Dear Ones,

            In case you didn’t notice, April is National Poetry Month and yes…I have a poem.  Hope it will  APPEAL to you. 

Address An Orange

                        by    Patti Ross

Good morning orange.

Cupped in my hand like a glowing orb, I cuddle you

And growing warm you emit a pungent sweetness

I lift you to my nose and sniff it in

Inhale the pungent fragrance of your skin.

Good morning orange.

I sit you on my plate and peel the pith

With fingers sticky and stained I watch

The peel drop away like darkness at the dawn

your nakedness revealing juicy jewels of gold

waiting to be swallowed like the day ahead.

A cool slice curls my tongue and citrus fills my mouth

I chew you

Good morning orange.

Pay attention to the day for like the orange it will slip away

Eaten by the gods of time

Beautiful Old Broads write stories

Dear Ones,

Writing stories in my head is something I’ve always done.  Some stories are real, others, make believe. A recent article pointed out, we all write our stories.  Personal narratives, they are labeled.  What’s more, these stories in our head help us make sense of our lives and so how we compose the story is important. 

The article which goes into depth about two studies done by psychologists states that if the story you conjure up in your head about an event in your life is positive, then voila!  You will be happier.  They interviewed hundreds and calculated and weighted and suggested a course of action to aid in reframing your narrative from negative to positive mainly by paying attention to the narrative you create and examining it.  Is the story really true?  Can you change it?

After reading the complete article, I could take a page out of E.B. White and condense that study down to a few succinct lines such as:  When the world gives you lemons—make lemonade.  Or always see the glass half full instead of half empty. Or how about when the door shuts, somewhere there is a window opening.   Tons of these cheery adages do help us and yes while we know they work, when the bird of paradise poops on our parade, those upbeat sayings can curdle our coffee.  But as the article points out, feeling helpless and moaning is pointless and uses up our energy that we could better employ making a plan.

So I decided to write two narratives for the same morning.  Here goes.

1.  It’s a crappy morning, humid and drizzly.  My knee hurts.  I’m sick of going to the neighborhood park for my walk.  Same old…same old.  I want to run barefoot on an ocean beach.  Fat chance.  I can’t jog anymore and I can’t see any ocean beaches in the near future for me.  What’s more, my step has slowed, and I get occasional glitches in my hips.  I’m blue today and I don’t want to go over to the park and beam good morning to other walkers.

2.  Wow!  So thankful it’s not snowing and icy like many places.  I can walk over to our small park and I think my knee is improving. I’m lucky to have a safe pleasant place close by for walking.   Plus saying a cheery good morning to fellow walkers usually improves my spirits.  After all you have to return a smile.   Yeah, I do walk slower but that gives me a better chance to spot a finch or a cedar waxwing in the pecan tree.  Thank goodness my eyes are okay.  I’m blessed.    

Interesting, isn’t it?  Same day, same person, same issues to deal with…yet two different narratives.  One researcher said “You can’t impact every event in your life but you have a choice in how the narrative is played out.  You tell the story and the story really matters.” 

By our age, all of us have composed many narratives in our heads.  However, it was revealing to me to examine my stories and maybe do a little rewriting.  Try it.

                        “I remember things the way they should have been.”

                                                                    Truman Capote 

Beautiful Old Broads meditate on Good Friday

Dear Ones,

Last year on Good Friday I posted John Donne's famous meditation on death which he preached at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  Nothing I could say could be more appropriate for the day so I'll repeat the post this year.   

“Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.  Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him.  And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.  The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child; that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me.  All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.  God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness…The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out?  Who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?  No man is an island, entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

                                                it tolls for thee.”