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.
Seventy-two years old, and I still get the same thrill out of staying up late that I did when I was five years old. There is something magical about still being awake when everyone else in the house has been asleep for hours. Things go on in the night that they will never know about. The heavy rain beating on the bulbous skylight of the domed ceiling, the moths fluttering around the chandelier over the patio table, the mystery of cool night air that makes a saga out of what might have been an ordinary night spent in dreams forgotten in the light of day.
The only prompt word ready at this very early hour is saga.
This huge moth was plastered to the wall beside my front door.
Every year around this time, thousands of winged termites descend upon this region, land all around my house and in my pool, chew off their wings and go in search of wood. Here are a few of the piles of wings I found on the stairs to my garage and in front of every door, not to mention covering the surface of my pool.
I knew him as a rowdy member of our town constabulary, noted for his bumbling but not lauded for vocabulary. So when he whispered “pulchritudinous” with raspy voice though he could have just said, “beautiful,” I wondered at his choice. He could have called me riveting or gorgeous or just cute. All those other adjectives I never would refute. But when a noted doofus picks his words from a thesaurus, I fear it has no other kinder effect than to jar us. The fact that he would woo me being nothing but absurd, nonetheless he might have won me if he’d used a different word!
He shook his bag of marbles at me in a jocular fashion. It seems this childhood game is his secret guilty passion. He had faith that eventually I would slake his thirst, in spite of my conviction that marbles is the worst game ever invented, for you see rampant sciatica coupled with my daily dependence on Sal Hepatica made my kneeling difficult, uncomfortable, and rendered it most difficult, afterwards, to stand.
But his most stubborn diligence in begging for a bout at last contradicted my reluctance and my doubt. I picked me out a shooter and commenced to knuckle down— the fact we played for keepsies occasioning my frown. But it seems I am a prodigy—most artful with my thumb. It wasn’t very long until he realized how dumb it was to introduce me to this game that hurt my ribs bending low to shoot at his dragonflies and mibs.
First I won his cats eye and then I won his aggie. And when I won his shooter, I fear I became braggie. In the end, I won at that game that he called ringer by making a maneuver that proved to be a zinger. And my friend the marble shark paid for all his sins as I emptied out his marble sacks and emptied out his bins. I left with all his marbles rattling in my tin, grateful that he’d never ask to play the game again!
Gloria has actually taken photographs for more than seven days, but I’ve neglected to post some and combine others. Here are her most recent shots:. I’m very curious about that first shot..any ideas about how she did it? Look for her six other photo shoots in earlier blogs, including an explanation about how this assignment came about.
