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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
February 6, 2018 at 11:50pm February 6, 2018 at 11:50pm
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Prompt: What's your “back in the day, we...” story? Write about whatever.
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I don’t have grandchildren, except for those really nice ones in WdC who adopted me, and I am not going to bore them with any “back in the day,” story. But then, maybe I’ll relate an earliest memory or two, since while writing this, an incident or two came to me, incidents that may be suggestive of emotional blackmail. 
1. If I didn’t want to eat something or other my mother used to tell me, “You have to eat that. Children in…. are starving. (fill in the blanks. In my time, first, it was China; then Korea won the lottery) They can’t even find a bite of what you’re rejecting.” That always made me sad enough to eat whatever I was served.
2. One of my mother’s uncles had a fancy garden that he was crazy over. Once, when I was three years old, we went to visit him. Before we went, my mother told me not to ever pick a flower or a leaf or anything because those plants in that garden were a family and anything I’d pick would be separating a child from his mother and I would be hurting the plants’ children who'd feel much pain.
When we arrived there, the aunt told me to go out in the garden and enjoy the outdoors. I shook my head and said no and stood frozen. Then the uncle took me by the hand and led me out.
His was truly a beautiful garden, probably one of the best privately owned that I have seen in all my life. I was very careful only to walk on the walkways and not to step on the flowerbeds. The uncle picked a flower and handed it to me. I think it might be a pansy, but no matter, I immediately began bawling and crying my eyes out.
You can imagine what a surprised man he was because he himself was a lit teacher and knew a bit about child psychology. Yet, he couldn’t understand what got into me. By this time, the aunt had decided maybe the whole family should have tea in the gazebo since it was such a nice day. They were in the process of settling around the table in the gazebo. Hearing my loud wailing and lamentation, they ran to us to find out why I was sobbing and crying my eyes out.
I can’t recall what happened after that, but her uncle must have told my mother how to handle me better or something because I recall that he took her inside to talk privately. That uncle was such a gentle, beautiful soul whom I grew to love and admire deeply over the years. He was only a few years younger than my grandmother, and he passed away before he turned sixty-four when I was in my teens.
So, if anyone is wondering how and where my gullibility first took its roots, here is its possible starting line in the race of my life.
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February 6, 2018 at 3:49pm February 6, 2018 at 3:49pm
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Prompt: Is there such a thing as good and evil? What determines an action as good or evil? Who gets to decide who’s good or who’s evil? Your thoughts.
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First, I need to define evil. Evil may be considered as the antonym of good, but the real antonym of good is bad, but not all bad is evil. Even in the justice system, there are degrees of crimes. Knowledgeable people and circumstances can help or even bad people through their own work can turn around to be better and reach to acceptability despite the dual nature of humans. This is bad turning to some degree of good.
Evil is different. Evil cannot be fixed. To me, evil is irretrievable, irreparable, and permanently bad. It is harmful, inexplicable, and obscure. And you-know-who in religious terms, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as in Harry Potter, personifies evil. (As an aside, come to think of it, Lord Voldemort wasn’t really evil but really bad.)
The dictionary defines the noun form of evil as “profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.” The adjective form of evil is defined as profoundly immoral and malevolent.
Can we know evil when we see it? I doubt that. Evil is cunning, crafty, and sly. It approaches us in many forms, mostly in the forms of things or people we have been yearning for, and that is why we give in to it.
From where I stand, mass-killers and murderers have done acts of evil but are they evil themselves? That, only their creator knows. We might call them sociopaths or psychopaths who commit terrible crimes, if only to explain their horrific acts. This may be acceptable only when the crimes committed are involuntary, which means these people believed in the wrong ideals or chose wrongly while they themselves were quite ordinary or even good people before those acts.
In our time, the word evil has become what we call wrongdoers who cannot be injected with any form of morality and for whom all devices of justice are inadequate, and the word itself describes the limits of what badness we’re able to put up with. For such irreparable criminals, evil may be the appropriate adjective.
As to good, it means all desirable virtues like morality, charity, peace, love, and friendship that benefit someone or something. Good is easy to see and to identify. As the opposite of bad, it forms the bright side of humanity whereas its opposite is our shadowed side. These two sides make up our dual nature.
On the other hand, evil in its perfect meaning is difficult to pinpoint. In any case, I am not the one to decide who is evil as I don’t have the knowledge, insight, or the authority for it.
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