Photo 101: The Natural World

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blogging U, nature, photo 101, Photo Challenge, PHOTO101, photography, Wilderness Wednesday

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” Aaron Siskind

Photo 101: Connections

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blogging U, family, home, parent, photo 101, Photo Challenge, PHOTO101, photography

“While Hubby is away, this mouse will…tackle some small home reno projects with her parents”. We spent the whole weekend connecting over good food and silly jokes. We browsed the aisles of Home Depot by day, and watched Game of Thrones by night. No one connected any paintbrushes with the floor or their thumbs with any hammers! I finally have my kitchen ceiling painted (2 years after I started this painting project). Best of all, Little Guy will have memories of working with his grandparents to transform his space into his space!

I experimented with camera settings, angles, and lighting some time between working hard and hardly working!

“In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.” – Marc Chagall

Photo 101: Solitude

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blogging U, photo 101, Photo Challenge, PHOTO101, photography

Solitude –  the state of being alone, or a lonely and uninhabited place.

““So, if this were indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life, for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring … Try to feel, in your heart’s core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself.”

– Margaret Laurence

Photo 101: Street View

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blogging U, photo 101, Photo Challenge, PHOTO101, photography, travel

“A dead end can never be a one way street; you can always turn around and take another road.” – Bo Bennett

Photo 101: Water

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blogging U, photo 101, Photo Challenge, PHOTO101, photography, River scenes

Tell a story with water…

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.” – Ann Voskamp

Writing 201: Nana’s Hands

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aging, blogging U, DP, DP Challenge, family, Grandparent, loss, poetry, writing

So still. Resting gently on the starched, white bed sheets. Her hands, almost blue, the skin paper thin and translucent, barely stretched across bone and ligament. Her hands, finger tips once nicked by sewing needles deftly weaving stitches in colourful patchwork wonders to swathe a newborn or shroud an invalid. Her hands, once calloused, fingernails caked with mud, tending vegetables in a patchwork of soil, or coated with sugar and flour and butter, a patchwork of dishes served to family and neighbours. Her hands, red and chapped from washing soiled bedding and soothing fevered brows, gently caring for aging relatives and growing children. Her hands, scarred but strong, competently filling heavy responsibilities on a farm, in a home. Her hands, young and supple, stroking the hands of her beautiful babies, marvelling at their size, reaching to caress the hand of the man she loves. Her hands, small and smooth reaching to move the checker across the game board, reaching for her doll in the night. Her hands, so small, fingernails like little pearls, resting gently on the starched, white bed sheets. So still.

***

The assignment today was to write a poem about fingers in a prose format.

Writing 201 – Day 5: Elegy

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blogging U, DP, DP Challenge, poetry

An old man stands silently along the shore.
His clothes are worn and musty, pulled closely around his body
Against the bitter, salty mist.

The mist, a scent that beckoned him across the billowing waves
To a land where tired gray eyes stare sadly now.
His mind turns back to a day
When the skeleton of the abandoned dock was alive with young men and women,
And parents who aged unnoticed as the minutes ticked away.
The air was thick with voices – crying, laughing,
The odd word from an anxious mother, wife
Who tried to hard to hold the tears inside and failed.

And soon the boat pulled away from the dock,
The faces blurred, the voices muffled
Until the salty mist carried them all away, and accompanied young boys to where…
…to where? To no man’s land where muffled sounds died with another man’s dreams.

The old man’s face grows darker as he closes his eyes.
Shadows begin to invade the creases and hollows that came with the years.

The old man shivers violently against the sights and sounds locked forever in his memory.
Never shared, never fully understood.
His country had called him to serve, to fight for freedom, for peace.
He recalled no glory then,
When soldiers in tattered uniforms and caked with mud, fell lifeless on the ground.

A lone gull cries and the old man turns from the water.
A gull’s shrill cry had accompanied him home to Canada
Where aching arms would cling to loved ones,
And ache to fill the arms of those left behind.
The dead still call to him behind the veil.

The old man shakes his head and wipes a tear from his face.
He slowly limps away down the beach until the evening mist envelopes him.
And he is forgotten.