Concave or Convex?
For other minimalist photos, go to http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/minimalist/
Minimalist Photo Challenge
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Monthly Archives: November 2014
Finally, A Voice!!!—A Letter from Two Bad (Misunderstood) Dogs
Today they chose my suggestion for the daily prompt! It was: Return Address—Yesterday, your pet/baby/inanimate object could read your post. Today, they can write back (thanks for the suggestion, lifelessons!). Write a post from their point of view (or just pick any non-verbal creature/object).
If you’d like to see the letter the below post answers, please go here.
Finally, A Voice!!
(A Letter from Two Bad (Misunderstood) Dogs)
Do you think it’s simple, giving voice to our demands
without the proper vocal chords, without your human hands?
Everytime we try to talk, you scold us and you hush us,
even though you’ve just admitted that our howls are luscious.
And lacking proper fingers, we cannot write you letters.
We aren’t given proper tools to address our “betters.”
Simply howls and growls and barks and waggings of the tail—
and yet you do not take the time to learn this doggy Braille!
If you’d listen closer, perhaps you’d understand us.
Instead you shout out, “Stop!” and “Hush!” and seek to countermand us.
Can’t you understand that we’re protecting you from prowlers?
Feral cats and owls and skunks and nearby canine howlers?
We have such curiosity, though you determine to balk us.
We wouldn’t have to rush the gate if you’d take time to walk us!
We have to climb up on the roof to get a worldly view.
We wouldn’t be there barking if you’d take us out with you!
As for the cat food, take a clue. The reason we adore it
Is ‘cause it’s smelly, wet and luscious. Dog food? We abhor it!
That cat leaves a bit to tempt us—it’s a cruel feline game!
So why not buy us cat food? It costs you just the same.
And now the final agony. The ultimate tragic hitch,
Not only can our mom not cook, but now we make her itch!
No wonder our neuroses include jostling for attention.
A mother who can’t touch us? This escaped your earlier mention.
We thought you didn’t like us so we tried to win your favor.
Your touch is what we long for even more than cat food’s savor.
And as for pooping in the yard, you never told us to
sneak behind the garden shed to have our little poo.
You seem to think we know these things, but where would we have learned?
It’s you who should have taught us, for obedience must be earned.
If you would spend more time with us, perhaps you’d finally see
there is no other creature with whom we would rather be.
cees fun foto challenge: bark or leaves
The subject this week is leaves or bark.
http://ceenphotography.com/2014/11/04/
Why oh why did I use this shot for the “orange” challenge? Okay, I hereby retract it and submit it for its true category!
For other great leaf and bark photos go here.
NaYesWriMo
The day before yesterday, I decided to let my novel of three chapters die a quiet death. My plans to go to the beach to finish it already firmed up and rents paid, I decided I’d devote the time to my other books, already written, getting them illustrated and formatted. Then yesterday, my dear friends Betty and Larry showed up at our monthly reading at La Rueda with this gift for me. Looks like that novel (or a different one?) is back in the works. Who can reject a gift from a friend?
An Ode to Dog Companions
The Prompt: Literate for a Day—Someone or something you can’t communicate with through writing can understand every single word you write today, for one day only. What do you tell them?
Darling little Frida, dearest Diego, too.
I have a little something I have to say to you.
If you’d like to go out walking every single day,
you have to start responding when I shout out, “Hey!”
That word means “Pay attention!” Its volume says “Right now!”
It doesn’t mean to take off after every passing cow
pulling me right after you, cause it is two to one,
and since my last foot surgery, I don’t much like to run!
Another little something I’d really like to tell
is that it was all your fault the last time that I fell.
When one of you runs toward the lake, the other towards the town,
your leashes wrap around me and the way I go is down!
Please don’t jump up on the screen whenever mealtime’s near.
I’ve had it mended more than once—a dozen times, I fear.
If you sit there quietly, your meal will be served fast.
I tell this to you each day, but my words don’t seem to last.
Another little something that needs badly to be said
is that it would be lovely if you’d shit behind the shed
instead of on the footpath or all over the grass,
for pooping over everything is really rather crass.
You don’t have to answer that dog across the street,
for he sets a barking record that you don’t have to beat.
The fighting cocks can crow without your high accompaniment.
(Albeit that your howls are growing quite magnificent.)
The hound of the Baskervilles was acting on a curse
and now that you have matched him, there’s no need to rehearse.
The owl will hoot hoot every night no matter what you do.
Ignore him, please. This is your mother begging it of you!
The dog food is for you dogs, and the cat food is for cats.
If you keep forgetting this, it’s going to drive me bats!
It does no good to try to knock cat dishes from the wall.
Those antics will not ever get you anywhere at all!
Diego, when I get home, please don’t drive Frida away!
You won’t believe there’s love enough, no matter what I say.
I have one hand for each of you, so let her have her share.
You are a dog and not a pig, so gluttony’s not fair.
Please don’t eat the cat bed and please don’t chase the cat.
Bullying’s not an answer. I will have none of that!
You found me on the street and did all that you could do
to make me bring you home with me to join my motley crew.
I am allergic to you dogs, and also to each cat,
although I know that you cannot be cognizant of that.
And so you want to sleep real near and have me stroke you often.
But when I do, it ends in itching, nose-blowing and coughin’.
Your species is a puzzle to which I don’t have a key.
Though it was at your insistence that I brought you home with me,
why is it every single time an open gate you see,
you’re through it, running down the street, so anxious to be free?
(for a similar prose answer to this prompt, go Here)
The Children’s Hour
Okay, I am writing this down by heart, as I remember it. Then I’ll find a copy and check how well I remember it, putting corrections in parentheses. Why do I remember this poem that was unfashionable even when I memorized it? One of her favorites, it was chosen by my mother for me to recite in a contest. I won with it at school, county and district level and then went to state level where I did not win. Probably my wrong choice to pronounce “lower” in a manner so as to rhyme with “hour!”
Okay, by heart, mind you, here is the poem:
The Children’s Hour
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Between the dark and the daylight,
when the night is beginning to lower,
comes a pause in the day’s occupations
that is known as the children’s hour.
I hear in the chamber above me,
the patter of little feet,
the sound of a door that is opened
and voices, soft and sweet.
By my lamplight, I see in the darkness (from my study I see in the lamplight)
descending the broad hall stair
grave Alice and laughing Allegra,
and Edith with golden hair.
A whisper and then a silence,
yet I know by their laughing (merry) eyes
they are plotting and planning together
to take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
a sudden raid from the hall,
by three doors left unguarded,
they enter my chamber wall.
They climb up into my turret,
o’er the arms and back of my chair.
When I try to escape, they surround me.
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
their arms about me entwine,
till I feel like the Bishop of Bingen
in his round tower (mouse-tower) by the Rhine.
Do you think, oh blue-eyed banditos, (banditti)
because you have scaled the wall,
such an old mustache as I am
is not a match for you all?
I have you fast in my fortress
and will not let you depart
but keep you captive forever (But put you down into the dungeon)
in the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
yes forever and a day
till the walls have crumbled to ruin
and mouldered, in dust, away.
My mother told me her mother used to read this poem to her and her five sisters. (Her two brothers were probably off pulling pranks somewhere.) Whenever her mother would recite the line, “And Edith with golden hair” my mom would cry, because she had a sister named Edith, and my mom wanted golden hair as well.
Although I only met her once, when I was three, I believe my Grandmother was a kind soul and I can’t remember whether my mother told me or I imagined that my Grandmother then altered the line to read, “and Eunice with golden hair” as well.
Now, as to the lines or words I got wrong (after fifty-two years, as I believe I recited this when I was eleven) I am fairly sure that my mother changed that entire line I got wrong, thinking it wasn’t appropriate for a girl of 11 to say the words, “But put you down into the dungeon.” Mother knew best, even over such an illustrious poet as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a fact that probably stunned the judges and led to my eventual upset as South Dakota poetry champion of outmoded rhyme.
Now, please recite your biggest feat of memory for me in comments!!!
one-word-photo-challenge-clear
I posted two of these recently in the WordPress Weekly Challenge: Refraction, so I apologize to those of you who have already seen them. On the other hand, I’ve looked at the below picture of the jellyfish a hundred times and never get tired of seeing it; and they are so perfect for this challenge that I just have to use them again.
One Word Photo Challenge: Clear
for more photos, go here: http://jennifernicholewells.com/2014/11/04/one-word-photo-challenge-clear/
Less Salt in My Success Story, Please
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
–Truman Capote
Less Salt in my Success Story, Please
Is it coincidence that spice is also known as “seasoning?”
The reason for this must be (according to my reasoning)
because we need a bit of this and then a bit of that
lest our cuisine, and more importantly, our lives become too flat.
Summer, winter, spring and fall—no season dominates them all.
So this is why, then, in my view,
a pinch of failure will surely do.
The Prompt: The Spice of Success—if “failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor” (Truman Capote), how spicy do you like your success stories?
Okay, trying to link to NaBloPoMo. Let’s hope this works!!!
The Daily Wait
For some reason, I woke up at 4:30 this morning. Of course I knew there would be no prompt yet, but as I combed the internet for distraction, tried in vain to write to my own topic, joined NaNoWriMo and tried without success to find a photo for a cover and gave up, (who picks a cover before they write the novel?), tried to find the real website for NaBloWriMo and gave up (only to see,eventally, that they posted it with the prompt this morning).
I finally was reminded of the days I’ve sat for hours waiting for the prompt or have received a timely one only to find the link doesn’t work. And so those other days of waiting are what inspired the seemingly unreasonable post below. (Who for God’s sake expects a prompt at 4:30 in the morning?) Daily Post, we do appreciate your efforts so hope you can have a sense of humor about our complaints. One thought, though. I just discovered the feature where you can set a post to automatically publish at a certain time in the future. Could you do this with the prompt so it would consistently be published at a certain time?
7:05, and still I wait.
Have you forgotten we have a date?
Without your promise, I might move on,
but in your game, I’m just a pawn.
You move me here and move me there.
You do not even seem to care
that I’m here online, held at the brink
as I wait for prompt or wait for link.
Daily Post, you’ve drawn us in,
addictive now as heroin.
We can’t get on with our day
until you tell us what to say!
Your hook and line is without bait,
yet still we let you seal our fate.
If you’d just post your topics sooner,
we wouldn’t have to pull a nooner!
Okay, fair is fair, so here is the real prompt for today and I promise to write about it as well:
The Prompt: The Spice of Success—if “failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor” (Truman Capote), how spicy do you like your success stories? (My answer to this is now posted in a different post.)
Hard Drive
The Prompt: Buyers, Beware? The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.
My Retablo, “Autobiography”
If you long for mystery,
poems, facts and history,
long perambulations
and wild exaggerations,
recipes and letters and
episodes of Homeland,
Elementary, Sherlock, Friends,
a blogging site that never ends,
Emails, Youtube, Facebook notes,
starts of novels, copied quotes,
OkCupid pictures of
possibilities for love,
notes from nice guys, threats from creeps,
notes from guys who play for keeps,
friends who only write when drunk,
chain e-mails, jokes and other junk,
two hundred drafts of my third book,
(each one different, have a look),
kids stories and their illustrations,
the Christmas plans of my relations,
photographs of my whole life—
its happiness and pain and strife—
some successes but also follies,
fireworks, insects, gardens, dollies,
travel snaps and friendly faces,
rooms at home or foreign places,
birds and children, beaches, skies,
the camera lens is true and wise
and not as given to fraud and lies
as writings filtered through the eyes
of one who feels the joys or pains
of what she witnesses, then deigns
to try to change her reader’s mind
to accord with the type or kind
of thoughts she carries deep inside:
pride’s cutting edge, love’s waning tide—
things lovely, funny, jarring, rare.
So read this hard drive if you dare,
but if you fear a life laid bare,
I have one word for you. Beware.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 