Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Snippet

As Spring turns to summer and gardens blossom and bloom, I have chosen to be romantic in my choice of snippet, with a waterlily. A flower floating on water can only speak of romance.

Enjoy.

The Water Lily

'Art thou from the snowy zone
Of a mountain-summit blown,
Or the blossoms of a dream,
Fashioned in the foamy stream?'

by John B. Tabb (19th Century)
from 'A Victorian Posy' edited by Sheila Pickles





The images are from the garden of a palace on an island in the beautiful Lago Maggiore in Italy.

Sky Watch Friday

And so, farewell to the jacaranda with its last blossoms etched on the early evening sky; serene, peaceful.

Enjoy your weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday Intro

Taking the lead from 'Bibliophile by the Sea', here is my Tuesday Intro:

'The Artificial Nigger' by Flannery O'Connor
(short story - as I am reading my way through the collection)

'Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of moonlight. He sat up and stared at the floorboards - the colour of silver - and then at the ticking on his pillow, which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it wwere waiting for his permission to enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything. The straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were awaiting an order and Mr. Head's trousers, hanging to the back of it, had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just flung onto his servant; but the face on the moon was a grave one. It gazed across the room and out the window where it floated over the horse stall and appeared to contemplate itself with the look of a young man who sees his old age before him.'

Would this first paragraph intrigue you to want to read more?
I enjoyed the relationship aspect of this story and the descriptive prose.

Sunday Snippet

I Am Not I

I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.
The one who renains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
Th e one who will remain standing when I die.

YO NO SOY YO

Soy este
que va a mi lado sin yo verlo;
que, a veces, voy a ver,
y que, a veces, olvido.
El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo,
el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio,
el que pasea por donde no estoy,
el que quedará en pié cuando yo muera.

by Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881 - 1958)

I found the translation ... and then I found the original, in Spanish, which I prefer. I thought that I would share it with you this Sunday - and a little about the poet, which is taken from 'Poem of the Day' edited by Nicholas Albery:

Jiménez was born in Moguer, Huelva, the setting for his story of the young poet and his donkey, (Platero y Yo). Giving up law, he moved to Madrid. When Civil War started he remained in the capital for a time, caring for the wounded and collecting children from the ruined streets.
He moved to Havana and then to Florida, losing many of his manuscripts in the process. Influenced by Verlaine, in his youth, he in turn influenced Lorca and other Spanish poets.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, the year before his death.

A little more than a snippet ... but worth it.

Sky Watch Friday

I captured a rainbow - figuratively speaking. I have hoped for so long for the moment when camera and rainbow appeared simultaneuosly ... and it happened. So, here is my rainbow, just ouside the garden.

Enjoy a rainbow filled weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday Take

On some days, things just happen.

A Tuesday tale:

Our windows were so dirty and unreachable for us (mostly, but let's have evenly spread dirt) after the winter. 'A window cleaner!' was the cry. 'I have his number.' 'He does not exist any more,' vocalised Mr. Wordtstitcher.

I try the number anyway - as one does. Miraculously, it seemed, he had reappeared. Tuesday was designated for us to move from Dickensian grime to a sparkling modernity of clear glass.

Mark, his name, dutifully set about transforming our lives, showing that our sight is not as bad as we had thought (for our years). He prescribed bi-monthly visits as he could not achieve perfection on this initial attempt and warned against grime as a way of living.

Work completed, he loaded up his ladders and talked about his mother, who is failing and hence his absence. I leaned over the gate to wave my farewell and to repeat my thanks and gratitude when, to my amazement, he hesitated, scratched his head and announced, 'I am a poet; a social poet'.

We fell to talking poetry and it was my turn to point the way forward - out of obscurity and into Blogland.

Contented, we turned aside to resume our lives; two poets, a window cleaner and pure glass.

Sunday Snippet

I have chosen this short extract from 'A Late Encounter with the Enemy' which is one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. It never ceases to amaze me that she can so easily conjure up characters in words so that they are immediately visible in the mind.

'General Sash was a hundred and four years old ........He didn't remember the Spanish-American War in which he had lost a son; he didn't even remember the son. He didn't have any use for history because he never expected to meet it again. To his mind, history was connected with processions and life with parades and he liked parades. People were always asking him if he remembered this or that - a dreary procession of questions about the past.'

From 'Complete Stories' by Flannery O'Connor

Farewell Friday

And so to Barcelona; views from our hotel window on the last night of our transatlantic adventure.

Wordless Wednesday - Malaga

Sunday Snippet

... because I always begin with paper ...

Surreal Relationship

Paper lay before me;
turned it lazily in my head
this way and that,
but there was nothing there
except the interest of
- nothing.

No thing but paper
softly resting its hard edges on the table's,
mirroring those hard edges
and the space between them; divisible.

Both, in being there, accentuating
the other's presence;
table building paper
to a large expanse of nothing there,
but revealing minute pits in paper's surface;
denoting something.

Table receding to become a backdrop
for paper marking the size of table
in relation to itself;
a holding quality;
table holding paper holding thoughts.

Ann Sharples

Skyline Friday

.... so on to Cadiz, with its skyline of domes and spires, towers and bells .... and a wonderful scent of ozone on the breeze.

"Go traveling with us!"
Her daily travels be
by routes of ecstasy
To Evening's Sea -

Emily Dickinson no. 1513

Wordless Wednesday ... en route to Cadiz