Tag Archives: Beauty

Beach Christmas

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The Prompt: The holiday season: can’t get enough of it, or can’t wait for it all to be over already? Has your attitude toward the end-of-year holidays changed over the years?

Beach Christmas

I can’t get enough of any holiday, no matter how much it is commercialized.  The world evolves. Whether we agree with the way it does so or not,  the only thing we do have control over is our attitude, so I simply celebrate every holiday the way I want to celebrate it.  This year, I’m at the beach for Christmas.  For the past month, I’ve been collecting wonderful finds on the beach and putting together an altar  that is comprised of a palm fruiting stem, flowers I’ve made out of egg cartons and all of the heart-shaped rocks that seem to have cropped up more frequently than ever before.  I now have 60 or more of them that decorate both the fruiting stem “tree” and the altar around it. Then, I started seeing rocks in the shape of characters from a nativity Creche and constructed 15 creches which may be seen on my facebook page.  You can connect with it here.

Contrary to what you might think from these pictures, I am not religious.  I  do hope that something exists outside of our physical realm, but I don’t  comprehend exactly what it is.  We all find the beliefs that get us through our lives, and I love the Christmas story (be it fact or myth), the Xmas memories, communion with family and friends, the decorations and celebrations.

It started with a palm fruiting stem washed ashore. I added flowers I made of cutouts from egg cartons, painted and glued together, then added pelican feathers and verious heart-shaped shells and small stones found on beach walks.

It started with a palm fruiting stem washed ashore. I added flowers I made of cutouts from egg cartons, painted and glued together, then added pelican feathers and various heart-shaped shells and small stones found on beach walks.

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Detail from tree.

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I then covered a flowerpot with shell finds and cemented the “tree” into it.

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Although I wanted the tree to be all natural, I quickly decided an Xmas tree without lights was not going to be enough! The mural behind the tree came with the rental house!

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Details from the altar.

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I’ve started sleeping on the futon in the living room to enjoy the tree by light strings and candlelight.

 

 

Wooden Heart

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Wooden Heart

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give. Continue reading →

Hard Drive

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The Prompt: Buyers, Beware? The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.

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My Retablo, “Autobiography”

Hard Drive

If you long for mystery,
poems, facts and history,
long perambulations
and wild exaggerations,
recipes and letters and
episodes of Homeland,
Elementary, Sherlock, Friends,
a blogging site that never ends,

Emails, Youtube, Facebook notes,
starts of novels, copied quotes,
OkCupid pictures of
possibilities for love,
notes from nice guys, threats from creeps,
notes from guys who play for keeps,
friends who only write when drunk,
chain e-mails, jokes and other junk,

two hundred drafts of my third book,
(each one different, have a look),
kids stories and their illustrations,
the Christmas plans of my relations,
photographs of my whole life—
its happiness and pain and strife—
some successes but also follies,
fireworks, insects, gardens, dollies,

travel snaps and friendly faces,
rooms at home or foreign places,
birds and children, beaches, skies,
the camera lens is true and wise
and not as given to fraud and lies
as writings filtered through the eyes
of one who feels the joys or pains
of what she witnesses, then deigns

to try to change her reader’s mind
to accord with the type or kind
of thoughts she carries deep inside:
pride’s cutting edge, love’s waning tide—
things lovely, funny, jarring, rare.
So read this hard drive if you dare,
but if you fear a life laid bare,
I have one word for you. Beware.

Saved

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The Prompt: Local Color—Imagine we lived in a world that’s all of a sudden devoid of color, but where you’re given the option to have just one object keep its original hue. Which object (and which color) would that be?

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If all at once, all color were bleached out from the world
and suddenly a universe of whiteness were unfurled—
the rainbow, flowers, trees and art all newly bleached and pearled—

I know what single object I would choose to retain
in all its colored glory, in every hue and stain,
in sun and shadow, snow and hail and dust storm, drought and rain.

Its natural color changes every day we see revealed
over every continent: forest, city, field—
over every place from which the colors will be peeled.

This one glorious object would retain its vivid hues.
It would be the whole world’s canvas and every poet’s muse.
Every lake and river, its reflection would infuse

with all the colors nature has selected for that day:
blue or gold or purple, salmon, orange or gray,
according to whatever whim of moisture, dust or ray.

If I select the sky as the object that I’d choose
to retain its myriad pigments that only start with blues,
there are a thousand colors that we wouldn’t have to lose!

And the whole world could see them in the daytime or the night.
All the colors of the rainbow would not be lost to sight,
as every day and every hour, a new one’s brought to light.

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photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown, On the road to Ajijic.

Light Play

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Light Play: Weekly Photo Challenge—Refraction

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Transitory Visitor

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DSC08396 - Version 2This ladybug explored my body for a half hour or more today when I was manning the information booth of a local cultural center.  I couldn’t resist taking pictures—no easy task, since most of the time, as in this picture, she was on my right hand and wrist.  She seemed to be inspecting the new bracelets I made last night from buttons I found in a local recycle bazaar.  As I readied myself to go, I thought she had deserted me, but when I went into the office to say goodbye, I felt her crawl from my ear to my cheek.  When we got back to the information booth in the garden, I tried convincing her with “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home. . . .” but by then she’d staked her claim and seemed to be settling in for a nap, so I blew a little gust from pursed lips to persuade her on her way.  This shot is my new desktop picture.

(I’ve been a bit late posting today due to an internet outage this morning and a huge electrical storm this afternoon and evening that blew out an electrical transformer, plunging my entire village into darkness until 10 tonight. This is when I am thankful for fellow night-owls!!!)

I actually called a friend in Missouri (from Mexico) to post changes in my poem for me earlier tonight. I was sure we’d be without power all night, but my  electricity is on now and I’m making the most of it.

To see other photos in Cee’s Oddball Photo Challenge, go Here

The Collector

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The prompt: Digging Up Your Digs—500 years from now, an archaeologist accidentally stumbles on the ruins of your home, long buried underground. What will she learn about early-21st-century humans by going through (what remains of) your stuff?

The Collector

Tools, pictures, clothes, shoes,
too much food and too much booze.
Too many games and too much fun
for a house of only one.
A mystery why this big collector
didn’t have the proper vector
directing her away from things:
(potions, lotions, bracelets, rings)
directing to another track—
something that could love her back.

But, for the rest of the story about living alone, go here

Mirror Fearer

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The Prompt: The Mirror Crack’d—You wake up one morning to a world without mirrors. How does your life — from your everyday routines to your perception of yourself — change?

 
Mirror Fearer

Every time I walk past it, I look into the glass
and notice how my hair looks and then survey my ass.
I cannot help but look at it, every time I pass—
criticizing how I look, both fuzziness and mass.
And in my deepest feelings, despite my brains and sass,
I can’t avoid this feeling that men must find me crass.
And so I guess I really feel that it would be a gas
if you took away the mirrors from this self-critiquing lass!

“Flutter” : The Surrogate

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The Prompt: Sounds Right—This is clearly subjective, but some words really sound like the thing they describe (personal favorites: puffin; bulbous; fidgeting). Do you have an example of such a word (or, alternatively, of a word that sounds like the exact opposite of what it refers to)? What do you think creates this effect?

I’ve always loved the word “’Flutter” as it applies to a butterfly or moth.  What better word could be used to describe the motion of their wings?  The moth described in my poem, however, was noticeable because of its lack of flutter.  It landed upon my computer screen like a magnetized object to metal and remained there for over two hours.  The moth pictured in the poem is the actual moth.  Tiny and green, it became part of my writing experience. Since it had chosen to remain in one position, directly on my screen, I was forced (by choice) to write around it, which could not help but influence the poem that resulted.

 

 

D-Picted (X-Rated)

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                                                                               D-Picted (X-Rated)

I was taking my daily sunset walk on the beach at La Manzanilla, Mexico when I came upon this idyllic scene. He was sipping a margarita and staring out to sea as the water ebbed and flowed—never reaching higher than his chair bottom. Of course, I had to comment.

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“Is the view good enough for you?” I queried, with a noticeable lack of originality.

“Do you want to see for yourself?” he asked. He quickly rose from his chair and motioned for me to take his place, taking my camera from my hand as he handed me his Margarita.

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He told me to look his way as he turned the tide by taking a picture of me, and so I didn’t see at first a part of the landscape obvious in this next picture.

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But as often happens in an evening tide, that object quickly washed ashore to enter my picture,

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and quickly dominate it.

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The End

(I promise.  This was not a staged incident.  It happened exactly as I describe it with no prompting by me.  I love getting out in the world.  No imagined story ever duplicates what happens in real life!!)

The Prompt: Edge of the Frame—We often capture strangers in photos we take in public. Open your photo library, and stop at the first picture that features a person you don’t know. Now tell the story of that person.

Special Note to viewers of my blog:  Please also see the next posting “Sur-Prize” to enter a contest celebrating my 10,000th viewing.