Delta: December to June – Time of Transition…

These images show transition: From Winter to Summer; from stark neglect and barren brokenness to luscious growth and change in function; from house to home; from thin garden to bountiful, fruitful sanctuary; from closed space to open and companionable area.

It represents an area of flat land in which the multiple streams – both of physical rain and my at-times-turbulent emotions – have divided and run safely downhill to join the vast ocean.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/delta/

Advertisements

FRIEND: I wish I could speak Border-Collie…

I wish I spoke your lingo, dear suffering dog. I know you hurt somewhere; I know you pant with anxiety or pain. But I cannot catch the language in your breath-related anguish. I do not know what to do for you, how to comfort, how to soothe.

You stand there, frantic – with a need I cannot read. I try all sorts: Stroke your fur, which makes the panting worse; touch your back, which you pull away from; open the back door and let you out…and there you stand, in early morning light, a lost canine soul, unsure of your world, unmoving, breathing harshly to be let back in again.

I wish I could converse with you, my lovely friend, Jumble, in words or sounds we both understood. I wish you could tell me what ails you so that I could do something – other than the drugged hit-and-miss nature of Tramadol – to ease the ravages of age and soreness.

I wish I were fluent in Border-Collie…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/friend/

Photo Challenge: Evanescent

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/evanescent/

Whitsands, East Cornwall, August 1962

This photograph, taken by my mother nearly fifty-five years ago shows, from left to right: Alienora, M.(next sister down), S, J and A (my godmother’s three sons) – and, behind the rocks, back right, my father.

I was four at the time. My sister was three. The boys were seven, five and nine in seating order.

I don’t know why this tugs at my heart so, but it does: Just a normal shot of two little girls and three little boys enjoying a holiday in Cornwall.

I think part of it centres around the body language of those five children so long ago – and the clues each pose held with regard to character and potential, even future career. I will not discuss the boys because I do not have their permission to do so; nor will I go into my sister’s life.

Devon and Cornwall, the former especially – and Budleigh Salterton specifically – were part of the magic of childhood. So this image, to me, conjures up happy and relaxed times; times of innocence; times of edible pebbles and dead crabs collected in buckets and swimming in wild salty waters.

Times, that is, now gone.

I have not seen any of those boys since my late teens. So, for me, they will always, in a sense, be a trio of tow-headed little chaps, one posing, one reluctant and the third smiling rather sweetly.

Evanescent, indeed.

Family Violin: Heritage

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/heritage/

This fiddle is part of a living heritage: My father learned to play it (though not for long); one of my siblings got to Grade 8 on it – and I took it over when I started to learn many years ago.

I love it, though I don’t practise enough and am technically pretty inaccurate. But the gift of music has been passed down the generations of my family and, although Son does not play this particular instrument, he has certainly inherited a considerable talent for music (far greater than mine, if I am honest!).

It touches me to think that this one violin was tucked under the chin of a small boy in the thirties, a little girl in the late sixties and early seventies and now belongs to a fifty-something women; it touches me to think that blood kinship and music connect us and that, when I am gone, this beautiful fiddle will grace the next generation to come into the world.

Living heritage indeed!

 

 

Half-Light: Photo Challenge – Brassieres!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/half-light/

I just loved this gallimaufry of brassieres glimpsed, nay hooted hysterically over, in Rethymno Market (Crete) last summer. There was something so liberating about the rows of colourful tit-holsters, many of which looked as if they’d been designed for a lactating mammoth!

And, thinking of ‘Love Serenade’, it hit me: We are so obsessed with covering everything up, aren’t we? We emerge from our mothers’ wombs bollock-naked – and then it’s clothing all the way…

So, a little devil of fun in my mind likes to imagine that all of those bras have, in fact, been shed by a multitude of laughing, dancing, free-as-air, naked ladies of all ages – that the heaped bosom- hammock store is the repository of all shame and fear and inhibition!

Share a photo inspired by a poem, verse, song lyric or story.

‘Love Serenade’: Barry White

Take it off, baby, take it all off
I wanna see you the way you came into the world
I don’t wanna feel no clothes, I don’t wanna see no panties
And take off that brassiere, my dear, everybody’s gone
I’m taking the receiver off the phone because baby you and me
This night we’re gonna get it on to love serenade

Musical Harmony and Delight

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/harmony/

The Music of the Spheres! The harmonious effect of the most immediate art form: tune and song! The glorious notes pouring from instruments created from bone, wood, metal, love, human ingenuity and imagination! Such, for me, is the epitome of harmony in this often-troubled world.

I have adored music from baby-hood and it never fails to calm me. I play several instruments (some of which are shown in my entry for this Photo Challenge). My tastes, as symbolised by the four CDs shown, are eclectic. I cannot play the mandolin very well – but I have included it because it was the one instrument my father played (and, in fact, belonged to him) and I have happy memories of him playing and singing ‘Yellow Bird’ when I was a little girl.

I have chosen the slightly honey-ish, yellow background to give my photo a Mediaeval atmosphere. I wanted to suggest a musical history stretching right back and encompassing harmonies both ancient and modern. This is also why I have placed the violin (which is over a hundred years old) and the recorders (which, in one form or another, go back to the Middle Ages) right next to twenty-first century musical technology.

Rainbow’s End, Glastonbury: Now

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/now

Today, my son, his girlfriend and I had a lovely meal at Glastonbury’s Rainbow’s End Cafe. We sat outside, opened Christmas Crackers, ate gorgeous food, laughed a lot and saw a very inquisitive robin settle close to us. The two shots I have chosen both show aspects of the courtyard we sat in – and, incidentally, something of the atmosphere and spirit of Glastonbury itself.