly exhales.  His head hurts.  So does his heart.

**********

Light and Shade Challenge – 100 words inspired by the above picture and this quote:  She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake – Margot Asquith

Shipwreck

                     He says he wants to brave the rapids

                So one leg in the canoe I give us a push

                        Bare feet with life jacket over bikini

              Too late I realize we’re bound to mess up

                Grab the paddles and endeavour to row

       Whack some rocks in the creeks white water

                  Bumping and tossing we finally capsize

                        Our little adventure is less than epic

           In three feet of water we wade to the dock

Poetry Prompt #6 – Reverse Acrostic from We Drink Because We’re Poets

Well this was fun!  Why start off with a frontwards Acrostic when you can do a backwards one?

Murder on the Beach

Yellow crime scene tape flutters and flaps in the cold wind off the lake.  Shutters click,  red lights flash.  The detectives unblinking eyes sting and tear, mesmerized by the bludgeoned body lying face down in the sand.  Seagulls slowly circle and cry.

 

Written for Yeah Write # 156 Gargleblaster – 42 words – Who Dunnit?

Thump Ripe Melons

365 Days of Writing Prompts ( WordPress) for January 4:  Quote Me 

Yes, I know I am a day behind, but I’m skipping the one they suggested for today because it involved the phrase ‘favourite book’ and for me there just is no such thing. Or possibly favourite anything, but for the sake of sanity, I’ll just pick a quote I like and everything will be back to normal tomorrow.  Or, you know, as close as it gets.

Do you have a favourite quote that you return to again and again?  What is it, and why does it move you?

Life is a thump-ripe melon, so sweet and such a mess.  (Joan Baez)

Found out yesterday I have been getting this quote wrong forever.  I thought it was “life is like a soft ripe melon, so sweet and such a mess” but the words are from the song Rexroth’s Daughter, and the original version of this quote (which is actually what one is supposed to get right, because, duh, it’s a quote)  is a lot better than the one I appear to have messed up. Because thump-ripe is an incredibly fun thing to say, and stating that life IS something is so much more emphatic than being vague about what life might be like.

The whole song is quotable.  It’s so sixties and folk-song-y. I also found out it was a song originally done by Greg Brown, and Joan Baez did a cover of it, so it’s not even her quote!  See??  Life IS a big mess.  Sometimes I think that’s exactly what makes it sweet.  And thump-worthy.

Anyway, enough making things up for now.  Here is the song, sounding to me at the beginning as if her guitar might have been used a few too many times for melon thumping.

Coldest night of the winter, working up my farewell
In the middle of everything, under no particular spell
Dreaming of the mountains where the children learn the stars
Clouds roll in from Nebraska, dark chords on a big guitar
My restlessness is long gone standing like an old jack pine
I’m looking for Rexroth’s daughter. She’s a friend of a friend of mine
Can’t believe your hands and mouth did all that to me
And they are so daily naked for all the world to see
That thunderstorm in Michigan I never will forget
We shook right with the thunder and in the pounding rain got wet
Where did you turn when you turned from me with your arms across your chest
Yeah I’m looking for Rexroth’s daughter, saw her in the great northwest

Would she have said it was the wrong time if I had found her then
I don’t ask very much, a field across the road and a few good friends
She used to come and see me, she was always there & gone
Even the very longest loves don’t last very long

She’d stood there in my doorway smoothing out her dress
saying ‘life is a thump-ripe melon – so sweet and such a mess’

Well the murderer who lived next door seemed such a normal guy–
You try to swallow what they shove at us, you run out of tears to cry
I heard a man speak quietly, I listened for a while
He spoke from his heart to my woe and then he bowed and smiled
What is real but compassion as we move from birth to death
Yeah I’m looking for Rexroth’s daughter and I’m running out of breath
Spring will come back I know it will and it will do its best
so useful, so endangered like a lion or a breast
I think about my children when I look at any child’s face
pray that we will find a way to get with all this amazing grace

It’s so cold out there tonight, stormy I can hardly see
I’m looking for Rexroth’s daughter and I guess I always will be.

A Fork Tale

Daily Prompt: 

Write a post about anything you’d like, but be sure to include this sentence somewhere in the final paragraph:

“He tried to hit me with a forklift!”

***********

Clifton Carmichael is a dutiful son.  He goes to visit his 89-year-old mother in the seniors residence every day and patiently listens to all her complaints.

The food is terrible here.  Everything is mush.  The coffee is like dishwater.  And those caregivers!  Why do they always mumble and never speak up.? And they don’t listen either.  I tried to tell them that some of my best articles of clothing have been lost by the facility laundry.  Anybody could be wearing my things!  I wanted to keep a look out for them but someone has gone off with my good glasses too.  I don’t think I’m wrong to strongly suspect that old coot, Ernie.  You remember Ernie?  They’ve forced me to share a table with him in the dining room and he is downright cantankerous and extremely unpleasant.  I have no idea why.  I try to be nice, I surely do, but I do not like him, not one little bit.  Why, just the other day he rudely disrupted dinner by waving his cutlery around at me in a very menacing manner.  Clifton, are you listening to me? 

Hmmm…?  Of course mother.  Ernie.  Are you getting along any better with Ernie now?

He tried to hit me with a fork, Clift!

A forklift?  Mama, don’t be ridiculous.  And don’t fret, nobody could get a forklift past the security doors.

A fork, Clift.  FORK!  FORK!  FORK!

Mother,  please!  Shush – such language!  You’ve imagined the forklift.  I’ll get the nurse to give you something to calm your nerves.

Get her to give something to that Fork King, Ernie, why don’t you? He’s the villainous silverware fiend!  Oh, never mind.  Nobody listens to me.  Go home Clifton.  I can look after myself.

Yes. Yes, alright.  I do believe you can.

Clifton Carmichael sighs as he gets up and kisses the top of his mother’s silver head.  Forklifts in the dining room.  Good God, he thinks as he bids her goodbye, what next?

Related articles

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My Inner Emily

Emily dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Daily Prompt:  Unleash Your Inner Dickinson.  National Poetry Writing Month is nearly at an end. To celebrate it, try your hand at some verse.

Huh.  I thought I just did that.  And how come I didn’t know it was national poetry writing month?  Do you suppose I wasn’t informed on purpose?

No matter, another poem probably won’t kill us.  Well, me, anyway.  I don’t know about you.  I just hope poor Emily doesn’t roll over in her grave.  Or come back to haunt me.  Because I am about to update one of her poems.

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

Emily Dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Emily Dickinson

A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!

Your prayers, oh Passer by!

From such a common ball as this

Might date a Victory!

From marshallings as simple

The flags of nations swang.

Steady—my soul: What issues

Upon thine arrow hang!

A Prompt!  Help! Help! Another Prompt!

by grandmalin

A prompt! OMG, another prompt!

Give me a break you guys.

Such a seemingly simple request

Might cause INSANITY!

You prompt and prompt and never stop

The stress is making me mad.

Hold on, my soul:  No worries

Just write something really bad.

The only thing I like better about Emily’s poem compared to mine is the use of the word “swang”.  That is a truly awesome word.

And this post, my friends, should prove once and for all that poetry writing and appreciation is really not my strong point.

elders (Photo credit: sbpoet)

Random Words and Images

Kaua’i (Photo credit: Cody Wms)

November is just such a random month where nothing really happens here except for Remembrance Day and putting in time waiting for December.  And shovelling snow.  Blah.  Here’s a daily prompt I’m finally getting around to doing.  My attention to these things is obviously random as well.

Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind.

Step one – I went to wordnik for a random word, and this one to me is about as random as they get.

psychopomp – from a Greek word meaning ‘spirit-guide.’  A guide or conductor of spirits or souls to the other world: a special title of Hermes.  (He was that Greek God who was the messenger of the Gods, and the conductor of souls into the afterlife.  He had winged sandals and a winged cap. He could fly like the wind.)

Spirit Guide (Photo credit: Cayusa)

Step two – google image search.  The eleventh picture was a gigantic cat with huge yellow eyes staring off into space. Next to the cat was a kneeling half-naked woman with long dark hair and dangling earrings.  One of her arms was raised with her hand behind her head.  I could not see the other arm.  Maybe it was missing.  The cat and the woman appeared to be sitting on some kind of huge cat pillow, with splotches of yellow and orange light behind them, over which were superimposed some glowing heart-shaped things.

You have to know that I could not possibly be making any of this up.

But I’m not posting that picture here either, because stranger things than that have a copyright.

Instead, I’m including these two pictures from the media gallery because that blue stuffed thing on the beach is way more interesting than a large cat, and the spirit guide picture on the left is something I prefer looking at more than a scantily clad womans armpit.  Call me crazy if you want.

Step three – write about whatever the image brings to mind.  It makes me think about how weird cats are.  Maybe when they look at us they can see our spirit guides wrapped around us and that’s why they want nothing to do with us.  This doesn’t explain why they can stare into empty corners for an hour or fall asleep in sinks.  I don’t have cats anymore, but almost 20 years of living with them didn’t make me an expert on their incredibly stupid and yet infinitely wise behaviour.  I’m just thankful they couldn’t talk.

Well there we go.  Random nonsense on a cold and snowy November day.  I hope my personal spirit guide isn’t in any hurry to conduct my soul into the afterlife.  I hope he’s focussed on some completely random day in the very distant future.  Maybe that day when we all miraculously get where cats are coming from.  I can wait.