One last zinnia before I head out. I’ll be gone for six weeks so I may or may not post a flower of the day from Wyoming, Missouri, Minnesota and Alabama! I leave in a week. Lots to do!!
See the most incredible rose photo HERE.
Mind Freeze
There is new news all day long, and every single minute,
radio and Internet constantly immerse us in it.
On our televisions, they repeat and repeat
every warlike action, every athletic feat.
We know before their spouses do when politicians slip,
view every starlet’s nightclub spree via a Youtube clip.
Stock market scams and Ponzi schemes and other news that scares
as big guys pick our pockets in order to line theirs.
Sans Blackwater and Monsanto, we would be better off,
but we’d still be deluged by news of Enron and Madoff!
We consult Wikipedia to see what it might say,
keep up with the Kardashians a dozen times a day.
It’s hard enough to keep abreast of those they might be bedding,
let alone to know the date of their most recent wedding.
Who has gained a pound or two or who’s the most hirsute?
This information makes our lives a Trivial Pursuit.
There are so many details that come at us day and night,
filling up our minds until our craniums feel tight.
We’re stuffed with sound bites, news clips and every TV show
until it is inevitable. Something’s got to blow!
No wonder that we can’t remember names of our best friends
or what we came out shopping for or how that movie ends.
We can’t remember song lyrics or what we meant to do.
We came in here for something. Was it scissors, paint or glue?
I am forgetting everything I always used to know.
Every mental process has just gotten kind of slow.
It’s taking me much longer now to ponder each decision—
a factor that the younger folks consider with derision.
Like-aged friends agree with me, for they all feel the same.
They all have minds stuffed just as full, and we know what to blame.
There’s too much information, and like any stuffed-full larder,
to locate things within them gets progressively harder.
If we could sort our minds out the same way that we pack—
putting unimportant stuff way at the very back
and all the more important things in front and at the top,
we wouldn’t have to search our minds and wouldn’t have to stop
to figure out the names of things or places or of folks,
and then we wouldn’t be the brunt of all their aging jokes;
but it seems that we can’t do this so perhaps the answer is
to just turn off the TV news and gossip of show biz.
The scandals and the killings—all the bad things that astound us—
we’d leave behind to concentrate on happenings around us.
We’d notice more the little things in our immediate world:
the spider in the spider web, the bud that’s tightly furled
and notice when it opens, and the dragonfly that’s on it
and take a picture of it, or perhaps construct a sonnet.
See the children who are hungry and instead of our obsessing
on matters where we’re powerless, instead bestow a blessing
on all those things around us where we have the power to act.
When we see whatever needs doing, to take action and react.
Perhaps then all the horrid facts that rise up in the mind
will settle to the bottom and then all of us will find
the keys we’ve lost, our glasses, and remember why we came
into this room and how to recall every person’s name.
And all the time we save we’ll spend on the important things
and feel the sense of purpose helping others always brings.
The world is too much with us with its bad news of all kinds,
and all this information simply freezes up our minds.
Perhaps with much less input, there would be less to astound us
and we could concentrate on what’s important close around us.
The prompt word today is athletic. This is a rewrite of a poem written three years ago.
I received this challenge from my friend Alex Solomon. Okay, girl, here goes. Hard for me to post with no words, but. . . . .“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
Today, I inviteAngloswiss to join the 7 Day Photo Challenge.
A few days ago I bought collars with little bells on them for all the kittens. I put the first one on Roo, and it was a disaster! Her eyes went round and she went bucking like a wild bronc all the way across the patio. She tried to claw and scrape and bite the bell off. Then the other kittens joined in the chase and they went careening off into the dense jungle underbrush of the front yard. There was no way I could follow them there, but eventually she bucked her way out of the thicket and I grabbed her and tugged the collar off. Luckily, I had insisted on easy release collars, fearing that they’d get caught up in a tree branch or vine, so it was easy to free her.
It was not so easy to cut the bells off all the collars. It took heavy metal cutters and even at that, I had to twist and twist to get the little bells off, actually cutting them off their soldered link and then had the fun of cutting the sharp metal pieces off the loop still attached to the collar. I’d ordered tags with my phone number to attach to the collars–my guarantee that no one would think they were feral cats once they inevitably climb up the bougainvillea vines and make their way out onto the street side of the wall. I was to pick the tags up a few days later, and since the man who did the engraving insisted I put “recompensa” (reward) on the other side of the tag, I could visualize neighborhood children ringing my doorbell daily, kittens in arms. Ah well. What was a few pesos bribe, anyway? It was a bit like the insurance given to neighborhood thugs in the barrios of NYC in bygone days, and perhaps in the present. At any rate, I eventually got bell-less collars on all of the cats except for Roo, who to this day is a collar virgin. Within minutes, however, the opened collars lay scattered like breadcrumbs across the terrace. Only Frannie retained her collar. I gave up on the rest for the time being.
(Click on first photo to enlarge all.)
Ollie will stand in as spokesmodel for all the rest. Needless to say, he hated his collar with or without a bell. The bells, here seen isolated from their collars, will no doubt be welcome toys if not welcome jewelry for the cats.
jdbphoto
Spider on the ceiling, legs evenly spread round,
I can’t help but wonder what keeps you ceiling-bound.
Have you little suction cups welded to each foot,
and if so, has nature adequately put
each one on this spider far above my bed
so it will not disconnect and land upon my head?
I woke up much earlier than usual today, and after I posted my poem and photos, I went back to bed. I closed my eyes for a short time, then opened them and stared fixedly at the ceiling above the bed. It was not fully light in the room, but in the diffused light from the curtains which form a sort of scrim in the room, I could see a black blotch on the ceiling right above me. Trying to figure out what it was, I scrunched my eyes up and eventually made out lines radiating out from the center. It finally occurred to me that this might be a spider. Further scrunching determined that it was, indeed, a delicate-looking spider perhaps an inch or two in diameter. It hasn’t moved in the half hour or so it has taken for me to write its laudatory poem, locate my camera, arrange for adequate lighting and camera settings, shoot its portrait and to get posted. It will probably still be there tonight. If so, its fame will probably be expanded with another poem. If I remember.
The prompt today is popular.
The challenge is one black and white photo from your own life each day for seven days. No people depicted, no words of explanation. Invite one other person to join each day. Today I nominate The Jagged Man at Daffodil Hill Photography.
(Click on first photo to enlarge all.)
My Zinnias are a bit sparse compared to Cee’s today. To see hers, go HERE.
I received this challenge from my friend Alex Solomon. Okay, girl, here goes. Hard for me to post with no words, but. . . . .“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
Day 1
Today I challenge Marilyn Armstrong.
