Seeking the Mysterious

We yearn for the beautiful, the unknown, and the mysterious. ~ Issey Miyake

The Mystery Photo Game continues. I hope you all are having fun.

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” — Muhammad Ali

I’ll make a little edit on Muhammad Ali’s quote and insert woman in there with man. We all need wings and imagination. So if your guesses on my mystery photos are not quite on the mark, then just pat yourself on the back for having such a great imagination. I have a folder on my computer of some of the mystery pictures I’ve posted in the past. Sometimes I don’t know what they are until I spot the original photo nearby. Those pictures with no rest of the picture in the folder may remain a mystery forever. At the end of our game I might share some of the mystery photos that were the most mysterious along with their complete photo just for fun. A reward of sorts for those of you who played this time and have played in the past.

But now on to Sunday’s mystery photo. This one turned out to not be completely mysterious to several of you.

But some of you did do some imagination exercising with more food guesses of sausage gravy, chocolate cake, mashed potatoes, flour with eggs, and wet dough with butter. Of course some of you hedged your guesses by saying food and adding on more. Paula said a pot of soup or snow puddle. She wasn’t the only one seeing snow. Lavon guessed banana pudding, but her grandkids helped her guess sunflower.

Several of you knew it was water, just not exactly where that water was. Some of you knew the water was at sunrise or in the sun. I liked Tammy’s sky out of an airplane window. Lee said sky or water and Birdie said water with sky. They got both in there. Ola said sunrise on water. Others of you got it right or mostly right. Hope said waves on the beach. Trudy said ocean waves. Janet said sun and sand. And Lisa got it exactly right with a shell on the beach.

Here’s the rest of the picture. Another one that my daughter took on a vacation we went on together. They were dredging the beach and we were picking up beautiful shells without having to look hard. The kids went out into the shallow waves and came up with some beauties.

Oh, and I have to recognize Marji for her guess that made me laugh. “Sun shining on the moon surface.” You know that might look just like my mystery photo.

We have two more mystery photos before the game is through. Tonight’s and Sunday’s. If you make a guess on this one or that one or both, you get more entries into the book giveaway. I’ll pick two winners and contact them by email. Deadline to enter is midnight EST June 9, 2026. You do have to be at least 18 to enter, but no other requirements to play the Mystery Photo Game. I’ll announce the winners, first name and last initial, on the next day’s Wednesday post, and of course, reveal the answer to the last mystery photo. I’ve got a doozy for that last one.

Meanwhile, see what you think about the mystery photo up top. What is Mystery Photo #4?

One more thing.

My first Shaker book, The Outsider, is on e-book sale right now for $1.99 at many e-book selling sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and perhaps others. Just be sure to check the price before you hit enter to be sure you’re getting the price you expect. These e-book sales come and go quickly at times. But if you’ve wanted to read one of my Shaker books, this is the first one I wrote. It was actually a finalist for the Historical Fiction book of the year by the ECPA. (Evangecal Christian Publishers Association).