I am here again, trying to stay afloat in this writing challenge. I’m feeling like Bill Murray in the movie, Groundhog Day, waking up to the same tune on the radio every morning and to the same morning over and over again. That was my take on the word repeat for the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge. I figure it’s a good prompt to write on as well. When I am stuck, I’ll use anything for a springboard. Word(s) can paint a picture in my mind’s eye. Conversely, a picture can evoke a story. Word and photo prompts work for me.

I’m feeling I’m in some horror movie these days, waking up to the same cloudy and smokey morning. It was still dark at 6 am. It is only July 15th. Too early for fall. It stayed like that most of the day till now at almost 8 pm. The clouds and smoke are just lifting. There’s a weak display of sun. I had to go out and tap my kitchen window shut to keep the smoke out earlier in the day. It had shifted and I could not properly close it. The kitchen was quite smokey. I hope tomorrow brings better things – more sun, less smoke.

The world looks and feels apocalyptic. It’s either fire or flood somewhere in the world. I hear James Taylor singing his song:

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

In these weird climatic change times, it’s difficult for me to appreciate wabi sabi, the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and impermance. Wabi sabi is another prompt from my DYICAD challenge. I thought my parsnips made an excellent demonstration of the imperfect and impermanent. Having looked at their strange shapes for awhile, I have to confess they are rather beautiful with their tangles of long and curly roots. And they were delicious in my beef stew of many ingredients.

Since life is full of things that can’t be changed, it is helpful to adopt the wabi sabi outlook. It is much better to look for and study the beauty in the bleak, ugly and lonely that is our present world than being stuck in the muck. It would be a change instead of repeating over and over the same old that have not worked before.