Month: August 2018

Confessions of a Mer-Crone

/ Susan Romanenghi / 3 Comments
TexasSueMaryMom

Mermaid family

We show up regularly to water aquatics class. Mostly women — a few gents too — shaking our booties at 8:00 a.m.  The heavily tatted instructor shouts out the movements:

“Run-in-place:  take it up to a 3!”

Then:  “Now pick it up!  Take it to a 4!!!”

Jeesh.  I was happy at 3.  Why doesn’t she factor in the resistance from the water as we run?   3 could be the new 4.  I need protein.  Why didn’t I eat that egg before I came here?

“Take it to a 6!!!!!.”

Then relief comes — the cross-country ski stride.  Long, luxurious, and slow.

But not for long.

Now it’s “Raise your knees high and wide.  We’re doing tire pumps.”

Next, it’s the bicep-busting Maytag wash machines with water weights, kick-backs for rocking horse which ache my sacroiliac, and finally “the Marilyns.”   This is a set of 100 jumps where we press our foam weights between our thighs.  The instructor named them after Marilyn Monroe.

Don’t ask me why.

And show me a woman in the class who could live up to the Blonde Bombshell’s standard.

No.  We are the Mer-Crones.

Our hair may be gray or dyed or hiding under flowered bathing caps, but we perk up in the water, wear glorious smiles as our float belts carry our spotted, wrinkled, sagging  flesh around the pool.

And we are wise.   Bikinis?  Gauche.   Much more comfy to sport a 1940’s-style Esther Williams swimsuit. You know the kind — the halter one-piece with a bit of drape to cover the tum?  Nice, tight spandex to tuck the bum?

I applaud you, Lands End, for providing quality and variety in women’s swimwear.

Until I discovered LE, finding a good swimsuit was  a search for the Holy Grail.

But back to aquatics class.

I have a hard time keeping up with Mary.   Mary is 75 years old and jabs her water weights like Rocky Graziano.

If I live to be her age, will I have such stamina?

(Confession: back when I was a smirking mermaid, I used to swim laps adjacent to what I deemed The Codgers Aquatics Class.)

How times change😊.

I am in awe of the peeps in class who show up with battle scars.

Take, for instance, one of the men in the class.  “Foghorn Brad” (so named by the instructor for his bellowing interruptions) returned to the pool only three weeks after melanoma surgery.  Though he habitually annoyed the instructor with his thundering disruptions of our foot circles (shouting out REVERSE and causing the water to ripple with his booming voice), I noted that the instructor smiled, glad to see that he had returned.

And me? I shall defend being a mer-crone, whatever the cost may be.  I shall never surrender.

 

Venetian Fairy Tale

/ Susan Romanenghi / Leave a comment

WP_20180624_006 1 (2)

Felt inspired to make a collage.  I call this Venetian Fairy Tale.  Hand-painted paper background. 

The trip to Venice still lingers in memory.  Luckily, we were not flooded.  La Serenissima floods 1/3 of the year.  It is a regular practice for them to set up ramps and you are advised to bring tall boots. 

Here’s one of my unearthed poems:

Venezia leans and lists,
an ornamented, lacey, Byzantine eccentric
caught in the lagoons.

She is a jilted bride –
Miss Havisham in a yellowed wedding dress,
her Adriatic stanchions
rotting away
as rats nibble at the cake.

But Venezia refuses to stop the clock.
Her Bell Tower rings – cracked but hopeful.

In a café, the Italian slurps his zuppe di cozze,
downs another grappa,
sets fire to his brain as a musical strain
echoes from canals,
the boats of gondoliers.

I imagine the fire of his dream:
Venetian maids of yore
lie supine on the shore,
tresses fanning out in hues of gold, orange, blue.

Their siren songs set him aflame.

Until he returns to the 21st century,
spots a woman flocked by pigeons
at St. Mark’s Square.

And here’s YT, being flocked:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Bootcamp

/ Susan Romanenghi / 2 Comments

MemoryVault              FortWorden_PortTownsend_Poulsbo_0103

Memory’s Vault is just off the main trail in Fort Worden.  Once housing coastal defense bunkers, it  is now a place of contemplation.   7-foot high metal monoliths with porcelain enamel plaques contain poems by Sam Hamill. The artwork references gun battles and military function of the Fort.

During writing bootcamp in Port Townsend, it was hard to stay focused.  Nature  and U.S. military history is Writ Large there.  I went far afield on hikes.  The Memory Vault trail is off the beaten path.   The area was originally built as a United States Army installation for the protection of Puget Sound.  Now it’s a place for contemplation.

I was up at the crack of dawn hiking along Admiralty Inlet.   The birds and lighthouse were a 5-minute walk from dormitory:

FortWorden_PortTownsend_Poulsbo_0174      AdmiraltyInletLighthouse

I did manage to focus on writing eventually.  Here’s a 10-minute quick-write for  a Fairy Tale craft lecture.  The prompt?  Re-frame Red Riding Hood  to POV of my choice.  In this case, the  Voice is Red’s hood:

I advised the kid not to wear me on the way to Granny’s cottage.  But she’s known around the village as “Red Cap” and lives up to the name and I am her favorite color.  So I lost that battle.

Other than not listening to me, Red’s a good kid.  She did not sass her Mom when she gave Red a loaf of bread, jug of milk to take to Granny.   (But you should get a load of Red’s sister, Drusilla.  Poster child for misbehavior.  She used to blow smoke in Red’s face when Red was just a babe in the cradle).

So Red and I venture out.  We find ourselves in a field of flowers.  A Monarch butterfly alights on my peak.  I twitch it off.  The kid gathers daisies, Queen Ann’s Lace, bachelor buttons. She puts them in the basket with the loaf of bread, jug of milk. 

We’re almost near Granny’s.  But then the Wolf spots me.   I know he wants to devour the kid so I shake from the peak of my cap to the hem of my cloak.  My magic ripples down the garment, causing Red to drop the bread, milk, flowers.

“What’s going on?” she says.

“I have made us invisible.”

It works.  The wolf darts at the bread and milk instead of us.

“Told you not to wear me in the deep, dark forest,” I say to the kid.  “Red is eye candy for wolves.”

By the time we reach Granny’s door, we are out of breath.  We ring the bell.  She locks us in and the Wolf is left behind chomping away.