Monthly Archives: July 2023

Kitchen Inspirations for Lens Artist Challenge

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Click on photos to enlarge.

My kitchen looked much larger before I added the center island on wheels, but it has a lot more work and storage space now.  I moved my grandmother and mother’s crocks down from where they usually reside on top of the cupboards just for this photo. We were asked to also photograph our favorite cup. This Talavera cup is my favorite, partially because it is the biggest cup in the cupboard, but I also love its design.

 

The Lens Artist Challenge this week is Inspiration found in the Kitchen

Bougainvillea, FOTD July 2, 2023

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For Cee”s FOTD

Reclaimed Words, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 611

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Reclaimed Words

I fall victim to your shallow spell,
shattered by your drifting gaze
that catches on me, then drifts on,
to mingle with the gathering haze.

The damp roils in and sunlight dims,
night mingling with the fading day.
The shattered call of evening birds
echo and then fade away.

When I call out, words split in two,
spilling their meaning to the sand.
When I attempt to gather them,
they fall again from twitching hand.

As you retreat, your power fades
and I reclaim each scattered word,
change their order and intent
into phrases less absurd.

Words once wasted assume power
directed at another ear.
Amazing how the selfsame words
gain power with a loved one near.

 

For The Sunday Whirl: Wordle 611 the words are: mingled dim damp shallow spell gaze drifts shattered call twitch words split

Everybody Knows V: The Day that Death Came to Town

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The Day That Death Came to Town

I do not know how long ago it was that the first person died. I was not told if it was a woman or a man, an adult or a child. I was told only that the person lived in the first house on the east side of town. Then, every day for 30 days, a new person died, always  on the same street in a straight line from the first death to the last, as Death visited house by house. Sometimes he would skip a house or three or five, but every day, he would visit a new house on that street, moving always Westward until at last, a month later, he passed out of town. Ever since, people have remembered the day the first death occurred as “The day that Death came to San Juan Cosala.”  I was told this story by someone who came late to San Juan, but she lived in the town for three years and she was told this story and repeated it to me.

 

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash. “Everybody Knows” stories are supposedly true town stories passed down to me by different mouths.

America the Beautiful?

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As July 4 looms in the near future, this poem by Alicia Ostriker so captures the state of the nation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xCQzHurMHc

Thanks to Kenneth Salzmann on “How to Grow A Poem” for bringing it to my attention.   Check our his site for interviews with intriguing American poets as well as links to their poems.

And thanks to Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash for the illustration.

Everybody Knows III: The Martyr Dog

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Here is another story of the pueblo. (If you haven’t heard the others, they are HERE and HERE.)

The Martyr Dog

There was a pothole in the road that because of neglect got larger and deeper every year until it had swallowed most of the road, leaving only a space on one side large enough for one car to pass. People in the pueblo said it was dangerous, and everyone said that it needed to be fixed, but as is often the way, everyone waited for someone else to do the task and no one ever did anything about it. Then one day, a little boy fell into the hole and was unable to climb out of it. He was thrashing about, but could not swim. By then the hole was too deep to climb out of and there was no one close to hear his cries. But there was a stray dog in the neighborhood who did hear his cries and although even if he had jumped into the hole to save him, the sides were so steep and straight that he would not have been able to carry him out, so he went up and down the street barking and barking until at last a man came to see what the problem was and pulled the child from the hole.

What happened then was very strange, but it must be true because many people have told the story which has been passed down over the years, reporting that once the dog saw that the boy had been saved, he ran through the town directly to another hole even deeper with straighter sides and when he reached it, he jumped in and drowned. And people all say it was as though the dog had made a promise to the gods that if they spared the boy, that it would sacrifice itself in his stead. And to this day, if a dog wanders into a church during a service, no one ushers it out or makes any fuss. I have witnessed this myself on two occasions. In one case the dog even walked up onto the stage where the priests were standing and no one took notice. It is my idea that the story of the martyr dog has something to do with the fact that both the priests and the people accept the rightful presence of even dogs in the church. No one has told me this. It is my addition to the story that no doubt others have added to, as well, over the years.