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Feast

I took this photo yesterday because I am visiting friends in Texas. We had a memorial on Saturday and on Sunday we had a feast. I have perhaps tasted a single crayfish in jambalaya before, but I have never been to meal like this! Many thanks to the hosts and apologies to the crayfish: I am not a vegetarian…. So this is for Clare and Dean’s photo of the week! . I also am submitting it in response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Fresh.” Fresh with claws…..

“I weep for you,’ the walrus said, “I deeply sympathize.”

With sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size

Holding his pocket hand-kerchief before his streaming eyes…

From Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter

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Thorns

Once, oh Best Beloved, there was a little girl. She went on a trip to the desert.

The desert was very different from where she lived. All of the plants had thorns. Even the trees had thorns in their bark. But just like home, there were birds.

She saw a little bird. “Hello little bird,” she said.

“Hello,” said the little bird.

“The trees have thorns,” said the little girl. She touched a cactus softly and it bit her. She pulled out the fine thorns and sucked on her sore finger.

“Yes,” said the little bird.

“Where do you live?” said the little girl.

“Here in the desert!” said the bird, happy.

“How can you live in the desert?” said the little girl.

“There is morning dew and delicious insects and nectar from flowers!” said the bird.

“But can you build a nest?” said the little girl. There were no twigs.

“Of course!” said the little bird. “Come see. My nest is in this tree.”

The little girl looked and there was the nest. The nest was built of thorns.

“It is thorns.” said the little girl, thoughtful. “If you live in the desert, you build your nest of thorns.”

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Little Blue Pill

Little blue pill
Little blue pill
Help me help me
I’m over the hill

Don’t wanna have sex
Nope nope nope
Little blue pill
Gives my husband hope

Can’t make a pill
Til we define the disease
Doctors would you
Hurry up please

Little blue pill
Little blue pill
Help me help me
I’m over the hill

Thought them hormones
Would make me hot
Doc was right
They did not

Hot flashes make me
Sweat and moan
No help from that
Testosterone

Little blue pill
Little blue pill
Help me help me
I’m over the hill

Doctor this
Is really no joke
My husband says
He’ll slit his throat

Can’t make a pill
Til we define a disease
They’re trying hard
Those drug companies

I think we’ll know
If they define a disease
Drug companies will plaster it
On tv

Doctor I found
Just the thing
A brand new stimulating
Clitoral ring

Don’t wanna have sex
Nope nope nope
Little blue pill
Gives my husband hope

previously published on everything2.com

the mushroom is from the olympic peninsula. we didn’t know what it was and did not eat it.

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Lift

I am writing this for both Weird Image Wednesday and for Ronovan’s BeWoW.. Be Wonderful Wednesday. The image is from 2010 from a synchronized swim meet in Washington State. The girls do the lift from under water, and they are not allowed to touch bottom. They do the lift with their swimming skills. This team is very young and probably novices, so the girls lifting have their heads out of the water. As they get older, stronger and more skilled, the lifters would do all the lifting from under the water, holding their breath. I have seen girls lifted out to their feet in more experienced teams. Everyone has to be in the right position under the water and the person lifted has to have the core strength to stay straight or stay in their split during the lift.

Isn’t that wonderful and amazing?

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Foul sweets

This is for the Ronovan writes weekly haiku prompt. The words are foul and sweet. I am at a medical conference where we are really delving into diet and how the high sugar/ high corn syrup and high carbohydrate typical american diet increases our risk of inflammation. Eat more vegetables! And here is the poem….

Foul sweets, treats greet us

Meet us, daily folly. We

growl at sweets, eat meat.

 

The picture is a mushroom growing out of a tree on the Olympic Peninsula.

 

 

 

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The Introverted Thinker on high school fights

I just watched Taylor Swift’s Mean and it makes me think of what the Introverted Thinker says about high school fights. I asked if she sees a lot of bullying.

“Oh, mom, mostly it’s not bullying. Mostly it’s misunderstanding.”

She said that mostly the fights are mistakes. “Mom, one girl isn’t really thinking and she says something as she’s leaving. She is not even trying to hurt the other person. But she says something that is not thoughtful or can be taken wrong.

Then the other girl thinks about it and gets all upset. She talks to her friends and then snubs the first girl. The first girl doesn’t remember the comment and has no idea that it has hurt anyone. She doesn’t know what the fight is about, so she feels attacked out of the blue by the second girl and her friends.

It’s silly and it’s usually a misunderstanding. The first girl made a dumb or thoughtless or confusing comment. It gets taken wrong and then it all escalates from there.”

It is hard to go back to a person who made a comment that feels really hurtful and ask: what did you mean when you said this? There is bullying and meanness as well. But my daughter thinks that it’s mostly not deliberate or thoughtless cruelty: mostly it’s thoughtless comments.

Taylor Swift Mean
More Introverted Thinker and Extroverted Feeler stories here.

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Off balance/balance

Plato’s Groove lovely poem from yesterday reminds me of Portia Nelson’s poem “A Poetic Interlude:Β  Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”. I wrote my own version of this back in 2005, about trying to change. It is hard. I also want to submit this to the Ronovan Writes BeWoW Wednesday, for Be Wonderful Wednesday. @RonovanWrites. I think looking inside and trying to change and changing is wonderful…..

Off balance/balance

Confusion
Makes no sense
React react react
Engage
Argue
Fight
Want to bite kick scream
Argue (control) argue
Icky tone of voice
Ugly
Confusion confusion
Told I am wrong
I am overreacting
I am invalid
Child again
Hide

Confusion
Makes no sense
React
Stop
Don’t react
Stop…..
Wait…..
Feel…..
Confusion ANGER
Let anger go
Confusion: Sad, Hurt
Sad feels lonely
Not engaged
Remember you are loved
Remember you are lovable
Sad is ok
Remember
Roses and violets and lupine
Spring from the path
Where your true self steps
Call true friends
Comforted.

Confusion
Makes no sense
Hurts
No react
Listen
Confusion not mine
Sad
Disengage
Remember
Roses and violets and lupine
True self
Comfort self

Confusion
Not mine
Step away
Comfort self

Comfort
Comfortable
I am loved
I am cherished
I am safe

June 11, 2005

previously published on everything2.com

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Beacon bacon

I am really enjoying RonovanWrites‘s weekly Haiku prompt challenge. Also he made me laugh here at the “ow” comment. Thank you for making me laugh! The problems are that I have trouble spelling Ronovan (I want to put the o at the end and the a in the middle) and is the apostrophe in the correct place? These are things to ponder. Today’s prompt is Field and beacon. I have been rereading Walt Kelly’s Pogo comics, wordplay and spellingplay all over the place. He makes up words or combines word or misspells words on poipoise. It is wonderful play. So the first word that comes to my mind with field and beacon is, of course, bacon. Wasn’t that true for you? And bacon sparks a whole other train of thought. My brain is like one of those old fashioned train stations, where the engine was place on the central track and could be turned to start off in another direction, or even turned to face back towards the train that it had just pulled in….

And another track: I have a friend of 30+ years who works on rear end devices. Trains, not twerking…. rear end devices replaced cabooses. I liked cabooses better then the rear end box. And we could now go soaring off into black boxes and airplanes…..

Here are the words I played with:

Field, beacon, bacon, become

feel, felt, belt, real steal meal

steal, steeled, feeled, deal.

And the result:

Bacon beacon past

beckons. Feeling real steel field.

Feeling begs, I yield.

The photo is from a place where bacon was loved. Peace be with you.

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Love and self

When you love someone, do you lose your self?

I think that is the tricky bit about love. When you fall for someone else, do you fall or do you hold on to yourself? Where is that boundary?

I am in a flirtation. I am very interested in a person. I am interested in what he says and what he is interested in. I am learning quite a bit about some topics that really, have not been on my radar. I also often disagree quite strongly in the realm of politics. And I don’t really care that our politics are just about opposite ends of the spectrum.

I am interested in where we meet and where we don’t meet. Where we agree and where we very strongly disagree and privately think that the other person needs their head examined. I am not falling too far into the “really this person thinks like I do, they just won’t admit it” trap. Well, perhaps I am. Perhaps that is what love is: when we project part of our self and the ideal part of ourself on to the other person. They reflect and occupy some part of our ideal. That does not mean that they ARE our ideal or that they ARE the projection.

In this particular flirtation, he does not seem interested in much of what I am interested in. Well, particularly poetry. Occasionally this bothers me but mostly I shake it off. I am hoping that I have reached the age and level of cynicism where I do not expect the other person to like everything I like, to agree with what I say, to have the same ideals or ideas. I am watching myself and wondering how much of what I like in him is him and how much is my projection. Don’t know yet. The mind is a peculiar place. So is the heart.

But …. I am feeling much happier about holding on to myself at the same time as I fall and crush. I look at what he likes and wants but I also hold what I like and want. I am trying to give them equal weight, the needs and wants and desires of the two people present.

Hold and fall, at the same time.

The picture is of an etching by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.

Shake it off.

Also published on everything2.com