Sunday, October 31, 2010

EARLY HALLOWEEN MORNING

Here are two poems that go together,
for Halloween.
~


Mother, 20, getting off a boat in Savannah,
after a boat trip to New York. c.1929

The Perfect Intro


“A bandleader asked me to sing once,”
Mother would say
when she’d be listening
to a tune on the radio.

Oh, Mother,
I wish I could have seen you
stepping up on the bandstand
your heart beating wildly
the clarinets playing
the perfect intro.

The handsome bandleader
with a dashing moustache
is tipping his head
catching your eye
as you smile and lean into a
30’s microphone
with it’s silver art deco grillwork
and sing:

“Nothin’ could be finah’
Than to be in Carolina,
In the maw-nin’”

You would notice
the man with the cigarette
lean forward on his elbow.
A brunette raising her
pencilled eyebrow in approval.

It is the fifteen minutes of fame
I wish for you
because I knew you’d been
too shy to say
“Yes.”
 ~ ~ ~
An interlude of recent photos


The colorful heirloom tomatoes


dew on ornamental grass


lavender blooms of rosemary
and now . . .

Early Halloween Morning


Maybe Mother’s soul is rising
out of a dreamy float,
or a floaty dream.
Someone is nudging her saying,
“Wake-up, it’s All Hallow’s Day,
your soul can return to earth.”
“Oh,” says Mother, “I was just
dreaming of my daughter, Charlotte.
She’s writing a book about me. 
Maybe I can float down close enough
to see what she’s written”

“C’mon, then,” says Gypsy Edgeworth,
an imp of a flapper angel
who smokes and drinks
Koolaid with gin on the sly,
behind some thunderclouds
where she also hides her Luckies.

“Look!” says Gypsy, “there’s
the book . . . can you read what it says?
  . . . Here, I’ll hold the firefly lantern closer.”
“Oh,” says Mother smiling,
“She’s put me on a bandstand
next to a handsome man with a mustache!
I’m leaning into a microphone
and singing, ‘Carolina In the Morning.’”
“Son of a gun!,” says Gypsy.
“Thank you, Shug,”
she whispers in my ear, 
“for making a dream come true.”
~ ~ ~

 stay tuned . . .
~ ~ ~

Saturday, October 23, 2010

THE PLAN B DIET!

The Plan B diet was launched on
July 4, 2009 after I had a Dream.
I wrote this poem: 

The Night Before the Diet Dream

You stand in front of the open door
of the refrigerator wondering,
what else is there to eat?

You are sick and tired of this!
Yet, craving to sink your teeth
into a chewy raisin bagel.

Or maybe fix a thick sandwich
with mayonnaise,
mounds of shaved ham,
cheese and pickles. 

Heat up some peach cobbler,
spoon out Vanilla Bean ice cream,
and it’s the middle of the night! 
And you ask yourself a desperate question, 

Would you give up all the
music you’ve written,
the short stories, the poems,
the minor successes?

Would you give up all
that you have
literally gained, so to speak,
if you could just 
have your body back?

You would be a thinner nobody.
But, then I think, I’m a nobody anyway!

There you are standing in the
refrigerator light,
and you already know the answer.

And that night you have the diet dream!

DREAM: I’m at a garden party . . . 
a young doctor in a white coat, 
(sort of like a smiling Deepak Chopra or Dr. Oz)
offers me a baking pan
with blue Morning Glories spread out.
 “Would you like to participate in this 
experimental diet of eating Morning Glories?”
I am surprised that he has singled me out,
-- actually, I’m glowing from his attention. END
====
I  have been given a second chance.

I drew this sketch the next morning.
====
Before the Plan B. Diet,
whatever I weighed freaked me out!

I’ve been on diets since I was 16,
when Mother and I went on the
steak, boiled egg, & grapefruit diet.
back in 1953.
I love pizza, I hate to exercise!
I would call myself a lazy bum
creative loafer.
And I love to experiment!
So, I developed the Plan B Diet, 
as a Last Resort Diet,
because of a growing dislike for
raw vegetables and broccoli.

I asked: How can I possibly lower my
caloric intake and still eat foods I like,
but must, not only,
NOT GET TIRED OF EATING THOSE FOODS
but also, look forward to eating!

This diet isn’t for everybody.
Because I pick the foods I like, well enough. 
And thrown out the 
LOVE and HATE foods.

And YOUR diet foods would
be entirely different.
Though, you might find that
you would do well to cut out
BREADS!
I’ve been waiting a long time
to post the PLAN B DIET Blog
but today was the perfect opportunity
to take this photo

a beautiful reminder of the
Morning Glories on a Baking Tray Dream
---
Early Breakfast:
1/2 banana or 1/4 orange or almonds
coffee w/fake creamer, turbinado or sugar substitute.
(I am trying to cut down on both.)

Breakfast:
1/4 cup (uncooked) oatmeal w/sunflower seeds,
pumpkin seeds, raisins, chopped walnuts, chopped 1/4 apple, Cinnamon-sugar sprinkle.

I add milk and sugar free maple syrup.

Late Breakfast or Lunch Fritatta:
Saute in Canola oil, green peppers and onions,
sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, then add
vegetables like zucchini & yellow squash,
mushrooms, red tomato or red bell pepper.

I add a scrambled egg and top with
left over rice or dried beans
Sprinkle w/ Parmesan cheese,
(the ONLY cheese I’m allowed).
Cover. Be sure heat is low.
I season a lot with ADOBO.

Snack 1: Homemade granola cookies

with chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds,
pumpkin seeds, raisins or dates,
cinnamon, organic chocolate morsels.
After cooking, I turn off the oven,

and let these dry out until crisp.

Snack 2: 1/2 c. sugar free jello,
or gelatin made from organic fruit juice

I add lots of canned fruit, chopped apple,
walnuts. I put on a dollop of low-fat cottage cheese
and sprinkle with dry roasted unsalted peanuts.

Snack 3: Fresh fruit, clementines, organic juices.

Here’s what I had on hand today.

Avocado with ADOBO is fabulous!

Raw Almonds are a mainstay.
I keep an open bag on
the refrigerator door shelf
so I can grab one,
when I have that CRAVING feeling,
and I still do!!
Good Stress or bad stress
still brings on cravings!
That’s why I have built in so much
CRUNCH-A-BILITY
in every food ,like the peanuts on the jello.
That small amount of Jello
would go down too quickly,
With the peanuts,I can pause and chew.
It’s really hard to remember to eat slowly,
But, I do so much better when I do.
It’s Tao, mindfulness, gratefulness.

Lunch or dinner: Basmati rice is a staple.
It’s the only carbohydrate
I keep around.
I wondered ,
about this, too,
Maybe the countries who eat rice
like Japan and India tend
to be thinner because of the rice,
whereas the countries
who eat corn, potatoes & wheat
as their staple carbohydrate
tend to be slightly heavier.

Over the rice, I put a mixture of
chicken, or canned tuna or salmon
or dried beans which I keep on hand.
Crab-flavored, fish nuggets,
left over sauteed veggies.

NO BREAD, CRACKERS, BAGELS, PITA,
SALTINES, PIZZA, ICE CREAM, OR SANDWICHES.
Stuff I LOVE!

I never weigh.
I don’t exercise, except limited gardening
dragging furniture around,
hauling in groceries, etc.
I am 74, after all.

I’ve always been overweight
and had to work at it.
and I never thought I’d lose
at least two dress sizes
at my age.

I am so full of gratitude and joy.
====
Our Writing words were from
The Way to Life from 
The Tao te Ching by Benjamin Hoff

happiness, discard, strange, terrace, cause, clever

I wrote:

From her terrace she looked out at the
blue Mediterranean.
wondering at the emptiness she felt.
What was it she’d discarded
along the way
that hadn’t yet been found?
Who was the cause of all this?
Harry? Her Mother?
There was no one to blame!
No clever psychological trick to distract her.
No dreams
Maybe her happiness was elsewhere
Maybe this was just enough,
and she didn’t know it, yet.

She wrote:

The terrace was empty and wet with rain.
Happiness eluded the bare space
of this strange house.
She turned to discard the cause of her entrapment --
his bitterly clever note falling from
her hand to the marble floor.

----

STAY TUNED . . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~