Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you. But first, a poem written for the National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) challenge, the optional prompt for which is to write a poem about something you have absolutely no interest in.
Eh? Bob*, what song should I pick for my Friday song day? Bob, what do I have absolutely no interest in? Listening. Suffering. Eh, sorry? What did you say?
Today, I’ve chosen L’Indifference, a musical piece written by Tony Murena and performed by Dan Newton’s Cafe Accordion Orchestra for my Friday Song Day. The Cafe Accordian Orchestra hails from Minnesotta. Indifference is not the exactly the same as having no interest in something, but it is close. Enjoy.
Tracy (front) and her sister riding Lightning,1972
An image flickers like an old home movie across the screen.
A young girl stands by an open fridge door drinking thirstily from a large bottle of Passiona. A woman, her mother, appears in the background and chastises her daughter for drinking too much soft drink.Too much Passiona. Always Passiona.
"Drink water," the child's mother says.But the child doesn't stop.
Images flicker alternately between the child vomiting violently, and drinking from the bottle of Passiona, before vomiting again. The child becomes thinner and thinner.
Images of the wasting child flicker faster until she is nothing but a wisp of fetid Passiona air, translucent and ephemeral as she drifts in and out of consciousness.
When I was a small girl, I lived on a rural property on the outskirts of Sydney. Every week, the soft drink man would deliver a crate of syrupy, carbonated drinks to the property. They were supposed to be a treat, but I couldn’t get enough of them. My favourite was a passionfruit-flavoured fizzy called Passiona. In the 50 years since I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I have always craved carbonated fizzy drinks on those rare occasions when my blood glucose levels have been seriously high. It is worth noting that I became a Type 1 diabetic in the months after I recovered from a serious bout of the measles. Isn’t it fortunate that there are now vaccines to protect against many serious viruses that can trigger our immune systems to go into hyper drive and attack our own bodies?
The (optional) task for Day 14 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) is to write a poem/piece that takes the form of the opening scene of the movie of your life.
I once thought “bokeh” referred to the circles, sometimes sparkly, that you often see in the background of a photo taken with a macro or telephoto lens. I’ve moved on from that and I now like to think of bokeh as the aura surrounding the subject of the photo, the bokeh being that little bit of voodoo magic performed by the camera to blur out the background so that the subject has centre stage. That is purely my artistic view and not a technical definition. I prefer my bokeh soft and calm and not swishy/choppy, but this is easier said than done. The exception to that is when the bokeh is being used for creative effect. If for any reason it is not possible to achieve the effect desired, I would rather take the photo “as is”, and enjoy what I’ve seen. Hence, you will see less than perfect bokeh on my site. Hopefully, the photos will still be interesting.
A messy background, my position and camera shake affected the quality of the bokeh/aura in my photo of this kookaburra below. The bokeh is not to my taste but how could you not love a face like that?
Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), Australian National Botanic Gardens
Now for my photography partner’s photo. He was further up the hill than I was and his extra height meant that he was able to access a much nicer background, and hence, lovely bokeh.
Kookaburra – Australian National Botanic Gardens
Look! Even with my little camera, I can still achieve a lovely blurred background if I am lucky to find myself close to my subject and there is a reasonable amount of separation between it and the background.
Silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) in the Canberra suburbs
It is difficult to capture that lovely blurred background effect with fast moving little birds. A really fancy camera or lots of patience is required. I therefore like to see what my little camera can make of plants. Trees in sheltered spots are great for this. The filtered light provides a beautiful tonal calm backdrop to the bark of this Pinus canarienis at Canberra’s Lyndsay Pryor Arboretum. The dark colour of the bark is a result of being burnt in the 2003 bushfires.
Canary Island Pine (Pinus canariensis), Lyndsay Pryor Arboretum, Canberra)
And below, I couldn’t resist the combination of the young eucalyptus leaves against the muted yellow plants in the background (probably paper daisies like those in the foreground), which were themselves set against the darker green of the heavily shaded area in the far back. I wouldn’t classify this as bokeh or an aura, but without my camera to see this stunning plant against the blurred background, it might not have caught my eye so. My botanist son’s best guess is that the tree is a native of Western Australia, Eucalyptus macrocarpa. WA plants are always show stoppers. What do you think, WA readers? Did my son guess right?
Mottlecah (Eucalyptus macrocarpa) tbc – Australian National Botanic Gardens
And, finally, this creamy milk chocolate background is a perfect complement to the fungi growing in fallen timber. Photography can be such a time waster but there are worse things we could be doing.
Thanks for reading this far, everyone. I have a couple more photos of the kookaburra that I will share soon. In the meantime, take care and take photos.
Love is a place. The place where I belong. Safe in your arms, the warmth of your smile. The place that I call home.
Love is a home. The home we make together Our memories, our joys, our lows. The journey we go on.
Love is a journey. The journey of body and mind. Our coming together. Making love. The love that we share.
The love that we share. The journey we go on. The place that I call home. A place to love and be loved.
The (optional) task for Day 10 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) is to write a love poem. It is very plain and so not saucy, but I was in a hurry. And shy.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you. But first, a poem.
In Your Likeness What do you see when you look into your soul? Bloodshed, torture and depravity? Is this your version of humanity? Not fit unless made in your likeness.
Today I’ve chosen Pan’s Labyrinth Lullaby, composed by Javier Navarrete for Guillermo del Toro’s film.
In Australia, there are whispers of a murderous cabal of people-eating koalas. Known colloquially as “drop bears”, their location is known only to Aussies, who avoid them for dear life. The modus operandi of the drop bear is to drop down from the trees onto unsuspecting visitors. That’s when things get gruesome. But times are a-changing, ladies and gentlemen. Survival of our respective species, of the planet, means we will all need to reduce our meat consumption. Let’s see how that goes. Gather round.
Blood red eyes, dagger claws, give lie to that sweet furry body and button nose. “To our sacrifice and to yours!” The leader of the Drop Bears includes the captive in her hypnotic gaze. Then, in a booming bark, she projects to the crowd, “One last time. For tomorrow we turn vegan.” The crowd blanches, then tentatively at first, begins to chant,“Flu-ffy. Flu-ffy.” “But tonight. Tonight, Sisters. Tonight, Brothers. Tonight, there will be feasting on more meaty prey.” “Flu-ffy. Flu-ffy.” Silence falls – or maybe drops – as the throng gathers to feast. Finally, a shout rings out. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, we dine on the Infidel.” The crowd roars. “Flu-ffy. Flu-ffy.”
A Vegetable’s Nightmare The silence ripples. Beyond the shadows, beyond the adulation, in gardens across the country, the infidels quiver in their beds.
If you are a visitor to Australia and plan on visiting koala habitat, best do that during the day. Koalas and their kin, the drop bears, are nocturnal and feed at night. There’s no telling if the drop bears will honour their resolution.
Day 5 of the NaPoWriMo challenge was to write a poem about a mythical person or creature (drop bears are more secretive than mythical) doing something unusual – or at least something that seems unusual in relation to that person/creature. I made a slight deviation from the brief, but near enough is good enough.
Stay safe, everyone. Kind Regards. Tracy.
PS. I had rather too much fun setting up the photos. I’ve had the koala toy since I was a baby.
Hurts. History repeats. Overwhelmed (even more) hospital staff. Important details omitted. Seniors. ie. not. Bedded down in the geriatric ward. Also, still short staffed. Pan. ie. bed. Plan B. Also, patients. Way too many (not their fault). Investment. To fix this health care crisis. Also incomplete medical notes. Toilet. Plan A. Please god, plan A. Also tired, ie. everyone, and stop the tax cuts. Accidents & Errors. Inevitable when staff exhausted. Investment, not tax cuts. Love. Not for love or money. Burnout. Get out. Real life “Survivor“.
Aussies, give your vote to the person that shows they care by putting their money where their mouth is. Our health, public health. In Australia, public hospital costs are shared between the national and state/territory governments.
Unfortunately my TL is back in hospital, ladies and gentlemen. I may need to take another blogging break. I’ll let you know or fail to show. How poetic!
Today three strange cars pulled up out front. One was white, one was green, one a colour in between. We scratched our heads, we gave a shrug, because we had no clue what this could mean.
Perhaps their intent was simply to admire the view bucolicus of our newest creation botanicus. Spiky grasses, delicate daisies, a blossoming shrub or three. Look, not even that sap sucking gum tree can stop ’em deadius!
[It gets worse.]
But maybe the onlookers’ intent was far more nefarious. Salacious desires for substances slightly more licentious. Or perhaps they were merely lost all three, but we really find that very hard to believe.
Or just maybe they were salivating over our male buxus. Told all their sketchy friends to come check it outus. So maybe we ought to charge a fee to prevent a stampede? Kid-free, adults a buck, carpooling receives a discount-ious. 😉
Oh my, oh my. That is truly awful. It didn’t exactly go where I expected it to go. The NaPoWriMo optional prompt today was to write a poem in the form of a “glosa”, utilising a quatrain from another poem of our choosing. Since I am a complete newbie to the formal aspects of poetry and poetic forms (not to mention proper English), I didn’t even know what a quatrain was, so I thought I would try to write one of those, ie. a quatrain, instead. I fear I got slightly distracted in the process. As you do.
Cockcrow to brownout, iron melts. Fruitful and fruitless is the product of labour under blast furnace sky. Golden age of man built on seeping pile of manure and metallurgic sands.
Cronos has finger on the pulses, his finger in the pies – a polyphagic appetite, polydipsic thirst, promises profligate. Hollow god of fortune in guise of sovereign man.
Staccato beats the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the dread. In messianic masterstroke, sickle wielding in parlous miscalculation, sunders creator from his balls, heaven from this earth.
Eulogise, pathologise, mythologise to light a conflagration. Killing time, past consuming future, til darkness slowly dies from his seed of destruction. Only to be condemned equally by those drunk on his poisoned chalice and by those whose freedoms he trampled.
I started this poem a couple of weeks ago, ditching it when I advised myself not to go there. Anyway, I decided to revive it for Napowrimo. I understand that Napowrimo stands for National Poetry Writing Month. I’m a Napowrimo virgin. I can’t imagine what possessed me to join in this time. I’m afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that as far as my poetry goes, it is all downhill from here.
She felt she was being judged. She didn’t want to look at the woman across from her. Would her judge think her a fraud, or worse, incompetent and weak?
“What is a good day for you?” the disembodied voice across the desk asked.
How to answer that? Think, think, but the thoughts came too slowly. Silence filled the room. She felt so weary. A psychiatrist’s couch would have been welcome at this point.
Then, “A good day is when I don’t have to rest in the car for an hour before taking my groceries inside.”
As she left the office, she could feel the doctor’s eyes boring into her back. She wondered what her gait and posture said about her, but she no longer cared.
Reflections of An Untidy Mind 