Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

The Floral Occasion: Flower of the Day May 13, 2016

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I loved this street scene–with everyone walking right down the middle of the street.  Sidewalks in Mexico seem to be used more for sitting, setting up little mom and pop stores and for courtship rituals.  Everything else seems to occur in the streets.  Cars stop in the middle of the street for their drivers to talk to passing friends, kids play ball there, dogs hobnob, trucks or cars with loudspeakers drive oh so slowly, blasting their news, fruit trucks or gas trucks or water trucks distribute their wares, garbage trucks park while their workers run to neighboring houses to pick up garbage. Construction workers pile huge mountains of sand and brick there, and the recently bereaved erect tents they fill with chairs for mourners, blocking off the entire street.  Sometimes it seems as though the passage of traffic is of the least consideration.

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/12/flower-of-the-day-may-13-2016-rose/

On My Way Home: Thursday Doors, May 12, 2016

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The other day I decided to avoid the main road and take neighborhood streets most of the way home.  This is what I saw.

(Please click on first photo to see larger views of them all.)

 

https://miscellaneousmusingsofamiddleagedmind.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/thursday-doors-may-12-2016/

Old Flame (A Maiden Aunt’s Testimony of Survival)

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Old Flame

“I stood and craned my neck to C
if I could make out the ID
of the one my parents chose for me.

He’d courted them from A to Z
and then proposed on bended knee,
but even though I knew that he

suited my father to a T,
I said that it was not to B.
He did not set my spirit free

nor make me want to be a “we,”
so I’m afraid that his suttee
was never fueled by such as me.”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/survival/

CCY Challenge, May 12, 2016: Landscapes

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DSCN1311

I love the detail and the unhurried, sleepy quality of this Mexican scene.  I’m not sure whether the amount of detail removes it from the “Landscape ” category or not.

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/11/reminder-for-ccy-photo-challenge-21-landscapes/

CCY Challenge–Landscapes

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Click on photos to enlarge.

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/11/reminder-for-ccy-photo-challenge-21-landscapes/

Calla Lily: Flower of the Day, May 11, 2016

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This is the second flower brought to me by the hummingbird lady.  I can’t get over the pattern on the front part of the flower and I’m wondering if it was caused by being wrapped around the pistil.  The other part of the flower doesn’t seem to have the pattern on it, so perhaps it was wrapped around it on the outside.  I’ve never noticed this in any other flower before and it makes it look artificial, but it isn’t

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/10/flower-of-the-day-may-11-2016-bearded-iris/

Truth

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 I invite you to send a photo to illustrate this poem, according to your understanding of it.


Truth

I fly on wings through morning dew
to try to get away from you.
I cry in vain, I kick and scream
to slip away—but still I seem
in spite of anything I do,
still to be caught up in you.

So I give up to float the stream
flowing from this morning’s dream.
Let all that it may generate
flow through me to create my fate
at first for minutes of my day
then hours and days that float away

to lose themselves in clouds of dreams
that leak out from the day’s stitched seams
conceived to keep reality
of other worlds inside of me.
I pull at threads and slip between
into the universe’s scene.

There thoughts float free in eddies of
creation that consist of love
and hate and light and dark and all
that generated our earthly ball.
We seek to have just part of it.
Impossible from the start of it.

We do not know the why of it,
but we are born and die of it––
that paradox of evil and good
made tragic by our parenthood.
That truth born out by earthly schemes
we seek to comprehend in dreams.

We are not meant to understand
by what generative hand
life flowed into the universe.
But still we’re fated to rehearse
the truth of light shadowing dark,
in novel, painting, play and quark.

Dramas in the world around us––
the sounds and sights that still astound us––
contain these opposites within––
light versus dark, yang joined with yin.
These ironies of life and art
are, in the end, what create heart.

The prompt today was “Generation” which of course means not only a generation, but also the act of generation.  That prompt led me to this poem which is really about some hard truths of life that we all face but few of us, if any, really understand.  Nonetheless, the truth of the world is  something that we all hold within us.


 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/generation/

Bare Necessities

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Bare Necessities

I scream, I cry, I moan, I curse.
My pleas for help are curt and terse.
I look around for something worse,
then lift the sofa just to rehearse.
I quote  the Bible–both psalm and verse,
request a doctor, request a nurse,
predict they’ll need to call a hearse.
Why must its contents be so diverse?
I grit my teeth.  Then lift my purse!

Version 3

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/diverse/

Cooking with Flowers––Flower of the Day, May 10, 2016

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Even the blandest flower can be spiced up.  Take for instance this unspectacular shot of dahlias:

IMG_4877 copyI had decided to throw it away, but instead transferred it to a folder on my desktop that said “Flowers Unused.” It’s where I put things I have considered using in my blog but haven’t—either because I found one I liked better or meant to use but lost on my desktop or ones that I’m just saving. Sometimes I put things there just because I don’t know where else to put them… or they wind up there by accident when they should have gone into the file of photos already used in my blog.

I checked and found it was fair game. I’d never used it in a blog post. On the other hand, it was so unspectacular that I was a bit embarrassed to use it, even when cropped down to a single flower. So, I played around a bit and ended up with this:

IMG_4877 (3)
Pretty fuzzy, but some interesting shapes, shadows and shades. Still not blogworthy, though, so I played around some more and got this:

IMG_4877 (2)
and this:

IMG_4877 (1)

and this:

IMG_4877 (3)

and finally, this:

IMG_4877

All of these photos came from the first photo shown, making use of only cropping, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint and sharpness settings—the basic tools in the edit function of Photos—the app on Mac that replaced iPhoto. Pretty fun. Like making a tasty new dish from leftovers in the fridge that anyone else would have tossed out.

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/09/flower-of-the-day-may-10-2016-bearded-iris/