This is my response to this Magpie Tales #31 visual writing prompt:
what we see
is a reflection
of who we are
distorted still
by slight perspective
and the play of light
on glass darkly
Go to the site to see the responses of others.
My response to the Magpie Tales 27 prompt. Link to the responses of others from here.
old connections rusted
tight against intrusion,
inseparable
like old friends
forged by history
The following is a piece I wrote in response to this Magpie Tales #19 visual prompt. More responses can be found here.
Sometimes the softest silk,
the smoothest grain,
hide danger, sharp,
compelling beyond trust.
Beware of costly knives
riddled with history.
Well, it’s not MY toy, really. I just sit and watch. And take photos.
This spring it will be a bigger garden plot, with tomatoes of all colors. With lettuce and beans and squash and other vegetables that their fertile fancies haven’t yet decided upon.
I grow the herbs on the other side of the house, where even now the lemon scented Melissa is boasting a mass of bright green leaves. It will make a relaxing summertime iced tea after those hot days tending the garden.
I noticed that the poppy seeds I planted in the fall are starting to poke up through the covering of autumn’s leaves that have kept the ground from freezing all winter.
Things are springing. They are tilling. I am waiting.
Until the snows came, Buddha rested on a tree stump in the corner of our yard. Now he waits in the corner of the porch, along with bike helmets and what will be the starting of seeds.
I wish I could wait like Buddha, without anticipation or expectation. Waiting in stillness as lives begin and end, as the first butterfly finds its way to our doorstep, as somewhere on a mountain, an old woman cries for stillness.
I wasn’t sure that I was up to learning any new technology tricks (being almost 70 and just about managing to blog successfully), but I invested in an iphone and its expensive upkeep in a moment of brash consumerism.
But the damned thing has got me hooked.
Away on vacation in Maine for the past four days without a computer and wifi, I had the time and inclination to figure out just how useful my iphone might be.
Of course, there’s the camera, and I knew I would make good use of that feature. If there were a “panorama” app I might have been able to get both the beginning and the end of the rainbow which started on land and went out into the sea, but I can live with what I did get.
The “night camera” app I downloaded before we left enabled to me get some decent photos indoors without a flash.
My “Facebook” app enabled me to upload a couple of photos to keep my friends apprised of the good time I was having while wishing they were there.
My most pleasant surprise in recognizing the helpfulness and ease of iphone use happened on the way out to Maine, when my grandson needed to go to the bathroom and we were all hungry for lunch. Because I was driving, my daughter downloaded a “fast food” app and we got directed to a McDonald’s off an exit a few miles from where we were on the road. How cool is that!
We ate out a lot, so the “tip calculator” would have come handy had not my son-in-law been able to figure it all out just as fast. (Actually, I did use the app just to check his accuracy. And because it was new and I wanted to test it out.)
Before I left for Maine, I downloaded a WordPress app so that I could post to my blog if I wanted to. I posted once, just to see if it would work. I’m used to typing text on a big keyboard, so it was a bit if a problem to use the little iphone one, but, obviously, it can be done. Since I don’t do text messaging (there’s no one I know to text message to), I’m still not used to the little keyboard. But it’s good to know that I can do a blog post if I want/need to.
Since we were in a rented cottage with limited television reception, my evenings were spent using my iphone to listen to the books on tape that I downloaded free from my local library, check in with Facebook, catch up with bloggers whom I follow, follow my son’s exploits on Twitter (I don’t belong to Twitter, but I can read his tweets), and obsessively play my “Bookworm” app game.
While I’m still feeling guilty about the $70 or so a month it costs to keep my iphone connected, at least I’m finding the little machine damned useful. It’s gotten to the point that I’m never without it.
Before the iphone, I had a TrakFone, which I rarely used, and several cheap mp3 players, some of which would not play the WMA audio book files from my library. The iphone covers it all and more.
There are still lots of features on the iphone that I haven’t tried, and I figure that I’ll get to them when I need them.
I have one major frustration at the moment with the iphone. I can’t hear what a caller is saying unless I put on the speaker. Maybe someone reading this can tell me where the hell the phone’s volume control is. I can make the ringer louder or softer, but the voice that’s coming over the phone is barely intelligible.
If I can fix that problem, my love affair with my iphone will be just about perfect.
here a garden
I had once
here I had
once a garden
Such is the image captured by my new iphone camera at the fireworks last night as shooting sparks webbed the full moon and a sidewalk vendors cart glowed with neon light sabers.
These are two welcoming places in our back yard, thanks to the hard work of my daughter and son-in-law. The rest of the yard is requisite open space and jungle gym for the family’s youngest, as well as a vegetable garden strip.
But these are my favorite spots.
Now, if only I could convince the mosquitoes to move somewhere else.
Latest craft projects to keep my hands out of the potato chip bag:
Recyclable plastic grocery bag crocheted with strips of recycled plastic bags.
Two crocheted cotton grocery bags.
