Looking Up & Around…

This week, I happened to visit a nearby suburb after almost a year and a half. As we entered its periphery, the roads there seemed busier than ever before and we had to push our way through the erratic traffic.

Later as we walked along the pavement, there was no usual order in things. Actually there were precautionary boards all along the roads, while construction guys stood with their vans all over the place.

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?

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Obviously this hub of activity was a bit of a nuisance to pedestrians as well as those looking for a parking place. In the late

Catty Face

 

Catty face! Catty face!!
Don’t stare at me like this
You petrified, or scaring me?
Standing there frozen still
In my home, on my driveway
It’s my territory, my pathway
You the prowler, go away!!

It’s ok! Let it be
Here I open the door
Please come inside
Play with me for a while
Have tea with me
But dear! Make sure
You come regularly

Hey!! What happened?
Why you running away??
Wait! Wait!! Wait!!!
Let me come with you
Will you? But you won’t
For you’re an impish kitty
Catty face, frisky and sneaky!

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The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge Face is so interesting, that I could think of so many of them, but this light post came by easy as I saw this prowling cat. Do you also get some regular visitor like this one?

Also for One Word Photo Challenge – Cat

© 2016 Alka Girdhar

Errors That Are Meant To Be

Don’t cry over burnt toast!
Stop wondering at its blurred pic
Oops! For this weird lapse
In cooking and clicking.
Perfection gone missing
Dimmed before brightening
Life finished before living

Missed opportunities
All these could-have-beens
Simple phantasmagorias
Mere shadows of their real being
Imperfect clumsy wholes
Unimaginable new shapes
So enigmatic and puzzling!

Cheers to the unplanned blunders
That were meant to be!
Good or bad, let them be…

 

The above picture is that of a framed hologram that hangs on a wall, and when seen though my dresser’s mirror, this wall-hanging seems to throw all its glowing ingredients outwards as if it is a three-dimensional picture. I tried to capture it via my camera but see the result…

The one below somewhat shows the 3D effect but blurred still, though quaint and unique as it is.

 

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Now, this post about imperfections was my response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge prompt for this week:  “Oops! ‘Tis the season to revel in photographic (and/or photogenic) disasters.”

This morning…a burnt toast triggered this writing…

Being (Extra)ordinary

No car engine this
Leaking exhaust down the path
Spewing venom of diesel puffs
Abhorred by all

Up above the sky
Smoke fumes delight our eyes
The ordinary became extra-ordinary
An awesome sight

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Planes leave behind white streaks. These streaks are artificial clouds called contrails, a word formed from the phrase ‘condensation trail.’

Like a car engine…airplane engine also produces exhaust gases that escape from a plane. These exhaust fumes have water vapors which hit the air.  At such a height, the air outside is extremely cold which causes these water vapors to condense and form tiny water droplets or even freeze into tiny ice crystals before eventually evaporating.
It’s this mix of condensed water vapor and ice crystals that create the cloud-like trails you see in the sky.

Wow! Ordinary fumes and vapors yet extraordinary sight.

~~~ ~~~

Picture taken in Sydney skies
For Weekly Photo Challenge: (Extra)ordinary

© 2015 Alka Girdhar

Bonded Forever!

A month old baby sleeping on top of his mother

Such bonds are not undone
With the cutting of umbilical chord
Ties that nourish forever.

Maa! That was the best sleep ever!

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My son’s picture, clicked many years ago, was for the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Connection

Fatal Connection

Fatal Connection

It eats up all
Spares none.
Grass devoured
Leaves holed
Hops on a flower
Kisses the petals
Gobbles them up
Speck by speck.
Clever plunderer
Spiky charmer
Connects, only to wreck!!

(Look closely, some leaves and yellow petals have been eaten.)

~~

Recently, I’ve been talking about cockroaches, creepy faces, serial killers and now this grasshopper. Time to look for some beautiful pictures. Generally, green grasshoppers are a symbol of good luck.

Hashtagged Lives of Social Media Junkies

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(Lonesome twitterer sitting on road-side wired network)

 

#Hashtagged Lives of #SocialMedia Junkies

This life full of hash tags
Our fragile life support

These jumbled networks on the net
Too widespread, too shallow yet

These fluctuating statistical dips
Ego-boosting followers and likers

These spheres in the blogosphere
Going everywhere, reaching where?

This highly connected disconnect
Surmounts isolation, then rejects

We, the wirelessly wired, the restfully tired
Our sleepless sleeps, our aimless aims

Where are we all going hand-in-hand
Riding this media horse, towards what end??

© 2015 Alka Girdhar

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The lonesome twittering Crested Pigeon, that I pictured from many angles,  is commonly found in Australia. It is often solitary and makes distinct whistling calls and hooting sounds, to draw attention of others like him.

My poem and the lonely pigeon convey one aspect of social media – that it has connected us all like never before and yet disconnected us from the real world…a bitter reality we find hard to digest.

On the other hand, without media I wouldn’t have been able to share this post with you.

Connected

Feel free to share your thoughts via your comments.

My Creepy Room-Mate

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This girl on my room wall
Gives me a queer call

She hangs in a demeanor
That I fail to comprehend

Worrisome and contemplating
Or is she tranquil and serene?

Her eyes make a mute appeal
Or is it a sinister frosty chill?

Are they tears, dried and darkened
Or is her make-up running out?

Are her cheeks rosy and robust
Or is her blood streaming out?

One look, and I look away
With restless unease

This creepy girl on my wall
Somehow does not please

***

~ © Alka Girdhar ~

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This silver portrait is in my house in one of the rooms. Looks different in various lights – gothic, somber, eerie or just thoughtful.

God!!…Keep Me Afloat…

These are the pictures I took as I saw an airship hovering over my house, in the skies above.

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The airship had a business name on it: Appliances Online.  I wasn’t sure my camera will capture the name but it did. The airship kept moving around and changed angles.

Nothing unusual about it, right?  These are not an unusual sight except that I kept calling it a ‘float’.  Later in the day I was corrected by my somewhat amused son who said these are called airships. Now was it that funny?  Don’t they just float around?

I did more research on the term ‘airship’. And bingo…these are also called zeppelin and blimps. I’m sure my sonny doesn’t know this much.

I will now try writing a poem on these cute egg-shaped floats…errr blimps…

To keep their business afloat
the tycoons float in the air
their airships and floats
that float round and round.
But what a sight and spectacle for
awe-struck people on the ground.

How does it feel to have a short ride on one of these, just go around the city. One day we may have one such means of commuting/transportation.

A search on Mr Google provided a page from Sydney Morning Herald that has information on the workings of this particular float, I mean blimp. See how they work plus enjoy a musical song on blimps.
Have a look:    blimp my ride

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That was my response to Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat

Photo Challenge: Vivid Ephemeral Nature

Mauved, I mean Moved…
But I know it is ephemeral because it’s vividly beautiful.

When we see such vivid splendor of nature such as in this mauve and purple sunset we find it too exhilarating. One moment we see it and then it changes. We may even feel as if it is unreal. But it should not be so. After all, the color spectrum had always been there in mother nature for ages. It is only recent optical experiments that made us humans understand the phenomena of light’s reflection, diffraction and later ‘refraction’. Newton’s use of prism made us consider air itself as a prism.

These pictures were clicked in Cairns in Queensland, Australia. The exact location is Cairns Esplanade.

Previously I had posted similar vivid pictures of a rare, but again short-lived and ephemeral Indigo sunset in my post Gifted by Nature.  Those pictures were taken in Sydney.

Mauve, as a colour itself is unique. Neither purple nor pink nor blue. Being a female I had seen this colour in lipsticks and nail paints but not sunset. Flowers too bless us with such unimaginable hues and sights, even though flowers too are a short-lived beauty.

Mauve colour is named after the mallow flower.  pic credit: wiki

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