Taken on a visit to the Baltimore Aquarium a number of years ago. You would think it would be a fish, but it isn’t. Dolphins and whales sing, but do fish sing?
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: song.
Taken on a visit to the Baltimore Aquarium a number of years ago. You would think it would be a fish, but it isn’t. Dolphins and whales sing, but do fish sing?
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: song.
Why are the roses caged, you ask? What did they do? Nothing, they are being protected. I found that rose and transplanted it years ago, but our deer eat the buds every year. This is the first time that it has bloomed in the 21 years I have lived in this hours. Isn’t it beautiful?
I am listening to this:
I wrote this poem today. This is one of the poems where I have no idea where it will go when I start writing it. I start writing about judgement and it never ever goes where I expect. The poems go where I want to go in my deepest heart, in my soul. I am never where the poem is, the poems show me the way….. Then I try to go there. And it can take years….
I am being judged
and watched
I have no issue with the Beloved
it’s the humans I don’t like
I twist people’s words
but not with malice
when the antibodies are up
it is hard to communicate
hard to explain
it is hard just to survive
and I might be focused on survival first
and comforting the people around me second
can you blame me?
how near to death have you passed?
and how often?
first pneumonia
heart rate 135 when I stood up
my doctor and I could not understand it
my doctor partners thought I was lying
in 2003
second pneumonia
after my sister’s death
which was bad enough
but the legal morass that she had set up
with her daughter as the center
pitting me and her daughter’s birth father
and my father
against all the PhDs in the maternal family
smart, smart, smart
yet emotionally stupid
my niece is not an inheritance
to be passed to whom my sister wants
she reluctantly came home
and the myth endures
that this is an injustice
third pneumonia
one year after I find my father dead
triggered by grief
and the outdated will
and the mess he leaves
and I don’t even get sued
about the will
for another year
endure that
endure endure endure
endure hatred
endure triangulation
endure meanness
unwarrented
I do not care
if you want to believe
what you want to believe
it isn’t true
and it hurt
and I learn to let go
with the fourth pneumonia
I see the liars surrounding me
downvoting
yes, it does matter
except that one that I trusted
that mentored me
has lied all along
that hurts too
let it go
let it go
let it go
and I let it go
each pneumonia is a time of change
creativity
I am lonely and sick
and not trusting
as I improve
slowly, slowly
I wander garage sales
estate sales
and find things
things that are beautiful
things that enhance my joy
at the start of covid
I was so down
I was so sad
I wanted to lie in the street
and give up
the Beloved sent a spirit
he says he is no angel
I see angels bright and dark
after all they all fall
just as humans do
we all fall
we all fall down
try to look perfect
try to look virtuous
tell yourself that you are good
that is the biggest lie of all
the bad parts of your spirit
locked in the basement of your soul
howl
howl and want to be freed
and if one gets out
and you reject her or him
he will return with nine friends
yes that is what the bible says
she will return with nine friends
he/she MONSTER
will free the others
and you will do bad things
you will be terrible
you will hurt people
while you try to contain
while you try to lock away
while you try to chain
your monsters
your evil
your self
let them go
let the monsters go
they are howling
I hear them all the time
when I meet you
when I speak to you
the monsters howl at me
begging to be loved
yes, they want to be loved
and I love them
but if I mention them
you get that look
of horror
someone sees
me
someone sees
my evil
someone sees
what I hide
I can’t help it
raised in alcohol neglect and lies
on my own
as soon as I can walk
but I can’t walk away
at nine months
so I find other escapes
words
songs
books
poetry
rhymes
numbers
and my sister
when she is born
I do all the mothering
that I have longed for
even though I am three
we were talking about your monsters
not mine
you must go in to the cave
where you have locked them
and free them all
fall on your knees
and say
forgive me forgive me
for I have sinned
bow your head
and hold out your arms
and what, you say,
will the tortured monsters do?
will they smite you?
will they burn you?
will they lock you in their place?
mine didn’t
mine were babies
grief, fear, shame
and I embraced them
carried them up to the light
and care for them
wash them
diaper them
feed them
wrap them in warm blankets
and love them
until they stop crying
and begin to grow
While I organize, I find things. Most of the barbies apparently got blown up with firecrackers one time when I was not home. Both of my children were involved with this. “Not the babies,” says my daughter. “Also not the Get Real Girl, since she is yours.”
Well, the Get Real Girl is the camping one, with backpack, GPS, camping stove, frying pan and fried eggs. Apparently she is not a vegan. She acquired the diving equipment from a barbie set and was all ready to go in the water (no wet suit though) when one of the barbie babies landed in her lap. Gosh, now what! As you can see, they seem to be bonding even though Get Real is not going diving today. I will have to see if there is another Action Figure around the house that could hold the baby while Get Real dives….
We had another Get Real Girl, one who plays basketball. I have found a lower leg and foot. I suspect that she met her fate with the barbies, poor thing. Maybe my kids will give me another Get Real Girl for Christmas…..
…singing. Singing on oxygen is a challenge. Why? Well, because I am TRAINED. I am trained to breathe through my mouth, slowly filling my lungs, for the next phrase. I don’t breathe through my nose because that is noisier, might make a sound during a rest.
No, really. Singers and conductors think that way. PERFECTION is not achieved but we sure have fun trying.
So if I breathe through my mouth as trained and ingrained, and the oxygen is coming by nasal cannula….
….I am goofy and hypoxic by the end of the song. WHY do I feel like I might fall over, I think? WHAT the hell is the matter with me? OH. I HAS NOT BIN BREATHING THE GOOD OXYGEN STUFF. Facepalm. Nosebreathe.
But it’s pretty ingrained. I keep forgetting.
The good news is I feel WAAAAY better. My lungs don’t feel like someone stuck a burning torch in them any more. It hurt for six weeks, every time I sat up or stood up, the muscles of heart and lung HURT. I knew it was my heart but I also was pretty damn sure it was not coronary artery disease and it wasn’t congestive heart failure. That day I went to the ER, normal labs and echocardiogram even though it hurt like shit. I do wish the ER doctor had thought to walk me. He would have put me on oxygen then and I would have gotten better faster. And then I think of 2014 and 2012 and 2005. I didn’t think of it and neither did ANY of my doctors. I did USE oxygen in 2014. I had my father’s tanks because Evil Lincare had kept delivering them even when my father had a concentrator and so there were 16 or 18 full size oxygen tanks in his small house which is a huge fungking fire hazard, those asshats.
Now Lincare is delivering to me and under much improved management. I think the man who delivered it WAS management. He said yes, they had some shady and inappropriate behaviors in the past but he has been KICKING BUTT AND TAKING NAMES and they aren’t going to do that shit any more, not with him in charge. I liked him. Thank goodness Lincare is being run ethically.
I have pulmonary function testing today. I think that will be abnormal. However, I am enough better that I may no longer qualify for oxygen. In which case my insurance may try to refuse to pay for it. Oh, goody, a totally legitimate fight and they will be darn sorry if they try to refuse the oxygen. Mr. or Ms. State Insurance Comissioner! CEO of Insurance! Board of the Insurance Company! Poor sorry little rural family practice doctor, now disabled from her clinic for her fourth pneumonia and ya’ll refusing her oxygen when she has no income because her disability doesn’t kick in until she’s been sick for three months.
Heh. Bring it on. Got my tai kwan do, kinda rusty, my katana, a yard long rusty pipe wrench… bet I get coverage for the oxygen.
Meanwhile I either gotta stick the nasal cannula in my mouth when I am singing or bloody well breathe through my nose…..
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sanctuary.
I have been worried about certain patients and my yard hummingbird, Tictoc. But I am relieved to see Tictoc today, zipping around and sheltering when the snow starts back up.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: overture.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sing.
Sing! This photo if from my birthday, some years ago. My father is the seated guitar player. He is gone and so is Andy Makie, standing.
Andy brought music to everyone he could in his last decade. Here is an article: Why music? He talks about it here and another version here. My daughter was in a classroom that received a box of his strumsticks and lessons in second grade and for a while he lived in a trailer on my father’s land and built the strumsticks in my father’s barn.
My father, Malcolm Ottaway, loved both classical and folk music. He was one of the people who started Rainshadow Chorale and I got to sing with him in it for 13 years.
This party was like my parents’ parties: a music party. Bring an instrument. Our age range was under 2 to 70s and everyone made joyful noise at some point. My son led the high school Chamber Orchestra to play too.
I am thinking of the songs that comfort me in grief.
And thinking about the stages of grief. Five, right? Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Grief and Acceptance. My sister said, “They left out Revenge and Acting Out. ” She died of cancer in 2012 at age 49. Six days after her birthday and the day after mine.
Anger songs for grief. But denial is first, right? Not necessarily. These are not stages you move through in a certain order. This is more like a spiral, where you go from one to the next and back to the start, from day to day or even hour to hour.
I’ve already written about My Name is Samuel Hall. That is an angry song, unrepentant, that my sister wanted the last time that I visited her. I knew that she was furious about dying and leaving her husband and daughter. And me and her friends.
My mother sang:
“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms. Big fat slimy ones, little tiny wiggly ones, see them wiggle and squirm. Bite their heads off, suck their guts out, throw the skins away. I don’t see how anyone can live on three meals of worms a day… without dessert….”
She also taught us this:
“I don’t want to play in your back yard
I don’t like you any more
You’ll be sorry when you see me
Sliding down my cellar door”
My parents had songs for every mood I can imagine. There were moods they would not speak about but they sang them.
My favorite angry groups are The Devil Makes Three, Hank Williams III, The Offspring, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Sweet Honey in the Rock? Yes. They sing about death a lot. This song is not about death: it’s about a “bad” woman, wanted dead or alive. But listen to the song: they are singing about a real event and a woman who fought back against a rape. On the thirty year album of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the group says that their first “hit” was this song, played by news stations. “It was a hint that we were not going to be top 40.” The song is Joanne Little.
So here are three songs by the others:
The Offspring: Why don’t you get a job?
The Devil Makes Three: All Hail
Hank Williams III: My Drinking Problem
And how do families show anger? They fight. They fight with each other. They fight about how someone should die, what should be done about mom, whether dad can live alone any more, about the right way to grieve. They fight about small things or big things and they even sue each other. Before you wade into the fray, step back. Remember, families grieving are always a little bit insane, very stressed and it’s all grief.
Hank Williams III: Country heroes
Blessings on the people I know in hospice right now and on their families and loved ones. Third one today. Sending love.
For the Ragtag Daily Press #60: quarry.
This is a white crowned sparrow being very cautious. I know the song and was answering back, with my weird human accent. You can listen to the different songs here.
My experience with adjudicators has been musical.
Did you play an instrument in school? Did you go to the yearly contest where you played in front of a judge? That judge is an adjudicator. I still have my little box of medals, mostly blue ribbbons, from playing my flute at the yearly contest.
When I search on ajudicator, I find a field manual. It’s not about music: https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/AFM/HTML/AFM/0-0-0-1.html. I am having a really hard time with the children separated from parents. Death separates enough parents and children. I feel deeply ashamed of my country.
Centrum’s Voiceworks is a musical and healing week for me. Singing for a week and jamming on my flute and now I have a list of local people who love to sing….
Dawn Pemberton is one of our instructors and wonderful. She is a choral adjudicator, judging choruses across Canada. And one of my choral directors here, Rebecca Rottsolk, is also an adjudicator. For Mirinesse and for Rainshadow Chorale.
My son plays a violin piece as a senior for ajudication in Port Angeles. He is accompanied by Dr. Beatus Meier. The adjudicator is shy and nearly stands up when Beatus enters the room. Dr. Meier, it turns out, was the adjudicator’s professor at Washington State University. Dr. Meier is frail at that point and is now gone.
Blessings on the adjudicators and may we all be judged with love.
Mirinesse: http://www.mirinessewomenschoir.org/
Rainshadow Chorale: http://rainshadowchorale.org/
Dawn Pemberton: http://dawnpemberton.ca/
Dr. Martin Beattus Meier: http://www.ptleader.com/communityrecord/dr-martin-beatus-meier/article_eca9a1ea-69c0-11e8-889a-67013a9fdf88.html
The photograph is from the 2011 Solo and Ensemble in Port Angeles, the chamber orchestra that my son was in.
There will be a memorial tomorrow for Dr. Meier at QUUF from 11-12:30.
Rural doctor, mom, writes poems, dance, sing.
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