Now that the days are not as hot in Phoenix–more like 85 than 105–I started up my daily walks again. I had to stop when my hip got so bad, but now that I’ve had the replacement there is nothing stopping me. I love the smells outside, although the last two days there has been an unfamiliar funky odor (possibly bobcat pee) in the air, as well as the usual perfume of flowers, grass, leaves, and sun-kissed concrete.
The intensely blue sky during my walk
Not being able to “show” you the smells annoys me. I can take photos and write words and even post audio if I want to. But I can’t post scent. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy adding olfactory descriptions in my writing; however, sometimes I’d just like to share how something actually smells. Or smell something my nose can’t reach.
This brings me to what I was thinking when I woke up yesterday. I’ve always loved history and as a kid used to wonder what it would be like to have lived in a different time period. Or to visit, even invisibly. Choose a time period. How about 1515 CE? What would it have stank like? I think even if I arrived in my time shuttle inside a palace that I would be gasping for air. I’d be holding an entire bottle of Gris Dior up to my face. I’d have to keep a little puke bag handy. I’m sure I’d be begging to come back to the present time. And that’s with palace peeps, not inside the hut of a poor person.
Yes, this is the kind of thing I think when I wake up in the morning. Maybe because I’m not writing every day. If I do write daily, then I’m apt to think of a story or poem while I’m still in bed. But I have finished my Remedios Varo-inspired ekphrastic chapbook. Gosh, I hope I can find a publisher for it. It’s hybrid, being both fiction and poetry, so that makes it harder to find publishers to submit to.
And, in other news, my hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family, should be available from ELJ Editions in March! Watch for cover reveal and so on in the future. If you are a blogger and would like to participate in a blog tour this spring, send me an email at luanne[dot]castle[at]gmail[dot]com. You can post a review or I can write a companion post to my book for your blog. I can get you a pdf. Here’s a link to publisher’s page: ELJ Editions forthcoming.
On the cat front, it’s been all puke/pee/poo/puke/pee/poo. If you plan to have multiple cats, try to space out their ages a bit so you don’t end up with all seniors at the same time. (just kidding, sort of)
In less than a week my grandson will be 21 months old! I can hardly believe it. He’s such a delight. He went on vacation to the beach and loved every moment.
I know I haven’t written about my kitties for a long time, so I thought I would update about them. We have four, all seniors.
Perry, my true love and favorite fur person (only rivaled by dearly departed Pear Blossom). I won’t say much as I don’t like to “jinx” anything. Gray and white, medium-long-haired.
Sloopy Anne, my best little girl who sleeps with the gardener and me. One of our other cats (Lily) hates Sloopy Anne with a passion, so we have a gate dividing our house in half. Sloops lives in the bedroom half. Tortico–tortoisehell from the top and calico from the bottom.
Lily, one of my son’s cats who I took in. She is so mean to Sloopy so Lily is confined to the front half of the house. The reason this is fair is because Lily is a dominant cat in great need of human touch and companionship. Sloopy is more reticent and happy in back. If the gardener sits down, Lily climbs on his chest up to his neck and sticks there like velcro. She can’t get through the gate because she’s fat. Orange and white long-haired who knows she’s beautiful.
Meesker, the other one of my son’s cats. He’s shy and was bullied by Lily for years, so for the last couple of years he’s lived in the back of the house with Sloopy Anne. However, just recently, he decided he likes it out front with Perry. Lily doesn’t dare bully Meesker out here because Perry keeps her in line. Perry is the benevolent king. Meesker is so skinny (GI issues) that he slides between the bars of the gate we put up so he can come and go as he pleases. (Actually so can Perry when he really really wants to do it). All black with black whiskers and toe beans.
The boys, Perry and Meesker:
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The wonderful journal Gone Lawn has published two of my micros: “Nature’s Ways” and “The New Girl.” The first one is fanciful. The second is kind of heart-breaking. It’s in honor of all the new girls who didn’t come into a school with the best clothes or nurturing.
Ethel hoisted herself off the old, webbed chair with one hand and a sigh, grabbed her muddy gloves, and slipped on wet grass toward the garden at the back wall. Her dear Buttercup had passed in her arms the day before, and her enthusiasm for her garden, even life itself, had seemed to die with the little marmalade cat.
“The New Girl” begins this way:
The school secretary handed you off to Miss Dixon, as if you were a slippery, prickery, stinky fish, and you sat in that front row seat where nobody else wanted to sit and didn’t look around so everybody could stare at you until lunch, and I admit I was no different, noting your limp faded dress,
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Two of my micros were finalists in a contest by The Ekphrastic Review.
If you go to that link you will find all the finalist stories as well as the winning story.
Here are the two inspiring art pieces that I wrote from with beginnings of the stories.
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Rogue Agent published two of my collages at https://www.rogueagentjournal.com/lcastle along with a written description of each collage and some comments I make about them.
Silver Birch Press has a new series, My Favorite Things. In such fraught times moments of joy are so important. So without further ado, here are one of my favorite things, my boots:
I spoke too soon in my Kitty Cat Update post last week. Sadly, one of my cats has passed away. Here is my eulogy about Kana.
Our girl Kana has gone to meet her furfam over the rainbow: Pear Blossom, Felix, Tiger, and Isabella Rose. The first night in early 2015 when the Gardener and I started volunteering in the cat room at the shelter, Kana was in a cage and pushed herself into the front corner, against the wires, begging me to take her home. At the time, I couldn’t do that because Mac was sick and needed a lot of care, and we had other cats as well. Kana waited for us for months because the progression of Mac’s illnesses dragged on. Nobody asked to spend any time with her. The shelter sent her to PetSmart, hoping someone would take an interest in her. Nobody wanted an 8-year-old black cat, and I saw her get more and more depressed. As soon as Mac passed, I picked up Kana from the shelter. By this time, she was very cantankerous and didn’t even want to go home with me any longer. We discovered that she not only had IBD, but the ultrasound showed that at one point her back had been broken. She lived with chronic pain. After a few months, Kana realized that she was home, and that she could relax. Her final illnesses really took a lot out of her. We now realize she was in a LOT of pain and feeling very sick, but she was always brave and fierce, a real hero.
Since I haven’t been able to blog much because of caring for grandbaby (missing you all!!!!) I know I haven’t blogged about my cats in a long time. So time for a cat update!
I still have five cats: Perry, Kana, Lily, Sloopy Anne, and Meesker.
Perry, of course, is the closest to the grandbaby, but he’s also the one that gets the most jealous. Therefore, I often have my arms full of baby and cat at the same time! Say hi, Perry!
Perry is still on his meds for GI and heart and getting lots of hugs. His ruff looks greasy because his medicine is oil-based. He’s the youngest, but even Perry is a senior. All my cats are old.
Kana is at least 17 and has failing health. She has kidney disease. She has a hard time walking. I have to lift her up on the couch when she wants to lie next to me at night–and lift her down again. She spends her days in a kitty playpen (not zipped in—it’s by choice) near the sunlight.
Lily is Lily. She’s the worst cat I’ve ever had. She’s also the most beautiful (long-haired orange and white), vain, and we love her a lot. Hah. She’s the reason we had to build a gate in the middle of our house, to protect Sloopy Anne and Meesker from her. And when she feels like it she pees on the living room drapes and kitchen rugs. She needs lots of attention, whether from us or anyone who stops over.
Sloopy Anne lives in the back of the house, an independent tortico (tortoiseshell and calico markings), and she is the cat who sleeps with us. In that way we make up to her for giving her the least attention during the day.
Meesker lives in the back of the house, but has his own room that he can be in when he needs to feel secure. It has a gate on the door (open most of the time during the day), which he could jump over if he realized it. We’ve never told him about that fact though, so he doesn’t even try. The gardener spends some time with him almost every afternoon and almost every evening. My physical therapist (don’t ask–another mobility issue) wants me to lie on my stomach for five minutes a couple times a day, so I started doing it in Meesker’s room. He lies next to me in the same position, just like a little copycat.
Lily and Sloopy Anne prefer the gardener. Kana and Perry much prefer me. Meesker is a happy bouncy guy and likes us both the same.
Here’s a pic of the baby who refused a nap all afternoon and then conked out the second he went into his jumper.
I’m closing comments because the little time I have for blogging today I would rather spend it reading some of your blogs.
Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested we write a syllabic poem using synonyms for the word “work” and “play,” and to contrast the two for this week’s #TankaTuesday.
I have to admit that the synonym prompts are not my favorite. I prefer a little looser prompt, and this was even tighter by the need to contrast them. So go ahead and hate my poem, which is three Badger’s Hexastitch stanzas put together. I used that form because I LOVE the name. It’s like a cross between something a witch does as a hobby and the town that Loretta Lynn sings about in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (Butcher’s Holler).
For work I used the word “toil,” because it reminded me of two of my favorite poems (see below). And for play I used “entertain” and “rest.”
To toil
seems poetic
like Hopkins and Shakespeare.*
Entertain sounds lazy
as if I should
do more.
The cat
does not toil much
except to wash himself
or hunt food if he must,
but entertains
us all.
I hope
that I can be
more like the cat than me
and rest when I need to,
toiling just as
needed.
Hopkins is the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur,” and Shakespeare is Will himself, “Song of the Witches” from MacBeth. I loved to entertain my kids when they were little with the latter.
Here are both poems and you can see where I got “toil” from.
GOD'S GRANDEUR
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
###
SONG OF THE WITCHES
by William Shakespeare
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Notes:
Macbeth: IV.i 10-19; 35-38
Source: The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)
Now if you’re still reading, here’s a sonnet that I wrote based on the Hopkins poem which was published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal by editor Jenny Kalahar. After that you can see a pic of my cutie pie Meesker.
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod* by Luanne Castle
and I am shackled to the backlit screen, subjected to technology’s caprice, my feet immobile, hidden, and benumbed, my thoughts dispelled by cumbrous messages of discounts, password problems, and a troll, and so I scroll my Twitter notices and scan What’s Happening, then Google God, procrastinating still and find, alas, my spirit drifts away, mere haze, but then the images of light dividing clouds is how we see the brightest wings and warmth and you appear and take me by my hand to share the garden, smell the sweetbush, hear the cactus wrens, and trill for butterflies.
My mother gave me my baby book which I have started to go through. I found a photo in it that I have never seen of the person who was my favorite when I was a kid: my maternal grandmother. In this image I am 20 months old. I also read in the book that for my first week of life Grandma and her other daughter, my sweet Aunt Alice, stayed with my parents and helped take care of me. She was the best grandmother anyone could ever have. The grandmother poems in Rooted and Winged are about her.
For months now I have been writing this post in my mind. The reason is that the post is meant to help clarify my thinking about a matter.
I grew up in an era where people still believed that it was important to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and to “put a good face on.” I also like to be seen as strong or even tough. Most importantly, there are always people worse off than ourselves. Some people have such horrible “roads to hoe” in life. It makes me cry to think of what some people go through.
Further down there is going to be a “but.”
Without boring you with too many details, underneath a lifetime of many and varied illnesses, I have a few chronic conditions that are a bit extraordinary. One of these is primary congenital lymphedema, particularly in the lower extremities. It’s what used to be known as elephantiasis.
Additionally, I have a migraine disorder that for the last 25 years has not (for the most part) been headaches, but a sudden and extreme set of symptoms. Because the symptoms didn’t fit neatly into a specific type of migraine, I was told they were “complicated migraines.” Most recently, the diagnosis is that I have genes for more than one rare type of migraine—and that they work together to give me symptoms of more than one disorder. Most likely these are vestibular and hemiplegic.
An extra issue in the mix, and I’ve written about this before, doctors at Mayo Clinic discovered that I had a very rare tumor in my right foot (rare meaning at that time medical staff couldn’t find any medical literature of a tumor in that particular bone). This was a nightmare that went on for 1 1/2 years and was complicated by my lymphedema. There were only two surgeons in the United States that Mayo considered competent to do surgery on this tumor, and it was performed by the AMAZING Dr. Eckhart at UCLA orthopedic hospital (RIP to a wonderful person and doctor). Five years after the surgery, he told me he never thought the surgery would work but he watched over me so carefully. Since the surgery I am not allowed to run, jump, hike, or do most aerobic activities.
I write about these details to give a little context. Back to putting a good face on and all that. Because I am a writer and keep up with current events in the writing world, I am more aware of new ways of thinking about things than I might be if I weren’t writing and especially reading new work. My view of myself that I have had my whole life has been as a blessed person–certainly privileged in many ways–and that I needed to stay tough and “power through” everything and then set it aside. Another way of putting it is to say burying it down deep. Perhaps what best fits is that I never made space for my health issues. I let everything else in my life intrude and take over the space they needed.
But (I told you there would be a but!) reading young writers, I am beginning to change my view of myself. I am disabled. Any time I go out I must have a hat and sunglasses with me for lighting situations (migraine trigger). I can’t go to concerts or sports games because of flashing lights. I can’t travel alone because it’s become too dangerous with the migraines which occur in a moment and are completely incapacitating. I must bring my lymphedema pump with me to travel–as well as lots of other things for the condition, and it takes a lot of time and energy every day. Most importantly, lymphedema affects much of the rest of my health, and as I age (arthritis and other deteriorations, for instance) it will become more and more of a problem.
So, while I have no ridiculous illusions that my situation is comparable to the tragic illnesses of so many others, I am finally realizing that disability has nothing to do with comparison between one person and another. And it isn’t negative or counter-productive for me to finally understand that it’s ok to admit that I am disabled, that it’s just a useful way to communicate with others. If people don’t realize that I am disabled, how can they be supportive?
I wish I had had this epiphany years ago when my son was still young. He has an exceedingly rare disorder that doctors misdiagnosed for decades. It’s so rare that in the NORD (National Organization for Rare Disorders) list it is lumped in with other disorders and diseases instead of being listed separately. At the most, only a couple thousand people in the U.S. have his disorder. The reason it’s important to note the rareness is because the less others know about your disability, the less helpful they are–even if they want to be!
You see where I am going with this? If I had been better about making space for my disabilities, it might have been easier for my son with his own situation. It’s hard enough when people see you from the outside and say, “Oh, it’s not such a big deal,” with absolutely NO understanding of what it’s like to live that life. So, while the gardener and I always respected the importance of his disorder (which I first noticed when he was nine months old, and the pediatrician practically laughed at me), we didn’t teach him to make space.
Now I see everything differently.
Have you ever had a big shift in how you viewed yourself?
OK, ending on something a little lighter. Perry is very unhappy about the cane I’ve been using since I injured my knee more fully when I got home from Michigan. Yesterday, I was walking in the living room, and Perry came up from behind and crashed into the cane, forcing me down on the bad knee. Yes, it hurt like heck, but it was funny, too, because what cat does something like that? A dog might do that if he’s frustrated enough. But Perry was just being Perry! And then we had the hugging session afterwards where he apologized to me! Sweetest, funniest little goober.
I had a poem published today in a cool Australian lit mag. It’s called Trash to Treasure Lit, and the idea behind it is that “every writer has a piece of ‘trash’ that we can treasure.” Look through your drafts, your poems you figured you could never do right by, and if you can write something that explains why this “trash” can be a “treasure,” they might publish it. In my case, I wrote a love poem to my cat Perry, who as you may know, suffers from a couple of terminal illnesses (so far so good in case you’re wondering). I hope you can tell from this poem that Perry is the real treasure.
Colleen Chesebro’s prompt for #TankaTuesday this week is in celebration of her 65th birthday. (Happy birthday, Colleen!) We were to create a poetic form using 65 syllables.
I created a form I will call the aînée, which is the French word for a female elder. I was going to use the Spanish word anciana, but I didn’t like the connotations which seemed less positive. Plus I like that I am honoring the French language which is a language that has originated a lot of syllabic poetry. 65 syllables are arranged this way: ten lines of six syllables each, followed by a line of 2 syllables, and a final line of 3 syllables.
Decades to Medicare, or We Count Slower Later On
The first we play and learn,
then anguish for ten more.
Finally on our own,
we screw it up or not.
Next years we develop
into who we will be.
In our forties we whine
that we are now so old.
Those next decades are fine
for comfort in ourselves.
Now count
more slowly.
You might recall that I have been submitting a poem every month to Visual Verse for their ekphrastic challenge. Here is my April poem: https://visualverse.org/submissions/dont-look-back-2/ They showcase each poem next to the inspirational art.
If you would like to help support (for as little as $1/month) a deserving poetry journal, I can’t think of one I enjoy more than Thimble. Nadia is a delightful person with excellent taste in poetry. I think the statement on the journal’s website is very telling: “THE THIMBLE LITERARY MAGAZINE IS BASED ON THE BELIEF THAT POETRY IS LIKE ARMOR. LIKE A THIMBLE, IT MAY BE SMALL AND SEEM INSIGNIFICANT, BUT IT WILL PROTECT US WHEN WE ARE MOST VULNERABLE.” https://www.patreon.com/thimblelitmag
Thimble seems a magazine by the people for the people. I love it.
Guess what I just discovered? I wanted to start to submit to Visual Verse to practice writing ekphrastically. So for my first try I wrote a flash piece about the art Visual Verse used as a prompt. I didn’t know they published mine, but I just found it: https://visualverse.org/submissions/the-mess-of-mindfulness/
Without saying anything else (because what can be said is endless), I just want to place this link for Tyre Nichols’ photography.
