NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 14 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 14: Your Legacy

Image by Barbara Bonanno from Pixabay

I

am not

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the legacy that you created

I am your Frankenstein monster

built from the things

that made your life

worth living

I am a

twisted

sorry

awful

mockery

a failure

of a person

I am not 

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the gifts you gave me

~cie~

NaPoWriMo: write a poem about the people who inspired you to write poems

April PAD Challenge: write a form poem

notes

I think the shape above is a chess pawn. It started out as a simple diamante but turned into what you see. It is what it is.

This poem addresses my late father. He was a professor of literature and humanities who also taught technical writing. I was a precocious little skidmark who learned to read and write by the time I was four years old. I think my father believed that this prodigious spark meant that I was destined for greatness. He read poetry to me. I started reading Edgar Allan Poe's works when I was six years old.

My father wound up tremendously disappointed in me. I was a fuckup who could never do anything right and I had a slew of psychological problems. I was singled out and abused by my peers. I married too young. I had one abusive relationship after another. I engaged in self-harm. Possibly, worst of all, between a fucked endocrine system and years of yo-yo dieting, I ended up fat. My father believed that being fat was a sign of failure. He always went to great lengths to prevent himself from being fat. He ran six miles a day for many years. However, his vascular system was a disaster. He had a major hemorrhagic stroke at 68 years old. At the time of his death at age 74, he had suffered several more strokes, had congestive heart failure and vascular dementia, and was confined to a wheelchair.

If anyone's first inclination is to tell me "cHeEr Up, U cAn StiLLL LUz3 tEh WaTeZ!!111!!!" my suggestion to you is to check the ever-loving fuck out of yourself. Preferably on ice during a hockey game. I tried to hate myself thin for 33 years. With my endocrine problems, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be thin unless I do what my great-grandmother did. She developed acute myelogenous leukemia, dropped from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of a year, and dropped dead. But hey, she cut a svelte figure in her coffin, and, apparently, that's the only fucking thing that counts. Never mind that she was now, you know, DEAD.

In any case, I'm not going to waste another goddamn minute of my time trying to hate myself into the body that other people think I'm supposed to have. Thirty-three years of that shit is long enough. People who think I, or anyone else should do that, can slam down a hot, steaming cup of STFU, read the following fine books, and fuck off forever. Or if you're not a brainwashed, narrow-minded asswipe and you simply think: "say, those books look like they have some good information," you can read them while drinking what you want and omit the fucking off part. I'd think that was pretty cool.

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 1 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 1: Escape on the Asphalt Sea

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

on an asphalt sea my son and I ride

as long as the weather is on our side

we make a journey to retrieve

items from a place that we must leave

on an asphalt sea

as the earth turned, so did the tide

fortune has not been on my side

I search for reasons to believe

on an asphalt sea

some days I do not mind the ride

other days I wish to escape inside

over the years there have been reasons to grieve

I examine the dreams that my mind may conceive

on an asphalt sea

~cie~

notes

I combined the NaPoWriMo prompt with the April PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt AND the April PAD Challenge Countdown prompt. Go me!

Come As You Are Party: Wired Differently or Just a Flake?

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

This is my response(s) to a post on The Mighty.

It is my hope to back away from apologizing for who I am and instead explain about myself so that those I interact with might develop an understanding of those of us who are wired differently.

I have type 2 bipolar disorder and ADD as well as complex PTSD and OCD. I wasn't properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder or OCD until I was almost 40. I didn't know I had ADD until I was in my 50s. I was just always scolded for being forgetful and distracted. I have always vacillated between being Ms. Wonderful and being that flakey a-hole that everyone hates. I understand why it happens now, but I can't change the past. I wish people would try to understand me a little better, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

My son will be 30 this year. He is high-functioning autistic and has ADHD as well as anxiety issues and major depression. He is very intelligent and has read the entire Amber series (Roger Zelazny), much of Tolkien's writing, The Count of Monte Cristo, the works of C.S. Lewis, and the list goes on, but he can't learn from a textbook to save his life. I think the current educational system does a very poor job of addressing the needs of those who are not neurotypical. 

I technically also have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, but it is my opinion that borderline personality disorder is actually a form of complex PTSD and is an outdated and sexist diagnosis. It is almost exclusively applied to girls and women. Everyone who has it has endured some form of trauma, whether physical, psychological, sexual or a combination thereof. 

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Family Tombstone

Image Source

a memorial

a place to sit and reflect

on past memories

my father's name is there now

my mother's will be one day

~cie~

This time, I was a disobedient jerk-face on purpose. I was inspired to write this entire Tanka rather than a Tan Renga. You are still welcome to throw overripe produce at me. 

Dad

31 May 1936 - 28 November 2010

The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp Come As You Are Party + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 7: Find Your Why

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of the book through the preview link, I earn a small commission from Amazon.

Five things that make me happy:

1. My son

2. Writing

3. Doing crafts, i.e. loom knitting

4. Exploring nature

5. Learning new things

Identify why each of the above makes you happy. For example, if vacations make you happy, ask yourself why. Are they relaxing? Are they a hassle or expensive, but worth every penny because of what you learn about the world? Is it the time spent with loved ones?

Why these things bring my happiness:

1. My son is simply one of those people who was born with a desire to be kind. He wants to make the world a better place. He doesn't care about being showy or flashy. He just wants to be able to do his own thing. He is very good at working with his hands and has a great artistic eye. 

At times, I have not been as supportive of him as I should have because I misunderstood him. My parents also misunderstood him and scolded him for not "trying harder" when he would withdraw. 

Neither my son nor I were aware until he was an adult that he is on the autism spectrum. He hid a lot of his distress from overstimulation. He was born in 1990, and at that time, most people believed that autism was identified by the pronounced behaviors in people who are more severely affected, i.e. rocking and screaming. Most people believed that everyone with autism is non-verbal.

My son has since been able to reveal such characteristics as extreme sensitivity to sounds. He turns on rain sounds because otherwise, the humming from his phone charger disturbs him. I can't hear the phone charger at all. He is very aware of the sounds of water running through pipes. One time when the washing machine hose was dripping and causing water to run down the laundry room wall into the basement, he heard it all the way up on the second floor of the house and went to check it out. I was completely unaware of the problem.

I first started to suspect that my son might be autistic when he would turn the air conditioner in his room down to the coldest level while he was sleeping in order to be able to sleep under his heavy comforter even in the hottest days of summer. Weighted blankets have been shown to be very helpful in calming people with autism. Fortunately, at this point, the knowledge about the condition has increased exponentially.

However, society is often very slow to catch up. People with autism still tend to be treated as if they are retarded. People with autism are intellectually diverse. Some have severe intellectual disabilities while some have higher than average intellectual capabilities. People with autism are often pigeonholed as having lower than average intelligence because they tend not to learn well using traditional methods. 

My son, for instance, has trouble learning anything at all from a textbook. He does not have problems reading long novels that hold his interest. The best way for him to learn a new skill, however, is by observing and doing, not by reading a boring textbook and attempting to answer a long roster of meaningless questions. For instance, when he was in the EMS program, he would become extremely frustrated by trying to read and answer questions in the textbook. It did not matter if I read the text to him, he didn't absorb it and trying to just upset him. However, he took a lot away from his clinical experiences, and he did well with the medical terminology and even the pharmacy calculations which were always a sticking point for me.

Unfortunately, at that point, the community college EMS programs were hell-bent on passing no more than 75% of their participants because they wanted to prove how "tough" their standards were. I was astounded by the amount of information that students were being expected to learn in the space of one semester. I had gone through the EMS program six years prior to when my son was in it, and at the point when he entered the program, the students were expected to learn skills that were previously part of the paramedic program. 

When my son opted to drop out of the program, I fully supported him. I was aghast at the changes that had taken place. It's a damn shame too because I think that my son would have made a good EMT. However, he probably would have opted to work in an emergency room rather than on an ambulance because, like many autistic people, driving is a skill that is problematic for him.

2. Writing has always been my main way to survive. I do not think that I would last long if I didn't write. If I go for several days without writing, I start to become clinically depressed. It helps me work through problems and provides me an escape from a world that I've always found hostile to my very being.

3. Unlike writing, there is no impetus for me to have a certain level of "success" when it comes to my crafts. I just do them because I like to.

4. Exploring takes me out of my everyday environment, away from civilization, to a place that does not judge me. Connecting to the natural world renews the spirit.

5. One should not cease learning simply because one is not in school. Without new knowledge, a person stagnates. Learning because I want to learn just feels good. 

How my goals connect to the things in life that bring me joy:

1. I want to succeed because I want to be able to support my son in his own goals and give him the best life possible. He deserves this.

2. I would like to earn my living writing. However, I doubt this will ever transpire. So, I intend to write as if I were earning my living doing so, but not as if I MUST earn my living doing so. I never want it to be a chore, and I never want it to become a duty or a means to seek acceptance. When I start doing any of those things, I know I'm on the wrong track.

3. I want to be able to have enough money to do my crafts anytime I want and not have to worry that I should be doing something that's earning money instead.

4. I want to have enough money to have the time and resources to explore and take care of nature.

5. Learning is necessary to find new avenues to obtaining my goal of multiple income streams. Also, without learning, life stagnates.

Free use image from Pixabay

Ornery Literary Services

Will work for tips and links

Blow Your Stack Saturday + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 6: Don't Give Up

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of the book through the above link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.

How can I break this goal into smaller, achievable steps?

With the publishing goal, I'm already doing this.

I think I'm actually already doing it with the Goat Yoga Studio goal as well.

I've also been thinking about purchasing condos in the Denver area (single condos, not an entire building) to use as Air BnB/rental properties. 

I've become better within the past five years about breaking my bigger goals down into smaller, achievable goals. Which would have made me about eighteen when I gained this sage wisdom in my life.

Nah, I'm just messing with you. I'll be 55 in less than two months. I honestly still wasn't very good at breaking things down into smaller goals when I was fifty. Or fifty-one. Or fifty-two. It probably started to sink in when I was 53, although I was still recovering psychologically from the fact that I could no longer do the kinds of physically demanding work that I had done all my life.

Okay, I really didn't learn the lesson until this year. I'm kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.

How will I celebrate my accomplishments along the way?

With my son. Other than him, my family has never been supportive of my dreams. I could count my real friends on one hand if you chopped off half that hand. None of them live close to me and I've never met any of them in person.

Who will I turn to for help and encouragement?

See above.

If my first attempt does not work, what is the next approach I will try?

I'll just keep going at it with the publishing. However, as I previously mentioned, I'm not doing that to try and become The Next Big Thing. I'm just doing it because I want to.

With the goat yoga studio, if the property across the way is sold, I'll switch gears and move the idea to the fall-back property, which currently has a decaying structure on the land. The basic premise is the same but the execution is somewhat different.

The Air BnB/rentals in Denver thing is something that I've been considering and doing research on for a while now. It isn't a burning desire, so if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. It's a potential income stream, but I have to be careful not to fall into a money pit.

Tackle It Tuesday + Inner Champion Workbook Chapter 3: Staying on Track

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of the book through the preview link, I will earn a small commission from Amazon.

In Chapter 3 of her autobiography, Lauren reveals how her tendency to jump into situations both feet first without thinking led to a detrimental lifestyle of nonstop partying and drugs. One day she woke up and realized that if she kept on the same path, she was going to die. She successfully went through a rehabilitation program and has been sober ever since.

I am often surprised that I didn't end up either an addict or dead. I have an addictive personality and a self-destructive streak six miles wide. Which, to hear some people talk, is approximately the same width as my ass. These people are incorrect. My ass is, in fact, seven miles wide.

Butt-related jokes aside, I am an adrenaline junkie at heart, but my body won't allow me to indulge my addiction. I also have very low self-esteem. The ravenous hunger for acceptance combined with an addiction to excitement led me into some bad situations in my youth.

When I was younger I was infamous for trying any substance that didn't need to be snorted or injected. It's a good thing that I have a strong aversion to things in my nose. As I discovered when I was in the hospital 25 years ago after having an emergency Cesarean section, I really, really, really like opiates. Not the kind you swallow, those make me nauseous as all fuck. Codeine makes me projectile vomit. But morphine coming through an I.V.? That's the shit! I knew I would be addicted quick if I had a steady supply of that, and I was pretty sure that I would have been addicted to cocaine with the first sniff if I had ever tried it. 

Cocaine has similar effects to drugs like morphine. Fortunately, crack wasn't a thing in the area where I lived back in the day, and the crowd I ran with was too plebian to have access to coke. Also, there was the aversion to putting things in my nose. Much though I liked alcohol (and I liked it a lot), I never became addicted although I was a very heavy drinker and hard partier well into my thirties. I stopped drinking when I got pregnant but picked it back up once I was done nursing.

And now you know that part of my story.

Here are today's Inner Champion Workbook questions:

Wrong direction/action:

Equating excitement with happiness and lust with love. I partied hard and allowed guys who didn't care about me to take a piece of my heart in the hopes that if I was good to them they'd fall in love with me. It doesn't work that way.

How it didn’t match my values or goals:

I was destroying my body and going against my belief that a person should have to earn my trust in order to obtain intimacy, especially that degree of intimacy. I was disrespecting myself and it was destroying not only my body but my will to live.

How I got myself back on track:

It didn't happen until I was finally diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder at nearly 40 years old. I was at last able to see a pattern in my behaviors. I learned about hypomania and hypersexuality. I was able to start treating the physical component of my condition and understanding some of my psychological motivations. 

It took me a while to heal the most important relationship in my life, the relationship with my son. I am forever sorry about the chaos my untreated illness and my lack of self-respect introduced into his life until he was 14 years old. It took a while for him to forgive me. When I think back on how broken our relationship was, it fills me with sadness.

Wrong direction/action:

I equate my value as a person with money or lack thereof.

How it doesn’t match my values or goals:

I know that money doesn't make the person. Case in point: the rich but rank shitgibbon who holds the title President of the United States. Or, in my case, Mr. Not My President. However, my family always equated wealth with personal worth, and that is something that has stuck with me on a very deep level. 

I do not personally believe that a person's wealth has anything to do with their personal worth. If they don't do anything worthwhile with their wealth, if they squander and flaunt it, they're nothing but a giant walking rhinestone-encrusted asshole. Yet although I don't believe that wealth reveals anything about a person's true value, I believe on a deeply ingrained level that my lack of it defines mine.

How I’m going to get myself back on track:

I don't really know. I'm going to keep striving both to improve my position in life and my own self-respect. That's really all I can do.

Free Use Image from Pixabay

Ornery Literary Services

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November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 28: Grateful

Image by Matthias Cooper from Pixabay

grateful for what's here

a town far from everything

life in an old house

impossible dreams fade out

bittersweet acceptance in

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt asked for a Gratitude poem.

People, you know me. I am not the sort to write heartwarming, Chicken Soup for the Soul, grateful for God and family and Better Homes and Gardens type poetry. I am an agnostic curmudgeon, and the only miracle here is that I'm still alive. They ain't found a way to kill me yet, and neither have I. I believe there is something that survives the death of the corporeal body, and I believe there are advanced spiritual forces which could be termed higher powers. I don't like the Church God, and although I'm willing to judge his followers on a case by case basis, I tend to be mightily skeptical of them.

I was raised Catholic and am the black sheep of a family that tried way too hard to keep up appearances. Today is the ninth anniversary of my father's passing. Although we had a sometimes contentious relationship and he passed his own insecurities down to me, he was a devoted father and I love him. I am glad he isn't suffering anymore. The last five years of his life were increasingly difficult. In the end, he really wasn't himself anymore.

I want to call my mother today. My mother is a loyal person who is too wrapped up in keeping up appearances to see the damage that mindset does. She has no idea who I actually am or what I'm really doing because anytime I have tried to tell her, she shuts me down and criticizes me, so I just let her think what she wants.

My brother and I were once the greatest of friends but now have a civil but distant relationship. 

I love my son with all my heart and soul. There are some hurts from the past from when my mental illness was as yet undiagnosed and my behavior was chaotic.

Leonard Cohen wrote the line "It's Father's Day and everybody's wounded."

I think the same could be said for most holidays.

If you're having a Better Homes and Gardens Thanksgiving, that's great, and I hope you enjoy it. I would just ask that you realize that this is not the case for everyone, and those of us who are unable to have Shiny Happy Holidays are not bad people or just feeling sorry for ourselves for attention. The hurt is real.

Just to lighten the load a bit, here's one of my favorites:

Carpe Diem #1778: Moonlight Rail

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

flying in moonlight

trains travel the winter night

father sings his tale

~Cie~

Notes:

Today we were asked to revise a Haiku by Masaoka Shiki (14 October 1867 - 19 September 1902). I believe my verse is more an interpretation inspired by Shiki's original poem than a revision. In a time gone by nearly 50 years ago now, my father (31 May 1936 - 28 November 2010) would play his guitar and sing old railway and folk songs. The ninth anniversary of my father's passing is tomorrow and I wrote this poem to honor him.

the wild geese take flight

low along the railroad tracks

in the moonlit night

© Masaoka Shiki

The Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp's Come As You Are Party + Ornery Musings: Why Book Reviews are Useful

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

As the late, great Shorty Medlocke used to say, howdy solks, I mean folks! If you don't know who Shorty Medlocke was, it's time for you to at the very least hit Wikipedia and brush up on your music history, and then go listen to some Blackfoot, where you can hear Shorty's grandson Rickey shred on some sadly underrated Southern rock masterpieces.

Sadly for you, this post is not about great blues musicians, twentieth-century radio hosts, or great guitarists. It's about book reviewers.

At the bottom of many posts, you will notice the image of a plump owl carrying a couple of books, one with a pentagram and one with an anarchist symbol. This owl is my alter-ego, my inner badass. Where I am infamous for apologizing for myself constantly and becoming defensive quickly, this owl never apologizes (unless she has actually done something wrong) and has no time for defensiveness. If she is under attack, she will fight back, but she doesn't harbor any of the insecurities that I do. Therefore, defensiveness is foreign to her. This owl is unapologetically, authentically herself.

Me, on the other hand, I tend to always wonder if I'm doing something (or anything) right. I am a horrible--I mean adorable--little (okay, large) bundle of insecurities. I have both physical and psychological disabilities, and I also have ADD and dyslexia. Dyslexia does not have only one manifestation, by the way. I read most things clearly, and I'm a relly gud spelur. My dyslexia tends to present itself with numbers more than words, and I have a great deal of trouble with tests involving pattern recognition, which led to me being labeled borderline retarded when I was in the sixth grade. That label was a thermonuclear hit to my already severely compromised self-esteem, particularly when one of my nastier classmates overheard my parents and the school psychologist discussing it in the hallway and proceeded to ask my father if I really was borderline retarded, to which he naively replied, "yes, I'm afraid so," rather than telling her to run along as he should have.

So, here I am in my fifties with a lifetime of abject failures behind me, disabled and living in poverty, and I review books for a living. Seriously, that is how I eke out a living, and sometimes I become rather cynical about it. Here I am, doing something completely useless yet again because being useless is my M.O. in life. I would do very poorly as something like a virtual administrative assistant or customer service agent. I have moderate anxiety about talking to people on the phone, and if I get bored, I get distracted. I would be fired from these jobs fairly quickly. However, I can read books. These days I prefer e-books because of my vision and because they don't take up space on my shelves. I also enjoy listening to audiobooks. 

Anyway, I possess the ability to read, opinions are like assholes, and I am an asshole with an opinion. So I sneaked in the back door at the Online Book Club and tried my hand at doing reviews for them. My first few reviews were unpaid, and then I started getting paid for my efforts. Doing reviews for paid review services like Online Book Club means that I can do reviews on request for independent authors without charging money. My costs for an independent review are as follows:

If the book is available on Amazon, you give me permission to have an affiliate link in my review post. You won't pay me a cent, but if someone buys the book through the link, Amazon will pay me a few cents.

If you like the review, you provide a link to it on social media.

You understand that providing me with a copy of your book does not guarantee a positive review. There may be reviewers who get their rocks off writing negative reviews and destroying authors' dreams. I am not one of them. I love giving positive reviews. With most of my less stellar reviews, I find that the problem with the book tends not to be the story itself, but the execution and lack of proper editing. By the way, I am also available as a beta reader.

Very rarely do I give scathing reviews. On the occasions that I have done so, it is because I find the author to be an odious jerk with awful opinions who targets vulnerable people for ridicule.

You may be saying (as I sometimes do), "well, that's all fine and good, Cie, but the world wouldn't stop turning if all the book reviewers were abducted by aliens. Book reviewers do not provide vital services such as emergency services personnel, medical personnel, construction workers, mechanics,  teachers, grocery clerks, customer service personnel, cleaning crews, or, pretty much anyone else provides. Reviewing books is fluffy stuff and isn't a real job. Like, you know, the kind of work that you claim you can't do anymore but probably could if you tried, and don't give me that 'but I can't walk very far or very fast, I can't stand up for long periods of time or my back will start hurting, or, but my diabetes fucks with me and starts making me weak and confused' bit!"

Well, you hopefully don't say that last part, but my inner voice is, not to put too fine a point on it, an absolute twat. Anyway, the overall gist is, most people find book reviewers to be non-essential members of society, and I sometimes feel angry at myself for doing a job that most people see as sprinkles on a cake, not even icing or pretty decorations, just sprinkles. The kind of sprinkles that come in a jar and you pay a couple bucks for them and you sprinkle them on your kid's birthday cake and it makes the kid happy. Except that I have the potential to make people's inner children unhappy with my words.

However, today I read a wonderful review from one of my fellow Online Book Club reviewers, and I would like to share that review and my thoughts on it with you. Please follow this link to read it.

Here is a copy of my comment for the reviewer:

Thank you for your lovely, descriptive review. I had tears in my eyes reading it. Although I grew up in a home with both parents present my family was inadvertently emotionally abusive and didn't understand someone like me at all as they were very perfectionistic and I had learning and psych issues (I have type 2 bipolar disorder that wasn't correctly diagnosed until I was almost 40.) I did a lot of the same things that Eva did, moving out with my now-ex-husband when I was 19, being divorced by 29, having a string of abusive relationships. I really appreciate reviews like yours which tell me everything I need to know about a book, even better than simply reading a sample. Have a good day.

Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. While being a book reviewer is not an essential occupation such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph, nor is it a meaningless occupation. Too many bullies calling themselves critics have given a bad name to critiquing. A professional critic should endeavor to be kind, discussing the best aspects of a work while, if necessary pointing out areas needing improvement.

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~

Free use image from Pixabay

Cie reviews books and is no longer ashamed to claim it as her profession.

She is also available as a beta reader

Click the link to learn more

I'll bet that some of you would like to know which book I was referring to when praising my fellow reviewer. Well, now you know and can get yourself a copy! 

Disclosure: If readers purchase a copy of this book through the preview link, I receive a small commission from Amazon.

Carpe Diem #1774 Renga With Jane Reichhold ... apples for lunch

Image Source

dad on high

dropping from his trees

apples for lunch

I walk to the chicken coop

to visit my friends the hens

southern sunset

filling the apple bin

a deeper red

thinking of a time gone by

when the sky was beautiful

applesauce

the cinnamon glow

of a kerosene lamp

we didn't need to have one

my mother liked how it looked

windfall apples

palaces for worms

American pie

I started getting to know

worms eating into my brain

straight falling rain

tiny lakes upon the tree

stem hollows of apples

I have always loved the rain

but it's the snowy season

baskets in a row

overflowing with apples

on one a sweater

was it my mother's or mine?

Dad goes on picking apples

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

The Hokku stanzas of these Tan Renga were created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The Ageku were created by me.

When I was writing my Ageku, I was remembering my childhood in New Mexico between the ages of four and ten.

It wasn't idyllic by any means. We were very poor. But we did have a half-acre of land, and we had chickens and fruit trees and we grew corn and beans.

We also ate a lot of stuff like boiled soybeans and buckwheat groats. I still like buckwheat groats. You could put a bit of butter and honey on them and they tasted good. However, to this day, I loathe boiled soybeans. I would eat my shoe before I would ever eat another boiled soybean.

I knew I was weird and different from a very young age. These days doctors would probably put me on Ritalin and antidepressants. One did try to put me on phenobarbitol when I was a year and a half old because I didn't sleep for crap. My mother said it had the opposite effect and I was awake for three days straight. 

It probably put me into a manic state. It may even have been what triggered the onset of my bipolar disorder. Any doctor who would instruct a parent to give phenobarbitol to a child needs a damn good whacking, and nothing will change my mind about that.

Carpe Diem Renga with Issa: Sparrows

Image Source

spring peace--

after rain, a gang war

garden sparrows

the seeds that I have planted

are a victory buffet

don't let the plum blossom guard

cut your tongues...

Sparrows! 

let voices be a whisper

until you are safely past

are the sparrows too

having a private party?

plum blossoms

no, I was not invited

I now watch from the window

while I watch

he's off to make a living alone...

baby sparrow

sometimes the ones who leave home
invite the parents to stay

living in harmony--

the sparrow has

both parents!
will the parents be able
to live in harmony too?

on the tip of the

newly sprouted bamboo...

a baby sparrow
a small and innocent thing
in a world without a heart

~Issa and Cie~

Notes:

The Hokku stanzas in these Tan Renga verses were composed by Kobayashi Issa (June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828). The Akegu stanzas were written by me.

The Akegu in the last three verses are references to my son, without whose kindness I would be homeless. The property he bought will eventually also become home to his father who is currently living in Arizona helping his own father. When his father passes, he will sell the place in Arizona and move here.

We were divorced in 1994 when our son was four years old, and we have lived in roommate situations since then, although I was always relieved when he moved on to something else if I am honest. That probably won't happen this time, due to compromises in his health as well as mine. However, this is a big enough place that we should be able to keep from killing each other.

Carpe Diem Acts of Devotion: St. Francis

Image by LaterJay Photography from Pixabay

Saint Francis statue

still in my parents' garden

old and weathered now

~Cie~

Carpe Diem Field of Flowers: Honeysuckle

I can remember

the smell of honeysuckle

New Mexico night

~Cie~

Notes:

I recently completed and am about to submit my manuscript for the Insecure Writers' Support Group anthology contest. The genre is middle-grade historical fantasy/action.

I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.

The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.

I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.

Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Twilight

Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

Looking forward to

Finally seeing twilight

From the window of

My new home on the prairie

Will the day finally come?

~Cie~

Notes:

When you invest in a historic property in a way-off-the-beaten-path town, there can be holdups. This place is not move-in ready, and getting it to that state is proving to be a challenge. It's been like pulling teeth for the electrician to get the necessary permits. He's trying his best, but the people who are supposed to be helping him aren't being very helpful. He said that usually permit people are more than happy to take your money.

It's also been like pulling teeth to get the proposal from the plumbing company. Why don't these people want our money? If they don't get the proposal to my email tomorrow, I'm going to tell them that we'll come to the office and sign it. 

With my health issues, these 250-mile round trips are knocking me on my ass. I'm an old night shift worker who has never slept well at night and these contractors like to get cracking at the ass-crack of dawn. 

I may suggest to my son that we consider packing everything from the townhouse into a pod and staying in one of those by-the-week motels in Greeley so we don't have to keep making this drive. It's really taking a toll on me. Of course, we'd have to find one that would allow cats...hell, it's always something.

Anyway, this bit is going to start coming down today, so that's a start.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Sundown

Doomed version 7

Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

Some sundowns rise on another day of loss and one day set forever on a self ravaged by a broken mind.

~Cie~

Note:

Sundowning is a term for confusion in a dementia patient which worsens as evening comes on. Towards the end of his life, my father, who had vascular dementia, was sundowning. He confused reality with events on television. 

My father was a college professor. I have cared for more than one college professor or other people whose work revolved around using their mind who ended up with dementia. The junk science sharticles which proclaim that exercising your mind helps prevent dementia make me see liquid murder. 

You know what helps prevent dementia? Not having the DNA trigger for dementia coded in your genetic makeup. You could watch nothing but reruns of Jersey Shore and the Flavor of Love for your entire life and not end up with dementia if the trigger for dementia isn't in your DNA. I don't recommend it, but you could.

Dementia is horrible. It destroys lives. The least we could do is not insult those suffering from dementia and their caregivers and loved ones by publishing victim-blaming crap. 

Image created by The Real Cie

Copyright taysuffocation @deviantart.com
I'm hoping one day to get this tattooed on my arm in honor of my father

Haikai Challenge #91: Midsummer Rain

Copyright Xenia Tran

On the return drive

From a life-changing journey

Drops became torrent

~Cie~

Prompt Used:

Haikai Poetry Matters

Notes:

Today the final decision was made and my son and his dad agreed to close on the historic Grover Hotel. To follow along with our story in renovating and living in this building in a Northeast Colorado ghost town, visit my Good Stuff From Grover blog. (Also features samplings of my poetry and other good stuff.)