All signs located in the San Francisco Bay area or in the Route 66 Museum near Times Beach, Missouri.
For more signs, see: http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/30/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-signs/
Why is the sun most beautiful at its beginning and end?
With luck, the same is true of our lives
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/29/one-word-photo-challenge-sun/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/fearful-symmetry/
 http://jennifernicholewells.com/2015/04/28/one-word-photo-challenge-sun/
Each and Every
Each person is born to turn into a memory.
Every beginning is the beginning of an end.
Eerie the truths we start to face with time.
Earnest philosophers find a happy ending.
Elders will soon become the newly borne.
Eiderdown falls to rise again.
Either we believe this, or we spend
eternity trying to know it.
Every ending is also a beginning.
NaPoWriMo Prompt: Write a poem backwards. Start with the last line and work your way up the page to the beginning. Another way to go about this might be to take a poem you’ve already written, and flip the order of the lines and from there, edit it so the poem now works with its new order. (I selected the first alternative.)
WordPress Prompt: Fearful Symmetry—write a poem where every line begins with the same letter.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/fearful-symmetry/
THE ORCHIDS AND AMAZING LEMON SOUFFLE ACCOMPANIED THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR DIANA–A NEW FRIEND OF MINE AND A LONGTIME FRIEND OF SHARON, WHO PROVIDED MOST OF THE EGG-ASSOCIATED PLOT POINTS FOR THIS STORY.
SINCE SHARON HAD SPENT ALL DAY BREAKING AND BEATING EGGS AND SQUEEZING AND ADDING LEMONS, NOT TO MENTION DRIVING ME OFF IN PURSUIT OF GIANT LIPS TO PHOTOGRAPH, SHE REMAINED UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SILENT AS JOANN REGALED US ALL WITH TALES OF FILM MAKING AND DISTRIBUTION. SHE’S A GOOD STORYTELLER, AND JOHN (AS WELL AS THE REST OF US) LISTENED WITH PLEASURE.
DIANA, WHO WAS BUSY TRYING TO RECOVER FROM A CASE OF SHINGLES, WAS A VERY GOOD EGG AND SEEMED TO BE ENJOYING THE EVENING HELD IN HER HONOR.
MEANWHILE, SHARON, ALTHOUGH SILENT, HAD BRAIN ACTIVELY ENGAGED, PROMPTED BY JOANN’S TALES OF A HORROR MOVIE SHE PRODUCED AND DIRECTED YEARS AGO. NURSING MOTHERS MAY NOT WANT TO KNOW THE PLOT, BUT SUFFICE IT TO SAY IT INVOLVED A BABY WHO PREFERRED TO NURSE ON BRAINS RATHER THAN OTHER PARTS OF THE ANATOMY. THAT SET SHARON TO THINKING ABOUT THIS EXPERIMENT SHE HAD READ ABOUT ABOUT HOW TO SEPARATE THE YELLOW OF EGGS FROM THEIR WHITES. SHE VANISHED INTO THE KITCHEN AND RETURNED WITH TWO EGGS SANS SHELLS AND AND EMPTY WATER BOTTLE. MY RUM AND COKE WAS PUSHED TO THE SIDE.
JOANN, WHOSE CAREER HAS INCLUDED WEDDING ART AND SCIENCE THROUGH INTERACTIVE ART EXPERIENCES FOR MUSEUMS AND ZOOS, WAS ESPECIALLY INTERESTED AS SHARON SUCKED THE YELLOWS OF TWO OF THE EGGS LEFT OVER FROM THE SOUFFLE CONSTRUCTION UP INTO THE EMPTY PLASTIC BOTTLE.
VOILA! EGG YELLOW REMOVED UNBROKEN FROM ITS WHITE. TURN BOTTLE OVER AND IT SQUEEZES OUT THROUGH THE NECK INTO THE CONTAINER OF YOUR CHOICE. DIANA WAS ENTERTAINED!!!
AND SHARON COOKED THOSE EXPERIMENTAL EGGSÂ FOR BREAKFAST THE NEXT DAY. (P.S.–YOU SQUEEZE AIR FROM THE BOTTLE, PLACE ITS LIP FLAT AND GENTLY ON THE YELLOW OF THE EGG, THEN RELEASE SIDES OF THE BOTTLE AND WHEN THE AIR RUSHES IN AGAIN, IT SUCKS THE YELLOW OF THE EGG UP INTO THE BOTTLE WITH IT. )
Thanks to Cee Neuner for inviting me to participate in this challenge. You can see her blog here. It is a daily treat!!! http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/21/five-photos-five-stories-challenge-day-five-oceans-fury/
See other stories of wanderers, including mine, here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-happy-wanderer/
Recalculating: Berkeley to Livermore and Back
Who wanders for pleasure, wanders alone
marking no boundary, barrier, zone.
The earth has no limits and time has no chime,
my steps undetermined by schedule or clime.
This used to be my modus operandi—
travel my sweet tooth and freedom my candy.
No email or Google, no iPad or phone,
without Internet service, I rolled like a stone.
But today I am traveling from town to town
with heavier luggage–more weighted down.
And though I go singly, I’m never alone
thanks to my computer, my Kindle and phone.
Right now I’m imprisoned and my progress is bound
by the cords of my ear buds confusingly wound
round my camera charger and Ethernet connector.
My GPS determines my vector.
No more do I travel unfettered and free.
Cell tower to tower is where I must be;
so every person that I’ve ever met
has me perpetually in their debt.
Birthdays to remember and twitters to answer,
queries of grandchildren, hip sockets, cancer.
Traveling with this extra weight is not pleasant.
I much prefer traveling just in the present
unfettered by email, phone calls or that voice
calling instructions at every choice
of northwards or southwards or eastward or west.
Yes, I know GPS directions are best,
but if I’m never lost and never alone,
I might as well stay home and talk on the phone,
for most of adventure has come when I’m lost
from all of my past, whatever the cost.
Still the ways of the present make planning much easier,
finding my next destination much breezier.
These tricky freeways have changed in past years
and I find my memory much in arrears.
So perhaps for today I’ll turn on GPS
so I won’t get so lost and I won’t have to guess
which freeway to take: eight-oh-eight? eight-oh-six?
Getting myself in a terrible fix.
Tomorrow’s the time to become vagabond,
using personal radar and my fairy wand
to maneuver through life by the skin of my pants.
Just for today, I won’t take the chance!
P.S. Â Thanks, Patti, for the loan of the GPS!!! Actually, it has been a Godsend.
The WordPress prompt: The Happy Wanderer–What’s your travel style? Are you itinerary and schedule driven, needing to have every step mapped out in advance or are you content to arrive without a plan and let happenstance be your guide?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-happy-wanderer/
We spotted this clever sign over an orthodontist’s office on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, CA, north of Berkeley. My friend Sharon generously went around the block to afford me a chance to photograph it. It was big–we estimate at least 8 feet long. Although this sign is probably not that old, I love the 50ish buildings and signs along San Pablo…
 
The rules of Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo (It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph) and then nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/21/five-photos-five-stories-challenge-day-five-oceans-fury/
Routes Laid Out by Heavenly Bodies
The road of the moon
on the water
is a bridge
between us
leading me
to our new self.
When I am ready
to return
to what I was
before you,
that road
has vanished
but the sun
lights a different
pathway
and sends my shadow
ahead like a door
I seek to enter.
The oldest moon,
the sun at its birth
or just before its death
create in us
just the suggestion
of a road.
That is why we rise early
for the sunrise,
gather for the sunset,
spill old blood,
howl howl
at the open moon.
This poem meets both prompts today. The NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem about a bridge. and the WordPress prompt was “When the full moon happens, you turn into a person who is the opposite of who you normally are. Describe this new you.”
Street Animals
In a house, I like a presence
not my own
and I like contributing
to some other creature’s pleasure.
I prefer cats, but dogs prefer me.
These animals
are drawn into my life
as though by a magnet,
but it is yet to be determined
which is the magnet–
them or me.
Nonetheless, here we are.
They bark their language of in and out.
I motion my language of sit before being fed.
The cats do not enter since the second dog moved in.
One sits on the front wall to be fed and ventures no closer.
The other moved to dogless neighbors.
I am a resting place in their karma.
They come and go at will.
While the dogs, compliant prisoners,
escape through some careless open door when they can,
in minutes, they come home again
to walls and gates and high scalable domes
where they can watch that world
they have been saved from.
WordPress Prompt:Menagerie–Do you have animals in your life? If yes, what do they mean to you? If no, why have you opted not to?
NaPoWriMo Prompt: Write a A hay(na)ku (a three-line stanza where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words.)
Haynakus
are the
Tweets of poetry.
No
bird tweets
three note songs.
I
don’t write
six word poems.
Â
I cannot imagine this guy’s story. He flew up to ogle our tortilla chips when we were sitting facing out over the bluffs of San Carlos Bay, Sonora, Mexico. This toothpick or porcupine quill-shaped object was poking straight up out of his skull and must have been embedded there.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/26/cees-odd-ball-photo-challenge-2015-week-17/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 