Yin and Yang
I wrote about Yin and Yang in a much earlier post that hardly any of my present followers read. Go here to read that poem: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/06/21/changing-lines/
Yin and Yang
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Author Archives: lifelessons
Lunar Eclipse #1
Since we also had a full Lunar Eclipse in 2014, I’m reblogging a poem I wrote for the first one. The photos are also from that eclipse. I was able to capture the full eclipse last time, but the cloud cover prevented that this time. I did capture it for most of its cycle, however, and you can view tonight’s pictures HERE.
Lunar Eclipse
Lunar Eclipse
Last night I rose to watch the full eclipse––
a blood orange moon, full in the dark night sky,
around it, scattered stars and tall palm tips.
It was as though in this world, only I
watched the last fingernail of glowing moon,
chewed at by shadow, slowly wane and die.
And then the night birds with their lonely croon
gave timbre to this darkened night soon joined
by lonely burro, braying for the moon
as though they mourned for vision now purloined
or simply sang for joy of adding to
the beauty of this dark moon newly coined.
Then once again the moon’s edge came to view.
Earth moved aside in favor of the sun
and for an hour, I watched as moonlight grew.
Then sought my bed, the pageant not yet done,
as light increased and shadow slowly waned.
Inevitably, once more light had won.
The ending known, no mystery remained.
Our prompt today was to write a poem in terza rima, a form invented by Dante and used in The Divine Comedy. It consists of three-line stanzas, with a “chained” rhyme scheme. The first stanza is ABA, the second is BCB, the third is CDC, and so on. No particular meter is necessary, but English poets have tended to default to iambic pentameter. One common way of ending a terza rima poem is with a single line standing on its own, rhyming with the middle line of the preceding three-line stanza.
Here is a link to the pictures I took of the lunar eclipse on September 27 & 28 of 2015! https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/27/eclipse-of-the-blood-moon-over-mexico/
Eclipse of the Blood Moon Over Mexico
Blood Moon Over Mexico
Before I went swimming tonight, I set up my camera and tripod. My first view of the eclipse was in my pool. Palm Tree Silhouettes in front, the moon which had just come out of the cloud cover had just a sliver of shadow. I came in to dry off and went back out to take these shots. It was strange, because I kept getting an illusion of a pink cloud floating over the moon. It was granular–a bit like like pink undissolved Jello powder floating in water. There was definite movement. Perhaps it was a cloud layer reflecting the red of the moon. I’m curious if anyone else had the same experience It was when I had the most magnification on my zoom–nearly 120 I think.
At any rate, palm trees water and the moon in eclipse create a sort of magic that may have just prompted a type of hypnotic illusion. I look forward to hearing of your experiences and seeing your photographs.
You can read the poem I wrote about last year’s Blood Moon Eclipse here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/28/lunar-eclipse-1/
A Photo A Week Challenge: Wood
A Photo A Week Challenge: Wood
A five minute stroll around my front patio area supplied this variety of wooden experiences. I especially like the scars in the green wood of the palm tree. It looks like someone has used the tree for their canvas. Cee says the scar in the first tree (and its closeup in my last photo) looks like a tree itself. I hadn’t noticed this, but she is right!
https://nadiamerrillphotography.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/a-photo-a-week-challenge-wood/
The Year I Gave Up Childish Things
The Year I Gave Up Childish Things
At the age of sixty-eight,
I’ve no wish to equivocate.
Is there a time when childhood ends?
When we give up playful friends?
Cease to lie in grass and dream?
Drink our coffee without cream?
Always do what’s reasonable
in order to avoid life’s trouble?
Say no to candy and dessert?
Cease to giggle, joke and flirt?
If so, I can’t remember mine.
Perhaps when I am sixty-nine!
The prompt: Write about a defining moment in your life when you were forced to grow up in an instant (or a series of instants).https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/when-childhood-ends/
Throw Away: Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge 9/27/15
Throw Away
As I go through my pictures on days I’m not in the mood to go take new photos, trying to remember which ones I’ve already used on my blog, I also take the time to delete photos I know I will never use. But today I got a wild idea and decided to restore the picture I’d just deleted and see if there was any part of it I could use. After an hour or two of playing, I came up with fourteen possibilities. I’m posting them all, and at the end, the picture of the giant blooming castor bean plant they all came from.
Below is the unedited photo I threw away and then retrieved–the mother of them all:
I guess the moral of the story is that there are lots of possibilities in even a picture you think doesn’t warrant saving. Unfortunately, I see this potential in other parts of my life as well, which is why I got distracted waiting for all these photos to download to my media file and started sorting closets. I’m proud to say I sorted out a big box of clothes to give away and another to sell. Photos are an easy thing to hold on to because they don’t take up much space, and if all else fails you can send them to the cloud. Now if they could just invent a cloud for the rest of the clutter of my life!!!.
Do not miss this photo: http://ceenphotography.com/2015/09/27/flower-of-the-day-september-27-2015-bashful-dahlia/
Vocabulary Lesson: The 7 Word Challenge
https://7words2inspire.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/word-list-week-4/ Write a story or poem making use of as many of these words as you wish: (oneiric cigar shenanigans cold-cocked finish sun-dried knickers) To save you the bother of checking them off, I’ll tell you I used them all—in order. The unbelievers can check them off anyway if they wish.
Vocabulary Lesson
She was more than irritated. Pissed, really, as she thumbed through the dictionary in search of the word “oneiric.” Any word that needed to be looked up didn’t belong in a “Dear Jane” letter anyway–as though to the very end he was trying to demonstrate his superiority—her inferiority.
Fuck! She slammed the dictionary to the floor, picked up the half-smoked cigar he’d left in the ashtray last night, relit it and surveyed the new paper cut on her index finger. Just one more of his shenanigans, she thought. Right after he’d cold-cocked her with the news that he and she were finished—that he was leaving her FOR HER MOTHER!!!!!!, he’d lit up his Cubano for one more puff before grinding it out and handing her this letter, telling her not to open it until he’d gone.
His finish had been pretty much like their beginning—with him ending up on the floor. But this time she was standing over him rather than lying on top of him. Idly, she flicked an ash into his open mouth, hitting him squarely on his tongue. The sun-dried blood on his lip looked like the smudge of a lover’s lipstick. Around his head were the remains of the crystal candlestick her mother had given them for their wedding. She sucked at the paper cut, then at the gash across her palm that she had gotten from a shard of the candlestick that had taken a far smaller part out of her than it had out of him.
Far away in the kitchen, the phone rang and rang. Probably her mother. Well, let her get her knickers in a bunch waiting for him. Let her think (for as long as she could put off coming to investigate) that her daughter had reclaimed her property. She was in possession for now and everyone knew possession was 9/10ths of the law. She took another long draw before examining her wounds again.
Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she moved back to the dictionary to thumb through the o’s. When she’d found the word, she chuckled and looked back at her lost love. Gone from this world, but no one would ever know it if she just shut his jaw and wiped off the bloodstain. As a matter of fact, he’d look downright oneiric!
If you want to join in the fun, post your story or poem HERE.
Why I Do Not Ham on Rye it
Why I do not Ham on Rye it
You cannot borrow steal or buy it.
Sumo wrestlers never try it.
Female starlets do or die it.
Vitamin makers fortify it
You never cookie, cake or pie it.
Pizza parlors terrify it.
Now and then I me oh my it,
but I hope I don’t defy it,
for if I ever hope to guy it,
I simply must stay on my diet!
The Prompt: What is one thing at which you are the most afraid of failing?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/must-not-fail/
Obelisco y Mas: Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge, 9/26/15
Obelisco y Mas
In Mexico, the hibiscus flower is an obelisco. These two blooms were picked off the street in San Juan Cosala this morning as I came out of Cafe Saga after the girls’ dance class. I loved the rust-red color, which somehow I have been unable to duplicate in these photos. I’ve tried decreasing the light to duplicate the color so that is why the photos are a bit dark,but none are the correct color.
I carried the two flowers to my favorite local plant place and although they had a rather large plant that he said had this color blooms, it turns out that the blooms change color three times and are only this color for about a day, finally turning into yellow. The plant I bought has no blooms, but I bought it anyway. If it isn’t the plant I want, no doubt it will be beautiful anyway as I’ve never met an hibiscus that I didn’t love. I’ll show you the results!!!
For more flowers, look here: http://ceenphotography.com/2015/09/26/flower-of-the-day-september-26-2015-gitts-perfection-dahlia/
Change, Change, Change
Change, Change, Change
For the fourteen years I’ve been in Mexico, a bright green caterpillar (actually, the larval stage of the hornworm at this stage) has invaded my Virginia Creeper vines. It wouldn’t be much of a problem except for the fact that they poop lots of black pellets about 1/2 inch in diameter directly onto my glass tabletop and all over the terrace floor. I can never see them against the green of the foliage, so three or four times a year, Pasiano is recruited to use his keen eye to discover them and relocate them to my houseless extra lot next door.
I think his/her little green tail looks like one of those little brushes that is used in place of floss or a toothpick to clean between teeth.
If we don’t catch them during the green stage, they begin to morph into a creatures you wouldn’t believe were stages of the same being.
This goofy little guy looks like he has crystals coming out of the top of his head. (Click to enlarge)
And this guy was caught at the same time we found the littler guy above.
This shot shows their size in relation to each other. The larger one is four or five inches long. Their heads look like the rolled part of an uninflated balloon and are translucent and polka dotted. The racing stripes add an extra flair in the littler guy whereas the larger one looks more sedate in his brown and white striped pale gray suit. Two different caterpillars or stages of the same creature? And, are they later stages of the green larva? If so, why is the one guy smaller? Questions, questions.
This is the next stage of worm that we found. By now, I have discovered that it is a Hornless Hornworm (Acemon Sphinx) and that they lose the little horn on their rear end (you can see the detail on the first green stage above) after their first molt and it is replaced on each of the subsequent larval stages with an eyespot that you can clearly see in the picture below.
That one eyespot on the tail end seemed spookier when I thought it was a cyclops eye on the head of the hornworm!
There is a rather long and unbelievable story that goes with this stage of the caterpillar that I will tell at a later time. In fact, this is the one hornworm that became my “mascota” (pet.)
The most interesting part of this story is what this caterpillar turns into. So far as I know, I’ve never seen the insect stage–perhaps because I am too insistent that Pasiano removes all the larva to relocate them. I have just this year discovered that they actually turn into hummingbird moths that are avid pollinators of many of the flowers I grow. They are also beautiful–often being mistaken for hummingbirds. I don’t think it is fair for me to download a picture of the moth, since all of the photos above were taken by me and if I had been more aware of anything other than my Virginia creeper, I would have known that it might be worth putting up with the worm poop to be able to see the hummingbird moth.
So hereafter, I vow that I will not relocate any more hornworm larva or caterpillars at any stage. And it may take another year, but I promise to take a picture of the first hummingbird moth that I see.
THE END!!!!
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/change-2015/
