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Sunday, August 29, 2021

The Things I Never Did

How I miss the things I never did.

I remember an offer I declined

because it might have

projected me into some unknown

(and thus terrifying) future.

I might have met Dolly Parton.

She might have gifted me with

a hand-me-down wig.

Some agent would (might) have heard me

casually yodeling

as I went about my work

and there, in a lightning flash,

my life would (might) have taken

a new direction.

 

Do I miss that possibility?

I said I did, at the start of this poem.

But it isn't true.

I look back

on that life not lived,

that fork not taken,

and I feel myself accompanied,

even now,

by the friendly ghost of my other self.

 

I wonder how many similar forks

I encountered,

how many forks where I chose left

instead of right

(or vice versa),

and I honour

those forgotten unlived lives.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, August 22, 2021

Thoughts for Eeyores and Others

Time wounds all heels.

We can but hope.

While we're waiting for time

to do its durndest, however,

let us remember that life is adventure,

not predicament,

not catastrophe.

We might all benefit

from inscribing this thought on our hearts.

 

The Eeyores, for example,

who never met a situation

that wasn't a predicament.

Likewise the why-me crowd.

In my dotage (in my elderhood, I mean to say)

I find myself screaming

(internally, of course)

"Suck it up, you molly-coddlers!"

 

I've wandered from the topic here,

which was the mild suggestion that a simple shift

in point of view could reap

whirlwinds of change.

Life is adventure

(to be sought and embraced)

not a predicament from which to be extricated.

 

What trauma was the origin of the

"predicament" mindset?

Doesn't matter.

I need to shift to let it go.

Adventures R Us from here on.

Maybe.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, August 15, 2021

Touching Home

Well, these are two words

that punch above their weight.

 

Touch. Touching.

This involves skin.

The skin of the fingers, if nothing else,

though the "else", the also,

encompasses skin of all shades and textures—

and of all locations.

 

And home? Where is it? What is it?

It is said that it's where, when you go there,

they have to take you in.

But that definition implies family,

and "home" is so much more.

In the first place, home involves the heart.

The heart is where home is.

Touch it.

 

To touch home is to touch the heart.

Let the vibrations of your voice

reverberate through the soft tissues

of you

until heart itself is touched.

Touch home.

 

 
 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, August 8, 2021

A Strong Back

Bundled against my back are its muscles,

sinews,

strong and flexible bones.

My short-term task

(later I'll discuss the rigours of the long term)

is to smooth and stretch

and strengthen

those back parts

for the immediate health of the body I'm in.

 

I can do this,

even as I can only nibble at the edges

of the larger duty.

I can't save enough,

I can't heal enough,

to counteract

the evils and ills of our world.

But maybe, with a strong back,

I can shoulder a wrong,

right it,

then set it down slightly improved.

So much work to do,

and it begins with one step forward,

supported by a strong back.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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Sunday, August 1, 2021

Moving Forward

I was thinking recently about physical motion--specifically forward motion, and I remembered that I used to love to skip. I don't know when I stopped skipping. Maybe when you reach a certain weight your knees can no longer support that one-footed jump. Or maybe it just seems unbecoming and undignified to skip. I do remember that skipping takes a great deal of energy and will tire you out much faster than walking the same distance.

 

Related movements are hopping and jumping, leading to our expressing the nearness of a destination as simply a hop, skip, and jump away from where we are now.

 

Physical motion leads to action verbs. Now "sit" is a verb that denotes an action, but it could hardly be called an action verb (and I have to admit that to sit is one my favourite verbs to enact).

 

Slide. Skate. Hobble. Toddle. Lope. Run. Hurdle. Jog. Bounce, even, though its motion is more vertical than forward. When I come back (i.e., in my next life, if I'm lucky/unlucky enough to be human again and not a slug or a grasshopper) in that next life I'm going to make it a point to learn to ice-skate from my earliest years so that I can glide (action verb) gracefully around the oval of a rink.

 

I used to roller-skate. Like all children of those times I had skates that you fastened on to your shoes (your Oxfords, not your tennis shoes) with screw clamps at the toes that required a special skate key that one could never find when it was time for skating. One summer a roller skating rink came to our town. It opened in a large tent on the east side of town and it became the place to hang out. You could rent the appropriately-wheeled skates (ordinary sidewalk skates weren't allowed). So all summer long I rented skates, seething with envy of my friends ("the girls") who had managed to persuade their parents to buy them their own white, high-topped roller skates, as elegant as any figure skater's.

 

I began my campaign, asking for roller skates for Christmas or my birthday. I wanted them. It was a long and arduous process for my parents to find a pair, living as we did in the heart of nowhere. Finally (I found out later) my aunt Jeannette bought the skates for me while on a rare pre-Christmas shopping trip to Indianapolis, so skates were under the tree for me that year. Purchased at great cost and emotional energy, but finally mine.

 

Summer came and the skating rink tent opened again. Unfortunately, "the girls" had shifted their attention to . . . whatever. Boyfriends? Tennis? Whatever it was that deflected them from skating, no one skated any longer. So of course I didn't skate, either. The skating rink was not where I wanted to be. I never wore my beautiful, brand-new white, high-topped roller skates. Never.

 

So there's a moment of shame to contemplate. There's a memory when the action verb (to skate) failed to move me forward.

 

Let's move on to "hurdle", a vigorous action verb. One can hurdle all obstacles (usually metaphorically) or one can get out there on the track team and actually leap those hurdles that keep arising in your path. The faster you run between hurdles, the more quickly the next hurdle appears before you. I cannot contemplate leaping over even one of those wooden frames. My older brother was a hurdler. How did he do it? A mystery.

 

Have I now exhausted my thoughts on physical forward motion? And does all physical motion have to be forward? Are we meant to keep moving forward or die, like a pool full of sharks?

 

If I look at another category of being, the mental, can I truthfully say that I'm moving forward? No, on all mental levels (including memory and arithmetic) my movement is decidedly backward.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog:
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00JI4758O
ListenandLive: http://www.listenandlive.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=An+Tudor&search_in_description=1&osCsid=0710648c0eea428843aca84d0c04837d&x=0&y=04837d&x=0&y=0
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
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