Tag Archives: Beach

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Celebrate Good Times.” You receive some wonderful, improbable, hoped-for good news.  How do you celebrate?DSC00212208171_1653270418343_3518364_n
Idyllic Schemata

If I won the lottery–just scads and scads of money,
I’d take my friends off to some isle beautiful and sunny.
I’d hire a house with many rooms where everyone could sleep.
I’d hire a housekeeper and cook, a chauffeur and a Jeep!
We’d swim and snorkel every day, take walks and collect things:
shells, driftwood and starfish–whatever the sea brings.
At night we’d drink and eat and sing, play dice or Mexican Train.
Next morning we would sleep in late and do it all again.

We’d rent a boat and captain and sail away to sea
to examine the horizon–to have fun and merely “be.”
When we’d stop at island markets, I’d give everybody money
to shop for anything they want–beautiful or funny,
delicious or fantastic, things to wear or play or see
and then I would give prizes for what most pleases me.
What I would buy are paint and tools, wood and nails and glue–
all the things needed to do what we could do

to transform all our treasures into jewelry or art.
Each person choosing just one thing closest to their heart
and letting it draw other things with which to tell a tale,
then joining them together with glue or cord or nail.
Then I’d mount an exhibition and ask everyone around.
Food and drink and music and good humor would abound.
Everyone could tell us what they make of all our art,
Which pieces touch their funnybone, which pieces touch their heart.

And we’d give the pieces all away to those who love them most.
We’d dine and raise our glasses in a final toast:
Here’s to all good friends that are and friends who are meant to be.
Here’s to the sand and sunshine, moonlight and the sea.
Here’s to all the luck we share in being here today,
to the freedom that we all possess to simply sail away.
And then I’d build a house somewhere and all could live there free–
each doing what we want and being who we want to be.

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I would have to say that my muse is the sea–but not the open sea. Rather, where it meets the land.

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I love sand and the things it collects: seashells, jellyfish, sand dollars, starfish, puff fish, sand pipers, sea turtles and even the people who collect at the beach.  It is like they have retreated as far as possible–the next step is either a boat or drowning!  They tend to be individuals, slightly odd–kind of like the people from the western world who congregate in third world locales like Africa.  Perhaps they are this age’s pioneers or trappers.

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Oh yes.  I do love the oceanside, the beach.  Salt. Sand.  I love what collects above the beach as well: frigate birds and pelicans, ibises, sun, moon, clouds.  Above are some of the thousands of images of the beach I’ve collected over the past ten years or so.

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Muse.” What subject do you keep coming back to again and again?

One-Four Challenge: March, 2015

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Here’s my first variation from the original. All I did was increase the saturation one hundred percent…

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This is my original shot.

The prompt was to take one photograph and to alter it in four ways, posting one per week for the four weeks in March.  Here is my first attempt.

I’ve often noted that the vivid colors of a beach sunset come out incredibly dulled. No doubt a “real” photographer would know why.  Perhaps it is because I am shooting into the sun.  I’ve tried focusing elsewhere, and only occasionally have good results.  The fourth version of this picture will be the closest to what this sunset really looked like.  The second photograph above is my first, unaltered shot.  My editing choices are not too broad, so my alterations will be limited to saturation, definition, sharpness, exposure, contrast, shadow and highlight control.  I believe I often over-sharpen and over-define, so I am trying to hold myself back in that regard.  So, immediately above (second picture) is  the girl without her makeup on!

For other examples in response to this four-way challenge, go HERE.

Sand Castles

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Sand Castles

Under the sand are palaces, I’ve seen them in my dreams.
Vast halls and empty chambers smooth rounded at their seams.
Every wall is made of sand. Each ceiling, archway, floor
carved by master craftsmen–each digging at its core–
so magnificent, you’d think they were the stuff of lore.
You, too, are free to see them, but you must provide the door.

For the chambers are filled in, though they are there without a doubt.
You are the one creating them by what you will scoop out.
The beauty’s hidden in the sand, waiting in your sleep
for you to dig the castles out from where they’re buried deep.
All your day’s exhaustion your dream labor will abort,
for what you build in slumber is work of a different sort.

Sand brought to the surface is what you get to keep
of subterranean palaces dug out in your sleep.
As you build above ground castles in the world that we all know
you reveal the outward structure of the inner rooms below,
furnishing the magic that the world will see through you,
showing what’s inside of you by what you choose to do.

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The Prompt:  Just a Dream

See also: This!!!  (This video may be one of the most remarkable things you’ve ever seen in your life.  Don’t miss it!)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Depth

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Depth

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Serenity

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Serenity

For this photo challenge, publish an image that conveys serenity.

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Home from the Sea

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The Prompt: Re-springing Your Step–Tell us about the last experience you had that left you feeling fresh, energized, and rejuvenated. What was it that had such a positive effect on you?

The Answer: Two months living on the beach in La Manzanilla really did leave me feeling energized, relaxed and a bit nostalgic. I posted some words and photos earlier here and here and here. Below is the rest of the story:

Home from the Sea

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 told the upstairs neighbors when I’d gone and 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,
those 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!

Leavings

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Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world
in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–pinning them down
to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen–
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me
in clear images–
not as they were,
but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture
taken of the same moment
is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.

We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay
or poetry.

A grandma
holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren.
See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this,
without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
hearts found on the beach
or other treasures
nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings;
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating–
perhaps teaching this
woman of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry.
That longer leaving is just a new adventure.

People who do not remember
let me slip away
when I would have held on,
given any encouragement.
Yet fingers, letting go, flex
for that next adventure.

Life is
all of us letting go
constantly–
taking that next step
away from
and to.

A white shell.
I have left it there
turned over
to the brown side,
so someone else
can discover it, too.

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Image Search—Pick a random word and do Google image search on it. Check out the eleventh picture it brings up. Write about whatever that image brings to mind. (Although the eleventh image was of a shadow on a beach, I’ve elected to reproduce my own photo here.)

Remember Me By This

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “For Posterity.”

The Prompt today was to write a post that you want to be remembered by. I’d like to try something different.  Instead of my telling you what post I’d like to be remembered by, would each reader please post a comment telling which post you would most remember me by?  It’s possible to search by topic if you don’t remember the title, or you can just scroll back through two years of prompts until you find your favorite.  This would be very very interesting to me, might help you find some posts you’ve never read, and also give me a day off from the frustration of searching and searching for ways to learn and remember PC ways.  Yes, I’m getting there, and I am beginning to think there was a reason for this painful lesson that forced me to learn how to coexist with my Acer.  Last night my Mac came alive for a few minutes several times before shutting off, which led Duckie to believe the problem might be in the fan. It has resided in the rice bag for most of the time since it came back from Daniel the dismemberer and is back there now, with my camera, which I also got to work for a few minutes, so perhaps not all is lost and praise be to the restorative powers of rice.  Remember this if you ever soak your camera or computer! I think the salt air is also a big contributor to computer demise. My next-door-neighbor Daniel (different Daniel) says his computers usually only last a year!  Okay, on to your assignment.  Please, please.  Judy (aka Jury)

Update: I finally answered the prompt as written here.

Two Saves

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(Note to new readers: I have been at the beach for seven weeks now, which might make you understand a bit better how isolated I am in present circumstances explained below.)

(Update by okcforgottenman: Here is today’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Daring Do – Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?)

The prompt today, which I cannot copy here because I don’t know how to do it on the pc I have been using for the first time, or trying to, over these past two days since I murdered my (sob) Mac Air laptop, has something to do with some time when you have saved someone.  After thinking long and hard, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to use the document software on the pc and then realizing I had no way to transfer it to my blog, anyway, I just decided that some power in either me or the universe (which is really the same thing) has decided that it is time for me to back away from technology for a time. If you don’t believe this, take into account that after both my Mac and my Kindle stopped working, then my phone did so also.  Thinking it was probably that I needed to buy more time, I resolved to do so only to find that its charger has absolutely vanished from my life.  I’ve turned the house upside down and it is nowhere.  Ah well, I’ll concentrate on photography, thought I, then realized I had no place to put the photographs.  After stumbling around for about 4 hours, I almost by mistake got them downloaded to this (devil) Acer pc, which promptly told me none had been downloaded.  A few hours later, I stumbled upon them but have no idea how to get them onto my blog…and, deciding to just give up on writing or talking to anyone I know outside of my immediate proximity, I took camera in hand…only to discover that my camera, also, is absolutely unoperational.  I think I wrote about this last night and sent it to a friend to post for me, but it was never received, so I won’t bore you with the details, other than that my camera has become a little turtle, constantly extending its head and neck only to withdraw them again, forever, until the battery wears out. Slip in a new battery and the same happens. I put it out of its misery, removed the battery and stuck it in a bag of rice, where it is keeping company with my Mac. Countless people tell me this is a remedy for waterlogged nonhuman entitites. I don’t know what is wrong with the camera, but that big bag of rice was sitting there handy, so why not. Anyway, this is why I am incommunicado and not posting .  Instead, I made a salad and chicken soup for a dinner I’m giving for departing friends tonight and got in the hammock with a good book, dozing a bit just in time for a friend to come by, jar me awake and ask if I was sleeping, then depart (her, not me) for a walk up the beach. So, what does this have to do with saving anyone?  Nothing.  Just a chance to unload on someone other than Duckie, who has been bearing the brunt of my frustration.  I do, however, have an answer to the question.

I have, in fact, saved two babies from drowning.  One was at a housewarming party given by my boyfriend’s son in California.  We’d all been given the tour, including the garden and hot tub, which was up on a raised patio out of view of the house.  One of the couples had a two-year-old child and I noticed he was not with his mother. Looking in the other room, I saw he wasn’t with his father, either, and I suddenly had a strong feeling that something was wrong. I ran out of the house and into the garden just in time to see him at the top of the stairs leading to the hot tub.  He walked over to the side, fell in and sank like a stone.  I ran up the stairs, jumped in the hot tub and fished him from the bottom before he ever bobbed to the surface.  I remember the entire thing in slow motion and have a very clear memory of the fact that it seemed as though his body had no tendency to float at all, but would have remained at the bottom of the deep hot tub.  The parents reaction was shock.  I can’t remember if they left the party or if they really realized how serious it was.  I know they didn’t thank me, which is of no importance other than a measure of either their inability to face the fact that their child had been within seconds of drowning or simply their shock and the fact they were thinking only of their child.

Strangely enough, this had happened before, at a stock pond just outside of the little South Dakota town where I grew up.  Everyone went swimming there, as there was no pool in town.  When I was still in jr. high, I’d just arrived when I saw a very tiny girl—really just a baby—fall into the dam (what we called a pond) and sink straight down under the very heavy moss that grew on the top of the water.  Her mother had her back turned, talking to a friend, and no one else noticed.  I jumped in and fished her out, returning her to her mother, who quickly collected her other children and left.  Again, no word of thanks.  It is not that it was required, and I mention it here only because it happened twice and, having not thought about this for so many years, I am wondering if it wasn’t embarrassment and guilt on the part of the parents that made them both react so matter-of-factly.