Can you furnish a story to go with this picture? Please give a link to you story in the comments section below. If you don’t have a blog, you can just tell the story in comments. HERE is a link to this blog.
The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem in response to the Picasso painting above.
Beach Memoirs
That good old salty sea air combined with grainy sand
defined my beach vacation and went great with being tanned.
Felt great under my bare feet and squished between each toe.
And left footprints behind me, wherever I chose to go.
It crusted up my toenails and powdered all my floors.
Seeped into my keyboard and creaked up all my doors.
It maintained a constand presence once I got back home.
It sneaked into my ear canals and caked up brush and comb.
In spite of all the nuisance of the sand within my bed,
good memories of beach life still swirl within my head.
Yet I needn’t wax nostalgic, for I find behind each knee,
in pockets, luggage and the floor—the beach came home with me!
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #75” Today’s number is 196. To play along, go to your photos file folder and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title. This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.
Click on photos to enlarge.
An Apologia for Indolence
Those beasts that prowl the underworld with claws uncoiled to strike
assume the right to wander anywhere they like.
They thread their ways through canyons, all over the map––
through every twisting river’s course, through every mountain gap.
Stuck tight to their temples are their matted strands of hair.
Masked by tree limbs and tall grasses, they maintain their vigilance where
a hunter or a camper or a homeless, shiftless sort
unschooled in the ways of beasts, chooses to cavort.
Thus do those loved ones vanish who choose to exercise
while at home are resting those of us who are more wise!!!
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle, the words are: prowl beast claws shift strands twists wander underworld map thread
On my way down to the little market just at the bottom of the hill, I couldn’t help backing up to snap this shot!!!
For Cellpic Sunday
Not-so-common Sense
The climate in the world today is generally tense.
So many of our leaders have lost their common sense––
basing their decisions just on thoughts of recompense.
For all of you who sit there, balanced on the fence
with regrets that your thinking formerly was dense,
please do better thinking as you vote forever hence
For Sunday Poser #236: Common Sense
For Brian’s Last on the Card prompt. The very last photo on the card is the first photo above of Blue’s cheese. The rest of the photos were other photos taken the last week of the month. Busy week.
Quality Control
As neighbors you are irreplaceable.
The prospect of your loss? Unfaceable
What if the folks you sell it to
turn out to be ones we will rue?
Replacing you?
We no can do!
We’ll annex your house and then
use it as our adjunct den.
The Weekend Writing Prompt 418 is to write a 44 word poem or story on the theme “annex.” (Image from the Irish Times)
“International Cheffery”
In the garden or on the hoof,
in the lake or on the roof,
we grow it, herd it, shoot it, hook it.
Pick it, wash it, chop it, cook it.
Wherever we see food, we take it.
Stir it, spit it, fry or bake it.
In Japan is the exception.
Some ancient chef had a conception
that he would not cook the fish–
just serve it raw upon the dish.
It is a strange way to be fed–
to eat a fish that’s merely dead!
In African countries, I have found,
they build a fire on the ground
and cook their food in cauldrons there
flavored with spices hot and rare.
In Sicily, the mafia bosses
favor rich tomato sauces.
First they’re fed by wife or mother,
then they go out and kill each other.
Mexicans use corn instead
of wheat to make their daily bread.
They fold it around beans or meat
and chilis to turn up the heat!
America’s a country where
there’s food from every country there.
What’s unique in our repast
is that we want our food here fast!
The word of the day prompt is chef.
Immobility
What once passed for vigor, I fear has turned into a case of fine acting. If I walk with energy, it is a forced energy expressed in spurts in situations where once I ran. I hope this can be attributed to the dignity of my age; but when I see others my age outpacing me, the jig is up and I am revealed for what I am—someone who, in spite of what I have always believed would happen, is wearing out and falling into that part of the life cycle that includes wrinkling up and slowing down. Ugh. I hate to admit it, but perhaps if I do it will be a type of therapy and in confronting it, it will go away—or at least it will lessen in its effect.
The truth is that I fear acting old more than I fear looking old. I hate it that I struggle to get up from a kneeling position and that I can in no way do it gracefully. I put both hands against the floor in front of me, raise my butt in the air and walk up to my hands—only way it seems possible without a lot of grunting and straining. In animal behavior, I would probably appear sexy as I do so, but I do not delude myself that any human being would find it so.
An additional truth to face now that I am older is that I am turning into my mother. Having to do more than one thing at once befuddles me and sometimes even one thing at a time is a bit confusing. Numbers don’t behave as they once did. I add and subtract and multiply and divide just fine. I grew up in a time before computers and handheld devices, so I’m used to doing functions mentally that youth finds better relegated to machines. The problem is in the interrelation of functions––just how to convert dimensions expressed in feet and tenths of feet to feet and inches, to enable me to equate it to the past when all dimensions were expressed as such. Why describe in tenths of feet which are traditionally divided into twelve parts, not ten? Why not just convert to a decimal system entirely, which I could then translate easily to inches and then to feet and inches?
The world is no longer my oyster. Devices get smaller and smaller as my eyes get worse and worse. I can’t wait for all of today’s young programmers and systems designers to get to be 60 and to try to make use of the apps they’ve designed primarily for phones so tiny that you can barely find the phone, let alone make out pages as small as playing cards. And don’t even get me started on the designers of medicine labels!!! If it isn’t bad enough that they are in size 2 font, they then make them white on yellow or gray on blue so it is impossible to read them no matter what size they are. What are they thinking? The clincher was my optometrist’s card that was primarily empty space with the writing squeezed into one corner, so small that I doubt it could be read by anyone–glasses or no glasses, and remember, people come to optometrists primarily because they can’t see in the first place! In addition, it was one of those cards impossible to look at because the two colors used not only made it difficult to read, but tended to affect one’s astigmatism, or at the very least one’s sense of good taste.
I must admit that I have never been an athletic person. Zumba, yoga and pool aerobics have been my most successful and enduring modes of exercise. But what I have done, I have always done with great vigor. I work hard, in the past did all my own housework and gardening and have been a bit of a workaholic. But very recently, I find myself wearing out faster, sneaking off to a hidden corner to huff and puff a bit or lie down for a ten-minute rest. I find myself getting a bit testier and less patient when things go wrong, but blessedly usually express my frustration (aloud) primarily to myself.
It occurred to me earlier this year, however, that passing neighbors can probably hear me when I shout “Idiot” to myself—or worse. Or, when I yell at the dogs to stop barking or stop jumping up. “Judy, you’re worse than the dogs!” a friend sputtered, shaking his head one day as I roared “Frida, Diego, Morrie–stop!!!” as they executed a deafening chorus of deep barks when I arrived home and opened the garage door. So I guess that is one place where my energy remains unabated. When it comes to expressing myself, I have great vocal cords. You could even say I’m still capable of a vigorous rejoinder!!!
The prompt for SOCS is “Walk.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 