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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.
October 31, 2016 at 6:41pm October 31, 2016 at 6:41pm
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Prompt: “Expect the good. Mentally concentrate on the good, and know that your subconscious mind answers you always. It never fails.” Joseph Murphy, from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
How much, do you believe, the subconscious mind affects the humans and their concerns?
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I think the subconscious mind is very powerful as it is a computer of sorts and then some. Even though I may be overly simplifying its functions, I’ll start with the memory storage. Everything a person comes in contact with is stored in the subconscious memory. Then it has the data filtering function that filters out all the necessary information needed at the moment. Moreover, it is the source and spring of ideas and inspirational thoughts. Not to mention the fact that it regulates and causes all the bodily processes to perform without the conscious mind knowing about those.
With such power given to us through our subconscious, it is up to us to make it work at its top condition, though not everyone has learned to be good at doing that. In general, meditation is the first step in quieting the conscious mind so the subconscious can work better and faster without its input. In fact, the subconscious takes all its orders from the conscious mind. If the conscious mind really believes in the fact that the sky’s falling, the subconscious mind may find a way to make that become real. That is why when we concentrate on the good, good things come to pass for us.
As to the quote above, I recently finished reading The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Just judging from my personal experiences, I agree with at least 70-90% of what Joseph Murphy has written.
One most important idea in it (for me) is the fact that he says if a prayer is answered, it is answered scientifically through the subconscious mind, although this may take time and the subconscious mind has the habit of not liking to be pushed by willpower, but if we see things the way we want to see them and truly believe in their reality, those things somehow come to pass. This is why faith (not necessarily any specific religion) is the only universal healing principle operating through everybody, and that’s how the faith healers heal. Then, when we receive answers to prayers, those answers come to pass through our mental acceptance of what we pray for.
It seems, in short, our subconscious mind has the answer to all our problems...if only we can learn how to look inside carefully and pose our questions to our subconscious to receive answers to them.
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October 30, 2016 at 6:09pm October 30, 2016 at 6:09pm
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Do you currently or have you ever owned a cat? Tell us a fun cat story. If you've never lived with a cat, tell us about another pet...and if you've never had a pet, what would be one of the first fun things you'd do with your pet if you ever did adopt one?
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I had several cats ever since I was born up to the time before I was married. I say ‘ever since I was born’ because of my aunt who lived with us until she was married and who was cat-crazy like me.
All my companion cats were tabbies, except for a gray one. When I was in the tenth grade, one of them, a mischievous kitten named Tabs, got into my grandmother’s crochet basket. My grandmother was very much into crocheting lace at the time and the lace she crocheted had to be done with very fine thread. Well, Tabs must have lost himself in a tangle during his play with the rolls of thread, until my aunt found him. She brought him into the living room in that very basket. The kitten was covered and wrapped with thread. He was trying to free himself and was meowing in desperation. I had a difficult time getting him out of that mess and finally succeeded by cutting off all that thread.
Of course, I had to buy new balls of thread for my grandmother to make up for the kitten’s antics, too. After that, whenever Tabs saw my grandmother with her basket, he would meow as if he were to be bound all over again and he’d run away to hide or he’d jump up my lap and bury his head in my skirt.
Nowadays, since our traveling days are over and I am home so often, I miss having a cat or a dog but especially a cat because they are easier to take care of and to carry around if one wants to. A dog needs his walks every day and we don’t have a fenced yard. All the yards in my area have open borders, courtesy of our neighborhood association.
My husband isn’t into pets. In fact, he doesn’t want any around, although when our boys were four and seven, we adopted a Newfoundland mix, Joe, who lived up to the young age of seventeen. Hubby also likes my son and daughter-in-law’s Lab Mix, Coco, too, but that’s as far as he can stand any domesticated animal.
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October 29, 2016 at 7:00pm October 29, 2016 at 7:00pm
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It's been said," the reason we hold on to something so tight is because we fear something great can't happen twice."
Do you agree or disagree? Share with us about a time you held on tight, was it the right thing to do or not, or was it simply fear that paralyzed you.
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Since we are human and we don’t have outer coverings like cockroaches do, fear is built into our nature; however, who says something great can’t happen to the same person hundred times over? For people to think that a good thing couldn’t happen twice would be like believing they are able to predict the future with 100% accuracy. Looking at this from another point of view, I think this feeling has its origin in the fear of failure.
There are two basic motivating sources for human behavior: fear and love. When people are afraid of failure, they pull back from life and they reject hope. Love always keeps the hope within it. And once I learned to think for myself, I chose love.
For that reason, it is difficult for me to recall anything that I held on tightly for fear of its loss; the only thing I can easily say was my mother’s words and her ways when I was very little. I then believed that she couldn’t ever be wrong about anything. Once my mind started processing the mistakes she made, and they were quite a few, I was shocked and fearful at first, but then, I grew into my own way of thinking. This is not saying that she was a good or bad mother, but she was a human being like any other and she had good and not-so-desirable sides. It took me a while to see that.
Still, there are a few things I hold on tightly such as my husband, my children, my extended family, and things l like to do, and I don’t want to change those. I guess if I had another husband, other children, and other things I like to do, I’d hold on to them just as tightly, but not because I’d fear those things valuable to me couldn’t happen twice or many other times. It is just that there is no reason to change anything valuable enough when I have them. Maybe other great things can happen or maybe they can’t; the idea of which doesn’t matter. After all, I am the one responsible for me, and the most important things to me are who I am, what I do, and how I value who and what I have.
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October 28, 2016 at 12:00pm October 28, 2016 at 12:00pm
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Do you agree or disagree with this statement? "When you wake up at 2-3am without any reason there is an 80% chance someone is staring at you!" Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and felt you weren't alone? Tell us about it.
(not counting your other halves)
Not really staring, but I probably feel a presence of some sort. It might well be my imagination or something inside my subconscious. 
Yet, I have a true story on the subject. Some time ago, I woke up suddenly and saw a person-like figure bent over me from the side of the bed. It was very tall, possibly 8-9 feet, on the thin side, and all royal blue from head to toe, at least from head to its middle, with the part of it that I could see. I screamed. Hubby woke up and turned on the light. There was nothing in the room. I didn't feel as if the figure meant any harm, though. If anything, I felt a sadness or maybe some kind of a remorse in it because of my screaming.
What happened felt way too real, though we gave the whole thing to a nightmare. But who knows!
Prompt: How will you spend Halloween weekend and Halloween? Any special plans?
The day before Halloween is my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding anniversary. So, we’ll probably celebrate that in some way. And on Halloween Eve, I’ll be handing out candy, and the only decoration I put up is a little witch on the door.
Now that even my kids are entering their middle years, I don't plan a big to-do on Halloween. When they were little, we used to have Kiddie parties at home.
Prompt: Styling a home is a little bit like writing a poem. How do you feel about this statement?
This sentence might have been coined by someone who is more of a creative homemaker than I am. My home has no specific style. It only holds those things that we need and use. Comfort is the key to it. I don’t even try too hard to match colors.
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October 25, 2016 at 1:33pm October 25, 2016 at 1:33pm
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Prompt: “Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.” Bob Dylan
What is your take on this quote?
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Bob Dylan is famous for thinking and singing in opposites. This may be due to the fact that he was probably trying to incite situational awareness in his listeners. Situational awareness is important because, when we look carefully, there may be both positives and negatives in each event, thing, or person. Not all those positive and negative clues and cues are equal. Missing on them may surprise us in a pleasant fashion or hurt us terribly in the future, so with that idea in mind, we may inject meanings into things that may not be there.
Yet, the cues and clues can play a significant role in the way things shape up in future. Among those, negative clues and cues are much harder to detect since, most of the time, negatives may be absent to the sight, or their meanings can be masterfully hidden or better yet, their implied negative meaning may not be there at all. Even an expert in any given area where he is experienced may be unaware of all cues and clues if in his past he hasn’t seen such stuff or even similar ones. On the other hand, a few suspicious people may read negatives into a given situation or thing.
For example, even logo designs are chosen by experts who are experienced in eliciting emotional responses in their customers. Some logos, however, may seem like they have a hidden meaning, and that may have escaped the eyes of such experts. We are all aware of Hillary Clinton’s election logo, which shows the letter of her first name but the logo looks like a hospital sign. We all know there is no hidden meaning in there, but to a foreigner, the case might be a different one.
And sometimes, a thing or a word is just what it is in its concrete meaning. A triangle, for example, is only a shape. If when I am talking about the triangle shape of my garden and someone else takes it as if I meant a love triangle, he or she would be mistaken. That someone may have known the meaning of the word triangle but he also had to know what the triangle in question didn’t mean.
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October 24, 2016 at 5:57pm October 24, 2016 at 5:57pm
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Prompt: Julian Barnes writes in his book England, England, “Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”
Do you believe strong early memories offer clues to what people can become later in their lives? And how do you think this idea will play out in your characters’ actions?
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Since our brains are endless depositories and filters for anything important, any information that goes into them is there for safekeeping. For that reason, strong early memories impact people’s actions later in life.
Sometimes we are afraid to do something or we shy away from certain people without specifically knowing why. More often than not, this may have something to do with an earlier experience. For the same reason, to treat phobias, therapists urge people to face their fears and put themselves in the situation that they have a phobia for. The idea is to place a more positive memory on top of the negative one to limit or eradicate its force.
Taking off from this idea, imagine how much an earlier childhood experience will have a bearing on the characters we create. It is a good idea to think about a character’s powerful early memories chronologically or topically and review them. A hero or heroine will be afraid of commitment, for example, if couples fighting is all they have seen earlier in life. Neither would a 007 character become a 007 character if he were told constantly in his childhood that he shouldn’t jump into things for he'd get badly hurt. Yet, I can imagine a truly wimpy character, after finding the right circumstance and motivation, becoming a 007 character and this psychological transformation passing through my pen or achieved on my keyboard. Surely, I’d have to explain that character’s backstory to show his or her character arc.
Talking of the quote in the prompt, Julian Barnes is a well-read teacher and one of my favorite authors, especially after I’ve read his book Through the Window, a compilation of essays, in which he writes mostly about books and their import to culture. He is mostly noted and has won awards for his novels, however. Reading Julian Barnes makes me think more deeply than I usually do.
Here is a link to a Julian-Barnes interview in the Paris Review’s Art of Fiction page, inside the Winter 2000 edition. It offers a portion of his ideas on literature and writing.
{link: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/562/the-art-of-fiction-no-165-julian-ba...}
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October 23, 2016 at 12:56am October 23, 2016 at 12:56am
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PROMPT: Is there a choice or decision you've had to make in the last year that you wish you could reverse the outcome of? How should it have ended up?
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The title of this entry, in no way, points the finger at the presidential candidates. It is about shoes, but I guess flip flopping tires anybody out whether it is in the head or on the feet.
Thus, chugging along, this prompt is a tough one because I don’t usually sweat over my choices or decisions. I think what’s done is done and go forward from there. A decision with an outcome I didn’t like has been difficult to dig up.
It may sound silly but the only thing I could think of at the moment was a pair of pink flip flops I bought, only because hubby wanted me to get them. Why I agreed, it passes me by. I guess I gave in to his good will or his wish to do something nice for me. It isn’t that I never wear flip flops. I do and a lot, but they all have a good amount of sole and excellent arch supports.
These flip flops, however, were a name brand but plastic and made in China, had very little support, and they cost over $60. For such a thing, if I were shopping on my own, I wouldn’t even spend $10. Still, just to please him, I said yes when he said I should get them, and I honestly tried very hard to wear them after we took them home, but they weren’t comfortable to walk on. They were probably meant for 14 year-olds since their soles were flat and thin.
So without saying anything to him, I wore them a little at a time, and less and less often. After a while, they took a permanent spot at the end of my shoe rack, and then, they found themselves in the AM-Vets donation bag.
I really didn’t like to give them away because they meant something nice concerning my husband. I wish there would be a way I could have worn them or I wish I could have steered his good will toward something I could use, something fitting for my presidential feet.
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October 22, 2016 at 12:08pm October 22, 2016 at 12:08pm
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Do you ever wish you could look back on your greatest love like they do in the movies? Look back on the fights or the misery or the sex or the love and see it all for what it really was? Would it make a great soap opera?
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Yes, to all, and because I don’t like soap operas, I am not elaborating on the subject.
Prompt: "If you only do what you know you can do, you'll never do very much." Tom Krause. Do you agree or disagree?
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I agree because taking a chance on things we can’t do makes us grow whether we win or lose since there is always that hope that we can succeed and this is especially important when we are trying to do something important. In this sense, it becomes a matter of the heart rather than the mind.
In a righteous situation, the conviction of the heart matters more than the idea that the attempted thing is guaranteed to turn out well. What becomes the highlight is the belief and the hope that that attempted thing is the right thing to do, regardless of how it turns out. I think, at times, the more impossible the situation, the deeper that hope has to be. If it weren't for that hope, George Washington's ragged army wouldn't have won against one of the great empires of the time with its fully clothed, fed, and armed forces. It is that kind of hope, which gives us the strength to live and always try new things and fight for what is just, albeit in impossible situations.
Therefore, paying attention to the impossibility of a venture and listening to those or to our fears who warn us that we are taking too big a chance is counter-productive on the path that we wish to follow, the path that interests us with the strength of conviction that possibly we can make some headway in the area, the path that will empower our own self-respect.
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October 20, 2016 at 1:20pm October 20, 2016 at 1:20pm
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Prompt: Do you like orange pumpkins or white pumpkins? Do you buy pumpkins at a pumpkin farm or somewhere else?
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In my mind, a pumpkin has to be orange. A white pumpkin is a pumpkin wearing a shroud. My bias toward orange pumpkins may be because all pumpkin related stories and news showed pumpkin images in orange.
As to where I buy them, there are no pumpkin farms around where I live, but there are several pumpkin patches in Florida, all too far to drive. So whatever the local supermarket has, I get that. I especially like the small pumpkins that I can exhibit on the windowsill.
This prompt made me search for info about pumpkins. I think what I found below has quite a bit of stuff in a nutshell.
From the site Funtober.com
“Before Columbus, pumpkins were not a native fruit in Europe. Jack O’Lanterns were carved from turnips or gourds. Pumpkins were native to Central America for over 5000 years before being brought back to Europe by the French explorer Jacques Cartier. Pumpkins are a fruit and really a member of the squash family which includes melons, cucumbers, gourds and more. The Irish are credited with bringing pumpkin carving to America. Pumpkin flowers and seeds are edible. It generally takes 80-120 days for a pumpkin to go from seed to grown fruit. Most pumpkins in the United States are ripened and used in October.”
“Pumpkins were first grown in the New World There were originally grown by Native American farmers in combination with other crops along river banks. The squash and pumpkins were first grown along with sunflowers and beans. Then they were grown with maize (corn) and beans. The “Three Sisters,” as they are known, aid each other in growth. The squash prevents weeds and preserves moisture in the ground. The corn serves as a trellis for the beans to grow, and their growth helps to stabilize the corn in the wind. The pumpkins looked different than the ones which are turned into jack-o-lanterns today.
“The word pumpkin, despite the American origin of the plant, has greek origins. In Greek, Pepon -or Pepin- means large melon. As the word and squash gained use in France, England and America, the word pumpkin emerge.
“Pumpkins were a valuable food source for both Native Americans and early European settlers. From pumpkin seeds to roasted pumpkin strips, they were cooked, used in stews, or ground into flour. They stored well and helped settlers through the harsh winters. They were also cleaned and used as bowls and for storage. Pumpkins even became a source of beer when settlers found other options scarce.”
Prompt: You are spending Halloween with Stephen King. What spooky things await you? Have fun with this.
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It was surprising to get an invitation from Stephen King for a Halloween Party in his castle. I mean, I never met the man. I read his books but, do authors know who reads their books? Maybe this one knew with all the magic he knows and the way he twists and turns that magic for his purposes. So I accepted the invitation with great enthusiasm.
The castle was a replica of Vlad’s; no creativity there…except for the castle door, which was split by an ax and the ax still hung in its middle. Cute! It had to be Jack Torrance’s work. The minute I rang the doorbell, someone screamed: “Here’s Johnny!” I guessed Stephen King wanted to relive his books in his daily life.
Pennywise, the murderous clown with razor-sharp teeth, opened the door. Now I worried about my next nightmare. Yeah!
At the entrance from inside a huge metal cage, Cujo barked at me. I don’t care if Cujo had rabies and a thirst for blood; I wanted to pet him. I just love dogs. Pennywise, however, pulled me away, his grasp on my arm reaching all the way to my humerus. “Not yet, Ma’am,” he groaned. “The master will let him and everyone else loose at midnight. Then the fun will begin.”
“Oh?” I wasn’t so sure I wanted to stay until midnight, but in the next instant, my eyes took in the sight of a half-open door, inside which Richard Vickers was watching a closed-circuit recording. Oh, Oh!
“Well,” I said, “I might not be able to stay that long. My broom will get impatient. It needs to be up in the air every two hours or so. It may refuse to take off into the air, later.”
“No problem! The master will send you back in Christine, together with your broom.”
“But I have a critter at home who has to be fed.”
“Well, I’ll run this problem by the master and see what he has to say since you are the only guest tonight!”
Ouch! The only guest! Ugh! Why did I ever think clowns were adorable!
I stopped short at the door to the entrance when Ace Merrill showed up pointing his knife at me, together with the disgruntled Nazi, Kurt Dussander. It was evident Pennywise’s master was going to let loose all his characters on me. And me meeting the author? Forget about it. With him holding the pen, I couldn’t even meet my maker, but the horned enemy from down below.
“Oh. my God!” I exclaimed, my shrill voice making Pennywise take a step back. “I forgot to tether my broom to a tree. I’ll be right back!”
And I dashed away before Pennywise could grab my arm again, past the door with Richard Vickers inside, past the growling, howling Cujo, past Gage Creed—Just when did this kid show up!--, and pushing open the split-door with the ax still hanging on it, I rushed to my broom, barely in time before a tree near me burst into fire.
Finally, up on my broom and into the wind, I waved at Carrie who was watching from an upstairs window.
I feel I handled this whole thing with quite a bit of polish, although I always hate to stand people up, especially authors like Stephen King. No wonder I didn't get a repeat invitation. What a pity!
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October 18, 2016 at 2:28pm October 18, 2016 at 2:28pm
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Prompt: Have you built a positive circle of influence for yourself to get you through good and bad times? What or who, if it is a person, is in that circle, and can you describe those things, elements, or people?
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My circle of influence took its roots from my extended family on my mother’s side. Even though any of those adults who shaped me is not alive today, their words and teachings lead me on. I think I have internalized their ways and behavior to the degree that I can use them to help me throughout my life.
Then, there are people, friends or acquaintances and even those who I meet on the street, in the supermarket or the library, or wherever I end up. Since I love people in general, just talking to someone face-to-face even about trivial matters lifts me up. I guess it is because I value human beings a lot, whether I know them well or not.
In addition, literature and all arts have the means to get me through anything. Reading and writing have been a haven for me at any time, and there are some saintly authors in literature whose words are like balm for my soul.
Still added to that, I take refuge in nature, in its minute operations, on land or sea, and in its plants and animals. Anytime I take a walk in a natural environment such as the beach or the woods or even on a city street, I come home feeling restored and happier.
Prompt: What do you think the latest clown sightings are about and why do the clowns creep us out?
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I am wondering if Stephen King led the way for these clown sightings and this distrust of clowns, however unknowingly, which became so deeply entrenched in the public mind that it led the rejects of society like crooks and criminals to engage in using the clown persona for their dirty deeds. Yet, as much as this might be the possibility, blaming anyone’s book for such a fad is uncalled for, and writers’ imaginations should not be held back from creating.
I guess the professional clowns hate this latest craze the most, and who could blame them? And were Shakespeare’s plays also slapped on the face with the latest scare? Possibly. Puck, King Lear’s Fool, Yorick and their likes must be forced to wear readjusted costumes on stage, now.
Shaking this stigma off won’t be easy. After all, most of us hired a clown for our children’s parties way back when, and a clown in the circus is a happy face even when his/her makeup shows a sad clown. It isn’t fair to have one’s livelihood badmouthed and slapped with a scary, terrible reputation. It isn’t fair when all actors agree that doing comedy is much harder than doing drama. In this case, however, funny is not funny anymore.
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October 16, 2016 at 8:14pm October 16, 2016 at 8:14pm
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PROMPT: Tell us about a time when you were faced with one of your biggest insecurities, and how you got over it.
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The outcome of any insecurity is that we feel pressured and we don’t know why. This is how we ruin our lives and mental health. With some things, we can backtrack and redo and it works; with other things we have to learn new ways of being or relearn stuff.
One of my biggest insecurities had to do with the latter, which was keeping a clean house. To a degree, if I don’t keep it in check, that insecurity still sticks out its dirty neck, but I have learned to smack it on the head and send it back to where it came from.
There was a good reason for this insecurity, however. My mother never kept house. She managed the money and a few other things but she never cooked or cleaned. We always had other people doing those things for us. If anything, when I wanted to do things like that at an earlier age, the other people shooed me away.
Imagine my frustration when I got married and had to cook and clean. Cooking came easier. I managed it somehow. Cleaning not much so. I would clean one thing, one room, one floor, and the others would get dirty. It was a never-ending struggle. Then I figured it out; it was a matter of organization, something like a plan an administrator would come up with in a work situation. I also decided spotless didn’t amount to much and clean-enough was good-enough.
Not only that, I realized an unclean or somewhat messy place once in a while didn’t matter to anyone. This realization saved me. Nowadays, I don’t care at all if things are a bit askew, and they are so, more often than not.
Prompt: While sorting your wallet/purse, something about a ten-dollar bill catches your attention, despite being completely authentic why does the date say 2050?
" I'm worried, what if this doesn't go right? What if-"
or
" You talk too much."
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2050? Why a ten-dollar bill? I didn’t even go through the Stonehenge rocks like Claire in the Outlander Saga. What is this bill doing in my purse? Would they even have ten-dollar bills in 2050?
Questions, questions! But wait! If I am really in 2050, that means we’ve survived the 2016 elections with a good-for-nothing president, and the cataclysmic climate change didn’t happen, and no asteroid hit the earth, and human race survived.
All that is fantastic. But why am I still carrying a purse from 2016? I am so passé now. What will the people say? Could this ten-dollar bill buy me a new purse? I bet it wouldn’t even get me a plastic bag. Well, I think I’ll carry my antique bag around and flaunt it as if it were a collector's item or an objet d'art. Don’t they say if you got it, flaunt it?
So, turning to my husband, I say, " I'm worried, what if this doesn't go right? What if-"
He grimaces like always, like the times when he reads my mind. "You talk too much,” he says. “That ten-dollar bill is the play-money the neighbor’s grandkid was playing with, right here this morning, when you were babysitting for them when they went to the dentist."
Yeah, right! He still hasn’t caught on to the fact that we’ve time-travelled. Men! They just can't face reality.
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October 14, 2016 at 7:53pm October 14, 2016 at 7:53pm
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If you went on a date with Edgar Allen Poe, how would it go? What would you do? Did the raven join you and Edgar? Would it end in joy or despair?
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Since you asked, it has been too difficult a date for me, not because of the guy, mind you, but the logistics of it. Because Edgar was too scared to pick me up, scared of the horrid presidential race to which we're exposing the entire creation, I had to time-travel to where and when he lived. Moreover, I had to zoom in on him before he fell for his 13-year-old cousin.
Eewww! On top of the age problem, imagine anyone falling for their cousin!
Yet, I wanted to meet Edgar, cousin business or not. Besides, I knew what would happen to him eventually and curiosity killed the cat, which in my case was more or less of a literary curiosity. So I took a chance although I am a married woman, but then, in the nineteenth century, my twentieth-century marriage wouldn’t count, anyway. Right?
It wasn’t easy to make it exactly to 1830 when he was living in New York City before he moved to Baltimore in 1831 to live with his aunt and his young (child) cousin, whom he married, later.
Edgar met me uptown on a new two-block street in front of the Lafayette Place of the money magnate John Jacob Astor. The so-called luxurious building’s construction was just about to finish, but its columns were in place and a few Sing-Sing inmates were still on the job. They looked at me weirdly, even though I had managed to find a passable attire for the era from the NY Repertoire Theater’s costume department.
Edgar was in a pretty good mood for having just published the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. As we sauntered down the street, I told him I had read The Fall of the House of Usher and said, ”I wouldn’t want to be in Usher’s presence.”
He looked at me funny. “But you are in my presence, milady!”
Now, I looked at him funny but didn’t say anything.
“Who do you think Usher is?” He grinned. “Usher is me. Usher and the physical house are one and the same. A house always is a person.”
Who was I to contradict him!
There’s a lot more to this date to tell you about, but I’ll pass for the moment because I still am undoing what I did to get ready for Hurricane Matthew, and I don’t have a novel-length time. Maybe on some other prompt occasion? Okay, just for the curious minds, no, there was no kiss at the end, just a very brief handshake.
I wonder why my right hand still feels the chill...
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October 13, 2016 at 10:22pm October 13, 2016 at 10:22pm
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Prompt: Did you get to do everything you wanted to do this summer? What things didn't you get done that you wanted to do?
During any summer, I don’t get much done, anyway. It is just too hot where I live, even with air conditioning. The only thing I did more this year was writing and reviewing for the GOT games. Other than that, I did what I usually do. Nothing more, possibly somewhat less.
Prompt: You find a white pumpkin, orange pumpkin, and a little black kitten on your steps. A message is attached to the kitten's collar. Who are they from? Do you accept the gifts? Do they change your life? Write this any way you want. Be nice to the kitten.
I love black kittens. My son has a black cat who was the cutest kitten once.
As to this little kitten, I can hardly read what is written inside the message attached to her collar since I am not wearing my reading glasses at the moment. I go inside to get my glasses and when I return, the kitten is sitting on top of the white pumpkin. It is such a cute sight that now I have to go back inside to get my camera.
When I come back, the kitten is now off the pumpkin but she is playing peek-a-boo running behind one pumpkin then the other. Maybe she is camera-shy. I give up on the photo shoot and carry both pumpkins inside, and the kitten follows me. I sit down on the nearest chair and pick the kitten up.
I can now read the message. It says, “Please keep this kitten. The pumpkins are gifts for keeping her. Please do not separate the three. The pumpkins last forever and the kitten will keep you good company as long as you live, but if you don’t keep her, we cannot promise what those pumpkins will turn into.”
A threat? But they didn’t have to threaten me. I am already in love with this kitten. I bet with those two magical pumpkins and this tiny black kitten, we’ll have a great time.
Except, I haven’t yet figured out where to put those pumpkins on my broom when I go flying with the kitty on my lap.
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October 11, 2016 at 7:22pm October 11, 2016 at 7:22pm
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Prompt: For a brilliant writing idea, what wins for you most of the time? An Ahha moment, being 100 percent sure of knowing something, the search for an idea, or your expertise?
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All of the above have worked for me, but the Ahha moment is my favorite; however, my Ahha moments come at the most inopportune times. Even if I may have noted a reminder word or two somewhere, somehow, when I get back to writing on it, the magic is gone, and I wonder why that idea appealed to me, but then on a rare occasion, the magic is still there. 
I usually come across good ideas while I am doing something else. Yesterday, for example, while cleaning out a closet, I found some flash cards with pictures on them on a certain subject. I thought of writing something for each of those cards and putting it together as one item. So I didn’t throw them out. Unfortunately for my housekeeping, this always happens. I also get similar or totally different ideas while reading poetry. There are poems that have caused fiction in my writing.
The search always bears fruit, though. That fruit may be sour or bitter but I always produce something out of it.
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And for laughs…although I may have to raise the rating on my blog…
I received an e-mail from an unknown someone or some company, and now I think they know something about me that I don’t know about myself, something about who I used to be. Maybe this is another Ahha Moment!
Without much ado, here’s the subject line in blue that I snipped from my e-mail addy, which you may need to click on or just point to, to make it bigger (no pun intended):
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October 10, 2016 at 5:15pm October 10, 2016 at 5:15pm
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Prompt: “It has taken me quite a few years to realize the fact that most of the thoughts in my head are not necessary.”
― Bert McCoy
My question is, how can anyone chase away those unnecessary thoughts? Do you have any ideas?
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For writers, there are no unnecessary thoughts because we know how to make use of every single one of them. Yet, any thought even a brilliant one can become a pest when we are trying to concentrate on something specific; therefore, all thoughts can be useful but they may be unwanted at that specific moment. This is because thoughts have their own way of trafficking through our consciousness. They come and go as they please and they don’t like being forced or resisted against.
Decades ago, I practiced mind-emptying meditation with dubious results. Yet, that meditation helped me to focus my attention on the matter at hand with some success. I also find that living a stress-free life (Well, as much as I can) helps my focus.
Those who know more about the mind say that unwanted thoughts are common symptoms of anxiety disorders, especially with obsessive compulsive people, as they may lead the way to negative thinking, self-recrimination, and violent urges. Worse yet, fighting these thoughts brings them back harder.
The one thing I learned in meditation is not to get mad at any of the interrupter thoughts but to watch them sail away slowly. One can do these through imagery or by a smile and a goodbye wave. If a thought is persistent, however, to write it out is the best way to handle it, and this fits the needs of us writers perfectly.
Prompt by Fivesixer  : Monday is Columbus Day in the United States- a holiday that some areas are no longer acknowledging, choosing instead to celebrate the heritage of the people Christopher Columbus first encountered. Should we still continue to honor Columbus in the US? And if you're not in the US, does your country celebrate similar holidays, either for the natives of your land or for the person(s) responsible for discovering it?
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I don’t think one can discover anything if that thing is already discovered. Since people were already living in this continent when Columbus set foot on land in Hispaniola, I wouldn’t count it as a discovery in itself. It might be called, however, a discovery of a place for those who haven’t seen or heard of it. I have never been to Antarctica, but I know it exists. If I go there by some far-out chance, I could only deem it to be a discovery for myself.
As to honoring Columbus, I think we should do that because he opened new vistas for those of us from the other continents. When I lived in NY, Columbus Day was a legal full-fledged state holiday. Here in Florida, too, the state recognizes it, but closings or its being a paid holiday is left to the companies themselves.
Choosing Columbus Day as the celebration of the indigenous people, on the other hand, is as if we are insulting them. They didn’t fare well because of our invasion, did they! Neither would we if our earth were to be invaded by hostile space aliens.
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October 3, 2016 at 4:16pm October 3, 2016 at 4:16pm
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Prompt: “In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exception.” George Eliot
What do you think makes the human nature more interesting: its compliance with the rules or its deviations into exceptions?
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Compliance with the rules makes day-to-day living much more pleasant, smoother, and easier; however, where the idea of interesting comes in, deviation wins hands down. Even for the compliant characters finding perfect rules to obey to can become complicated. This is why all fiction is more attention-getting when it focuses on characters who stray from the norm. The same goes for the movies, TV and media stories, and even the everyday news.
According to Aristotle, the human being is conjugal (liking to be with another person, persons, or group), political, and mimetic (imaginative, creative, analogical, adaptive, mimicking). Sometimes, in any of these areas, deviation from the norm occurs to a smaller or greater degree, and in addition to that, moral or societal rules can change at the drop of a hat or become complicated in some way. Subsequently, the story of a character or characters and the events turn out to be attention-getting as the result of these fluctuations.
Case in point, I just finished reading a novel where almost nothing happened. That is, whatever was amiss had already happened in the backstory. In the real story, things went very smoothly for the main character and the secondary and additional characters all acted as if they were angels on earth. To tell you the truth, it was the most boring story I had ever read.
On the other hand, when the human beings revolt against one thing or another or act internally or externally in a quirky, different, or even criminal ways we do have a story that is worth our time.
So yeah, deviants rule the writing world and possibly the real world. Just look around you. 
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October 2, 2016 at 7:15pm October 2, 2016 at 7:15pm
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Prompt: When you were a kid, who did you most want to be like when you grew up? Was it a particular athlete, a television or movie character, a superhero? Maybe even a family member? And in what way(s) did you emulate them?
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When I was six, seven, or younger, I wanted to be a doctor because my grandfather, my superhero, was one. When I turned eight, I made up my mind to become a writer or a poet because my mother’s uncle was a lit teacher, and also many people in the family had tried their hands in writing. When I started to pen my flawed productions, just about everybody in the family remarked that I had gotten the family bug. “The microbe’s in her,” they said.
The fact is, I really couldn’t emulate anybody perfectly, but I was very lucky to be born into a wonderful extended family on my mother’s side. In that family, the greatest lesson everyone in unison taught me was respect for human beings and all life. As to their vocations and interests, I may have borrowed a thing here, another thing there, but when all was said and done, I was me, the one forever searching. So I ended up studying linguistics, art, psychology, and several other things while earning certificates and diplomas for one thing or another, but reading and writing has been the greatest background force in everything I have done.
Prompt: When humanity has to leave earth to live on the moon, you panic. Nobody knows that you are a.........
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Nobody knew I was a creature from Alpha Centauri, exiled to live an earthly life as my probation stipulated. I just couldn’t go with everyone to live on the moon. I would be violating the terms of my probation. Worse yet, I knew I was being watched. Probation officers of Alpha Centauri, watch their subjects from afar on a regular basis. Even thinking about moving to the moon would be an infraction, and no statute of limitations existed, either.
I, therefore, didn’t say anything to anybody, one way or another, but I put my most essential needs in a backpack and went on a hike in the jungle. I am now guessing, most anyone must have left for the moon by now, and hopefully, they took their unruly rulers and good-for-nothing presidential candidates with them.
I plan to hide another year or two in the jungle with the monkeys and other creatures like me, and then, return to the empty and forlorn cities of yesteryear. I expect everything to be in place. Living alone on earth is definitely much better than living under power-crazed, rule-breaking presidents and kings.
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