Tag Archives: writing

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Print or cursive?

My father’s father was a pressman and the head pressman when he was in Knoxville, Tennessee. This is back in the lead type times, when the type had to be set before printing the newspapers. Before they moved to Knoxville, they lived in Connecticut. My father said that my grandfather helped develop the four color process for the comics. My father would get the new comic books, Superman, straight off of my grandfather’s press. Too bad those were thrown out!

I started cursive in school in about fourth grade and I did not like it. I learned, but I thought it was ugly. My father knew how to write in italics. I liked italics much more and asked him to teach me. I adapted the capital letters to make them easier and then I wrote my papers in italics when we were not allowed to print. The teachers objected but I pointed out that we weren’t allowed to print in the papers, but it did not say, “No italics.” I imagine that some teachers found me difficult.

My cursive is still stuck in about fifth grade and I almost never use it.

Meanwhile fast forward. A law is passed in Washington State that prescriptions cannot be written in cursive. However, it does not say that we have to print. The same loophole. I usually printed prescriptions anyhow, so that the pharmacist could read it. I got compliments occasionally for printing in a legible way. I didn’t spell certain medicines correctly, but the pharmacists never seemed to care about that. Now it is all by fax and since Covid started, even the controlled substances go by fax.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: print.

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Wait

I came close but no cigar
I want a mind that I can love
hand holding mine in the car
I send a quiet prayer above
Love of nature, kind to friends
not afraid of their own dark
Lust to learn until their end
willing to risk to build an ark
Curious but not controlling
Not addicted to booze or drugs
Intense at times and others strolling
Opinions, laughter and lots of hugs
My heart open yet I don’t faint
I think I am waiting for a saint

_____________________________

I wrote the poem yesterday, but I have used up my memory in wordpress and now I need to go through and delete things. Any advice, Martha? I know you did it. It seems that I have to delete the post and the photograph, or is that not true? Advice welcomed.

I search my photographs for gloves and it comes up with two: foxgloves! Well, strictly speaking, that is a form of glove, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: glove.

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The boring vampire

I meet a boring vampire
when I am boring too
when I am worrying with angst and ire
and have too much to do

It’s in the time of covid
We start to walk the beaches
The vampire won’t take paxlovid
His ego overreaches

He says his life’s perfection
He says his brain can’t fit his head
He has no belief in resurrection
That’s probably because he’s dead

I wonder that he lies
Does he think that I don’t see?
The person that believes the lies
Must be him, not me

I grieve before he ousts me
He says he’ll always be my friend
And he speaks of longing to be free
I know there will be an end

I know before he ousts me
He says we’re friends forever
I blink and calmly see
That it will soon be never

Some vampires don’t need staking
They do it to themselves
Isolation of their making
Hoarding blood upon their shelves

______________________________

The photograph is a “swamp robin” (Varied Thrush) from my yard, December 2022.

This has nothing to do with the Ragtag Daily Prompt: festival. Except that swamp robins are very festive.

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Love gently

Honey is older, nearly thirty years since that first feeling of being bitten by ants. She is back in corporate medicine, as a temp. Temporary, short term, maybe that will work better.

It is a joy to go in a room and be alone with a person and their monsters. Theirs and hers. Sometimes the younger ones haven’t experienced it, they are terrified if one of their monsters becomes a little bit visible, they hate seeing them. Honey tries to be gentle. If they only want to talk about the sore shoulder and not the stress and violence, well, she leaves the door open a crack. Sometimes the monsters cry.

Older people may be stiff to start with, but when they realize their monsters are seen, acknowledged, this isn’t another robot doctor in to say increase your diabetes medicine, lower your diabetes medicine, tell them a plan without ever connecting, the older ones lean back, sigh, and relax. The monsters play on the floor, Honey’s monsters playing with theirs, happy, engaged.

The hard part is the clinic staff. Honey is with them daily. The medical assistants are young. They kick their monsters aside as they walk down the hall. It is terribly hard and heartbreaking to work at her desk, with the medical assistants’ monsters cowering under their desks, kicked, abused, silent tears and holding bruises. Honey’s monsters mind. They climb into her lap and hide their faces in her shirt, under her jacket, peer over her shoulder. They don’t understand! Why can’t she be nice to THESE monsters?

Honey whispers to her monsters when the medical assistants are rooming patients. “I am so sorry, loves. If I acknowledge these, the monsters of the women working, I become a demon. It is very hard to share an office, no wonder I worked in a clinic alone for eleven years.” Honey has been through that. It is still inconceivable that some people don’t see the monsters at all. Is it learned blindness? Or just not developed unless someone had to learn it? Unless someone grows up in terror and seeing the monsters is the only way to survive.

Honey thinks some people learn to see them as adults, at least their own monsters. Hard enough to do that, without seeing the monsters clinging to other people.

Honey is tired of her monsters crying in sympathy with the staff’s monsters. She thinks maybe there are small crumbs that she can leave for these demons. Little gifts. Her monsters can creep under the desk when she is the only one in the room and leave something. A flower. A dust bunny. A crumb of a crisp. A small rock. A little gift to let them know they are seen and loved. A poem. A prayer. Just a tiny bit of love.

_____________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crisp.

The photograph is me all dressed up for the 1940s ball.

______________________________

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Tea bear

My friend C. is a bear.

People don’t know she is a bear. She carries a bear, a teddy bear. It is named S Bear, after her husband. He died of cancer a while ago. So she carries a bear named after him. The first time I met the bear, I asked if it needed a teacup too. Because people make clothes for it and I don’t know how far it all goes. No, the teddy bear did not need a teacup.

My friend C. is a bear. She writes horror stories under the name lostcauser. The writer is from Tennessee and so is C. The stories are horrid. Lostcauser is an anagram. Rearrange the letters and you get closet ursa. Closet bear. Hidden bear.

She is not my only friend who is a bear. She is aware of her bearness, her ferocity, the beast inside. Bears like honey and blueberries, too, they aren’t just monsters. My other friend dreams of a one room shack in the woods. His dead brother is at the door shouting for help. His brother is being attacked by a bear. A huge terrifying bear.

“Did you invite it in?” I ask.

“It’s a BEAR.” says my friend.

“It’s a Dream Bear.” I say, “I would ask what it wants.”

“You don’t understand bears,” says my friend.

“I understand a lot about dreams. Some think that everyone you see in a dream is a part of yourself. It can be a part that you don’t accept.”

“Bears attack. You can’t invite them in.”

“I would ask the bear in. I would ask the bear if it would like some tea.”

I tell another friend about one of my dreams. There are monsters screaming. I go towards them.

“TOWARDS them?” says my friend. “Why would you go TOWARDS them?”

I have to think about it. “Well, they are screaming. They might be hurt. They might need medical care. I have to go help them.”

My friend shakes his head. “Only you,” he says, “would go towards the screaming.”

One time in my neighborhood, I hear horrible screaming. I get up. It is 1 am. I go out and try to find the screamer. I don’t find anyone. A few days later, I read that someone nearly severed their arm somehow, in my neighborhood. A policeman saves his life with a tourniquet. It was three blocks from my house, at the grade school. The grade school is where I went. I think the person was knifed, but I don’t know. My neighborhood does not get a lot of that sort of thing, at least, not a lot of screaming that wakes me up.

I wonder about my friend that is attacked by a dream bear. A bear that is much bigger than his dream self and his dream brother self. There must be a lot of darkness in that bear. It is angry about being ignored.

My friend C. is a bear. She knows she is a bear. Reading her stories, I do not think she likes being a bear.

I don’t mind if she is a bear. I wonder if we will have tea again some day.

____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fan. Why? Maybe I am a fan of bears. Or maybe fans make me think of hats and gloves and tea parties. And bears.

This is based on speculation and some true events.

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Sisyphus

Sometimes clinic feels a bit like Sisyphus must feel. Rolling the stone of illness up the hill but it is eternally rolling back down. I can’t stop it. People age and people die and otherwise there would be no room for young ones.

The last two weeks of clinic has worn me out a bit. A friend says that I take too much of it home, worrying about people. How to let go of this?

I make connections in clinic. Not all the time. Sometimes I fail. I made a connection with more than one person with diabetes this week, but one was funny. The connection is that he mentioned that he is an elk hunter. Oh, and flies to California to fish and has a very lot of fish. I said that I’ve had elk and like it. That was when the connection engaged: he was very pleased that I am not horrified by hunting. Hunting elk is not at all easy or cheap and cleaning the animal and carrying it out, well. He is coming back about his diabetes and left cheerful.

If I go home trailing those connections and spend my time worrying about this people, I’ll wear out. I don’t want pneumonia number five. So how do I connect but let it go when I go home?

I will think of the connection as much smaller than the boulder that Sisyphus deals will. Not a boulder. A small piece of the rock. I can suggest how the person can lighten the load a little. Then I must stand aside and let them go. They have to decide what to do about their health. It is between them and the Beloved, they can try what I say or not.

Now it is not a boulder that I am trying to keep from rolling down a mountain. Each person has their own mountain to climb in their life, their own habits and histories, good or bad, trailing them like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. I can suggest a tool to loosen a link of diabetes, or a slightly different trail up the mountain. Then it is up to them. I can’t carry them and should not carry them. Maybe they are approaching a patch of scree and I can suggest an easier or safer path. And then stand aside, stand down, let the people go.

Now I am not pushing a huge rock. I am standing on my own mountain, quiet, and looking at the path behind. I am resting a little and on my own path. I don’t know what will be around the next bend in the path. But I love the mountain and the forests and the birds and the ocean. All of it.

Thank you, oh Best Beloved.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: olympics!

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Volcanic fire

A friend and I travel to Hawaii in March 2018. The lava in the caldera had dropped on the volcano and the road around it was closed because of the gases. The changing eruption happened over the next few months. We found a place to wait for nightfall to take photographs. It is way more dramatic in the night, isn’t it? We could see fire rising up in the day too, but at night the smoke is lit up as well by the lava below. A scene on fire, beautiful and terrifying.

The smoke from forest fires has dissipated in Grand Junction. I stayed mostly inside for a few days, which is not hard on work days. The clothes I wear are backwards from the ones I wear on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. There I have a windbreaker and layers for outside and I think my heat pump has had the air conditioning on once ever. Here I need the warmer clothes for the air conditioned inside. I get cold at work by lunch time and go outside to warm up! Very strange.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fire.

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Talk

Today I will interview people in clinic, but yesterday I hiked alone. Well, no, not really alone. I spot movement and freeze. A silent interview of this rabbit, with the help of my zoom camera. There was a very young bunny further on, about 6 inches long, who hid behind a bush a year from me. I did not want to scare her, so did not get a photograph.

Lizards and crows, too. Chipmunks and a squirrel who was noisy until she realizes that I have spotted her in the small tree, barely taller than me.

I climbed the Serpent’s Trail which is an old road. It goes up and up but is never terribly steep. At the top, I can see the haze: smoke from forest fires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada is coming down. When I got home I closed up the house to keep the air cleaner. It is smokey today with lots of small particulates, not good. We will see more asthma, allergies, eye problems, emphysema and the smoke makes people headachey and irritable. I hope it doesn’t sit in the Grand Valley for a long time.

Meanwhile, the bunnies and the crows and the lizards and the squirrels, can’t go inside, can they?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: interview.

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Frail

I wrote this poem about my father at least a year before he died. He was on oxygen, on steroids, terrible emphysema from 55 years of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. He would not accept much help and became more and more of a hermit. He did continue with the Rainshadow Chorale and because of it he quit smoking three years before he died.

Frail

We are going sailing
My partner says to me
β€œInvite him if you want.”

Then I am busy for a while

I think of calling, then forget

He was not at chorus on Monday

At last I say,
β€œI haven’t called. We’ll just sail.
Just us today.”

I haven’t called
because he was not at chorus on Monday

He is frail
55 years of camels
two packs a day
as if each cigarette
destroyed one alveolus
in his lungs
one tiny air/blood interface
built to exchange oxygen
and carbon dioxide
the loss is cumulative


He is frail
he is proud that the choral director
says, β€œI need you.”
He can’t sustain
but his entrances and time
are the best
among the basses.
They need him.

Chorus
is our winter link
two introverts
we hug at the start of chorus
sing for two hours
and talk for a few minutes at the end

Occasionally we go for a beer
I invite him for dinner
but he comes less and less
he often does not feel well at night

He looks smaller at chorus
this season
this is normal in emphysema
the body sheds weight
too much tissue to oxygenate
too hard for the lungs
and the heart, working overtime
to make up the difference
he is blessed with low blood pressure
genetic, from his father,
tough English stock,
otherwise I think he’d be dead

I didn’t call
before we went sailing
because I am afraid

I’ve driven out before
when he has not answered the phone
for a day or two
wondering if I would find him dead

I didn’t call
before we went sailing
because he was not at chorus on Monday
because if he didn’t answer today
I would not go

______________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: frail.

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Coping or manipulation?

I see someone in clinic with a difficult boss.

This brought up work stories. Now, are these coping skills or manipulation or a bit of both? You decide.

Long ago I work in a lab at the National Institutes of Health. We are super busy and doing a lot of overtime and have some media pressure as well. Our boss gets us together and gives us hell, about making mistakes. I am annoyed, because I’ve been really careful. I stew. I write a letter, what I think he should have said, which is telling us all great job, you’ve worked super hard, we are under pressure and also we need to not make mistakes. I circulate it to the four other lab techs, who enjoy it. The lab cheers up a bit. Eventually I get brave and give it to the boss. He likes it and reads it to everyone, who try not to laugh. A year after I leave the lab, I visit, and he has that letter up on his bulletin board.

Long ago I am made chief of staff at a hospital. My goal is to finish the monthly meeting in an hour. I have two senior doctors who always blow up about something in the meeting. I decide to be proactive and go to each one before the meeting and prime them. I pick a topic, say I am worrying about it, and what do they think? They each then blow up in the meeting, but now they have no opposition so there is no brawl. I prime them about something that is not really controversial. I do get the meetings done in an hour.

One year I go to the lake with my family. My children are small. My father has been drinking heavily. I call ahead and say, “Will you treat our tent site like my house and not come there if you are drinking?” “You don’t own the lake land,” says my father. “We don’t have to come.” I reply. He agrees not to drink at our tent site.

He is angry, though, and pretty much won’t speak to me. I ask if he would come to a family sing at my site. He says no. I think about it for a while and ask my cousin to hold a sing at her cabin. My father agrees to that, not knowing that I am the instigator. He is happy at it because he’s said no to me and yes to her, and I am happy too, because I love to sing and sing with him.

My father was one of eight people to start Rainshadow Chorale in 1997. I sang with him in the chorale from 2000 until the year he died.

Where is the line between manipulation and coping with a difficult person?

I think this is a time travelogue, so let it be my Ragtag Daily Prompt for today.

The photograph is of my father in 2012. He died in 2013.