Theme Thursday Post - "Ball"

How interesting. Even though I've spent the last week (two weeks?) engrossed in football (soccer) and tennis, my first thought on reading this week's theme had nothing to do with sports. The first thing that came to mind was The Secret Policeman's Ball. In case you aren't familiar with this gem (actually a series of gems, shows produced to benefit Amnesty International), I've embedded a sample skit below...




....and the second thing that came to mind, predictably enough, was The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.

Disclaimer: I recommend that you watch this second video either alone or in the company of a tolerant friend/mate. It made me howl. Really. Consider yourself warned.



Maybe I had simply had enough of sports for the time being, and I needed a little comic relief. In any event, I ended up spending quite some time working my way through YouTube's Secret Policeman collection, and I'm glad I did. Dare I say it? I had a ball.

Am I Blue?

Well, yes, apparently. My mind is following my body, and my body is following my mind down, down, down into the centre of my own personal, possibly viral tornado. Someday this will pass. Meanwhile, I've been told by family and friends that they miss my blogging. I responded that I really had nothing to say, but they didn't care. My husband claimed he had no idea what he had been doing for the past few weeks, because I hadn't documented it.

"But, but, all I'm doing is working and sleeping."

"So?"

I sighed.

Yesterday, though Jane and I went out during the afternoon and did some shopping, which livened me up, as our expeditions always do. Then we came home, and Jane went to fetch Franco. Robin had made prawn curry. Jane and Franco brought over some crab that a mutual friend had caught on the weekend and delivered to their house. It had been cooked and flash-frozen. All I had to do with the crabs was put them into a pot of cold, salted water and bring it to a boil. Presto! Fresh crab! So that's what we did -- we all feasted on crab followed by prawn curry. Oh, my. It's a good thing I had recently re-labeled myself a "flexetarian" instead of a vegetarian, because I dug in with abandon (and a fork). Soon I was up to my wrists in crab meat and feeling pretty good -- not blue at all.

Tonight, it occurred to me that staying away from Blogland isn't just annoying my family and friends and making me feel worthless. It's also cutting me off from resources that could actually help me get my bearings by providing ready-made topics -- like Theme Thursday, Friday Photo Shootout, the Poetry Bus, etc. -- so here I am, hopping on the Theme Thursday wagon early, because this week's theme (Blue) just seems so apt.

So. Am I Blue? Yes. Will I always be blue?  God, I hope not. I'm hoping to emulate my son's ex-girlfriend, who told me that she gets depressed, but it never lasts very long because she has a short attention span. "I go 'Oh, my, Boo-hoo,'" she said, "and a minute later I go 'Oh, look! A shiny thing!' and it's all over. I can't stay depressed because I'm too easily distracted."

On that note, as it were, here is my musical contribution to the theme:




Happy Theme Thursday, everybody.Better early than never.  ;>)

Theme Thursday - Polka Dots

This week's theme was suggested by Siobhan. For more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

I offer this post with apologies in advance, in case I am repeating myself. It's just that when I saw "polka dots" there was one story that popped to the front of my mind, and I just had to tell it, because it haunts me. I loathe polka dots - with good reason.

I think I was eleven years old when it happened - or maybe ten. It was a turning point in my life, the moment when I saw a door close.

I was a good student, for the most part. I loved anything to do with words or music, and I could hold my own at math and science. There were only two classes that defeated me. One was physical education. I enjoyed exercise, but I lacked self-confidence, so team sports were (and are) torture to me - but that's another story.

My second nemesis was home economics.  Anybody who has seen my house knows that I am still, shall we say, challenged in the matter of housekeeping, but at the age of ten(nish) I was completely hopeless. I remember my frustration with cooking class, where we had to measure and/or weigh every single ingredient for every single dish, which I found intensely boring. I would still rather ad lib in the kitchen, thank you. However, I muddled through.

Then came the second semester of home ec class, the half that still makes me tremble with fear. That was sewing. With a machine.

We made aprons. I have absolutely no idea what the apron I made looked like, which is strange, considering what happened in the course of its construction.

We laid out the fabric and applied the pattern, pinning it in place; then we cut out the pieces and assembled the aprons, using straight pins to hold the edges together. I went over to my assigned sewing machine and prepared to sew.

I was dressed that day in a circle skirt. You remember those, don't you? Some of them were decorated with poodles or monograms. Mine wasn't. Mine was a navy blue percale with white polka dots the size of quarters. I was very fond of that skirt. It was almost as pretty as the one Audrey Hepburn wore in Roman Holiday.

You know where this is going, don't you?

I placed the yet-to-be-sewn apron on the sewing machine's work surface, raised the foot, slipped the fabric under the needle, lowered the foot, and pressed on the foot pedal. The machine whirred, the needle went up and down, up and down, up and down with alarming rapidity, and I did my best to keep up. My panic was such that it didn't occur to me that I had any control over the speed with which the machine worked. I just laboured on like Lucy on the assembly line, losing ground with every scream of the motor - and it was screaming, because my pedal foot was in a state of rigour.



Meanwhile, it transpired, one of the straight pins with which I had joined the sections of the apron had become entangled in my beloved navy blue and white polka dot circle skirt. As I - or the demon machine - secured my apron's seam with thousands of tiny stitches, my skirt was drawn up into the maelstrom, and soon skirt and apron were inextricably joined, like Humpty Dumpty in reverse. All the king's horses...couldn't get skirt and apron apart again. My tearful attempts resulted in nasty little holes all over the front of my skirt. I don't know what happened  to the apron, and I don't care.

Let's see. There must have been a bright side to the story. Oh, yes. The other girls in my class got a really good laugh out of it - and I learned bright and early that I would never be a seamstress. That saved me ever so much time, being able to wipe a career path off my list like that. To this day, though, I am intimidated by sewing machines, and whenever I make something (once in a while I decide that it can't have been that bad, and I try again) the item I produce looks as if it were made by a ten-year-old. And a search of my closet would not produce a single polka-dotted item.

Theme Thursday - Climate Change

We're certainly experiencing climate change right now, here on the island. It's not an unexpected change. It is, after all, mid-October. Summer couldn't last forever. Nonetheless, it's shocking to look out the window and see this

instead of this.


I'm particularly aware of the change this year, because for the first time in several years, we will not be taking The Turtle to Mexico this winter. We have plans for an extended trip to England in the Spring, and the travel budget won't allow for both trips. We will go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, but not until late January - so we will be here on the island for most of the winter. Considering how hard winter hit the island last year, I'm more than a little apprehensive. I don't do winter, you know. It's cold and it's slippery.

I cannot speak with any authority to the larger issue of Climate Change, except to say that the doubters should maybe have a look around them, or step outside. Therefore, I shall close with a fond memory. A friend in Ontario said - oh, it must have been twenty years ago - that she was buying a house and staying put, because sooner or later, Ontario would be the Banana Belt. It seems she was a bit of a prophet.

Theme Thursday - Collections




I know. I know. The photo on the left isn't what you would expect from a post about collections. But as it happens, I had forgotten that it was Thursday. My dear friend Angel May reminded me by sending me an e-mail that said something like "So. Are you going to do a Theme Thursday post today?"

Originally, I was going to post something called "Serendipity." That will have to wait. It's Theme Thursday! Meanwhile, I've been invited to Willow's Manor Ball, and I'm very, very excited about that. Not only do I get to go to the ball, I also get to show off my collection. (You thought I'd never get to the point, didn't you?)

What do I collect? Actors.

Yes, actors. I haven't been collecting actors for a long time -- just since I started working on my preparations for NaNoWriMo. I am trying to remember who first suggested that one way to get a handle on your characters was to cast a well-known actor to play each of them. Perhaps it was Willow herself. (Whoever it was, if you read this, please please let me know in the comments section, so that I can properly credit you!) So. I will choose an actor from my collection (I think I know already who my date will be!) to accompany me to the Manor. The rest of my collection of actors will ride in our wake, singing loudly, poking their heads out through the roofs of their limousines, disturbing the peace -- except for the ones that do their celebrating at my own super-hip satellite location, waiting to meet the revelers when they arrive for the after-ball.

Would you like to see a few of the actors in my collection? I'd be delighted to show you.


This lovely lady is Nicole Kidman. (By the way, who is that man that's ogling her?) She will be playing Bridget Connelly, my MC. Nicole would be shocked to know how much de-glamourizing she will have to do for this part. Bridget is not a movie star.

Nicole was actually the first actor I collected. Long before I considered casting her in Fly Away Home, I snagged this photo of Nicole so that I would have something to show to hairdressers. Beth, who cuts my hair when I'm at home, can't be expected to accompany me on all my travels, so I needed a cheat sheet to show the substitute hairdressers just what I wanted to look like. "A foot taller, forty pounds lighter, thirty years younger -- and oh yeah, with hair like this." So Nicole takes up residence on my laptop -- as my wallpaper, in fact -- whenever I travel.

Then came NaNoWriMo and that marvelous suggestion. The first character I thought up was Billy Mitchell. I had no idea who he was. I knew only his name. As I thought about him, though, he began to take shape. This is the shape he took. Not bad, eh?


Yep. The delightful Matthew McConaughey. Shimmering in the sunlight. Oh, dear. I must say, he was wearing clothes when I collected him. Won't he make a beautiful Billy Mitchell, though? Once I had a face for Billy, his character was a lot easier to map out. I think I thought of Matthew right away because my baby sister actually knows him. What's that? Two degrees of separation?



The only actor (so far) who has failed to fit right into the collection is John Cusack, who will play Hugh Beachley. This is not to say that John isn't a lovely man. He is. That's the problem. He's a little lovelier than Hugh -- or a little lovelier than Hugh started out to be. The upshot of that is that Hugh is changing. In fact, a lot of things about the story are changing. Half of me wanted to put John back on the shelf and find another actor, but the other half just adores John Cusack. If he wants a script change, who am I to argue?

I just went to check. There are thirteen actors in my collection, and I have bids in on a couple more. Wouldn't it be great to have shelves full of actors (I think that's called a stable, actually) to call on when you need faces for your characters? I'll save the rest of my collection for the night of the ball, and I won't tell you which one will be escorting me. All I'll say is Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

Meanwhile, you can find more Theme Thursday posts here. This week's theme is hosted by Alan. Thank you, Alan.

Theme Thursday - Flight

Thanks to Roy for this assignment. To see more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

It has been a long time since I last posted my favourite poem, Adrienne Rich's Vertigo. When I saw today's assignment, the first thing that popped into my head was Rich's line "The flight of wings surprises empty air." As it always does, that line made me stop, catch my breath, and say "Ah!" The world is not just a stage on which we act. Suddenly, even the air around us is sentient. Anything is possible.

I will post the poem over on the sidebar, so that it can linger awhile. There was a time, a year or more ago, when I thought I had lost my only hard copy. I have since found it, and it hangs on the wall right under the dry-erase board, where I can find it easily.

I had several plans for this post, including a photo essay about my walk - our walk - on Duke Point today. The problem with long, woodsy, watery walks, though, is that they give you plenty of time to think. What did I think about while I was walking? I thought about my story - the same story I was talking (and thinking) about yesterday.

I thought of a title - at least a working title. My WIP will be called Fly Away Home. I just googled that title, and there is a book by that name at Amazon, but it's a children's book dealing with homelessness - nothing like mine - so for the time being, at least, that's the title.

I thought about my main character, Bridget, which led me to think about her role model, her heroine, Amelia Earhart. Lady Lindy - The First Lady of Flight. Bingo.

The opening scene of Fly Away Home will take place on May 20, 1932, Bridget's twelfth birthday - and the day that Amelia Earhart takes off on her first solo flight across the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Ireland. In preparing to write the story, I find myself drawn to read more about Earhart, who was an interesting and controversial woman. Her fascination with flight began when she was twenty-three years old. Her father and she visited an airfield in Long Beach, California. She took a ten-minute (and $10) ride in an airplane. At the end of the ride, she said "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly." She immediately set about finding a way to realize her dream, and she took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921.


Six months later, Earhart bought a second-hand Kinner Airster bi-plane, which she named "The Canary." The photo on the right shows Earhart and her flight instructor, Neta Snook, standing beside The Canary. By the time Earhart obtained her pilot's licence in 1923, she had already set a world record for female pilots by flying The Canary to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m). I've taken these photos and snippets of information from Wikipedia. I would encourage you to read the entire article, as it is fascinating reading. Just click here.

And/or - have a look at these videos, which will give you more insight into Amelia Earhart's life.




As you can see, flight is much on my mind. I must go now (See? I resisted the temptation to say "I must fly!" Aren't I strong, though?) to stare at my office wall and think writerly thoughts.

Theme Thursday - Wild!

Ooh. Such an intriguing assignment.

I was never wild. Goody Two-Shoes, that's me. When I was a child, my favourite activity was reading. When I played with the other kids, we played school, and I was always the teacher. I was hopeless. I wanted to learn about King Arthur, sing like Jeanette MacDonald, and save the world (in my spare time).

When the whole world went wild around me, I tried to join in, really I did. Starting when I was eighteen (I was a late bloomer) I tried to be part of the great anti-establishment unwashed. I became a hippie. I remember somebody saying to me that I had whiter teeth than any hippie he had ever seen.

I went through the motions. I listened to the Stones and the Kinks, the Animals - even Jefferson Airplane and - wildest of the wild - Big Brother and the Holding Company. I must say I identified much more with Gracie Slick than with Janis Joplin. I sounded more like her, too. But I sounded even more like Joan Baez or Judy Collins, and I was much more comfortable with their repertoire. All the songs of the era exhorted me to cut loose, but I was earnest to a fault. I still am. It's a real handicap for somebody who's trying to walk on the wild side.

By the way, I watched the video just now. It had been a long time. Nope. Definitely not me. Not even close.

Then there was "Born to be Wild". I always knew that wasn't true. Catchy tune, though.


There is one Wild song that must have felt just right to me. I loved it. It still makes me smile a secret (or not-so-secret, I guess) smile. It's "Wild Thing".


If I had it all to do again, maybe I wouldn't try so hard to break out of the box and join the Wild Ones. On the other hand, if I had it all to do again, I would be young again, and I'm not so old that I don't remember how that felt, how small the box seemed, how big the world.

And on the other other hand, I'm getting old. If I can't be wild now, when can I? Watch out. Maybe I was born to be wild, after all.

If you want to hear more - and from some really wild people - click here.

Theme Thursday - Over the Hill

As I will be away from home all day tomorrow, I guess I had better join the ranks of the early birds this week. I'm sure it's Thursday somewhere!

This week's theme was suggested by - me. (bowing) For more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

I have a story to tell you. It's a story about my sister Gracie - the one I went to visit in Wyoming a couple of months ago.

The story takes place many, many years ago. I flew to Wyoming on that occasion. I arrived on a Monday afternoon. My sister Pam was there, as well. We were all together to celebrate Gracie's fortieth birthday. Back then, we were all so young that we thought forty constituted "over the hill". Little did we know that at forty, we were just starting the climb.

Gracie and Pam picked me up at the airport and took me home to Gracie's house. When we got there, we saw that somebody had propped a 4x8 piece of plywood in the front yard. On the plywood were written the words

"Happy 40th, Gracie!"

in huge letters.

Gracie was not amused. She knew who had posted the sign. It was Barry. Barry lived three doors down. He was a realtor at a time when Wyoming was experiencing a real estate boom, so he suffered from an excess of self-confidence. He had played practical jokes on Gracie before. It wasn't that she didn't like him. He was actually a friend, and his wife, Judy, was a very good friend. What Gracie didn't like was having the fact of her precipitous descent into old age broadcast for the amusement of the whole neighbourhood.

Pam and I pulled my luggage out of the trunk and followed Gracie into the house. She went straight to the telephone and dialed Barry's number. She got his answering machine. She left a short message. "Thank you so much, Barry. I just want to remind you that I don't get mad; I get even." Then she hung up.

Over the next 24 hours, Gracie might be in the middle of cooking breakfast or chatting, and suddenly she would stop and smile; then she would go on about her business. Finally, when she had thought it through, she told us about her plan to get even with Barry.

It seems Gracie was not the only one having a birthday that week. Thursday, she told us, was Barry's 35th birthday. According to Judy, he would be taking part in a realtors' conference at the Ramada. Everybody who was anybody in the rarefied world of Wyoming real estate would be there. With Judy's help, we were going to crash the party.

On Thursday morning, Gracie disappeared into her room, and when she came out, she was wearing a blonde wig reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. Her face was heavily made up, and high on one cheekbone was a beauty mark that she had applied with black eye liner. She wore a tight, sleeveless metallic dress, fishnet stockings, and those transparent plastic high-heeled evening shoes that were all the rage. She had shoved a throw pillow up inside her dress so that she looked to be about six months pregnant. She was smiling broadly.

We hurried out to the car so that Gracie could get inside without showing herself to the neighbours. Then we drove three doors down and picked up Judy. Together, the four of us drove to the Ramada and found the conference room where the gods were gathered for their mutual admiration luncheon.

From her carryall, Judy pulled a cupcake and a candle. It was one of those candles that won't go out, no matter how hard you blow on them. She struck a match, lit the candle, and opened the door. Gracie walked into the conference room. Judy and Pam and I poked our heads inside just enough to see what was going on. We (particularly the Judy part of we) didn't want to be caught taking part in this caper.

Have I mentioned that Gracie sings? Of course I have. She had a country & western band at one time, and she had performed in public many times. She knew just what to do. She walked slowly across the room, which had gone strangely silent. As she approached him, Barry realized that this apparition was heading his way, and he started sinking into his chair. His torso got shorter and shorter. His head nearly disappeared under the table. He moaned "No, oh please. No." Gracie had no mercy. She sidled up to him, set the cupcake down in front of him, and began to sing. And this is what she sang:



When she had finished singing, Gracie kissed Barry on the cheek (no mean feat, as he had almost entirely disappeared under the table by then) and walked out of the room. We opened the door for her, and she made a slinkily impressive exit. Then we ran for it. We found out later that it wasn't until she started singing that Barry knew who the intruder was. He just knew he was in big trouble.

That evening, Barry called. "Please, Gracie," he said. "I will mow your lawn in the summertime. I will shovel the snow from your driveway in the winter. I'll do anything you like. But please - never do that to me again."

Over the hill? Gracie? Not likely! She was peaking. Come to think of it, I think she still is.

Cupcake clipart courtesy of Designed to a T

Theme Thursday - Rhythm

Thank you to C.M. Jackson for suggesting this week's theme. For more takes on the subject, click here.

Surely the first thing an infant is aware of is the beating of her mother's heart. Any mother will hold her baby close to her body in order to comfort her. Watch a toddler move to the rhythm of music. Perhaps her enjoyment of music is related to that early source of comfort, her mother's heartbeat.

Throughout our lives, we continue to seek pleasure and comfort in rhythm. When we are nervous, we tap our fingers on any convenient surface. When we see a musical or dramatic performance that pleases and excites us, we clap our hands rhythmically, often in concert with many other people. We dance, keeping time to the music with our entire body.

I've found a few music videos on the theme of rhythm. I hope you enjoy listening to them - even dancing to them. To begin with, listen to the rhythm of the falling rain...



How many of us will post Gershwin's I've Got Rhythm? I hesitated to do so, on the grounds that everybody would surely use it, but then it occurred to me that we might all think that way, and then we wouldn't get to hear the very best song about rhythm ever. So here goes.



Maybe I spoke too soon, though. I forgot about Fascinating Rhythm, which may actually be the best.



There are just too many possibilities. Rhythm is everywhere - in music, and in the sounds of everyday life.



My last offering is one of my favourite songs. It combines those two elements, the rhythm of everyday life and music. It is Paul Simon's song, Everybody Loves the Sound of a Train in the Distance.

Theme Thursday: Beginning

Once upon a time, there was a lady named Liza, who carried her camera wherever she went. Her photographs were a joy to behold. Liza shared her photos with her friends at Theme Thursday. In the fullness of time, the Theme Thursday folks asked her to suggest a theme. Liza spoke right up. "Beginning," she said. "Let's talk about beginning." And there it was - the beginning of this week's assignment.

No matter how hard I try to think of beginning as a verb, it keeps turning into a noun.

I know, I know. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

"I'm beginning as I intend to go on."

Of course beginning can be a verb (or even an adjective). It just feels like a noun, so I'm going to treat it (mostly) as a noun.

The image I've chosen (source here) illustrates one beginning, the beginning of a human life (well, close to the beginning). It's a time of joy and a time of hope, a fresh start - and it's the beginning of something else - a relationship between the child and her parents. This relationship grows from another relationship, that between the child's mother and father. In fact, it's hard to find the beginning of this story, because each life is connected to other lives, and something new, some new relationship, is always beginning. The child relates to her parents, then to siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents. Then she goes to school and begins her education. She also encounters other children. Some of those encounters will be the beginning of lifelong relationships.

At some point, the child, now beginning her life as an adult, might meet someone with whom she will begin a love relationship, and perhaps she will bear a child. Then the story will begin again, with a new baby, a new complex of relationships, on and on, ad infinitum.

But no. Life isn't just about beginnings. It is about endings, as well. Each beginning carries within it the seed of an ending. I am reminded of something T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding (online source here)
"....

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and [sic] end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments...."

When I started thinking about this post, I immediately developed an earworm - Art Garfunkel's "All I Know". It is such a lovely song, I didn't even mind, and it seems like a fitting end to this little post about beginnings - and endings.

Theme Thursday, and me without a Theme

I was bemoaning the fact that I simply haven't had time to do Theme Thursday this week, when I realized that I have nothing at all to say about limousines, so I had nothing to worry about.

But wait. I met a lady today who showed me some amazing photos. With a little help from Google, I found some photos to share with you. This isn't exactly a limo, but it's a pretty fancy piece of machinery - an amphibious bus! The bus apparently runs from Parliament Hill to the Ottawa River, whereupon it dives in and swims. There are more photos here.

The lady I met today said that she was standing beside the river, waiting for a bus, when she saw the amphibious bus plunge into the water. She panicked, seeing that there were actually people on the bus, fearing for their lives. I think I'd have done the same.

By the way, lots of other people actually did have something to say about limos, and you can find a link to their posts here. Thanks to Betsy for the theme.

Theme Thursday Post - The Laying of Ghosts


Let me say right up front that I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe that there is an afterlife, and absent an afterlife, where would ghosts come from?

That said, there was once a ghost. I met him only that once, and I've always regarded him as a symptom of advanced pregnancy combined with high anxiety. He came to me in the night.

I awoke suddenly. It felt as if someone had touched my breast - not gently, not violently, but more like a tap, a simple bid for attention. I looked up, and I saw him - the ghost - hovering a few feet from me. He was sitting cross-legged, tailor-fashion, in mid-air. He looked as startled as I felt.

There was light all around the ghost, and it permeated him. No, perhaps there was light in the ghost and it shone through him. That seems closer to what I saw.

It was a very uncomfortable situation. I glanced over at my husband, who lay sound asleep, then turned back to the ghost. I took my time, noting details - which seems strange to me in retrospect. Shouldn't I have been frightened?

His hair was the palest blond, and he had a moustache. He was dressed all in white, in an undershirt and boxer shorts. He was also wearing white socks. The word 'Edwardian' came to mind. I think his moustache was what gave me that idea. His mouth was gaping open, but not like some horror flick ghost's - more like someone who has been startled. My impression was that he didn't realize I would be able to feel it when he touched my breast.

As I watched him, he floated slowly toward the ceiling. Then he disappeared, like the Cheshire Cat - except he didn't leave a grin behind. That was a mercy.

There. I've confessed it. That is my ghost story. As I said, I chalk it up to pregnancy and anxiety, but at the same time, I remember my ghost rather fondly. I've always wanted to apologize if I frightened him.

I've never felt any real need to lay that particular ghost, as his presence in my life has never been a troubling one. But there are other ghosts, and I'm coming to think that this part of my life is about laying them, putting them in their rightful place.

I went looking through my half-baked poems this morning, and I came across something that isn't a poem at all. I think it's the beginning of the story I have to tell, the story to lay the ghosts.

This is the way of the river, my river. This is its course, the path it takes down from the mountain well-spring, the clean place of beginning. And nothing I wish, nothing I do can alter now its rush, its inevitable journey. I only cling, shivering, to the bank and watch, and wonder at the swiftness of it all, and wonder whether, if I had climbed long ago to the source, the place where my river emerged new and cold and hopeful from the earth I might have held the whole of the river in my cupped hands.

My river rushes, willful and reckless, heedless of the rocks that bar its course. Unfathomable seeker of oblivion, tunneling through shadow, rising triumphant into dazzling light, It washes my grasping fingers and is gone, like words spoken in anger or in love, carried now unresisting, weeping to the deep, forgiving sea.

For more Theme Thursday ghostly posts, click here.

One more thing - I forgot to mention that I have another poem up at The Found Poetry Project. I really like this one.

Theme Thursday - Funky

I searched, but I'm afraid I couldn't find any funky music by Bach or Brahms, or even Beethoven, so I had to move a little out of my comfort zone. This is what I found. Everybody dance, now:


The Funky Chicken!



Wasn't that costume fantastic? Oh, wait - then there's Funky Town -




For more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

Theme Thursday: Summer

Write about it? It's all around me. Or it was, until today, when winter came back for a little visit. That only made me appreciate the glorious weather of the last few weeks - and gave the landscape a much-needed soaking.

While I was out walking last night, I thought about Theme Thursday. What could I tell you? Summer is summer, right? Wrong. "Summer", the generic term, may bring the same picture to all our minds - heat, sunshine, bugs, school's out...but as I look back over my life, I see that there are two summers that left a bigger impression than the others, because each one featured an event, whether large or small, that no other summer offered.

There was the summer of 1963, when I lay on the beach with my cousin and listened to Nat King Cole sing Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer (oh, and that's me on the cover) -



To this day, when I hear that song, I smell suntan lotion, and I see sunlight reflecting off sand and water.

Then there was the summer in the early seventies when I was living on a farm. There were several children on the farm, and we had pretty strict rules about what they could do - for their own safety. One of the rules was "NO SWINGING FROM THE ROPES IN THE BARN!"

Then came haying time. The bunch of us adult(ish) types spent the day out in the fields, throwing 50-pound bales of hay up onto the wagon. It was hot out, and humid, and buggy, (and hot). By the end of the day, we had passed beyond fatigue to a kind of giddiness bordering on insanity. Hay safely stacked in the barn, we sat around on the lower bales and wondered whether we would live until morning. Then somebody (not I) idly grabbed one of the ropes that hung from the ceiling of the 100-year old barn. He swung back and forth on it. I watched him, thinking, gee that looks like fun. My turn! When he landed, I grabbed the rope and swung. I looked up...

I must interrupt my narrative to explain something. In the old days, a farmer would strip the branches off small trees and hoist those trees up to the rafters of the barn, producing a rustic shelf on which to stack things. I'm not sure what things they stacked up there, and fortunately there were no things stacked on the trees that lay on the rafters of this particular barn. So, to continue...

...and as I looked up, there was a little clunk as, far over my head, the rope caught a knot on one of the trees. As the rope continued to swing, the tree went with it. One end of the tree swept past the rafter on which it had been resting, and as the rope swung back, the tree came along for the ride. It all happened so fast, all I had time to do was get to the ground somehow and raise my left arm so that when the tree landed, it didn't land directly on my head. It hit my arm near the elbow, then rolled down my forearm and caught my head a glancing blow.

This is what happened next. I fell down. I got up. I got up very quickly and neatly. It was almost as if I bounced off the floor.

That's what I thought, anyway. I'm told I was actually unconscious for a couple of minutes before I bounced back up.

I was pretty crunchy in those days. I didn't go to the hospital. I didn't even go to see a doctor. I pierced some Vitamin E capsules and smeared the contents on my various abrasions, and I took extra brewer's yeast - for the B vitamins. Two days later, when I returned to work, someone asked whether I had been hit by a car. I must have been a sight.

Not long after my adventure, I talked on the phone to my older sister, who lives in Wyoming. I told her what had happened. She got it wrong. Maybe I was mumbling, what with the head injury and all. I told her that I had gotten hurt while I was swinging from a rope in a barn.

This is what my sister told everyone she knew:

"Would you believe, my prissy little sister hurt herself swinging from a rope in a bar?"

It was years before we got that little misunderstanding straightened out. It's a wonder I ever had the courage to show my face in Wyoming again, but I did. And I'm going to do it again in a few weeks, drive over the mountains and into Wyoming to visit my big sister. I can't think of any better way to spend the summer than visiting people I love, and who love me back - even if they think I'm prissy.

I wanted to leave you with one more summer song - and I was going to post Gershwin's Summertime - but then I remembered that there was one more truly memorable summer, one which speaks for itself:



For more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

Theme Thursday - Swing

The first thing that came to mind was, of course, "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). I performed this song with the little group I formed a few years ago. We called ourselves Deja Vu, and we did the old folks' home circuit, along with a few appearances at parties, restaurants, and the like.

I went hunting on YouTube, found Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, all those wonderful names, then happened on what I think is a hidden gem. According to the notes, "Incoming class of the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz at Loyola University New Orleans perform with Jazz Masters Herbie Hancock, Thelonius Monk Jr., Terence Blanchard, and Wayne Shorter."



Then I remembered - when I was a little girl, I lived near a park where I used to go every day (as I recall) to swing on the swings. There was a song I loved to sing while I swung. It was called "Dear Hearts and Gentle People." I thought I remembered Bing Crosby performing it, but when I went to YouTube, I played Bing Crosby's version, and it wasn't quite right. I listened to Bob Crosby and the Bobcats, but that wasn't right, either. Finally, I found a Perry Como version. The words were closer to what I remembered - "There's a place I'd like to be, and it's back in Tennessee" than Bing Crosby's "There's a place I'd like to go, and it's down in Ohio" (stressed OH - hi - OH), and the rhythm was perfect. Like Goldilocks, I sighed. It was just right.



Listening, I felt slightly queasy, as I always did when I was swinging. I would sing at the top of my lungs, and I'd time my singing so that when I got to the phrase "I feel so welcome" I would be right at the top of my arc, and as I sang "each time that I return..." I would be returning toward the ground. It was magical.



I sang other songs while I swung, like Teresa Brewer's "Put Another Nickel In" -



and Gogi Grant's "The Wayward Wind".



Nothing else, though, was quite as good as "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" for swinging.

Many thanks to Reyjr for this week's theme. It has brought back some lovely, sunny memories.

For more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

Theme Thursday: Clock


There are so many possibilities, but one stands out for me, a poem that comes to mind whenever clocks are mentioned. I went to YouTube to see whether I could find the video of John Hannah reading it, and I found it. Unfortunately, I cannot embed it, so I decided to send you there instead, to hear W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues.

Then, to my surprise, I found another video - I am not sure who is reading - and it's embeddable. Woo-hoo!



That one line, "Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves" breaks my heart.


Finding Funeral Blues inspired me to keep looking, and I soon found another Auden poem that mentions clocks.

This is "As I Walked Out One Evening".



That's Big Ben in the photo at the top of the page, of course. According to UPI, Big Ben is about to get a spring cleaning. The article also states that someone winds the clock three times a week. I did not know that. What a great job.

Thinking of Big Ben made me wonder whether it were Big Ben that Auden referred to in his poems, but that seems unlikely. He was born in York and educated at Oxford. I've never been to York, but I have heard the bells at Christ Church, Oxford, ringing the hours. I like to think of Auden passing beneath the Tom Tower clock and drawing on that memory to write both the poems I've featured.

Find more Theme Thursday posts here.

Theme Thursday: Suitcase

I once knew a man who flew to England and back several times a year. Unfortunately, he was more than a little absent-minded. His family delighted in telling me (and anyone who would listen) about the time that my friend, freshly arrived for a two-week stay in England, opened his suitcase at a London hotel and found nothing in it but books and a trombone. From then on, his efficient wife packed for both of them.

There have certainly been many suitcases in my life. I have moved a lot, and I have traveled a lot. As time goes by, I find that my suitcases grow fewer - and smaller. A few years ago, I even managed to pack for three weeks in England while staying within the 25-lb. luggage allowance of one of our local float plane operators. The laptop I was using at the time weighed ten pounds, so that left fifteen pounds for all my clothing and toiletries.

But if I did want to give my biceps a little more exercise (and pay lots of excess baggage charges), I could add this item to my luggage. I could use it for getting around in airports, and it would be really handy to have along on our narrowboat journeys. Presenting: the Suitcase Bike. I think it's a great idea.


Or - I suppose I could bring along a suitcase sturdy enough to double as furniture, like the one Clark Gable used in "It Happened One Night". Look at that monster. Remember when suitcases were as big as armchairs and didn't have wheels?




That brings me to the end of my presentation. I will leave you with a poignant song - the first image, in fact, that came to my mind when I saw that the theme for this Thursday would be suitcase. From Evita, "Another Suitcase in Another Hall".

Theme Thursday - Vacation

Picture it: The week after Christmas, some time in the 1980s - a last-minute holiday package, a mother and young son traveling together to South Padre Island, Texas.

It was snowing in Toronto when we left, but we didn't care. We were on our way to the warm. We boarded the plane and found ourselves seated across from a very jolly woman - let's call her Helene - with a purse full of little airplane booze bottles. She was traveling with her friend Carol, but they hadn't been able to get seats together. Carol was at the other end of the plane. Helene was not prepared to wait for the flight attendants to make their rounds, passing out drinks. She rummaged through her purse, brought out a handful of bottles, and passed them out to all the passengers in her vicinity.

When at last we were in the air and the flight attendant came by, Helene buttonholed her.

"Can you do me a big favour?" she asked.

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, do you see my friend Carol back there? The blonde in the aisle seat - the one who's laughing?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's Carol's birthday. Do you think you could ask the captain to wish her a happy birthday over the PA?"

"I'll see what I can do."

A few minutes later, the captain's voice filled the cabin. He thanked us all for trusting ourselves to him to fly the plane, then said,

"I hear we have a birthday girl aboard. On behalf of (mumble mumble) Airlines, Carol, I want to wish you a happy birthday. The flight attendants will be bringing you a complimentary champagne."

"That was nice of you," I said to Helene.

"Oh, I do that every time we fly together. It isn't really her birthday."

That was Helene. She was incorrigible. Over the next week, I came to appreciate that quality, as watching Helene's antics was pretty well all there was to do on South Padre Island. (I should point out that this was a long time ago. I passed through there a couple of years ago, and found that the place was buzzing.)

Anyway, back to the eighties. We stopped for fuel in Memphis, then proceeded to Harlingen, Texas, where we were picked up and driven by bus to our very unsatisfactory hotel on South Padre.

When we landed at Harlingen, the temperature was 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was raining. During the week that we were in Texas, the temperature never went any higher, and it never stopped raining. We spent most of our days in the hotel, which didn't even have a bar. Some time in the afternoon, while my son played chess with the young daughter of another passenger (or so they said), we three women - Helene, Carol and I - would scamper along the beach in the near-freezing rain, trying not to step on any of the thousands of dead jellyfish littering the sand. Ten minutes or so down the beach, we would pop into the Hilton for a drink. One day, having had an extra drink, Helene donned three green garbage bags (one for each leg, one more for the rest of her) and hitch-hiked home. Carol and I opted to make the beach run, figuring Helene would end up being carted off to a padded room. She did make it home, though.

The high point of the vacation was Wednesday, when we all boarded a bus and went to Matamoros, across the border in Mexico. I bought a serape at the market, so I could finally get a little warm. I still have the serape. The day was made really special by the fact that it wasn't raining in Matamoros. The rain was waiting for us, back in Texas.

At last, it ended. The holiday, not the rain. Come Saturday morning, we all had to be out of our rooms by 11 o'clock - but the bus back to Harlingen wasn't coming for us until 3:00 in the afternoon, so for four hours, we all milled around in the lobby. From time to time, somebody would pop out to the local liquor store and buy a very large bottle of something or other (mostly gin), upon which the assembled inmates would leap with an eagerness born of desperation. I heard somebody say:

"They're going to let us go home today."

And they did. Shortly after we got back to Canada, (We did not kiss the ground when we got home, but only because our lips would have frozen to it) there was a story in the papers about a religious cult in Matamoros that had been kidnapping children and killing them. My son capped the whole vacation experience with his request:

"Mom, the next time we go on holiday, can we go somewhere that they don't practise human sacrifice?"

Theme Thursday - (Wh)oops!


And I thought this would be easy. It turned out to be quite a challenge. The first thing I did was google Whoops! to see if anything inspiring came up. No. So I decided to take the liberty of checking the more commonly used Oops! - and even that wasn't particularly helpful. I did find a Britney Spears YouTube video called Oops!... I Did It Again. I watched it. I was surprised to note that I really had no idea what Britney Spears looked like, except that she was blonde. I could have passed this performer on the street and not recognized her. That was actually rather heartening. There's apparently one aspect of popular culture that hasn't permeated my brain.


It was a couple of hours later when suddenly I knew what I wanted to talk about. I was curled up on the sofa, reading Tender Graces. I came to a scene in which Virginia Kate learns to ride a horse. Bingo! I remembered a (Wh)oops! moment in my own life. It had to do with a horse named Bingo, in fact.

I was not yet 40 years old, and I had already managed to do some fairly nasty things to my back, so I was a little fragile. My son, whom I'll call Bumble (that being his baby nickname), decided he would like to take riding lessons, so we sought out a riding school. Every Tuesday night we would drive out to the riding school, and I would watch the class go through its routine. One night, I said to the teacher that it was like watching somebody shave or put lipstick on. My muscles wanted to move in synch with the riders. "If you want to ride," said the teacher, "I'll bring out a horse for you next week, and you can have a go." Cool. Really cool. I was so excited.

The following Tuesday, when we arrived for the class, I wasn't sure that the teacher would remember his offer. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but he came out to say hello, and he said "You can ride Bingo. He's very gentle."Bingo was also huge, but I had seen him in action, and I knew that he was perfect for me to ride. The challenge would be to get him moving.

So off we went, Bumble on his horse, I on mine, and we joined the group of kids. Soon we were all going around in a circle, walking slowly and gently.

Next came posting. For those not familiar with English riding: this is a technique whereby you clamp the saddle firmly between your knees and ride without actually sitting down right on the horse. "Posting trot!" called the teacher, and that's what we did. It was easy, and it was fun.

"Sitting trot!" came the next instruction, and we all sat down. Things are getting a little more jostly here, but I'm still okay.

"Feet out of the stirrups..." Out came my feet, and there I was, bouncing around on my tailbone, not having any fun at all, and meanwhile, the teacher was finishing his instruction - "...everybody except Bumble's mother." Oh. Right. Now He tells me. (Wh)oops!

The following day, I couldn't go to work, because I couldn't lift my foot far enough to climb into the commuter van. I could get into my car, barely, and I went straight to the chiropractor. His reaction was predictable. "You did WHAT?"

*********************
Theme Thursday -
The Winds of Change


This is Carol Ann Duffy,
The UK's first female poet laureate
The UK's first Scottish poet laureate
The UK's first lesbian poet laureate

Holy moley - talk about the winds of change. It gives me great pleasure to say that I managed to find a brand-new, beautiful, evocative, touching Theme Thursday poem by Ms. Duffy herself.

"The words of poems are nails which tack the wind to a page, so that the gone hour when your kite pulled you over the field blows in your hair."

Here is the entire poem:

The Words Of Poems

The words of poems are nails which tack the wind to a page,
so that the gone hour when your kite pulled you over the field blows in your hair.

They're hand-mirrors, a poem's words, holding the wept tears on your face, like a purse holds small change, or the breath that said things.

They're fishing-nets, scooping sprats and tiddlers out of a stream or the gleaming trout that startled the air when you threw it back. The words of poems are stars, dot-to-dots of the Great Bear, the Milky Way your telescope caught; or breves filled with the light of the full moon you saw from your bedroom window; or little flames like the tongues of Hallowe'en candles.

The words of poems are spells, dropping like pennies into a wishing-well, remember the far splash? They're sparklers, scrawling their silver loops and hoops on the night, again in your gloved fist on November the Fifth.

They're goldfish in their sad plastic bags at the fair, you stood there. The words of poems are coins in a poor man's hat; the claws of a lost cat.

The words of poems are who you were.

- Carol Ann Duffy
Source: Mirror.co.uk

Click here to see an interview with Ms. Duffy about her work and about her decision to accept the position of poet laureate. The interview was conducted by Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian.

Over in the sidebar, you'll see that I've posted another one of Ms. Duffy's poems. By the way, I am still posting a daily poem there, even though National Poetry Month is over.

And in case you think I've forgotten that this post is not supposed to be All Duffy, All the Time, but a post about the wind, I give you The Boss, singing about the wind and a bad moon.





More Theme Thursday here.