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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.
Previous ... - 1- 2 ... Next
November 30, 2014 at 3:18pm November 30, 2014 at 3:18pm
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Every Sunday, I try to skim through or partly read again one of my old books. Today, I have in my hand The New Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. The book is a compilation of poems that brings together the ordinary, mundane, and sometimes eccentric lives of everyday Americans. I think this is an important book as to cultural perspective, and although it is made up parts as a single person per poem, the collection altogether is a whole.
In these people, it is easy to see the strength and the weakness of human character, the total of what made rural Midwest America. Still, the message of the book is universal of subject, place, and time, because the characters in it are so human.
The book I have in my hand is in paperback, second printing, in 1968. By no means a collector’s item. Inside it are, according to my counting, 331 (could be 335) people referred to in verse by name. The first Spoon River Anthology appeared in 1915, and its continuation, The New Spoon River Anthology came to being in 1924, according to what is written in the Introduction by Willis Barnstone.
The feeling I get from the poems in general has to do with light and darkness, satire, doom, and inevitability of life and death; the poet's approach somehow reminds of Sylvia Plath. I don’t find Edgar Lee Masters's poems to be lyrical, but starkly realistic and dramatic.
I must have picked this book subconsciously, since my next Drama Newsletter, which I wrote this morning, has to do with different ways of approaching characterization. Some days my mind works only on one track. 
Two Poems From the Anthology:
.I.
Lilah Wood
When The Ledger became a daily,
With Mr. Wood arrived at sixty,
He celebrated his name at the head
Of the editorial column
As editor and owner
By marrying me, who was just nineteen.
And it all seemed happy enough at first,
And full of peace and prestige,
Until I knew of the game of life.
For when I began to rub the lameness
Out of his back, and mix his toddies,
And lie by his side when he was tired,
He whispered the secrets of his strength,
And the secrets of his weakness.
There were two giants, so he said,
The paper mill and the advertisers;
Perhaps there were four, and one was the bank,
And one the telegraph service.
And they almost owned him, and quite controlled him.
And there we sat in an equal fate —
For didn't he own me?
.II.
Emilius Poole
Did you ever see a growth,
Whether of flower or weed,
Break down and waste because of excess of life?
That was I, fellow citizens,
With no work to employ my restless energies,
And fulfill my vision of life.
Say you that the right man finds his work?
What would have become of General Grant
If the war had not come on?
He was sinking into decay,
And was rescued miraculously for himself and the country
By the opportunity of the war.
But no war came for me!
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November 29, 2014 at 12:15pm November 29, 2014 at 12:15pm
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Prompt: Buddha said, "We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." Do you believe this is true?
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On Thanksgiving Day, my daughter-in-law wore a pink shirt that had the inscription of “Happy Thoughts” in front. Just to look at her lovely face is enough to light up a place, but the shirt added an extra illumination to the good mood of the rest of us old folks. This alone is proof enough that Buddha is right when he said, “We are shaped by our thoughts.”
The same thought is also reflected in As a Man Thinketh, a literary essay by James Allen, published in 1902.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0304spiritpsych/030405thinketh/030405thoughto...
In it, Allen likens the mind to a garden and keeping it weed-free and cultivating it with flowers and useful plants turns him into the master gardener of his soul.
Identity is the distinct personality of a person and is, to a degree, shaped by the cultural and personal experiences. Through those experiences, thoughts on various aspects of life are created. Still to develop and improve on those thoughts and turn the negative ones into positives is an individual’s duty in order to gain a free and joyful mind and a constructive, optimistic identity.
By this, I don’t mean we should all be replicas of Pollyanna; far from it. I don’t believe one can take a tragedy like the Holocaust and turn it into a happy thing in one’s mind, but one can always clear oneself from the negative effects of such a horrific happening, as many survivors did, such as Viktor Frankl who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that impressed me greatly. This quote from it puts what I am trying to say in a perfect nutshell. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Then here’s another one: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The “space” Frankl is talking about belongs to how we process anything and form our thoughts on it.
On the other hand, this undertaking has to be a more difficult thing to do if one has been abused constantly in his growing years and now is living in a war zone, always afraid for his life. Still, mastering one's thoughts is doable and, no matter what happens to the person event-wise, his life could be more rewarding if he succeeds in this endeavor.
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November 28, 2014 at 12:05pm November 28, 2014 at 12:05pm
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After the last guest leaves, you push your way out of the drunken stupor and lean on the back of a chair in your kitchen, assessing the condition of the full sink and the floor tiles that need mopping. Husband is on your trail. It is his way to hover a few paces behind you. Still, you are surprised to see him. He puts his hand on your shoulder.
“Would you like a drink?” You ask as a bizarre opener. You’ve both drunk more than enough.
He laughs. “No. Would you like me help you?”
“No,” you say vehemently, knowing the clean-up job would double, if he did try to help with his clumsiness and his jelly fingers, although you love the gesture. Smiling in appreciation, you hold and squeeze his hand on your shoulder with your opposite hand.
“If you say so!” He strokes your hair and leaves. You fold the hand that held his as if to make his warmth stay longer. Then you kind of wish everyone, too, had stayed longer, maybe forever.
This has to be the turbulence of your heart that questions the status quo, your perpetual craving for company, or is it some kind of a sadness generating a feeling of nostalgia for the crowds, for the extended family you grew up in?
The way you now feel is not an aberrant state after all. There is some sweetness in nostalgia or even in sadness, after an immediate gratification or superficial contentment, and you tell yourself to realize that no one ever lives in perpetual happiness.
You recall Viktor Frankl’s words in the Man's Search for Meaning. “It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds."
So you do just that. You chuckle and rise. You walk toward the sink, as you tell yourself you were just observing. After all, observing the interplay of states in one’s own psyche is a writer’s job.
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Prompt: What happened after the last guest left? Take this in any direction you choose...
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November 27, 2014 at 10:25pm November 27, 2014 at 10:25pm
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The entirety of life, and even its hard parts, is made up of tiny moments. If we miss the tiny moments, don’t we miss the whole? So I like to give thanks for all tiny moments. The moments I spend with family and friends and all the wonderful ones I spend with my WdC friends from behind the computer screen. Any kind of acclaim or whatever feast I am fed comes way after that.
“Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings.”
J. Robert Moskin
While grasping at the straws with gratitude, an article I read yesterday sent shock waves through my appreciation of the holidays. Darn it, I know I should never read about the turkey business and turkey farms and such, on the day before Thanksgiving, but I did. What little I have retained is in the dropnote below. Click on it at your own risk.
About turkeys ▼ In the wild, turkeys live up to ten years. Not so when they are hatched and bred for slaughter. After turkey babies are hatched under a heat lamp, without any turkey mommies, they are huddled together in large windowless sheds, thousands of turkeys to a shed with standing room only, and they stay there until the end of their lives. To keep turkeys from killing each other parts of their toes and beaks are cut off. When they are five months old, they are sent to a slaughterhouse. Some of them die on the way due to overcrowding. Each year during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays 300 million turkeys are killed. How inhumanely they are killed, I am not even going there.
Oh well, now that I’ve written and somewhat hid in a dropnote what has been bothering me since yesterday morning, I have to write a fact about myself. I never liked the turkey meat. I do eat it though, only in Thanksgiving, especially because someone has gone through the trouble of preparing it.
Despite the turkey business, I enjoy the holidays a lot because they bring people together, and today, I swallowed up my dislike for the way we treat all animals in general and ate a small slice of a turkey breast. Regardless of anything, we had a very nice time with friends and family, and some painstakingly prepared food. The wine was the best part. By the time, deserts were up, I couldn’t eat any because I was so full. Pie and wine alone, I think, would make a better Thanksgiving feast to be served up front before the main course.
Yet, the best part of any holiday is the time spent with nice people, no matter what we eat, and I am so very grateful for a wonderful day with family, old friends, and a couple of new friends we met today. The miracle of this year’s Thanksgiving has been the people I connected with, and for that alone, I am deeply thankful.
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November 26, 2014 at 12:45am November 26, 2014 at 12:45am
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Prompt: If you had lived 100 years ago, what kind of job would you have had?
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The year is 1914. World War I has just started and the jobs vacated by men are now open to women. I have been a part of the suffragette movement already, having successfully fought earlier against the corsets and the consumption of liquor.
With the onset of the war, I have trained as a nurse and am staying in that position for life. Besides, other jobs might not be available after the end of the war. Nursing is the best opportunity to continue working unless one could manage domestic service. Yet, domestic service may not be as rewarding due to the whims of the employers.
Working in the jobs held by men when men go to war has given a bigger hand to the women in the financial and economic sense and also greater confidence in their own capabilities. I watch all this, and rejoice inside myself, for I don’t want to give up my newly found freedom when the war is over. That is why I am going to stick with nursing. Besides, tending the wounded and the sick gives me an enormous satisfaction. I am so glad I chose this profession. I plan to stay in it until the day I die.
My strength comes from a gifted mentor, my mentor. She is Clara Barton. Even though I haven’t met her, I have been told so many stories about her dedication during the Civil War. I keep her words inside my waist-pocket. The paper is twisted and crumbled in time, but her words will always ring true for me and light my darkest hours, and I'll keep on reading them over and over to regain my courage.
Clara Barton said: “You must never so much think as whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.”
Nursing is the fever in my blood now, and it will never go out of my system, although the hours are long, the work hard, the pay not enough, and the energy required is immense. If I could only stop taking every death so personally…
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November 25, 2014 at 1:12pm November 25, 2014 at 1:12pm
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Prompt: What does authenticity mean to you? How can a person be authentic as a writer or in any other role?
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Here surfaces “from the heart” phrase again, as authenticity asks for tact, love, courage, honesty, and communication with others from the heart.
Authenticity, on the other hand, doesn’t mean dumping on others our stuff and especially our emotions in a sloppy fashion. Airing of the emotions as if vomit and exposing others to it as if it is our only truth is an irresponsible and selfish act. Being responsible doesn’t mean not-being-honest either. Being responsible is being conscious of our impact on others.
Surely, talking with one’s best friend, therapist or the significant other--if he or she is agreeable to our flare-ups--helps us recover from nasty emotions, but is this dumping of emotions always honest, especially when one looks truthfully at oneself? I guess not. Sometimes we get emotional without thoroughly thinking or understanding the situation at hand or our own actions and reactions.
On the other hand, there are people who, at all costs, just withdraw and avoid talking about what hurts them. Both the dumping and the withdrawing does not make for a happy life. Neither does it insure a respected place in the workplace or among one’s friends.
Communicating from the heart means setting boundaries and starting an uncomfortable conversation, if needed, and probably letting some people walk away from you. This requires enormous courage, and it can change a life in an instant, but for the better in the long run. This is what facing the truth itself and being honest with oneself does that to people.
Communicating with tact what we feel in our hearts does rearrange life and does turn us into authentic human beings.
Truth is, we all need to dump our emotions at least once in a while. Luckily, as writers, we have our canvas of situations, choice of characters, and the many forms of writing to do that with, as do others in their own ways who work in the arts. Still, other people who work in unrelated areas can do this through their hobbies. No wonder people stick to their hobbies without any pay or recognition…We all need to expose in some way who we are.
Authenticity is truth, honesty, tact and responsibility with others. It also requires love for everyone and one's self, which the Greeks called agape^. I think where there is such love, most everything can be ironed out and the authentic person can be evident.
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November 24, 2014 at 12:15pm November 24, 2014 at 12:15pm
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Prompt: What do you think is the best way to have a necessary but extremely uncomfortable conversation with someone? How could a character in a story handle this?
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It may be taxing on a person to start a difficult but necessary conversation. Yet it needs to be done, and the process deserves courage and strength, and the belief in oneself --or God if you so wish--that not too much blood will spill when it is over.
On the positive side, when the process is finished, the person who started the dialogue will feel lighter, as he or she will have shed the burden off his/her chest and will have more room in life for what is necessary.
Starting such a conversation in general on any subject needs us to be decisive on some points. These are:
• Being clear on the situation and what we want in our hearts.
• Being clear on what needs to change, and even making a list beforehand.
• Also making a list of people that will be involved with these changes.
• Thinking beforehand from the point of view of the people involved. This will make the communication flow with better ease.
• Having the courage to talk to people face to face, and not hiding behind email, post-its, phone calls or social media. Don’t we all read about how much people get angry or hurt when being dumped out of a relationship through e-mail and such?
• If the people or the person know beforehand that the conversation will be a difficult one and they still show up, we may start by expressing our thanks for their presence and indicate that we think we have an idea on how they are feeling. Then we can start talking from the heart and telling them the truth.
• If they start to argue or try to change our opinion, we need to stay strong and let them know we are not changing our minds, although we understand how they feel.
• Then we may ask them if there is a situation that they need to receive extra closure, like a paycheck or a compensation for something or an apology if the difficult conversation deserves one on our part, but through this we need to stay strong.
• At the end, it is a good idea to say that we heard them and then thank them for listening and for their time.
As to the characters having to face such a situation in fiction, it depends on the situation and the person, but more so on the person. While a self-confident character will probably stick to the above points, a less self-confident person will hee and haw in the beginning and will take his time to approach the subject. Still other characters will choose the flight pattern instead of facing the situation. Surely the setting and other elements surrounding the situation will have a say in it.
This type of a conversation, be it in real life or in fiction, can be quite intimidating, but well worth the time spent in thinking about it beforehand and acting with conviction on our decisions.
--By the way, I got the points in bullets above from my son when he was complaining about having to fire people, then I added a couple of ideas from my own experiences.
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November 23, 2014 at 1:57pm November 23, 2014 at 1:57pm
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What my mind does to me during sleep, with its hocus pocus, always stuns me but mostly scares me. Through its trying to tell me something enigmatic, it asks me to look deeper into things. Do I still need my strangely mysterious side butting into my business? I guess I do.
As usual, when I opened my eyes this morning, the first thing that came to my mind was why the concept of stories existed, and since it did, what should a story be like. So I kept musing over these two questions through breakfast and housework, while buying stuff from Amazon, answering e-mail, and talking to people on the phone, which had to do with arranging Thanksgiving.
This is what I came up with, roughly, for any story in any genre.
Stories exist to enlighten, entertain, or change existing thought.
Stories, therefore, should be entertaining or creating emotion that readers and the writer herself should be able to relate to or empathize with.
There should be a theme to create unity, and possibly a backstory, but the backstory should only be used as a part of a powerful and progressive front story. Some writers get so stuck on the backstory that there is no front story left or what is left as the front story is minimal and weak.
Time is usually chronological, but to give the story excitement, back-and-forth movement in time can be used, but a caveat here. Failure to orient the reader where time is concerned causes confusion in comprehension.
Setting as to place adds to stabilize the plot. Yet, too long setting descriptions bore the readers and make them skip paragraphs no matter how poetic or florid the language. It is a better idea to insert the setting descriptions inside the story several times in just a few, possibly not more than four sentences, rather than one big block of narrative.
Motion in plot, at least a potential for movement, is important. As soon as conflict is established, something should happen involving that conflict.
Stories of our time don’t (and should not) deal with fatalism and Deus ex Machina. Rather, free will of the character should be what drives the action.
There should be no sermonizing on any subject, telling writer’s thoughts, directly asking metaphysical questions, or blatant psychological analyzing on page; however, showing those things through character action is fine and expected.
Dialogue should be character-specific and believable. Each character should carry a different tone, have a different vocabulary, or speak with his or her own individual voice.
Stories, to be good, need specific (not general) language: That is, concrete and not abstract ideas, fresh and strong voice, characters that are consistent and believable, and avoidance of cutesiness or self-importance by the writer. As they say, the story’s the thing, so the writer should butt out.
Having thought and recalled all this from what I have read on the subject, I also remember what Writer’s Digest shows on top of its page in ecru when it has a how-to article: WD—There are no Rules.
Yeah, but for me, there are rules, at least until l learn them so well that I can dare to break them. 
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November 22, 2014 at 11:24am November 22, 2014 at 11:24am
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Prompt: Write what whispers your name in the night...
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A song comes to mind when “whispering your name” is the question. “Yesterday I heard the rain whispering your name…”
Truth is, at night or daytime, no one whispers my name. Ever! They say it loudly, scream, or yell. Since I am so used to my name being called out loud, if somebody would whisper my name, I would be scared right out of my wits.
Also, why would I want to hear my name whispered, especially when there’s a book called The Horse Whisperer and a dog trainer who calls himself Dog Whisperer? No four legs for me, as I am a biped. True, sometimes when I kneel, I have difficulty getting up; so I use my four extremities to lift myself off the floor, but this is only temporary…Well, at least, for the time being.
This “whispering your name” thing, by the way, must have some kind of a spiritual link to God or maybe a ghost calling a person. In that case, as any other thing would make me suspicious, may I request from God that to please just say my name out loud, even if there’s no chance of His calling me, because I am very sure God has a very long list of desirables before He’d even consider me.
As to ghosts, I think, no problem’s there. They are already hesitant around me. We once stayed in a haunted Bed and Breakfast for two months, and even though, I was alone several times in that mansion, no ghost bothered me, not even for a second.
Then, as much as the word “whisper” tickles the imaginations of poets and song writers, it has a connotation of secrecy and gossip, and possibly romantic begging. If I ever whisper, therefore, it would be because I might have laryngitis, for I believe that any secret should be better kept inside one’s own mouth.
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November 21, 2014 at 12:48pm November 21, 2014 at 12:48pm
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Yours truly and taking notes is a hilarious undertaking. Yes, I do take notes, when I can.
If I am with a group of people and everyone is having a good time, however, I won’t stop and take notes, since it may be too distracting for others; plus, I don’t want them to see me as a party-pooping wise Alec. Instead, I try to memorize the scene or what has appealed to me, but later, whether I remember it or not depends on the roll of the dice.
In other instances, I do take notes on pre-cut pieces of paper I carry in my purse, which, most of the time, I either lose them or they become so over-populated and tangled up that they are unusable. Of those I can rescue, I copy them into a notebook for later use, if I remember in which notebook they are, as I have several notebooks according to context (supposedly!), but then, I face another pile up, since I can forget what goes into which notebook. If I could only hold a white-elephant sale of my notes…Despite all this mix-up, though, I manage to use at least a few of them, which can qualify for an athletic feat of some kind.
With all this note-taking, I know I still miss what’s in front of me, due to being distracted or not recognizing that a specific situation could be milked. My blind spots are countless, when I think of it.
In several instances, I tried to use an electronic gadget someone once had gifted me and a tape recorder. The gadget didn’t work well, and tape recording was good only when I was interviewing someone, which happened only a few times, a very long time ago. Since neither felt right, I now prefer taking notes long hand. In any case, I don’t want to obsess over notes, but then I am already obsessed with writing.
All this chewing the fat on notes and author quotes brings to mind another gem by Gore Vidal. “Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.” Who knows, that kind of a note may come one day when I finally feel drowned in my tiny pieces of paper with my barely legible scribbles on them. Now that will be something to take note of...
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Prompt: Raymond Carver says," many writers miss what is right in front of them." Judy Reeves disagrees, she says, "Writers live life on two levels, one we participate in relationships, go about our daily business, interact, respond and perform: the other we observe and take notes." I know it sounds simple but is it. Do you only take notes about what needs to be remembered or are you like Carver indicates oblivious to all that is available. Tell me what you think about their opinions.
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November 20, 2014 at 12:06pm November 20, 2014 at 12:06pm
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Prompt: What would life be like if unicorns and dragons really existed?
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If unicorns and dragons really existed, I think we’d stop all wars and try to fight off the dragons that would spume fire at us. As long as the humankind has this ineradicable fighting gene, we might as well fight dragons.
As for me, I’d keep an amicable dragon as a personal friend to guard my fire-proof castle and let a couple of magical unicorns to accompany me while I practice my spells so I can permanently give upgrades to WdC members for them to improve the mood and spirit of people all over the world with their work, with the hope that their work will mean peace on earth.
As to the reality of dragons and unicorns, our mythical history is full of stories, works of art, and songs. Remember, “Puff the Magic Dragon”? I used to sing it with my sons, and I am sure many of you did, also.
These creatures may symbolize danger or luck or happiness, giving shape to our greatest hopes, fears, and colorful dreams. No wonder children and some adults who are really children at heart, like yours truly, become fascinated with them and the stories they inspire...
I am quite sure dragons and unicorns did exist once, but UFOs came and hijacked them to a far-away galaxy to leave us wanting and bereft. And why not? I bet they wanted to stop wars in their neck o'the woods, too. If you can’t stop a war people get into, you then redirect their energies toward something else, like what nature does on our planet with the tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, epidemics, etc.
Truth is, we now have proof that UFOs were here a long long time ago, a secret that the Mexican government hid from the entire world. I’m sure those were the UFOs that robbed us of our dragons and unicorns.
If you don’t believe me, check this link:
http://themindunleashed.org/2013/12/mexican-government-reveals-mayan-documents-p...
And if you really believe me, I have a few bridges, mansions, and castles in the sky for sale in most places on earth, and I think you do qualify as a buyer.
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November 19, 2014 at 12:25am November 19, 2014 at 12:25am
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Prompt: "There is nothing like staying home for real comfort." Jane Austen-- Do you agree with Jane?
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Yes, I agree with Jane Austen, but only at this point in my life, since in old age, I’ve turned into a homebody.
Earlier, even up to a few years ago, we used to travel a lot. I not only traveled with my husband, but also I went to places, out of the country, on my own. There were years when we stayed so little in our house that the neighbors thought we sold the place. In those times, I loved being on the go. The airplane, I treated like my private office where I read, wrote letters, even did some work. I could also carry a whole bunch of books and other stuff, no questions asked. Once I drove all the way from New York to Florida and loved every minute of it.
Now, it is a pain to travel. Not only that, I get too tired. The last time we were overseas was in 2008. The last time we were out of state was in August, and in a city where we used to stay three to four days. This time we stayed more than a week to give ourselves time to rest and only ventured around the hotel area or took a taxi. Still we were very tired when we returned. It was like recovering from a bad case of the flu. They say, old age is not for sissies. It is true. I don’t even like driving to the next town, nowadays. It was good to be on the road, but it was then. I remember those days as beautiful memories, yet I have no plans or guts to repeat them again.
Besides, I am enjoying this, too. There are so many advantages to being at home. My home-- its quietness, its lived-in look, its existence without any pretense--calms me down. Everything I want and need is in it within easy reach. I belong in it with my simple little pleasures, all my books, music, plants, tools and trappings. In that respect, home to me now is a structure as well as an ordinary life filled with nothing but myself and my husband, and a glorious condition into which I have retreated to relax for good.
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November 18, 2014 at 12:58pm November 18, 2014 at 12:58pm
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Imagine listening to someone while you know for sure what he or she is saying is a lie. Doesn’t that make you furious inside, even if for one reason or another, you don’t make him or her face the lie? And isn’t it true that the vehicle for lies is mostly language?
Our subconscious lives on truth and knows very well that language is power; therefore language should be used for good and no good comes out of lies, even if it is the white lies we tell to save face or spare the moment. It is common practice to only say the parts of the truth that may be acceptable or to say what we think people want to hear, leaving the full truth hidden away. This draws a very different picture of reality, doesn’t it?
By that I don’t mean to say one should offer the truth haphazardly if the truth puts another person's life in danger. Case in point, a psychiatric patient may not handle a heavy truth, and his therapist may choose to make the patient face that truth when more therapy gets him ready for that. Otherwise, the patient may do away with himself. On the other hand, most healthy people do better when facing the truth and prefer it to the white lies that almost all of us tell once in a while.
Then, there is another type of lying that doesn’t use language. It is silence, for silence can become the vehicle for the suppression of any idea or action.
Up to about a century ago, women could not vote. Why? Was it because they were being mollycoddled or because they were considered not to have enough brains as men? During their mere struggle for survival, most women even bought into the idea of being lesser than men, while others drove the idea inward to fester like a tumor, until the time arrived for surgical intervention. To those who missed seeing that intervention, let me tell you, even the later phases of it weren’t pretty.
“The cruelest lies are often told in silence,” said Robert Louis Stevenson. If you saw a neighbor abusing a child, wouldn’t you have wanted to do something about it, before the reporting it became acceptable and even a law? Yet, decades ago, such abuse and others like it met with the silence of those who witnessed the abuse. Isn’t that kind of a silence a bigger lie than the lies put in words?
When truth is replaced by silence, that silence is a lie. When I am doing something wrong, I expect a true friend to tell me about it. When I finally face the truth about me and find out that my friend kept silent, I am more bound to think that she doesn’t care about me and is only pretending we have a friendship; as a result, I would feel isolated and rejected.
About four decades ago, someone I was going to sign a contract with omitted to tell me an important background problem regarding the issue, probably thinking—if I knew the truth—I wouldn’t do business with him. He said later, chances were I would never find out the truth as it didn’t have anything to do with the present issue. That was some rationalization on his part. Should he have not kept silent about it, I would probably still sign the contract. The truth behind his silence would possibly keep some people away, yes, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Unfortunately, his silence did matter, and luckily I found out just before notarization, and never did business with him again. Why would I have anything to do with a liar?
Truth doesn’t have many versions to it, but lies do. This is what we should always keep in mind.
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Prompt: “Lying is done with words, and also with silence,” says Adrienne Rich. What does this quote say to you? If you so wish, you may offer your experiences on the subject. |
November 17, 2014 at 12:27pm November 17, 2014 at 12:27pm
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Truth be told, I like perfectionists. If it weren’t for them, we were still trying to build fires in front of our caves. If we didn’t want perfection in our world, we wouldn’t want peace, love, and brotherhood/sisterhood. If certain scientists didn’t care for perfection we wouldn’t have electricity, internet, and the keyboards we write on while answering this prompt. Being a perfectionist is fine as long as the attempt to perfection is directed toward a goal or to the task at hand, and not to our own or others’ judgment of us.
If perfection is aimed at how others will think of us or our work, we are introducing judgment and self-righteousness, by thinking we need to be better than the others or best in anything. Thus comes the idea that, since we didn’t rise to perfection, we may be unworthy of adoration, love, and belonging, or we are not special, but something ordinary. This sight of our vulnerability makes us feel shame and clam up. Let’s face it, no one, even the smartest and the most capable, is always best at everything.
Shame is universal and it needs judgment and secrecy to thrive. Both our own personal judgment and thinking that others are using that judgment against us foster the negativity of shame, because pride and narcissism, as much as we deny those inside ourselves, are often the sisters of shame. If we didn’t care about our place in society and what others would think, we wouldn’t feel shame. From this point of view, shame happens to people who need to connect to others. Those without the ability of connection to others, and as a long stretch, to their own selves, wouldn’t feel shame.
Then, how do we overcome these feelings of shame when we truly care about the work at hand? I believe the cure for shame is empathy. Empathy for ourselves and for those other perfectionists who feel this shame. Empathy to show that they are not alone, as empathy says, “Me, too! I can fail, too. Sometimes, failure will happen. It is all right, as it is part of our hard work.”
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Prompt: Is there a relationship between perfectionism and feelings of shame when what we plan to accomplish does not come out quite right? Explore.
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November 16, 2014 at 10:56am November 16, 2014 at 10:56am
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Some facts make me chuckle. Well, they may not all be exact facts, but I suspect, some of them are theories parading as facts, and some scientists, it seems, are so attached to their theories that they push them as the truth. That just shows the quirkiness of the human spirit, which in itself is hilarious.
Take astronomy for example. Did you know that there’s a gas cloud in the constellation of Aquila that contains enough alcohol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer? If we could only import it…But then, its weight would sink our planet. If not that, imagine all the beer bellies who would be parading about.
People who do research in the area of astronomy must be either hungry or thirsty because there is another goody that claims, the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. Hey, I may just go there, even if I might have rejected the option to settle in Mars together with Richard Branson and the likes of him, had there been such a generous offer made to me.
And…Oh, my God! Ladies take notice if you are into big stones. There is a diamond floating in our galaxy that is bigger than Earth. Speaking for me, I wouldn’t bother with that. I was never into large stones in the first place, but those of you who do, dream on!
These goodies are from http://thespiritscience.net/2014/11/13/25-things-you-didnt-know-about-our-univer... I am giving the link for our Sci-Fi writers as there are other "theorized or real" facts in there.
Yet, it is not just astronomy. There are things on earth, which stun me--in addition to my children and some members of my family--, but just maybe, since these earthy facts are more measurable than the Space-y ones, they are closer to being facts. You see, I am neither from Missouri, nor-if in an earlier life-from the ancient skeptics school of Pyrrho of Elis, but I am always the doubting Thomas-ina.
Case in point: Human saliva contains a painkiller called opiorphin (Try pronouncing that!), which is six times more powerful than morphine. Now, why would some of us need other addictions, in addition to the one we self-produce? I bet there’ll be an answer to that, too, very soon.
Another one: Gorillas and potatoes have two more chromosomes than humans do. If I understood about the chromosomes, I’d make a decent comment on this one, but the only thing I can think of is the spiral in DNA. I am thinking maybe our chromosome strings lost a couple while spiraling and gorillas and potatoes picked those up. See, I can come up with scientific theories parading as facts, too. Talk about the theater of the absurd!
 Note: If interested, the last two “real” facts are from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/28/science-facts_n_4344759.html |
November 15, 2014 at 1:39pm November 15, 2014 at 1:39pm
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Prompt: Who can say at what point dying begins?
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I don’t know who can say or know the truth of dying, but I would say, when living begins, dying begins, for every beginning starts from some other beginning’s ending. It is the puzzle of the chicken-and-the-egg. In other words, every exit line, dying, or ending is an entry, like the seasons repeating themselves.
Since we don’t see the other side of the exit door, or dying, we feel sad for almost all endings. This sadness comes from accepting the validity and past importance of the life well lived and finished. Marcus Aurelius said: “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
A beginning is a blank page. We fill it by digging within ourselves and discovering what will or can happen in our lives. This helps us to do our part in the world by being interested in living fully every section of the time allotted to us. A beginning has to do with a sense of hope, a sense of future. A good beginning deserves boldness, zeal to be wise, and excitement for adventure. When we watch a new life, a baby, let’s say, don’t we see how eager he is to experiment everything?
Beginnings are magical, springing up suddenly and running their course, but if we get stuck at the beginning, the ending will be meaningless; therefore, our internal peace can come if we don’t look back, or if we do, we do it sanely, logically, with understanding and without bias. Mostly, all beginnings are wonderful.
Still, it is good to know when something has reached its end, as this points to a cycle completed, a circle closed, a door shut, a book finished, or whatever it is that has died, because this shows progress. This shows another cycle, another circle, another book will begin and another door will open, if only to repeat the process again. No wonder they say, “If God closes one door, He will open another.”
When we begin anything, most of us can recognize its ending from far away, but the beginning lulls us into believing it will continue forever; yet, as hard as we try to hold on, the ending comes. The ending or dying is the part already promised, the beginning’s potential for what will be lived, loved, and left behind, and because of that promise, we all become curious about the ending or dying, like some readers who, after reading a few pages from a book, turn to the back pages to find what happens at the end and miss all the excitement in the middle.
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November 14, 2014 at 2:22pm November 14, 2014 at 2:22pm
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I really don’t belief there is such a thing as writer’s block. Maybe it is this disbelief that keeps me going. On the other hand, since so many writers complain about it, psychobabble aside, something like it must exist somewhere.
Still, you might ask if I have ever been blocked. I can’t say I haven’t been blocked at all, and I can’t say I am always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed while I am writing, either. There are times, when I stop finding the work at hand to have come to a total shut-off, which only points to the fact that the shut-off is only for that specific piece. There are times when I am just plain tired and need some physical action. There are also times when either the arthritis in my fingers is acting up or my eyes are getting cloudy. Rather than worsening my aging woes, I stop then.
If I am feeling all right, aging-wise, and the piece I’m slaving over is going nowhere, then I read something, play hangman or mahjong for a few minutes by myself, or go do something else totally different, like housework.
A short while later, not more than a couple of hours, I come back to write in a different area. For example, if the piece that didn’t go anywhere is fiction, I write a non-fiction piece, poetry, a haphazard character sketch to add to a list of characters waiting for their turn to find a role, or just anything. Sometimes, instead of writing for myself, I do a review or two. Also, I love to read. Since I have lots of books in queue waiting for me in my Kindles, this becomes the easiest thing to do, easiest on my gray matter and easiest on my mood.
There are pieces I started that never found their completion, and there are those whose endings I am not happy with, but I leave them alone for some time. If I want to start a new piece, I look at photos and pictures. I guess, I am a visual person to be inspired by images on screen or in print. Not so with music, though.
Unlike some people who can read or write to music, my verbal skills come to a complete halt when some music I love is playing. Music has its own domain in my soul like an emperor and overrules what images do where my writing is concerned. Listening to music usually turns to an almost out-of-body experience, something like meditation with amazement and adoration added to it. In other words, I become a different person and get totally lost in music to do anything else.
To sum up, if I am not accepting that writer’s block exists for me, I am not negating its existence for others either. If writer’s block means the end to inventing something new in writing, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the end of life or the end to inventing new avenues where creating is concerned. I believe we just need to take what is handed to us and make the best of it, like making lemonade from sour lemons or discovering the brightest black light in our own shadows.
In the hope that it may help those who think they may have been blocked in some way, here is a link about what some famous writers say on overcoming Writer’s Block.
http://flavorwire.com/343207/13-famous-writers-on-overcoming-writers-block
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Prompt:
Everyone has their method of madness to overcome writer's block especially those of you doing NANO, what's your secret?
I hear people talking about morning pages, or writing about the goals for the day. Then I hear other people talk about taking notes ahead of time for their writing. Do you do silly writing games like word clusters or word associations? Do you look at pictures? Listen to specific music. Or do you just force yourself and hope for the best.
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November 13, 2014 at 12:38pm November 13, 2014 at 12:38pm
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Prompt: This month is Mickey Mouse's Birthday. Let's write about him and his friends.
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How can I write about Mickey Mouse without mentioning the Florida elections?
In the news:
“New Rule: A cursory review of the state's election laws shows no requirement that supervisors keep track of votes for unqualified write-in candidates. As votes for Mickey Mouse head the list, write-in candidates in Florida, like other candidates, have to file and qualify to run for elected office, even though their names aren't printed on ballots.”
Only in Florida! I think where I live has become the clown state of the good old USA.
I am very sure Mickey Mouse can file for candidacy as an anthropomorphic biped who is the official mascot of Disney Productions. It is quite possible for his entourage—Minnie Mouse, Daisy, Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy—to become the election committee, distributing Mickey Mouse ears to all their voters, and then, what if Mickey’s chosen the president? I’d say we’d have more fun.
We’d watch Mickey Mouse in the White House keeping house with Minnie Mouse while he puts together his cabinet with Pluto as his Vice-President, Goofy heading the Department of State, and Donald Duck as the Attorney General. We’d read in the media about the cleverness of his advisors who would be the rest of the Mickey Mouse Clan.
Why do I want Mickey Mouse in the White House? To start with, as a public character, he is not only popular but also may become more successful than who we had during the last few decades.
Yet, the most important reason for my indulgence arises from my being a Floridian during the last 22 years. After all, absurdity is a highly communicable, infectious disease.
Happy Birthday, Mickey!
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November 12, 2014 at 11:38am November 12, 2014 at 11:38am
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Prompt: If you could be a cast member on any TV Show, which one would it be?
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Truth is, at this point in my life, I’d rather be in the audience or watching any TV Show in the comfort of my living room, but if I were to be in the cast of any TV Show, it would have to be The Newsroom created and written by Alan Sorkin. My choice probably has to do with my once-upon-a-time journalism wish.
The Newsroom, although it may be considered a political drama, I enjoy the most for its characters, all of them so human, quirky, interesting, and totally dedicated to their profession. The newsroom’s setting is not so foreign to me either, since I always liked being in a newsroom.
This show's fictional newsroom shows the Atlantis Cable News (ACN) with its main character Will McAvoy. Yet, other characters are written and cast to be just as strong as him without overshadowing who he is. All actors in the show are wonderfully chosen and Jane Fonda’s every now and then appearance also spices up the episodes.
It is said that this show has fewer writers than others of its kind. Still, with its fewer writers, The Newsroom won many awards. The intensity of its existing writers may as well be the reason for its close to perfect storyline and the interconnectedness of its subplots with the general plot.
I heard many people say that they find this show boring or controversial or confusing, but it is the closest one to my heart on today’s TV, maybe because I can relate to it for its subject and close-to-perfect writing.
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November 11, 2014 at 12:04pm November 11, 2014 at 12:04pm
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I use flashbacks a lot, but not flash-forwards, to the best of my memory. Both flashbacks and flash-forwards are important to create suspense and add structure to the plot, although flash-forwards are used not too often, as they are hard to do and need a good amount of planning.
Although the namesakes sound like medical diseases, in literary lingo, a flashback is called analepsis and flash-forward, prolepsis. An internal analepsis is the flashback to an earlier point in the story, and an external analepsis is the flashback to a time before the story started on page.
Speaking for myself, I find flashbacks very valuable in revealing certain character elements. They also are good to show what happened to any aspect of the story, before the telling of the story started.
There are so many flashback examples in literature. Off the top of my head, most Holocaust and World War II stories contain flashbacks, as in Elie Wiesel’s Night. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester's background is revealed through flashbacks. Some mysteries need flashbacks, too, since they may start with a murder or an action- committed, and they need the one or more characters' recall. Most famous for flashbacks is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald where Nick learns a lot about the characters through Gatsby’s and other characters’ recall in flashback.
As to flash-forward, which I have been too chicken to use, the best and the most well-known example is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, in which the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge is taken forward through time to visit his funeral. On TV dramas, too, flash-forward is sometimes handled very well. For example, the last episode of Six Feet Under has an extensive flash-forward, showing the deaths of the main characters.
I am now wondering if I am going to use a flash-forward next, as the flash-forward idea in this entry is acting as a challenge to me.
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Prompt: Do you use flashbacks or flash-forwards in your fictional and true stories? How or why, do you think, they are important, if at all?
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