I have way too many muses, and not of the model or actor kind, thank goodness (they do come in handy when I write so I’m not discounting that kind of muse) but things and people around me.
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge
Relic
What images does “relic” conjure for you?
Site of the one of the worst prison riots that killed 33 inmates in 1980, the Santa Fe State Penitentiary has long been closed down. But it’s a favorite location for commercials and movies like Lockdown, All the Pretty Horses and The Longest Yard.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Room
In this week’s photo challenge, share your take on the idea of room — it could be an actual room in your house, a favorite gallery in your local museum, a cubicle at work. You could also take this challenge in a more abstract direction, and show us where you feel like you have room — or lack it.
This was my first ever brand new car, and I drove it everywhere! It took me places I never thought I’d go and actually enjoy myself (you know, for a city girl), like up in the mountains of the Sierra Nevadas where you saw all the stars at night and hear the deer munching on the apples outside your window.
To me, the world was wherever I found myself in. If all else failed, there was always my mind palace…
Which takes me to the next picture I took while sitting in LA traffic right by the take off and landing strip at LAX. Though it might be a bit constricting inside that car, I always knew it would take me anywhere I’d want to go (within driving distance, of course).
The next picture is of the Taos, New Mexico skyline. I have so many other pictures of the skyline but this was the one I could grab quickly without having to reduce resolution in another program. This was in the outskirts of Taos, where people lived in earthships outside of the grid. All around us are sage brush and at night you heard the coyotes howling.
Another view of the sky, although this one has been cropped to center the walkway with the cross. Writing often means I’m cooped up indoors the entire time so getting outside is really important for me – even though I don’t get to get outside of the city as much as I’d like. But when I do, I go for places where I can see the sky and smell the trees.
One of my favorite rooms that I wished I could have spent more time in was this master bedroom at the Phoenix earthship, also in Taos. I loved the red adobe walls with mica that glistened.
It was so cool, temperature-wise, inside that room because part of the area where the bed is located is bermed against and partly under a hill of sorts, to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And oh, the bed was divine. I could have just written in that room all day – oh, and do other stuff, too, of course.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Twist
I took this picture so many years ago when I first learned Thai Massage. The women in the photograph are my teacher, Janice (right) and fellow student and yoga instructor, Tanya.
The two weeks I spent with them and other therapists ranks as one of the best times of my life, a time when my life changed completely. The time was September 2001, to be exact, two weeks after the World Trade Center came down.
This was taken on the second to the last day of my stay. I had this brand spanking new Olympus digital camera that my client loaned me, and it was capable of such high resolution – at that time. We decided that it would be a great idea to do a photo shoot of sorts of the routine, especially the tricky moves, so we could all use it for whatever marketing brochures we needed to print out.
For the uninitiated, Thai Yoga therapy is a combination of acupressure, yoga stretches and breath-work, with some reflexology thrown in. It’s been around for about 2,500 years and not at all like the “Thai massage” some people associate with a lot of oil and an air mattress. Nope, this is done fully clothed, it’s meditative and it’s just amazing for both the giver and the receiver.
As one of my teachers, Mama Lek, used to say, “Good for you. Good for me.”
Weekly Photo Challenge: On The Move
My little prince loves his fire truck and he loves to go driving around the neighborhood – complete with his sunglasses that even has lights that blink along the side – like he owned the place. He has a routine. If he’s not going around the block to knock on the fire department’s front door, then he heads over to the bakery where the people behind the counter know his name and give him his choice of a chocolate doughnut. This he only does with his dad though, for I’m trying to get him onto a healthier diet. But once in a while is fine. I guess.
But still, he goes a-driving like he owns the place and I’m glad I caught his smug highness in the act. He is my little prince after all…
Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold
My friend’s husband needed a kidney transplant and had been on the transplant list for some time. During one of their visits down to Southern California just before he had to start some protocol to lower his white blood cell count, I took them to see the Hollywood sign. And while we, the girls, were taking our pictures with the sign behind us, Craig turned around to watch the setting sun in the horizon just above the L.A. Reservoir.
Even though the sun wasliterally in front of us, and therefore, not a good way to take a picture, I snapped this one because it just struck me at how it mirrored just where he was in his life. How close he was to getting a kidney! How close he was to getting a chance at a normal life, where he could go back to school, get a job and work without having to worry about his home dialysis schedule where he had to be hooked up to those tubes for up to 10 hours a night.
It’s one of my favorite pictures of Craig, and now that he’s got his new kidney and after almost two years of close calls as his body struggled to adapt to the donor kidney and the endless medications, he’s back to school and enjoying life. He even started posting his poetry online. And such breathtaking poems they are, too.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside
This week, in a post created specifically for this challenge, share a photo that says INSIDE.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Threes
IN A NEW POST PUBLISHED SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE “THREE.”
Too early at the park…
Weekly Photo Challenge: Object
In this week’s challenge, I’d like you to use one tangible object as both your inspiration and subject. It can be the obvious focal point of your shot or you can get creative and find other ways to feature your object — the only requirement is it must be somewhere in your frame.
Weekly Photo Challenge: One
This week, we want to see photos that focus on one thing. Maybe you’ve got a stark photo of a single tree silhouetted against the setting sun, or a lone sandpiper wandering the beach as waves crash. Perhaps you’ve caught your mother sitting by herself in a moment of quiet contemplation. Maybe you saw a basket of wriggling puppies, and got a photo with a single fuzzy face in focus. (Please, someone, take that photo!)
Morrighan's Muse 