Click on Photos to Enlarge.
Whether created by light or form, placed side-by-side or one within the other, placed straight or on a diagonal, I hope each of these photos presents the concept of two (or more) rectangles.
The rainstorm hit just as I drove up to the house. Running from the garage to the kitchen door, a distance of no more than 30 feet, I was as drenched as I would have been if I had jumped into the pool. I created a river as I ran across the kitchen, dining room and living room, shedding clothes the entire way. Once dried off (except for my hair) and in my nightgown, I wasn’t about to carry the cats’ food bowls out to the garage, and how could I expect the cats to eat their dinner in the driving rain? So they dined in the kitchen and quickly afterwards, chose their beds for the night. Kukla on the back of the living room sofa and Ollie on my freshly laundered, ironed and folded sheet. I think they are in for the night. Earlier, I had foolishly kept the kitchen door open, thinking they might wander outside once the rain ended. Instead, I entered the kitchhen a few hours later to find it filled with large red flying termites! I quickly turned off the light and many of them swarmed to the hall, where I had left a floor lamp on. For some reason, they were all on the floor, where I quickly stamped them to death. I hate to kill any creature, but these same termites used to invade our house in the Redwoods in California, chew off their wings and burrow their ways into the redwood walls of the house. It was them or my wooden African carvings and cupboards and furniture!
Go HERE and HERE and HERE to see and read more about these termites.
An ekphrastic poem is one that describes a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. For this exhibition, however, an artist was given a poem and asked to create a painting that reflected the themes of the poem. (To my knowledge, there is no term for this reversal of the ekphrastic process.) My poem about forbidden love is given below and above is the painting it inspired. Painting by Leonardo de Dios Jerónimoque, poem by me.
The show was the ExpoColoquio Internacional PreTextos del Solsticio held in Tabasco, Mexico, on June 20. I was honored to be a part of it. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but a friend took the photo of the painting that was based on my poem. Below is its Spanish translation.
Went to a wonderful play, “The Women,” at the Bare Stage Theater, then to dinner at the Jardin in the Ajijic Plaza. Got home just in time to not quite not avoid the deluge… Was positively soaked running from garage to my kitchen door.. I mean as soaked as if I’d fallen into a swimming pool. Kids all ready to be fed. Kitties inside as doggies have their own snug room–the doggie domain–built just for them. After their dinner, they got to lick out my ice cream bowl. There are some rewards for cats even in a rain storm..
How would you define these words?
1. Milieu:The fifth and sixth and words of the lyrics that begin , “Skip, skip, skip to ….
2. Inviolable: Music impossible to play on a viola.
3. Dulcimer: What surfers call an exceptionally flat and unexciting ocean surface as flat as the surface of a looking glass.
4. Condominium: What inmates call a prison block.
5. Sycophant: An insane pachyderm.
6. Elegiacal: A delectable food only rumored to be fattening.
7. Zhuzh: Kitten on the keys.
8. Obstreperous: Description of a difficult pregnant woman with a throat malady.
9. Symposium: Empathy for someone in agony over the length of a Jane Fonda exercise video pose.
10. Neophyte: The first stages of an altercation.
For Fibbing Friday.
For Cee’s FOTD
For Cee’s FOTD
At 2:30 AM, I was blasted awake by the music from the town a mile below me that was still in full festival mood. I described this music in a comment I made at the time as sounding like 1000 people singing a dirge. Not the usual banda music that I have more or less acclimated myself to over the 23 years I’ve lived in Mexico. Granted, the music is less startling than the hundreds of LOUD cohetes* that had been going off since 5 AM yesterday morning, but at this point the cohetes had stopped and for Pete’s sake. It was 2:30 in the morning!
People say if you can’t take noise, don’t move to Mexico, and I’m one of those people who say it. I could get up and look for earplugs. As a matter of fact, I had just located mine the day before as I spent a long afternoon organizing my desk clutter. But it ended up being a shorter trip to just go to the two sliding glass doors that take up most of two walls in my bedroom and closing them. Problem solved. Music now muffled, I attempted (unsuccessfully) to sleep for 2 1/2 more hours! That is how I find myself at 5:13 in the morning, still wide awake, writing yet another blog. Four hours from now, I have an English lesson to teach to Eduardo. At 5:30 PM, friends are coming to dinner. Will there be room for a nap in between? And why do I find myself fully awake after only 3 1/2 hours of sleep?
Recently, I read that the most important factor in maintaining health as we age is sleep. We can last longer without food and water than without sleep. Nonetheless, I find myself unable to sleep for longer than 5 or 5 1/2 hours. During the day I am usually a bit dizzy and when I walk, a bit clumsy–having to touch things to maintain my balance. Is this a product of too little sleep? Is it time to give up my stubborn refusal to take sleeping pills?
For the past 3 hours, every time I have attempted to settle back against the pillows to try to sleep, I have experienced a ridiculous fear that my nasal passages and throat are going to close up and that I am going to suffocate. A few other times when this has happened, I’ve taken a blanket and gone out to the hammock to sleep—feeling the cool night air will help. And it has. But earlier in the evening we had a very heavy rain which probably blew in and soaked the hammocks in my open-sided gazebo, so I’m unwilling to risk the walk in the dark down to probable disappointment.
I could swim, as the water was hot enough before the rain to probably be perfect now, but going out to swim seems to indicate that I’ve given up on sleep, and 2 1/2 hours is not going to cut it for the busy day I have ahead. Dilemma.
5:31 and the first cohetes can be heard in the distance, followed by a dog’s insistent barks every two seconds for the past three minutes. Guess it is time to locate those ear plugs.
6:07 (That said, I believe the festival is now over, as the actual Saint Day for San Juan is on the 24th.) The sky is beginning to lighten. I think I will go out for that swim.
*cohetes de trueno ( thunder rockets)—aptly named fireworks loud enough to raise the dead!!!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 