Category Archives: Uncategorized

Raison d’etre

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IMG_6589

Raison d’etre

What needs incite
my lust to write?
I fear the answer
is a cancer
that swims my brain
prompting refrain
in rhyme and meter
perfect and  neater
than free verse or
that deadly bore––

the limerick
that lost its kick
decades ago.
I love the flow
of iambs and
trochees that stand
first tall, then short
as if in sport––
touching their toes
or knees to nose.

Dactyls are gimpy–
awkward and limpy.
What I like best?
The anapest!
Its canter sweet
just can’t be beat.
It is my chance
to strut and prance
to sing and dance
through fine parlance
in rhymes repeated
while snugly seated.

My deeds nefarious
are all vicarious––
neatly rhymed
and evenly timed.
In short, my time
is spent in rhyme.
And if you’re judging
my dearth of budging,
I am not crazy.
I’m merely lazy!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/discover-challenges/raison-detre/

Hope

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IMG_5964Hope wears a white apron and a pensive smile!

Hope

I hope life turns out as you wish and is a bowl of cherries.
I hope you find a run of luck and that it never varies.
The whole world would be lucky, if I had my “druthers.”
Every line would catch a fish. All orphans would find mothers.
All endings would be happy.  All lottery tickets win.
But as I stop to think of it, I have to think again.
If all of us were winners, winning would lose its distinction.
Every hunter bagging game would lead to their extinction.
It seems that often one guy’s luck brings bad luck to another.
If you’re the family favorite, then it cannot be your brother!
So if I must express my hopes I guess that I’ll just say
I hope that when it is your turn, good luck will come your way!

Now I have to tell the story about my camera, which showed up missing (oxymoron) the day after I’d met friends in the Ajijic plaza coffee place.  I’d run a number of errands that day, and so after I had searched my house for over an hour, and my car, and my garden, I headed off for town.  Was it at the coffee place?  No.  Either of the stores I’d visited? No.  I headed down the street to Ajijic Tango, where I’d had comida with my friends.  All locked up.  Seeing a door ajar a few yards away from the entrance, I called into it.  It must be the kitchen.  I called and called and fially someone came.  I gave them a note asking the owner to call me.Then I went home.

A day or so ago I wrote about a friend in Missouri who tends to straighten out my life for me on a regular basis?  Well, I wrote to him bemoaning the fate of my camera.  Within the hour, he had sent me a link to a local message board and lo and behold–there was a picture of my living room with friends I’d invited to a viewing of the new documentary of another friend all sitting in it!  A picture that had been in my camera!  Turns out the lady pictured above had been approached by a man who tried to sell her a camera.  “He asked too much” she said in her message, which stated that when she’d inspected the camera, she had surreptitiously removed the sd card from the camera as well as three more in the pouch of the carrying case, then posted one of the pictures on the card in hopes of finding the owner.

Did she know the man who had the camera?  She did.  Long story short, she went to his house to ask about the camera.  Sadly, he reported, it had stopped working. (He still didn’t realize she’d taken the sd cards out. Brilliant move on her part.)  Did he still have the camera?  No, he had given it to his son, who, it turned out, worked in the restaurant next to where I must have lost my camera!  After a few more trips to enquire on her part, the next morning I recovered my camera from the son, giving him a good reward, although he didn’t ask.  I then recovered my four sd cards from the angel pictured above and gave her a reward as well, in spite of her protests.  And that is how my Music Man in Missouri once more came to my aid and turned disaster into luck.  (If you regularly read my blog, you might have guessed that I cannot survive without my camera.)  What does this story have to do with hope?  Simply that I hope if you ever lose anything dear to you that you have two angels  looking over you as I did!!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/hope/

Celebrate, Celebrate!!!!

29 Replies

IMG_6571.jpgHere is proof, kids, that I just had my 200,000th view.  That is so exciting and you all are responsible for it.  Thanks, thanks, thanks.  You are what keeps me obsessive!!!

Here is a link just sent to me by forgottenman: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/01/19/celebrating-my-100000th-view/

I wouldn’t have noticed either of these occasions if he hadn’t pointed them out to me.  Thanks, fm. I remember when we were excited over my first view!!!  Thrilling.

And he also sent me the link for my very first post:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2013/03/27/what-im-doing-here/

Firecracker Plant: Flower of the Day

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firecrackerplant, perhaps because they just generally have a very simple shape.  The best photo opportunity I ever had (and missed–) Was of a whole row of lipstick blooms bobbing across the terrace–each carried by a worker for the leafcutter ants. I can’t believe that it didn’t occur to me to take a photo.  Or perhaps I did and it is stuck on some old hard drive that I’ve forgotten.

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/02/flower-of-the-day-may-3-2016-bearded-iris/

Selfies for Dummies by a Dummie

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Or, “Abandoned.  Why I Gave up Selfies in Favor of a Burka!”

(Click on first photo and arrows to enlarge your illustrations and see your instruction guide.)

It is also a good idea to let the shower steam settle first.
2019
Sometimes filters are a good idea to filter out fine lines, but remember to go for a natural look.
Or Photoshopping.
I can’t for the life of me remember what I had on around my neck and face or why.
Playing around with light balance might create some interesting effects and remember to always emphasize your best features.
If all else fails, there is always the cropping tool.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/abandoned/

San Juan Cosala Fire–“After” Pictures

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Two nights ago I published pictures of what looked to be a huge fire on the mountain below me.  Yesterday I went back down to try to find the area to photograph it.  I could only locate one spot and this is what I saw:

IMG_6378IMG_6379Strangely enough, it looks like just the dry grass burned and burned so quickly that it left some of the greener bushes and plants.  I’ve augmented the color a bit so you can see the burned areas, but the green, even though a bit brighter than it actually is, does nonetheless show the green plants untouched by the fire. The fire extended over a much larger area than this, but this was the only place where a road led close enough to photograph it.  It appears that the cross and flags were not burned, so I don’t know what it was that I saw burning that looked like a rope of flags and a cross.  Perhaps I had a vision…ha.

Tongues and Tails: Cee’s Oddball Photo Challenge

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What better than tongues and tails for a dog, preferably in conjunction with each other! Two of these photos you’ve seen before, but they were necessary to complete the theme.  I love taking photos of dogs, so they are the subjects of both of my submissions for Cee’s challenges this week. Is it any wonder that I have three canine companions who complicate my life incredibly but also fill it out. Here’s to tongues and tails.  May you have a few of them in your life and may the tongues be out and the tails wagging!!!!

(Please click on the first picture to enlarge them all, then on arrows to see the rest.)

 

Where we going, Mom?
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/01/cees-odd-ball-photo-challenge-2016-week-18/

Yoli’s Baby: Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge

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Yoli is my housekeeper’s adorable little girl.  She loves to sing but even more, she loves her new puppy who is named Brian, after a character in a racing movie that was played by Paul Newman.  Because she is crazy about cars, she is also crazy about Paul Newman.  Funny, for a little Mexican girl, but who can blame her?  I always was, too.  Here are some shots of her and her new little Chihuahua, Brian!!

(Click on first photo and then arrows to enlarge them all.)

 

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/03/cees-fun-foto-challenge-pets/

Abandoned

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Shack+Pump3.jpgPhoto Credit: D. Hammock

Abandoned 

Grass sways by the abandoned house
I cower inside––a trembling mouse
exposed to the bright flash of day
when all else has gone away.

First my father, then my mum
go away and never come
again to shelter, feed or love.
Life is a winging mourning dove

that makes us and then flies away,
making green grass into hay,
the flush of life and then decay,
a harsh light turning shadows gray.

Life swells  like paint–a curling blister.
It peels away my older sister,
then also takes my younger brother
and never comes to bring another.

A shadow passes over me.
A sparrowhawk. I dare not flee,
for life is mainly perilous.
It makes us just to feed on us.

Outside I see the preening cat.
It waits for me––patient and fat
in tall grass by the abandoned house
wherein I hide–a trembling mouse.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/abandoned/

OMG!!! The entire mountain in front of my house is on fire!!!

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The headline above and the first of these photos were from an hour  and a half ago.  I’m not in danger and looks like probably no houses are endangered.  Hard to tell but the fact that there have been no sirens makes me think this isn’t in a residential neighborhood, although in the pictures it looks like it is.  The fire seems to have died out lower down, probably because the wind has died down.  I still see a small fire higher up on the mountain.  So strange…I feel like I’m the only person in the world who even noticed! And it was huge right after the sunset–lit up half of the sky!!!

Click on photos to enlarge.

This picture is taken from my upstairs terrace. The dome you see covers the ceiling of my bedroom.

The fire down below seems to have burned out, but it is now moving farther up the mountain, along the ridge and on the other side.  The cross  half way up the mountain was on fire earlier and the flags and electrical wire that ran up to it.  It is usually lit by light bulbs.  This was a lighting of a different sort.  It really looked like the entire town was on fire, but a friend in town didn’t even know about it and said to her it looked like the fire was in the Raquet Club, where I live.  But, not one fire siren or other siren was heard.  So strange.

This usually noisy place… deadly silent.  Not even one dog barking.  Eeerie.

Just realizing that I’ve written a story about the firest every year.  Here is last year’s: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/09/30/fire-on-the-mountain/

And the year before:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2013/04/19/dsc07925-jpg/