Click on photos to enlarge.
I must admit that I like the jungle look. These plants by my guest room patio seem to have picked up my vibes.
https://ceenphotography.com/2018/11/08/fotd-november-9-2018-dahlia/
Here’s another insightful oral essay by Beau:
The Awakening
She woke to a whiff of Darjeeling—that gentle caress to her nostrils that told her that Lorenzo had awakened early today. She could feel the press of his body on his side of the bed as he lay the tray there, ready for her when she was ready for it. He would not disrupt her, knowing all too well how she loved her Saturday mornings away from the press of the paparazzi and the demands of the fashion world.
On any other day, it wouldn’t be feasible to sleep in, but in addition to being a weekend, this was her birthday. She fell again into a sleep where there was no good reason for fantasy. Her own life was fabulous enough to be replicated in dreams. Both children grown and off to their own fairytale lives: Francesca in Crete with her minor royalty husband, Sebastian a skillful artist flying from one country to the next to fulfill the long list of commissions that stretched out to infinity.
All-in-all, she herself had lived out all her childhood fantasies and only now had it become feasible to start to delegate tasks—grooming some of her most talented protégés to take over the designing and running of her couturier salon. Time to lie back and take it easy and let Lorenzo pamper her in all the ways he knew so well.
She stretched luxuriously, reaching her arm up to hit against the silk of her padded headboard, but strangely, hit instead against wood. Curious. She opened her eyes. Light leaked into the room from between bent venetian blinds. Where was she? On the edge of the bed, a slightly paunchy old man with a day’s stubble on his cheeks sat studying the center foldout of a magazine he held at arm’s length. As she stirred, he looked up from it, his eyes widening in surprise. “Essie?”
She looked down at her own wrinkled hands, extending from the sleeve of a cheap pair of pajamas. She stroked her cheeks, dry and wrinkled , and wiped a small line of drool from the corner of her mouth. “Where am I?” Her voice felt as flaky and dry as her skin, her throat almost choking with the words.
“Yer here in Elm Gap,” he said, “where we’ve always been. Essie, do you remember what happened, yer slipping on the ice and falling sideways against the water tank? Do you remember anythin’, Essie, of the twenty years since then?”
“Twenty years? I’ve been asleep for twenty years? What of Lorenzo and Francesca and Sebastian? Where are they?”
“They’re right here, Ma, waiting for you as usual,” a straw-haired woman said from the corner of the room. She, like her father, was rounded and nondescript—a thirtyish childlike frumpy creature much like the girl Essie had been. She was patting a tall pile of romance novels. “I been reading them to you for twenty years, Ma. You woke up just in time, cuz Ladonna LaRue, their author, just died and there won’t be any more. But now you won’t be needing her life any more, because you’ve returned to your own. We always knew you’d return to us, Ma. This is your lucky day. And ours.
The prompt words today were skill, disrupt, whiff and feasible. Matt’s prompt was to create a simulated world. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/rdp-friday-skill/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/09/fowc-with-fandango-disrupt/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/whiff/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/daily-addictions-2018-week-44/feasible
For Daily Inkling’s Simulation Theory.
Click on first photo to enlarge and view all photos.
For Cee’s Black and White Challenge: Liquid Drinks, Hot or Cold.
Click on the first photo to see all photos enlarged.
I messed up on this one big time. First, after going through six years of photos on my Mac Photos file to make a list of these examples of hot or cold drinks, I got them all entered in my blog and when I tried to remove one, I erased them all—losing a good hour of work it took me to locate them in my WP media file. Then I decided to just enter them all again, since I had a list of them, and when I finished I realized that this was a black and white challenge. Maybe I need to retire. Anyway, back to the drawing board. I’m going to go ahead and post this one and then go back and convert them all to black and white to enter into Cee’s challenge.
Twenty-seven minutes later: I’ve converted all the photos to black and white and reposted for Cee’s Black and White challenge, so if you are curious about how these would all look in black and white, HERE is the other version.
I stored up a few photos before I left Mexico, knowing I was heading into winter in El Norte!!
For Cee’s FOTD
D.P.S.*
Please click on first photo below to enlarge all the photos and read the poem that is presented as their captions.
*Duck Positioning System
https://sonofabeach96.com/2018/11/08/which-way-challenge-november-8-2018/
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
Dust to Rain
The world, my dear, is dust to rain
over and over and again.
It is as true as it is sad
that relief cannot be had
unless some travail happens first.
How can we quench unless we thirst?
Those times you go without a trace
of raindrops on your upturned face
give way to petrichor—they must
as finally rain comes down to dust.
Bountiful years follow the drought.
It is the way the world’s planned out.
Grandparents tell their younger kin
that drought is the result of sin
or hurricanes our penance for
those misdeeds the gods abhor.
But this is all mistaken lore
dispelled by whiffs of petrichor.
The prompt words for today were trace, kin, bountiful and petrichor ( the pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions.)
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/rdp-thursday-petrichor/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/08/fowc-with-fandango-trace/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/kin/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/daily-addictions-2018-week-44/bountiful
The seven-word prompt was to make use of as many of these words as possible in a short piece: knickers, oneiric, cigar, shenanigans, cold-cocked, finish and sun-dried. You needn’t check. I used all of them. The November writing prompt was “Lipstick Lover.”
The Vocabulary Lesson
She was more than irritated. Pissed, really, as she thumbed through the dictionary in search of the word “oneiric.” Any word that needed to be looked up didn’t belong in a “Dear Jane” letter anyway—as though to the very end he was trying to demonstrate his superiority—her inferiority.
BASTARD! She slammed the dictionary to the floor, picked up the half-smoked cigar he’d left in the ashtray last night, relit it and surveyed the new paper cut on her index finger. Just one more of his shenanigans, she thought. Right after he’d cold-cocked her with the news that he and she were finished—that he was leaving her FOR HER MOTHER!!!!!!, he’d lit up his Cubano for one more puff before grinding it out and handing her this letter, telling her not to open it until he’d gone.
His finish had been pretty much like their beginning—with him ending up on the floor. But this time she was standing over him rather than lying on top of him. Idly, she flicked an ash into his open mouth, hitting him squarely on his tongue. The sun-dried blood on his lip looked like the smudge of a lover’s lipstick. Around his head were the remains of the crystal candlestick her mother had given them for their wedding. She sucked at the paper cut, then at the gash across her palm that she had gotten from a shard of the candlestick that had taken a far smaller part out of her than it had out of him.
Far away in the kitchen, the phone rang and rang. Probably her mother. Well, let her get her knickers in a bunch waiting for him. Let her think (for as long as she could put off coming to investigate) that her daughter had reclaimed her property. She was in possession for now and everyone knew possession was 9/10ths of the law. She took another long draw before examining her wounds again.
Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she moved back to the dictionary to thumb through the o’s. When she’d found the word, she chuckled and looked back at her lost love. Gone from this world, but no one would ever know it if she just shut his jaw and wiped off the bloodstain. As a matter of fact, he’d look downright oneiric!
The Nov. 8 Nov. Writing Prompt is Lipstick Lover.
