She will never return that woman of yesterday before this morning’s snow before the candycane melted in this coffee she is but a blip of history a snug memory of the woman I used to be She will never return that woman of this morning before putting on boots to make footsteps in the snow before grabbing the camera to make snowglobes before jumping back under the covers to cuddle with the cat and listen to him purr she was still half asleep and she stayed there with all the possibilities ahead of her I will never return the me staring out the window at the large white flakes falling from the thick gray meeting the water, so I really do feel like I’m in a snowglobe I am but a moment now a snug memory a blip in history I will never return
Receiving Snow by Maria L. Berg 2021
If you’ve enjoyed the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun. While you’re looking, please click the hearts to like the images on the RedBubble site. It will help my work get attention. Thank you.
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
Today’s prompt, altruism, inspired me to finally make an open hand bokeh filter. I like how it turned out. Then I had fun filling it.
Giving is Growing by Maria L. Berg 2021
Stream of Consciousness
It’s stream of consciousness Saturday. The prompt for today is “yum.” My family gathered for gift giving last night and my mother made the most delicious strawberry cake. Yum. This morning I put the super-soft slipper socks that my sister gave me onto my frozen feet and wow they are yummy. I opened the Starbucks mug from my bother and it came with Holiday coffee which I am drinking. Yum. And it’s perfect with the old fashioned donut holes I bought for this morning’s breakfast. Yum. But the yummiest was waking up to my favorite kitty who came to cuddle with me and gave me loud purrs for Christmas. So yummy.
Handful by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
For today’s new poem prompt I repeated what I did last week and browsed my WordPress Reader and found:
Through the din of crumpling paper and electronic toys she presented an unwrapped gift, a delicate memento to cherish.
Helping Hands by Maria L. Berg 2021
If you’ve enjoy the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun. If you get a chance to take a look, please press the hearts on the images you like. It will help my work get noticed. Thank you.
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
I found this month’s prompt Rest, Sleep and Hibernation very inspiring, and I’m excited to share my finished multi-media video. I really enjoyed how the stills and video fit with the sounds I collected and arranged. And it was fun to put my poem in the fire. I hope you find this relaxing and restful.
I enjoy getting a little orange in my stocking every year. Today, I played with visualizing the joy of that experience.
Adding More Oranges by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
A Precarious Achievement
It was a beautiful ceiling, a feeling of wishing the time I wasn’t home flickers across and distorts our lives. Games and cookies further generalized while the implications stimulated giving us candles, the yard was spectacularly vulnerable. Eliminating rationality, I went into the street with more decentered notions of weaknesses. Prepared for senility, they made sure to keep the windows hot/cold. Only just beginning not to improve, but nothing came back. From their fragmentation? She’d say insufficient metaphors.
They Left to Join the Sun by Maria L. Berg 2021 A Stocking Full of Oranges by Maria L. Berg 2021
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
What does giving look like? Yesterday, while rummaging around looking for yeti things, I happened upon this dishtowel I forgot I had. The universe gifted me this Christmas duck, so I decided to give it some gifts.
A Frog for Its Head by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
On Vacation
We visited something else disappeared pieces of shared experience taking up residence in the paintings on your forehead and the crook behind a slightly bent left leg
The apartment didn’t want to keep me If wallpapered, the same place so we met in other places If only your smile were digestible when we stayed together we reflected their appearance these women during clenched fists
It isn’t fair that the flavor or feel is neither sugar nor milk to my coffee I let you finish my reach forward to cut into the bits before depositing them to encounter the rebuke
Duck in Santa Hat by Maria L. Berg 2021
Christmas Duck Songs by Maria L. Berg 2021 Showered with Gifts by Maria L. Berg 2021
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
The Giant Footprint in the Yard by Maria L. Berg 2021Yeti Appears by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
At the Motel Pool
She sits on a stool in a blue pool with the water over her head I expect her to bloom like the strange flowers in my clear glass tea pot but she straddles that stool and competes with the water for bluest My shins in the shallows shimmer flesh under fresh pressure a slippery contradictory mystery now I’m swimming; it’s thrilling and she’s grinning and filming When did she leave her stool and the pool? Stop! I implore her, but she’s already bored and towel-wrapped headed for a door Strange how blinding light can tilt and wilt to chill; I shiver and my trembling lips fight the water for bluest
The Gingerbread Man Got Caught by Maria L. Berg 2021
Today’s photography prompt was inspiring. I refilled my glass gingerbread man with syrup and I made some healthy gingerbread with freshly grated ginger and toasted hazelnut flour (instead of almond). I’m so glad I tried it, because Gingerbread People are delicious.
Yummy Gingerbread Person and Cookie with Dried Plum by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
Sweet Gingerbread Love by Maria L. Berg 2021
Disquieting Signs
Lift it up Hold it up to a light source a reflection of changes my broken parts may slide when the waters arrive to challenge the edges of this lift the corner see our wild beasts absorbed in fascination to elucidate reject the sameness of life takes on a different meaning find a beautiful haven some way for mutuality and interaction like a string of horses splashing ahead in terms of connection I have so much ground to cover, cook longer, and then check again
Spreading Christmas Cheer by Maria L. Berg 2021
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
And for the Change of Focus Challenge theme Rest, Sleep, and Hibernation, here’s a picture of the gingerbread person at rest:
Inspired by Of Maria Antonia’s Weekly Photo Challenge “All is Calm” and the fact it isn’t raining, I went out to take some pictures of reflections on the lake. When I turned to take a picture of the mountain, surprise otter!
Otter by Maria L. Berg 2021
This guy was scratching some itches on the neighbor’s semi-submerged floating dock.
Standing Otter by Maria L. Berg 2021
I love his little face. He looks like a jolly old man.
Dock Otter by Maria L. Berg 2021
The problem with a surprise otter is after he leaves, all you ever want to see is an otter. Thank you Maria Antonia for inspiring me to head outside at just the right time.
And here’s the mountain and reflection on the lake:
A few days ago I realized that Bells managed to get on my prompt calendar twice. I thought about replacing it, but then I concluded that I hadn’t done much with the bells filter I created the first time around. I had some fun detailing my bells with pieces of label stickers.
Ringing in Christmas by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
The prompt at Poetic Bloomings today is Prompt #365 – Do You See What I See? which challenges us to write from the perspective of an item associated with Christmas.
I Worry She’s Forgotten Me
I stand in this dark corner by the closet in the hall. She moved me here to clear a path for the couch, but never put me back by the door. She left a windbreaker and a floppy summer hat as if to define me, define my purpose, or a purpose I once had. This change of station has me worrying that she won’t use me this year. But I was filled with anticipation as the festivities started early. She pulled out decorations and new lights arrived and then more came. But something’s wrong: she moves the lights from room to room hanging them in colorful defiance of the encroaching dark, but she takes them down again. A week ago, she set up Santa’s village and fixed the toy shop’s roof, but now it’s put away. It’s as if she’s taunting me every single day. The first year, I felt strange, out of place, over-dressed and embarrassed when she hung lights and decorations where coats and hats were meant to be. But as the gifts lay at my base and I saw the smiles in my lights on her face I began to enjoy my stand-in role she created. Every year she has added to my Christmas costume. Last year colorful ostrich feathers bedecked me as a modernist palm. And yet I stand bare my basic shape of function showing. Will she or won’t she? It’s torture, this waiting, not knowing.
Christmas Bells Are Ringing by Maria L. Berg 2021
If you’ve enjoyed the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun. While you’re looking, please click the hearts to like the images on the RedBubble site. It will help my work get attention. Thank you.
Let the Heavens Ring by Maria L. Berg 2021
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
Last night I made a candle filter. I thought I would try it with the fisheye lens technique to create flickers of nostalgia.
A Flicker of Nostalgia by Maria L. Berg 2021
Stream of Consciousness
It’s stream of consciousness Saturday. The prompt for today is “opposites.” In my experience opposites attract, but today I am more interested in nostalgia and its opposites. Living in the moment is the opposite of nostalgia, but aren’t my perceptive filters and emotional experiences in the now driven by those memories I would dwell in if nostalgic? Isn’t it healthy to face, visit, perhaps dwell in them a while, looking toward the future? Is it futurism that is the opposite of nostalgia? Or are they both a form of fantasy? I pick and choose which memories create a warm glow in the same way, as a futurist, I pick and choose which signals and drivers to extrapolate into possible futures. Nostalgia itself triggers cycles of fashion and entertainment, wanting to bring the best memories into the present only starts their cycle into the future, so where is the opposite?
Wired for Nostalgia by Maria L. Berg 2021
New Poem
For today’s new poem prompt I repeated what I did last week and browsed my WordPress Reader and found:
This roaring wind and rain bite through the heavy gray Yearning for the day’s opposite, I imagine variegated, pavonine skies hues of blue and green water and sky in conversation Waves crash as if ocean-side If only this nose tickle was from salt and sand As I fill another tissue, I pretend a peacock-feather fan in hand, wispy tendrils tickling As I create a delicate breeze to dry my perspiration on a lovely opposite day of peaceful relaxation far from now
The Sounds of Nostalgia by Maria L. Berg 2021
If you’ve enjoy the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun. If you get a chance to take a look, please press the hearts on the images you like. It will help my work get noticed. Thank you.
December Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.