Oh, my today’s prompt for Ethical ELA by Wendy Everard was to write a double dactyl. A dactyl is a DUM-da-da three-syllable word or phrase, I think. Each line (except the fourth) has two dactyls–six syllables with a DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da rhythm. I may have accomplished it in some lines. There are some other silly requirements like the first line is nonsense words, the second line has a proper name, and the sixth line is one word. Who created such a beast!? Ah, you can find out here. Here is my attempt at a double dactyl:
Wafflewab wufflegob
Woody L. Woodpecker
Early in Woody’s rise
Heading to fame
Fool of demented acts
inappropriately
too wild and offensive
Needed to tame
Whatever possessed me to write about Woody Woodpecker? Who knows, except that his name may or may not be a double dactyl, with the fake L. middle initial.
So today was a cold day with a high of just 42F. (That is cold for me anyway–maybe not in Idaho or the Midwest or the Northeast, but it is cold in California.) It rained last night and snowed on the hills and mountains around us. It was mostly cloudy all day.
I called this sky “Lifted Mountains”
For more inspiration today, I looked on my camera roll and found some photos from last week that I didn’t write about when they happened. This is my sister’s ‘granddaughter,’ we call her. (Not officially, but Lori is very close to the girl and her mom. My sister has become Grandma Lori to her. The little girl comes to our house a lot too.) I had these chalk eggs sitting out, and one time she saw them and wanted to play, but it was night time and cold outside. I told her next time she came in the daytime we would play with them outside. The next time came and the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm. She noticed them, and we spent the whole morning outside, drawing and then hiding and gathering the eggs. She hid them and found them, like she was seeing each for the first time. I was the container holder. She never tired until it was time to leave.
In Order for Me to Write Poetry
I have just to look out my window
The birds are munching their seeds
darting, hustling, swooping, soaring
Chirrupping and cooing to me
and each other
The sun peeks through the clouds
calling me to contemplate peace
In order for me to write poetry
I just sit in silence as I wish
I have enough food
I have clean water to drink
I have the Internet to publish
this poem online if I wish
and paper and pen if I don’t
I even have lots of things I want
and no threat of missiles
coming my way
no warplanes overhead
Can the people of Gaza take
time to write poems today?
Can they look out windows
they no longer have?
Many can’t hear the birds
for the pounding of fear
in their chest is louder
than the birds
The boat of a moon tonight
calls Gaza to break their
fast at افطار Iftar,
but what if there is no food?
How can there be a celebration
when there is no food?
How can there be peace
when there is no hope?
I wrote the poem above after seeing this on Instagram today:
Today, I took a walk by myself. I packed a windbreaker, a stocking cap, water, grapes, my notebook and pen. Everything I needed for a walk and a break at a favorite picnic tree.
We walk by this tree often, but I love to stop and sit under its shade. (Even today when it was cold.)Such a cozy space.This rock is my “kitchen table” and I’m sitting on another “chair” rock.
I started writing in the style I learned from Kim Stafford early in January, each day writing: “the date, a diary (boring prose of the day), an aphorism, and a poem.” So, I wrote the date and a couple paragraphs about my mundane day yesterday, and then I needed a quote or aphorism. I went to my email, and saw Trish Emerson’s Wednesday post. I read it, always inspired by her beautiful prose. Then I found the poem she mentions “This Too Shall Pass.” It is a dynamic and important word from Kim Addonizio. I searched for more from her, and found a video of Addonizio answering questions about her book in 2021. In the video, she described the world as “our beleaguered, compromised, beautiful world.” It struck me as so humble and true. I used that as my striking line to write today’s poem in honor of all you Slicers and what our writing does for each of us, each other, and the world.
A World Longing for Hope
Our Love and writing will salvage beleaguered dreams and compromised liberties. Our beautiful solace in a world longing for hope.
Kim Addonizio gives that striking line in this Q&A video created during the pandemic.
Happy Wednesday the 13th. I don’t think there is a word to describe a fear of Wednesday the 13th, but there is a word to describe a fear of Friday the 13th: Paraskavedekatriaphobia. That is surely a mouthful!
Last week Amy Juengst wrote a great post inspired by another Amazing Fact generated on the Mental Floss website. It was about heeding good advice about getting enough sleep because sleep is a time to clean your brain from daily toxins. I thought Amy’s idea, which was a prompt challenge she learned from NaPoWriMo, was such a good one that I kept it up my sleeve and went to it today.
When I saw the first amazing fact, I knew right away that would be my inspiration. I’m not at all afraid of Friday the 13th, that is one big word, and I have no idea how to pronounce it. That’s about all I have to write about that amazing fact.
However, I chose this amazing fact because it reminded me of another story–very loosely related!
Last month, I went to Brazil for a storytelling training. The translator for my group, was a sweet teenager who was on vacation from school for Carnaval. She was full of life and enjoyed making people laugh. She had an American English accent, which I found surprising, but she explained that she learned English in Arizona when her dad was in graduate school at the University of North Arizona.
One of the stories she told us about her time in Arizona made me smile. At her new school, she hardly knew any English, but she learned quickly. It was her first year, and her fourth grade teacher asked Victoria if she would teach her some words in Portuguese. Victoria told her with a straight face she had the perfect word to begin her lessons. Paralelepípedo. She said the teacher didn’t ask her to learn any more Portuguese.
Paralelepípedo is seven syllables of pure fun.
It actually has two meanings in Portuguese. One is a paving stone and the other is a parallelepiped. Which is also fun to pronounce and almost spelled the same. (In case you are out of practice with geometry, like I was, it is a three-dimensional six-sided shape, like a slanted cube. Each side is a parallelogram.)
Today was haircutting day for both Keith and me. He has paved his topknot and put in a parking lot, but once a week I still trim around the edges on his lot. I’ve been cutting his hair for almost twenty years now. Here is a convenient truth: When he had darker and much more hair, I had better eyesight, as well as more patience to make sharp lines around the nape of his neck and all the other edges. Now that his hair is thinner and grayer, I can still cut a mean haircut. You just can’t see all my mistakes anymore.
Now Keith doesn’t do the same for my hair. Praise God. I go to Amber. She has a sweet little salon in Yucca Valley. Her daughter has recently graduated from beauty school and is now working with Amber in her salon. I should have taken a before and after picture, but I wasn’t thinking of my Slice of Life when I was there.
Anyway, here are a few other photos from my day.
The view on the road to my haircut this morning.La Baguette is a Vietnamese sandwich shop. I had a rice bowl, and my hubby got a sandwich. We both had Portobello mushrooms on ours.There are so many windmills near Palm Springs.Out the side window.
Drew Oliver Built the First Wind Turbine Here
What would Drew Oliver think If he could see all the windmills Now filling the San Gorgonio Pass? Did he know his idea would take off?
Turn back the calendar 100 years and turn Up the wind. It squeezes through two mountain Ranges. Oliver knew that, and he tried to harness it by Building a windmill In 1926. Now the almost 1000 turbines make clean Energy–hundreds of millions of watts.
Before retiring to California in 2022, I lived in Bahrain. When we went there we took nine suitcases. When we came back eight years later, we had nine boxes and suitcases again. I’m guessing the contents of the suitcases had changed by about 80%. We brought home the painted map of Bahrain in the photo below. It hung in my dining room in Bahrain, and it graces our dining room in California now.
Learning to love tea in Bahrain was another joy I brought back to California, along with two tea pots and a dozen small tea cups–some of them gifts from friends. Every Sunday before church, I make myself a pot of tea (Something I used to do every Friday before church in Bahrain.)
Affaf had given me a set of crystal tea cups and saucers, so I told her I was thinking of her. Affaf wished peace to me and my family, thanked me for writing, told me she thought of me and our good friendship. (Of course, Google Translate had to help me read that note.)
Another thing I grew to love in Bahrain was wearing perfume. I had never been much of a perfume wearer, except when I first got married and received a bottle of Lauren, which I wore daily. But living in the Middle East, perfume is a big deal. At the mall, workers stand outside perfume shops and spray samples generously. For Teacher Appreciation Week, I didn’t get coffee mugs but often would receive gifts of perfume and flowers. While I was there, I learned to spray perfume on every day. I left my Bahrain perfume behind, so when I got to California I didn’t have any perfume.
This past December, I added perfume to my Christmas wish list, and Katie and Thomas got me a fun gift from Sephora–a perfume sampler. There are 16 tiny bottles. I’ve been wearing perfume since Christmas.
The best part, though. I get to choose a large bottle of the one I like best.
After awhile, I decided to do a proper tournament. The first round was easy because I had already separated the perfumes into ones I liked and ones that were so-so. I paired them up against each other.
Here is my March Madness, Perfume Edition.
Here are my final four:
I’m having a hard time choosing between the final four. I like them all, so it doesn’t really matter which one I choose! I’ll go to Sephora soon and commit to one.
Thanks to Megan’s slice yesterday, “My Five Senses on a Friday” at The Musing Millennial, I spent more time appreciating everything I was sensing today while I was on a bike ride. It’s been awhile since I closed my eyes and listened, but I did that today sitting on a picnic table, so thank you, Megan.
I heard the jet plane miles overhead, and when it was gone it got quiet-quiet, like I could hear the workings in my head. Then a very occasional bee and another occasional fly went by. Next, my husband’s footsteps in the sand told me he was back from watering a tree.
I smell no springtime flora; it may be a little early for that. I did catch a lingering remnant of the Nest fragrance on my wrist, which happens to be in the final four of the perfume brackets (more on that tomorrow). I also smelled the hard caliche when I fell and nearly kissed the earth, while I climbed up to the rock pile.
I see two gallon water bottles tucked under a bush and the skeletal remains of Joshua and juniper trees which were burned in a fire decades ago. I see my husband down below me waiting at the picnic table, while I watched him from the rock pile.
I taste the cool water flowing from my hydration pack, as I suck on the nozzle.
I feel the bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup as I bounce over ridges on the washboard road. When we first started I felt a pain in my left knee, so I cranked up the power to #3 on my e-bike, and enjoyed the electric assistance throughout the uphill climb.
And now as I write, I’m enjoying the bike ride again, thanks to paying attention to the senses that make life interesting.
Thanks
for the
connections
we make to this
adored planet you
have freely graced us with.
The God of the universe
created all sights, sounds, smells, tastes,
and touches–bringing joy to this life.
