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There’s nothing like a challenge to unify disparate ideas or odds and ends that just tickled your fancy at the time. Ailsa’s done just that with her ‘Contrast or Nonconformity’ challenge this week. As chance would have it – or … Continue reading
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The other day, early, I heard the boom boom whoop of the old boy, high up in the trees behind the house. It’s been a while since the troupe visited – too long – it’s been lonely without the familiar … Continue reading
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The romance of the coconut tree, the ubiquitous symbol of any tropical isle – every tropical land – grabbed me once, and has never let me go. Have you ever noticed that no two coconut trees are alike – that … Continue reading
A wordless Wednesday post:
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We think we’re so clever – and of course we are! – but to me it’s the so-called lesser creatures – nature itself – which really have the WOW factor. Look at this bird’s nest, isn’t it amazing? No eggs … Continue reading
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I’m procrastinating a little, dithering a lot, feel there’s a mountain of work still to be done and yet, when I wander around the denuded house I can’t think what on earth it is … some of you might relate, … Continue reading
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Funny – when I saw this pot of water lilies I immediately thought of impermanence, and I purposely shot it showing the stages of growth and decay – then the next day it rained. There are lots of different interpretations … Continue reading
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One of the things I noticed when R and I first visited Sri Lanka* was the number of people on the move. Night or day, it seemed, the busses and trains were always jam-packed, and as the country’s middle-class has … Continue reading
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There’s no question the pyramids are old. The famous three at Giza were built in a spate of pharaonic might and zeal over four and a half thousand years ago. Jump the Mediterranean, and a couple of millennia, to that … Continue reading
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to post this shot. It doesn’t fit with my usual stories of life in Paradise – of the exotic and beautiful island of Sri Lanka. But in calling for stories of the letter “N”, Fizz put the reason right into my hands, because “N” is for “nidagannawa” – to sleep, to nap, or at a stretch, to nod off. though this was beyond nodding off.
Having lunch out the other day I happened to look up as the young couple across the way settled down for a postprandial zizz. There was no way I wasn’t going to take a photograph, though it felt indecent – as though I were sneaking up to the crack in their bedroom door, spying on them sleeping sprawled across the bed …
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Just two shots (believe it or not!) from the Jaffna Lagoon: We arrived at dusk and just a little later dusk had morphed into the blue hour – but, it being Paradise, and just a few degrees north of the … Continue reading
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Come, quickly, before it gets too hot. We’ll go to the Mal Pola – the plant market. Those days it used to be held beneath a couple of massive trees in a dusty corner of Viharamahadevi Park, opposite the Art … Continue reading
On a blustery Sunday afternoon, the rain stopped and the people of Paris came out to stroll in the Tuileries gardens. Boys and fathers sailed model boats on the pond, young mothers pushed well-sprung prams, chatting all the while.
But nobody chose to loiter on the benches between the trees, and the buskers, with cold fingers and serious faces, had a difficult time attracting a crowd.
Jardins Tuileries, 1976
Thanks to Sue for this week’s Word a Week Photo prompt, Music.
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Mo remembered the banyan tree from when she was young, and began looking out for it as we left Vavuniya on our dash up to Jaffna. A landmark for generations, it must have been so beloved by both sides that … Continue reading
Midway through the first written story known to the world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, there occurs a passage of terrible grief. Gilgamesh, the hero, loses his closest friend and fellow warrior, Enkidu.
There is nothing they can do, despite the many battles they have fought, to stave off death. Enkidu, forewarned, rushes into anger, and from there into lamentation. He reproaches his friend for not being able to save him—“you did not rescue me, you were afraid and did not”; from his deathbed, he calls to the friend who has abandoned him simply by not being able to follow him into the land of death.
