31 Words in 31 Days

The transition of considering myself a writer instead of someone who doesn't hold a traditional job anymore, has been a slow shift in my mindset.  Am I really a writer if I just write and am not published?  Do I need that validation to be a 'real' writer?  Is it OK to for me to write for me; my purview, my catharsis, my alternative to therapy?  A few months back I was in Colorado Springs having lunch at a neighborhood Italian restaurant where I know the owner.  Having been an event planner, I am friendly with many people in the hospitality business and when Franco asked me what I was "doing these days?" I quickly replied I was retired.  It was my daughter who proudly declared "My mom is a writer".  Why didn't I think of that?

So what do I do that allows me to think - maybe say - and hopefully feel that I am a bona fide member of the pen and paper club?  I try to write everyday, but never beat myself up if the words just aren't free flowing.  I have also become an observer of my little world.  And an eavesdropper.  I hear the very best one-liners and they often spark something in me.  For me it isn't so much what to write, but the daily distractions of life that can stand in the way of my and my muse.

Many writers wake up and do morning pages.  Three or so sheets in a notebook of free-write to ignite the brain.  I have tried to do this, but I am inconsistent.  I am also a wee bit disorganized and have notebooks strewn everywhere; in my car, on the table and ottoman, the nightstand.  I spend quite a bit of time leafing through these notebooks to find what I need.  But it is never wasted time as sometimes I come across a nugget I had neglected.

A year ago in a memoir class one of the teachers initiated a discussion about source.  I had not heard this word used before regarding what it is that writers use to get them writing.  I had only thought about inspiration.  It was eye-opening for me to learn that inspiration is just one source. I've done some thinking about source and how it relates to me and my writing.  I have come to understand that prompts are one of my favorite sources. The Daily Poet, a little book with seasonally appropriate prompts is useful.   Ekphrasis is another.  Turn me loose in a gallery or museum and I will write!   Being in nature also allows my creativity to come.  I am not a nature poet, but I am moved by the beauty of the natural world and the song-birds lilt, and often come back from a hike rejuvenated and motivated.

I also make up ways for me to use prompts.  I have a book of quotations and will randomly open a page, read a quote and write.  For June I will be using a little Hallmark inspirational book of 50 short pieces about things that really matter.  Having 50 prompts to choose from gives me some freedom to not get stuck if one or two don't call to me.  I found this book on a dollar shelf at the local library, so it is mine to write in, tear pages from, pass on when I am done.  I can read the page title only, or read a few pages before I write.  We'll see.

For many years I have a daily word in my in-box courtesy of Merriam Webster Word of the Day.  I have always prided myself on being a wordy kind of gal.  As a kid I was constantly accused of using BIG words.  My parents encouraged a large vocabulary, and I have found knowing a lot of words to be useful in my writing.  It also gives cred to my writing when my word choices match my daily speech.  So this merry month of May found me taking the word of the day as my prompt.  31 words in 31 days.

Here's what I learned.  My vocab is not as voluminous as I thought.  At the end of this blog you can read the list of words in two parts.  KNEW and NEW to me.  I only composed a few ramblings that are worthy of further exploration.  Some words were obscure or archaic.  Riposte had parry in the definition, and I knew that was a fencing term, so I printed a list of terms inherent to that practice.  A kind of literacy mis en place.  I have the ingredients in hand for a future write.

Cajole got me thinking about my mother.  Flummox I knew - was it from a childhood cartoon? Garrulous forced me to be reflective in my word choice and tendency to dominate conversations.  Winsome sent my mind off on a tangent - winsome, toothsome, handsome...  Unfettered made me smile because I have a line in my poem 'Dozen' that says "Unlock my fetter, make me better."

My best write for the month came from the word remuneration.  Ah, my Dad used this word.  As a kid I always thought I knew more, and he meant to say renumeration.  Nope.  He had it right.  M before N.    From May 6th:

remuneration  noun | rih-myoo-nuh-RAY-shun

Definition

: the act or fact of paying an equivalent to for a service, loss, or expense : recompense, pay

And here is what I wrote.  Unedited and true:

My Dad was the Boss

Entrepreneurial and innovative

No college, I am not even sure

He graduated high school

But he had a quirky vocabulary

And when I asked if he’d pay

Me for a day’s work in his shop

He said I would be

Duly remunerated

Chastise is the final word for May.  A good one because it serves as a reminder to be gentle to myself.  Always.  It is OK if I don't write for a day or two.  It is OK if what I write is crap.  It is OK if what I write is really good, or close to good and deserves expansion.  It is OK to never chastise myself and continually treat myself with loving kindness.  It is also OK that knowing this word almost evened the tally.  My score?  48.39%.  Just about 1/2, but not quite.  I love learning that I have more to learn.

KNEW	NEW
Palindrome	Eventuate
Beaucoup	Flocculate
Remuneration	Agonistic
Decimate	Jocose
Menagerie	Slumgullion
Collaborate	Nascent
Transpire	Otiose
Layman	Aggress
Unfettered	Winsome
Cajole	Muliebrity
Homogenous	Besot
Sacrosanct	Raillery
Flummox	Garrulous
Indigence	Petard
Chastise	Riposte
	Arrogate

Time to Write,

Jane

Anniversaries!

My sister and her husband have been married for 28 years.  Almost three decades ago, in Orangeburg, NY they were betrothed while accompanied by a symphony of childish giggles from some friends of my parents.  Who were stoned.  Not my parents - their friends.  Which I find very interesting as this couple, both in their nineties, have outlived all of the friends from that suburban enclave.  Maybe Colorado has it right after all.  Cannabis may be the long lost key to longevity.  A smoky fountain of youth.  But I digress.

That my sister and her husband have outlasted me and our brother in term of years married is kind of miraculous!  I think my brother's first marriage, which produced four children, was about 16 or 18 years in length. His second go-round has been 23 years.  In total he was married longer than my sister, but two against one is not fair.  Right Mom?  My own marriage lasted almost 24, and we had three offspring.  Just six weeks and one year shy of a silver celebration.  Oh well, my hair is silver now and I can celebrate that.

I don't know the details or the secret to Amy and Ted staying put.  But I do know that I couldn't do it and neither could my brother the first time around.  I've read that half of all I Do's in the US end in I Don'ts.  As a divorced person myself I never shame people who are going through this very personal decision.  We never know what happened behind closed doors and expressing disappointment in people when I've had the same painful life experience is not only hypocritical, but cruel.

Instead -I choose to celebrate my sister and her hubby and all the long married friends of mine who managed to find the formula, the magic to wedded bliss.  And for anyone whose marriage ended, like my own, I hope you find peace in your journey.

This morning I was perusing some old scribbles and found this.  Along with my sister's anniversary it served as the inspiration to today's writing.


Taormina - my honeymoon, post one year of marriage.  The hotel lobby was actually the top floor as it was built into a cliffside on the Island of Sicily.  The pools were gorgeous; endless rimming to the sea.  I gleefully took off my bikini top and sunbathed while my husband gazed upon what I now regard as my formerly firm, youthful breasts.  

There was an elevator accessed through a vertical tunnel to bring us oceanside, and we devilishly made love in the darkness of daylight.  Oh!  To be young and uninhibited.  No forethought of hardships to come.

Just a blue Mediterranean sea and sky, expresso, and bread with butter so yellow it tasted like the sun.  Scooter rides on the coast of Sicily...

I loved that man and that place at that time with all of my being.  But I have never been able to return to any of them, geographically or otherwise.

Time to Write,

Jane

Mother Earth Would Approve!

The first time I saw a snow-capped peak, I thought it was a mirage.  It was my inaugural trek coming in from Nebraska on I76, and as memory serves, I spied the Rockies.  Well, not the whole range, but one large peak covered in a blanket of white – looming in the distance.

In the time it took to rub my eyes in disbelief, it was gone.  We were on the plains.  Hay stacks had transformed into large straw-colored bales somewhere between the Mississippi River and this border
crossing between western Nebraska and eastern Colorado.
  
I wouldn’t learn to appreciate this expanse of billowy, amber landscape until I stood on my BFF’s acreage.  Forty years had passed since my first foray into the flat earth that teased its way upward until the mountains reigned.  Now I stood with my friend, a true Colorado farmer, a vocal champion of organic skincare and steward to this land.  Her land.  An 80-acre rectangle of grasses and scrubby ground plants.  Situated directly across from the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Weld County.  

Crouching down to inspect a clump of native grass, we were checking to be sure that there was no bind weed.  An invasive plant that requires drastic eradication measures.  This land was perfect!  No offensive foliage to thwart Lily’s plans to build an agri-tourist destination.  This property has morphed - boasting a beautiful barn-like event center that will house the operations of Lily Farm Fresh skin care in addition to the endless possibilities of events that are only limited by imagination.

That day as I stooped to feel a prickly plant, I allowed my gaze to wander to the west.  In Colorado it is natural to always seek the mountains.  They are beacons of direction and hope.  The sun was just beginning to dip behind the front range and dark clouds were mimicking the silhouette of the Front Range.

This was the first time I had eyed the curve of the earth.  The soft roll of an unseen hill.  The ancient question of flat or round evidenced in my purview. With my head perpendicular to the land and my eyes seeing the world sideways, I could actually witness the gentle, feminine curvature of our life giving planet.  This is why country folk love this kind of landscape.  It is magical and majestic, and it took my breath away.

My first Colorado lover was a quick, cursory view of a mountain peak.  In the forty years of living on and off in Colorado, I have consistently appreciated this vision.  For fifteen years I awoke to a view of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs.  I never tired of the sameness because it really was a bit different every day.  The sun and the clouds danced on this peak and provided an ever changing scene.

But this day, on a yet unplanted patch of farmland, in prairie vastness and mountain shadows – this day was a time to honor a new lover.  The earth itself.  The mother of all creations and majesty.  Out here where the sky seemingly touches the golden yellow grasses - I can hear the earth rustle, as if Mother Nature is blowing a gentle breeze to initiate a quiet symphony.  It is almost always windy out here.  I like that.  It feels fresh and gives an expansiveness to the quality of the air.  

Three years have passed and the earthmovers have come and gone.  The barn is almost finished.  There is hemp planted on 10 acres and more farming to come.  This patch of earth will host many happy events in the years to come.  It will also be the creation station of Lily Farm Fresh Skin Care.  And an organic farm for children and their parents to come and see and feel the plants and the earth.

I do not feel unfaithful to my original snowcapped lover in this beautiful state I live in.  I rejoice in knowing I can love both the mountains and the plains.  And I can appreciate my friend, who diligently works to preserve this 80 acre plot as well as another 200 or so acres as organic, pristine land.  Mother Earth would approve!

Misogynistic Effigy

Every fourth Tuesday the Lighthouse Writers host a drop-in writing session at the Denver Art Museum.  The Denver Art Museum, or DAM as we locals like to say, is a world class experience each visit.  Add the bonus of a bit of ekphrastic writing for a visual prompt kind of gal like me and I am a happy camper.  Or maybe that should be urbanite!

Today's workshop took place in Jeffrey Gibson's exhibit Like a Hammer.  I wrote a piece that probably had nothing to do with his vision or his message.  I simply pressed my pen onto my pad of paper and allowed my hand to follow the lead.  Raw and unedited.  Enjoy!

Misogynistic Effigy

A quintet, count them, please
Five headless, elegant women
Hanged in misogynistic effigy

Their hips narrowed like
Boys, only the smallest
Remnant of peplum

Decapitated beauties
Sacrificed legs no longer
Needed to support them

Men no longer needed
To support them
No longer in need of men
To bolster girth or worth

Their eulogies painstakingly
Embroidered where their
Breasts once protruded

Chains that had adorned
Their decolletage, now suspend them
In morbid immortality

Personal mission statements
Emblazoned upon the
Cylindrical sameness, mindless memories
Of days.  Long past

The Sad, Blue Store

For most people mattress shopping is an experience.  Finding a store.  Laying on lots of beds, either alone or with your mate to decide which is the most sleep worthy.  Salespeople watching you repose and trying to insert their selling points while you are imagining sleeping on this wad of fiber and filling.

Not so for me.  I'm over the hauling a big behemoth up a flight of stairs.  Needing a box spring or certain bed frame to fit my choice.  Once I had an organic bamboo beauty that was super comfy, but it only lasted about eight years before it became a bit lumpy and low in the middle.  At over eight hundred bucks, that averaged out to more than one hundred dollars a year.

Nowadays, I dream whilst resting upon an air mattress.  There are some disadvantages to this arrangement, but overall I like my choice.  It is light enough when inflated to shove around and put the sheets on easily.  It is also light enough to deflate and put in the trunk of my car if I am staying somewhere that doesn't have a guest bed.  Can you do that with your BeautyRest?

At less than a Ben Franklin for the upgraded model, I am pretty happy with this choice.  But last week, I noticed that my bed wasn't keeping its air supply and I'd be on a pretty flat raft in the morning.  My daughter, Natalina, and I tried in vain to find the offending prick hole, with no luck.  I pushed - she listened.  She pushed - I listened.  No tell-tale hiss.  Two mornings ago, I was literally in a taco upon arising and I thought - enough - time for a new bed.

Here's the unfortunate part of my choice.  I didn't want to wait for an Amazon arrival.  I needed a bed and I needed it now.  And the only store with even a modicum of choice is the sad blue one that I avoid like the plague.  In fact the last time I was at Wally-World was two years ago, in Longmont, buying a slightly cheaper version of the bed I was now coveting.

My daughter, Andrea Faith, tried to ease my pain by purchasing this new Intex Dura-Beam Dream Lux upgrade.  She only needed to know three bits of information from me:

1. Was this the bed I desired?  Pillow-top and all?   YES!
2. Which location would I like to pick it up from later that day? HIGHLANDS RANCH.
3. Credit Card #. (not giving that here!)

We went to see Sisters of Swing at the Town Hall Center in Littleton and I enjoyed the show knowing sweet dreams awaited me later that evening. We parted ways after Pho, and I braved C470 to head into Highlands Ranch.  Sunday evening and the traffic was light heading east - one advantage of ski season being complete.  Wal-Mart's location in the Ranch is a bit funky.  It is the last business on a short road that dead ends.  The irony is not lost on me.

This store has three entrances to choose from.  Is that usual for the sad, blue store?  I pick door #2 Monty.  Not the Garden Center/Automotive entrance.  Not the market or food or whatever they call the slop they sell entrance, but the middle door whose marquis eludes me at the moment.

My daughter tells me that she thinks the pick-up should be right up front, but I think that is not so.  Any quasi savvy merchant knows that you don't encourage impulse sales by allowing people to run in and out.  So I inferred that the counter I needed would be elsewhere - but where?

I decide to beeline to the back - no distractions for me.  I am hustling past the greeting cards that are discounted, but still pricey (Dollar Tree anyone?) and what do I spy but a pile of poop on the floor.  No shit.  No, I mean yes, shit.  It pretty much looks like dog shit that someone's cart has taken a wheel through, but hey, this is Wal-Mart.  Could be human.  Or childlike.  My only thought as I am standing there is this; why did I leave my phone a/k/a camera in the car?  This kind of shit needs to be catalogued.  And cleaned up, I might add.

Ah, the wonderful, unique welcome only the blue store can provide.  I shake my head, clear my nose and continue.  There is no one around to ask, no signage, no direction as to which direction I should be headed.  But I do pass the women's wear and my favorite retail words CLEARANCE beckon me to peruse a rack of marked down shirts.  Let me clear up any delusions about my body.  I need an XL in tees or tanks to clear my hips and there is quite the selection here for a gal my size.  What I don't need are under arm hole openings big enough to push a party sized watermelon through!  So I am already saving money by shopping here, because these shirts won't work for me.

I decide I need a snack after all this XL being too big for me.  Nourishment or a treat is in order.  And Wal-Mart sells a lot of food.  In fact they garner something like 25% of all food sales in the US.  I meander over to the food section of the store and after a bit of mindless wandering find a suitable snack at a decent price.  Here I do find a helpful employee who directs me to the big orange banner in the back - so big he says - I cannot miss it - that says PICK-UP or some such directive.

I pass through craft supplies - who has time for that? -  and shoes, and electronic devices and after pushing my fit-bit up to well past 10,000 steps I find the proper counter to procure my bed-in-a box.  Only kidding, I don't wear a fit-bit.  But if I did I'm pretty sure a couple of laps around the blue store would be all I need on a daily basis.

No one is home.  Or should I say no one is at work here.  Empty help-desk.  I can see my purchase on the back counter and ponder just jumping over and grabbing it.  Or maybe walking through the opening between the counters and snagging it.  But I am nothing if not obedient, so I ring the little bell that has an encouraging sign about someone coming right away.  Or soon.  Or in plenty of time for me to use the ladies room that is right behind me and still get in some good old fashioned, toe-tapping waiting time.

Jared arrives!  It could only be Jared (insert musical notes here) and he is a gem.  He puts my air bed in my cart, apologizes for the lengthy wait, regales me with a story of how he used to work nights, and now he's on days, and his clock is messed up, and he was in the back and I think - Dude was taking a nap!!

He then proceeds to take a super long time struggling with some little hand-held gizmo that is supposed to print a ticket that will allow me to leave the store and not be suspiciously eyed as a
shop- lifter.  But he can't get the dang thing to work, and time is really ticking.  And I'm sure I'd like to go home and pump up my bed as much as Jared would like to resume his own back of the store slumber.

While I am looking for things to look at while he sweats and swears, I spy an employee coming out of the men's room right behind me.  And though it takes a moment for my brain to register why something isn't quite right, I am a good sanitation detective and figure it out.  This employee, who I learn from Jared works in the Deli Department, had his food service gloves on exiting the men's room.  Yuck!  This can only mean two things; One- he did not wash his hands, because who washes their hands with gloves on? And two - I am never buying anything from the deli in Wal-Mart.

Now that I am completely grossed out and Jared is fatigued from wrestling with his company provided hand-held, I am told to just go up front and tell them Jared said it is cool for me to exit the store without interrogation.

On my way out of the store I see the assistant store manager and relay my frustration and disgust at my once a year if not less foray to Wal-Mart.  She is not in the least bit concerned about pets who aren't housebroken, malfunctioning equipment or potential e-coli epidemics.  At first I was miffed, but in retrospect I am in awe.  She has learned to stay cool in the blue store.  I am not sure I'll ever be able to do that.

Time to Write,

Jane

PS - Next time I'm buying on-line!