River Sketches

Today was the first day that we got out to the trail. Our trail. I got to sit out at the river a bit and get a few words onto paper. It's nothing much - just the things that float through one's head while listening to the water flow:

Softly the waterfall of thoughts turns

to white noise, gurgling and flowing past me.

Slowly beneath the surface fish spot their prey

settling on the surface tension

                                    PLOP

                                    nothing left but waves

---

Leaves drop one by one into the current

drifting lazily, then picking up speed,

never knowing when the tipping edge will come

to toss them, turn them asunder.

---

From among the greens a peacock flutter,

dragonflies cloud my vision

Book Challenge Update

I did not get a chance to update my book challenge yet this week. I finished The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 


I must say, I really love this story. It's, of course, a great growing story full of morals and directives about how to be a good person, how to help children be good people and the loveliness and lessons we can learn from gardening. LOVE IT! 


It makes me want even more to start my own greenhouse. It's a pet idea that I've had floating around the back of my mind for a few years. 


Anyways - back to the book. I finished it Tuesday and began reading Little Women for the third time. It's another book I love. Alcott has such interestingly eternal thoughts. Plus, it is hard to pull me away from the transcendentalists (but not as difficult as it is pulling them away from Unitarian thought... hahaha ha ha.... no one gets my literary joke or finds it funny.


Thus, I have completed the twelfth book on my journey to tri-deca-dom. Or something like that. 


12/30 books completed.

Vapid Aphrodite

A post I got to via lovelinks, by Patricia over at Contemplating Happiness about people watching pushed me over the edge this morning. I went on one of the most lovely Easter Sunday walks to a zoological/botanical garden this year and along the way I picked up (in my writer's mind) a woman, whom I've charmingly named the "Vapid Aphrodite". 

Vapid Aphrodite

We walked through the gardens with spring all abloom

Our fingers meeting in between camera captures, lovely

and bright, the flowers, cranes and flamingos strutting

their best jeweled plumage in the afternoon warmth

We hold the camera at arms’ length, heads together

faces smiling with a light that is not all from above

A sheer mist from the fountain cools our faces, frenzies

of children splash and give chase in the delight

The clicking of another camera comes to our ears

from a fellow being directed by a tall and fair woman

She presents an orange-flowered tree for the camera

as a showcase showgirl presenting her latest wares

The sun illuminates her sun-bleached mop, her lips

too pink, painted as though she could be done up better,

Nature’s beauty undone, she holds her lover’s smile

too long, telling tales of perspiration and aching feet

The corners of her mouth fall with the camera lens,

gone until the photographer glances back up grinning

He leans in for her lips, but she presents a rouged cheek,

looking determinedly for her next ware to showcase.

Comments welcome.  :)

The Visitor

The Visitor

I fold the napkins flatter and adjust the china:

willow pattern on the left, handle to the right.

My annual visitor seems to hover at the door, but I wait

for the knock that I know will come – never failing.

I smile in greeting, but it is hard to be genuine.

I prefer the normal distant correspondence – a pen pal

of sorts. The table is laid with biscuits and honey –

my guest doesn’t like scones and takes two lumps.

The coffee drinker’s brew fills the air with an earthy

smell that compliments his own. I sip my tea mildly.

We chat at first, nostalgia and reminiscing coming next.

Soon the tears run down our face in laugher and memory

and sadness when the time comes to say goodbye again.

Come back soon, the thought sits on the edge of my mind.

Missing him already, with a deep breath I am free again.




Comments welcome.

Filling Water Balloons

So this weekend's RemembeRED prompt is up:


This week, we're giving you a photo to take you back in time.
In 700 or fewer words, show us where your memory takes you. 

Remember that this image is merely inspiration. Your piece needn't have a hose in your piece, but we need to easily see how you were inspired by it.

 I don't so much have a hose story as a brief memory about water balloons. The hose makes little appearance.

Filling Water Balloons

The water was cold on my toes as I tried to fit an empty water balloon over the end of the leaky hose nozzle. It was my birthday and we were a good half an hour into a water fight.

“We always take my car ‘cause it’s never been beat,                                                                                                  and we never miss IT with the girls we meet.”

It was Dan singing. I was only 8 and had yet to discover the meaning behind the lines, but there was something about the way he sang it that made it stick in my mind. He was a few years older and had a much more worldly view of that song that I. He helped me fill up my balloons – it was so much easier with four hands – and we jumped back into the crowd of kids running around the front yard.

Carefully avoiding the red ant piles, I ducked around the Dogwood branches and nailed James right in the chest with a wobbly balloon.

“Arhh! I’m gonna get you for that!” he yelled. The fresh balloons were cold.

Comments welcome.

There's nothing like anxiety in the spring

I'm not sure why, but every spring my anxiety kicks up a few notches. I've been trying to figure out what might cause this sudden upswing. I've come up with a calendar of theories, but they may not stand up to the test of applicability:


1) January: New Year's resolutions


Everyone seems to make this list of things that they're going to do in the New Year that they didn't do before. This is one of those cultural rituals that is an expression of our continuous search for perfection and designed to make those with high blood pressure or anxiety worsen their conditions. Instead of relaxing and doing small things to help ourselves change, like adding a 15 minute walk to our day, we feel the need to set a goal of hitting the gym an hour everyday when we don't believe we have enough time anyway. What's worse is when we've done well for the first week of January, we think "I'm getting the hang of this" and then promptly stop going to the gym and/or start eating more calories (because we worked it all off, right?). When we suddenly notice that we're not meeting the completely unreasonable goals, we start worrying - which only stops us in our tracks to good health more. 


2) February: Valentine's Day


Another holiday for those who are exceedingly happy in their romantic relationships. It tends to make everyone else just feel worse that they're 30 and not married, or remind them that their mother wants to know when they're going to produce come grandchildren and also worry about how there are too many curves in their silhouette.  Luckily, I don't have either of those problems, but then I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day either. 


3) March Madness


This is usually a term that is reserved for those of our country that are already diagnosed with a serious disease (Basketball Fanaticism), but it doesn't make it untrue for the rest of us. There's something about March that it's just the time when things start picking up and you feel even busier than usual. When you're a student, your midterms are coming around and the papers are due. If you watch television, then all of your normal relaxing me-time shows are being cancelled for someone's basketball obsession. Maybe you share the basketball obsession and have decided that gambling money is a good way to exercise that obsession. This means that you'll spend an entire month worrying about something that is in no way dependent upon your behavior that you're most likely going to lose your hard earned money on. It also seems to be a month for evaluation. You have to start doing the self-assessments that are required for ...


4) April: Tax Season


Everyone that has spent the last two months ignoring the W-2s that reside in the growing pile of mail at the end of the table, on the kitchen counter or in that corner of the office starts to sweat. It's time. You've got to pay your taxes. But to do that you have to go through the most confusing and often unintelligibly meaningless jargon of tax law. If you have any idea what most of that junk they ask you about in your tax forms means, then you're ahead of the game. I usually look for keywords like GI, military, train, miner and disability to help me decide whether or not I am required to fill in one of the boxes. At any rate, you've got the first two weeks to get all of your finances straightened out and make sure that you're accurately representing (and certainly not over-representing) yourself on paper to people in the government who won't think twice about rubber stamping your tax return, unless they see something fishy. And something fishy can be as complicated as not paying taxes on all of the money that you're taking off the top of your multi-million dollar corporate income or as simple as not understanding the language in which your accumulation of assets (otherwise known as your bank account) in being described to you. After the taxes have finally been filed, envelope licked, stamp attached and placed in your local letter carrier's trusty bag - you have two more miserable weeks (at least) to wait to see if they have been received, accepted and (if you're lucky) you'll actually get the return your state owes you or (if you're not lucky) they've removed the funds from your account. 


5) May: Light at the end of the tunnel


Perhaps I've been a student too long, but this seems to be the point at which spring just can't be spring anymore - it has got to start heading toward summer. All that worrying you did in April led to binge eating that is now starting to show around your thighs and the bathing suit season is creeping up faster than you'd like. Everyone's back in workout mode a little too late to get into the shape they want to be in on the beaches, but hey - at least it's almost time for a little vacation - a little R&R time right? 


In my family, all the birthdays have come around and by mine (mid-month) the anxiety has started to break up and leave me again until January.


So here's the thing... none of these things really apply to me. I didn't set New Year's resolutions this year - I was adjusting to being newly married and living in Hong Kong. I didn't celebrate Valentine's Day other than to eat some chocolate sent to us by my father-in-law and to say to my husband "Happy Valentine's Day" once. Also - not sad and alone, so no worries there. I don't care about basketball, nor do I own a television, nor did I gamble any money in the month of March. As I am abroad, I didn't even do my own taxes this year and they're already filed and I've already received my return (yay!). As for May, I'm just looking forward to going home for the summer. So how is it that all the things that usually give people anxiety don't apply to me and yet, here I am feeling it?


Sometimes life doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I am currently trying to apply Daoism liberally to the affected area to see if I get any results. Thus far there has been no increased inflammation, but no reduction of what's already there either. 


Advice welcome.