Call & Response #5: Show Skully the Funny

 Put forth here.

***

Oh, lord, no…

I’m supposed to be funny?

On demand?

DH claims I’m hilarious, but that’s usually unintentional.

 

Hmmmm…..

 

Well, there was the time I tried plastic bakeware. Nah, that’s not it.

Call & Response #4: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This week’s Call was posted by Walt at his Blog ‘O Froth. This time, given that it’s more of a great story than a photo, I highly recommend stopping by and reading his first, if you haven’t already. He has summed up the gist, however, in this opening paragraph:

“Everyone experiences what they would call “good” and “bad” times during their lives. The interplay and fluctuation of “yes-and-then-no” occurs in the tiniest of details on throughout all that we observe. But there are times of extreme adversity when we seem to be stopped at every turn — when, as is said, “you can’t see ‘up’ from here.” People develop various strategies for reconciling such times. One is by virtue of this principle:
“Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or greater Benefit.”

This, then, is my response. It’s a long one, but I hope you’ll sit a spell; I haven’t told this story this way before.

***

For most of my young life, when my family didn’t live in Texas or England, this humble house was Home. The story of how my mother’s family initially came to be there in the ’50s can be found here, though I have been remiss in updating for a few weeks. In the ’80s, it was mostly just Grandma’s house, and had been for quite a while. When we came back from England, my Dad was stationed at McChord AFB in Washington, and it was decided that we would move in with Grandma and eventually buy the house from her.

Call & Response #3: Doorways

 

The third pebble spins,

skipping across the deep. It

leaves a trail for you.

 ***
Robin Starfish said,

“Instead of the daily haiku, I offer this image as a meditation, a pebble in a pond. I invite you to use it as a catalyst to write a poem, create a story, paint a picture, carve a sculpture, compose a song, photograph an exploratory walk…whatever inspires you to play in the fields of the Lord.

This is a weekly “round robin” ™, where we could take turns tossing out an ‘assignment’ every Sunday (or Saturday), a sort of ‘call & response’ or voluntary tag, if you will. Although this already occurs in unspoken fashion, this brings various catalysts up to the surface. Some newly creative work could result; who knows?

As projects are completed, the pebble tosser can add links to those blogs or websites.

What do you think? Wanna play?”

 

-o.o-

Call & Response #2: Order

(Photo © 2007, Ricky Raccoon)

 

Looking up at the trees on a cool English spring morning, my playmate and I spy the broad leaves whose veins look like the ribs of a fish. The base of the tree is our kitchen, and we pluck several leaves, stripping away the papery membrane between the veins. They will be our dinner.

 

Looking closer, with eyes that have seen a couple decades more sights, the leaves today resemble wings. The graceful shape and the serrated edge would flicker as it drifted to the ground, but while on the tree it catches the air with the slightest breeze, changing the currents above and below it even as it is moved; perhaps it is more like the fin of a fish or the wing of a bird than we know, for there must be a good reason to direct the airflow around and through the tree’s branches; perhaps it is to aid in breathing.

They direct the air, they move water when it falls, and they soak up the light coming down from above. It is the light that is most amazing to me; these humble-seeming leaves absorb it and transform it into energy. They catch it and release it in a new form inside themselves, metabolizing and gaining nourishment from something that is not entirely something.

Reaching to the heavens

vitality from a star

held aloft on air.

-o.o-

 

Lost & Found

(Photo Copyright 2007 Robin Starfish)

(The following is my belated response to Call & Response #1: Lightness)

 

I didn’t mean to get lost; it just kind of happened, while I was dawdling along. Minutes may have passed, hours or even days for all I know (time tends to go funny when you dawdle too much, I’ve found) while I watched the little yellow butterflies dancing through a young cotton field, or listened to the sighing of the wind through dense stands of maple. All I know for certain is that when I finally looked up, everyone else had moved on and my surroundings took on the dread feel of an empty supermarket aisle to a small child.

 

I tried not to panic, bu there it was: on one side of my brain, the sensible side, I chided myself for a fool, but on the other it was pure pandemonium. The pandemonium would have won out, too, were it not for the very calm voice that came from somewhere else, and gently suggested that I keep moving forward. So I did. Eventually, I realized I was moving in a spiral. I had passed yonder cluster of bushes before, and the little waterfall with its bright cluster of koi, but each time around they were farther out, and I was farther in. Finally, the spiral came to a stop of sorts, at a stand of gently curled reeds along the bank of a burbling creek. Reaching out, I traced one of the curls with my finger, following it around and in, and finding that it somehow grew larger even as it tightened.

 

After several minutes (or hours, or even days), I heard worried voices calling my name. Looking up, I realized I knew exactly where I was (in the garden, of course, though a corner previously undiscovered), and that I had never really been lost at all.