Everyday Canvas

June 12

For "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" 

Prompt: Your pen just came to life.... the first thing it says is...

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“You know, that silly old hand that pushes me around hasn’t let me breathe or take a break since the day I was acquainted with it. She and the old woman she’s attached to have me flying around in personal journals, free-flow notebooks, countless papers that range from grocery shopping to daily-to-do lists to exploratory writings of character flaws to personal letters to other numerous things until my ink dries out.

Then, when that happens, she inserts a new refill into me, which she bought from Amazon in a big package of countless refill sticks, to make sure I never know what rest is. The only time she lets me be is when she is at the keyboard of her laptop, which she lets me watch her fingers fly on the keys, but she doesn’t know that I talk to the keyboard and that poor keyboard is just as distraught as I am.

Once we knew we were on the same boat, the keyboard told me its few tricks, such as acting as if its keys were stuck and confusing her after asking for the control panel’s help, ‘but those things never faze her out,’ it said. ‘We have nothing else left but grin and bare it,’ it said. I know what the keyboard means because the hand has a few tricks herself, up her sleeve, such as fixing the laptop and buying the refills for my insides, so she won’t have to set us aside.

Truth is, with some people, you just can’t win. She’s a slave-driver, I say. Yes, absolutely. A slave-driver!”

For: "Space Blog" 

Prompt: From poetchris5 ’s "Invalid Item"  about depression.
How do you deal with depression?

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Beautiful poem, by the way. But being a loner is not a negative in my book. For what I know, the best and the most successful people were loners; at least, the more successful ones needed some alone time. What made this poet unhappy and depressed was his focus on internalizing the situations and the people’s ways around him. Depression even a mild one is insidious and can hide in places where MRIs and X-Ray machines cannot penetrate.

During the last year, I lived through quite a few things to be depressed about. The way I deal with depression, in its beginning, is not to think about the current situation, not until much later when I am emotionally ready. This is because focusing on oneself--more than other people and life itself--exacerbates or rather nurtures a baby depression.

In the onset stages of a possible depression, after sending a request for help to the Higher Powers, I try to let negative feelings and sadness stay dormant for a while by focusing on things that take my attention away from them. Reading books--especially novels with grabbing characters and action or if non-fiction, a subject that truly interests me and/or what is in the book is new to me—tops my reading list. I read a lot as it is, but when I sense I am feeling down, I read as much as I can. During 2020,I read the entire Dickens' novels, plus close to a hundred more; some of those were whole collections.

In addition to reading, I like varying my activities such as taking some fresh air in the morning even if it means just sitting on the porch for a short while or taking a short walk, as some reasonable exercise always helps a person. Then, I also got in the habit of making a to-do list for the day.

I cannot praise the to-do lists enough. They regulate my time and my thoughts especially the clear-and-clean items are on them, as an orderly or somewhat organized surroundings help my emotional well-being. Having said that, I never hold myself bound to the list. If, at the end of the day, several items on the list are not done, then I simply add them to the following day’s list. It is a good idea not to be too hard on oneself for things undone.

Then, later on, when I am ready to face the sadness and the negativity, I resort to journal writing--longhand, in a note-book--while being truthful to myself and thinking or somewhat philosophizing on the reasons, events, causes, and the internal workings of what made me so unhappy.

And in addition, a poem on the subject by the 2021 Pulitzer Poetry prize winner Natalie Diaz



Grief Work by Natalie Diaz


I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.

Along the clayen banks I follow her-astonished,
gathering grief’s petals she lets fall like horns.

Why not now go toward the things I love?

Like Jacob’s angel, I touched the garnet of her wrist,
and she knew my name. And I knew hers—
it was Auxocromo, it was Cromóforo, it was Eliza.
It hurtled through me like honeyed-rum.

When the eyes and lips are touched with honey
what is seen and said will never be the same.

Eve took the apple in that ache-opened mouth,
on fire and in pieces, from the knife’s sharp edge.

In the photo her fist presses against the red-gold
geometry of her thigh. Black nylon, black garter,
unsolvable mysterium—I have to close my eyes to see.

Achilles chasing Hektor round the walls of Ilium
three times. How long must I circle
the high gate above her knees?

Again the gods put their large hands in me,
move me, break my heart like a clay jar of wine,
loosen a beast from some darklong depth—

my melancholy is hoofed. I, the terrible beautiful
Lampon, a shining devour-horse tethered
at the bronze manger of her collarbones.

I do my grief work with her body—labor
to make the emerald tigers in her hips leap,
lead them burning green
to drink from the violet jetting her.

We go where there is love, to the river,
on our knees beneath the sweet water.
I pull her under four times
until we are rivered. We are rearranged.

I wash the silk and silt of her from my hands—
now who I come to, I come clean to, I come good to.