I once posted a photo of a clock tower in Beirut, taken from up high.
But here it is again, from an even higher perch. We can see over the rooftops and beyond to the mountains of Lebanon.
Weekly photo challenge: Beyond
Ailsa's photo challenge: Up
Up on the roof of the outdoor heater (which we’re NOT using right now – 42 deg yesterday), it’s a cool place to mate. If you’re a dragonfly.
My son Josh and I both took photos of the dragonfly couple, but his were better and he’s happy for me to post them. Thanks Josh.
I don’t ever forget that Ailsa inspires me with her photo challenges. Check out her shots looking up to Edinburgh Castle: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/01/18/travel-theme-up/
Daily Prompt: Take Two
Run outside. Take a picture of the first thing you see. Run inside. Take a picture of the second thing you see. Write about the connection between these two random objects, people, or scenes.
This was the instruction for yesterday’s daily prompt. When I read it, I thought ‘I can do that’. I immediately took my small camera from its small drawer and walked outside. My husband was sitting at the outdoor table with his cereal bowl and glass of juice. But my eye fell first on his computer. I clicked.
I turned round, stepped back through the door and the first thing I saw was washing waiting to be folded, but the instruction is to record the second thing. I turned my head; it was the console radio that I saw, that I always see, with its photos of Renaissance architecture in Lyon, and a photo of my mother. Not long before she died. Click.
I have to find a connection. It could be the old glass vase and the new glass tabletop. It could be the Chain of Hearts growing above and over the radio console and the star jasmine growing like a triffid over the deck rail outside. Or it could be a connection to do with men.
My father listened to this radio at a quarter to the hour, every hour, beginning at 5.45am with the first major news bulletin. He would turn it up so it could be heard from the kitchen where he was eating breakfast, and I would wake and groan.
By contrast, and yet similarly, my husband reads the news on his computer while eating breakfast. The technology has changed but the need for these two men to know the latest world news is the same.
There’s a broken thread in the connection: the radio hasn’t worked for years. When I inherited it from my family home, my husband, a former radio technician, said he could fix it. But after opening it up and fiddling long inside, he wasn’t able to get it going.
The actual radio in the radio console is beneath the flowery frame, but if I remove the clutter, you can see it. Looking closely at the panel, I remember something: this Handel radio was made for Queenslanders. See how the station indicators are bolder? And I notice there’s no row for the Northern Territory, but there’s one for N.G. Is that New Guinea, I wonder?
A thought tickles me: I imagine one of our sons in thirty years with an inherited computer, opening it up and operating on it in the hope of reliving his father’s newsreading breakfasts…
Multiples
Since the day Ailsa suggested a theme of multiples, I’ve been noticing them here and there.
Tuesday, lunchtime in the city: I saw 3 people wearing sunnies in 3 different ways: one wore them on the back of his head, another had them across her forehead and a third had them under her chin.
Wednesday, 3.30am in bed: I couldn’t sleep for worrying about the 140 fires burning in NSW.
Wednesday 4.30am in bed: The 5 stars of the Southern Cross and its 2 pointer stars were so bright I could see them through sheer white curtains without my glasses.
Wednesday 2pm, arriving home: I received a postcard from a French friend that’s identical to the postcard she sent me last year.
Thursday 9am, my room: A string of 4 Indian elephants, their rumps decked in bells, a Christmas present I bought for an elephant-loving student before the lessons were cancelled, hangs on the wall and drifts in the breeze, its tinkling bells disturbing the dogs next door.
Thursday 9.30am, my desk: I remember this photo in my father’s war album of 5 beautiful boys. I’ve never posted it on this blog because I’ve seen it in multiple places. It was probably a postcard the soldiers bought as a souvenir.
Daily prompt: Quote me
If you would not be forgotten
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading
or do things worth the writing.
Benjamin Franklin
This is simple. How can anyone not take this advice? Especially when there are two choices.
I know of things worth reading that can’t be read, things written in French that non-French speakers are missing out on. I write those things. In English.
And when not rewriting someone else’s things, I do things worth the writing (which must then, according to B. Franklin, be worth reading). Visiting France in its secret villages. Tutoring little kids, big kids, young and old adults, Italians, Swiss, Croatians, Chinese, Koreans, Australians. Redeeming my father through his war photos and poetry and paintings. Committing to a daily task of observing unusual things.
You can do this. Don’t be forgotten.
Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Multiples
Ailsa has taken photos of things en masse that caught her eye. You’ll enjoy her photos: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/01/04/travel-theme-multiples/
On a day in June 2012 my husband and I travelled a few hours south to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Walking along a forest path, I was struck by the design and arrangement of these fungi. A work of art.
Daily Prompt: Stroke of midnight
Where were you last night when 2012 turned into 2013?
Is that where you’d wanted to be?
Last night in Australia was the end of the first day of January. This morning it’s the second. But I’ve awoken to the questions above because WordPress people are still getting through the first day.
But to cut the waffle and answer the first of their two questions, I was on the lounge with my husband watching Sydney fireworks on TV and hearing Canberra fireworks exploding in the distance. We’d had my brother-in-law and his wife for a BBQ of lamb steaks, marinated chicken, salad, baby boiled buttered potatoes and the best tarte aux pommes (apple flan) I’ve ever made thanks to a Christmas gift from my son: Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But after coffee and Swiss chocolates, our guests were tired and left, an hour and a half before midnight.
The evening was pretty well perfect. But it was the first year I’ve not seen my three sons or heard from them on New Year’s Eve. Nor did I see or hear from them yesterday, the first day of this new year.
Still, this morning has broken with a promise.
366 unusual things: days 364 – 366
29th Dec – Ten boxes of chocolates and biscuits, Christmas gifts, are stacked in a tower in my kitchen.
30th Dec – Heard in a sermon that 560 French and German churches have closed in the last decade and, now they are empty, many are being converted into mosques.
31st Dec – Today is a bonus day after the 365th. The last unusual thing.
366 unusual things: days 359 – 363
24th Dec – One of the worst offenders from the Housing flats (he’s just been evicted) spoke to me for the first time when I ran into him in the fruit shop. He wished me a Merry Christmas.
25th Dec – Went outside to breathe in this fresh Christmas morning and heard a deep male voice in the distance calling “Ho, ho, ho!”.
26th Dec – Found out that ‘organised’ has another meaning; it can mean ‘made into a living being’, that is, composed of organs.
27th Dec – Passed two road signs on a mountain: “Uncoupling zone” 🙁 and “Coupling zone” 🙂 (for truck drivers about to descend the steep and winding road).
28th Dec – Was having morning tea at my local café when the garbage truck, which had just emptied my bin, parked outside. Two hairy garbage men sat at the table next to mine, upwind of me.
366 unusual things: days 354 – 358
19th Dec – My son cooked dinner for the six of us in his apartment. It’s his 24th birthday but he spoilt us.
20th Dec – In my household, 4 things have an imperfection in their 4th working part:
One leg has rusted off my fashionably pre-rusted outdoor table;
One of four glass feet on a blue heirloom vase broke off and rejects the strongest glue;
Our dog’s fourth leg hangs limply since he broke a ligament;
One candle on a German Christmas carousel burns out before the other three. But here it is, running on 4 pistons:
21st Dec – Received an email from a publisher’s employee with the Dickensian name of Robert Puffett.
22nd Dec – On a shady bench in the Sculpture Garden, away from visitor paths, I read my translation aloud into a recorder.
23rd Dec – At 7 am as I wandered in the garden, bees buzzed about my ears and eyes. I looked up into the fig tree and saw and heard a swarm of them gathering sweet sticky honeydew left by a plague of aphids.