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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.
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February 28, 2015 at 11:44am February 28, 2015 at 11:44am
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Prompt: What do you understand about this universe of ours that few others realize?
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Jimmy Kramer of CNBC screams, “They know nothing; they know nothing!” He may be yelling for investments and such, but I think he’s really ticked about all the theories of what this universe is. Oh, all those theories! The Universe is a hologram; The Universe is endless; The Universe is expanding; Other Universes exist and can be accessed through this Universe’s wormholes; The Universe does not work on linear time, but on a grid; The Big Freeze will be the end of this universe; The Universe will never die; The Universe folds on to itself.
Then there is Plato who said everything was created from one single element. There are also the scriptures of different beliefs, into which I am not going. Although we have the photos from NASA’s probes that show only the minutest part of the universe, it may as well be that each one of us carry a universe or maybe that one universe inside us.
Whether I believe the scientific data behind this poem by Rumi or not, what he says feels so close to my heart:
“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”
And in another line in a different poem, he says, “The body came into being from us, not we from it.”
I find Emerson to be similar to Rumi, as they both wrote on the “Oneness” and the Essence of everything having to do with love. While Emerson said, “Give all to Love; obey they heart,” and "It is not the length of life, but the depth,” Rumi said, “Love is the One who masters all things; // I am mastered totally by Love.// By my passion of love for Love...”
I’d like to believe that, no matter how vast or endless the universe may be, Plato’s single element could be love, which created the universe and made it whatever it is today, and that feeling is echoed in the words of Emerson and Rumi.
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February 27, 2015 at 12:03am February 27, 2015 at 12:03am
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Prompt: Let's have a bit of flash fiction...short story of no more than 50 words.
Our topic is a hair cut or style gone awry. Did the stylist give you the wrong dye, or was talking on the phone and took a hunk out of your hair. Maybe the razor slipped and you now have a huge bald spot. Let's see what you can come up with.
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“A deal, you can’t refuse,” said she. “I’ll do a style out of this world. Now shut your eyes tight.”
When she was done, I opened my eyes to rainbow hair of green, blue, purple, yellow, red and brown.
I was speechless, for I was gagged and all tied up.
50 words
Talking about hair, here’s something by an old master to definitely outdo my tiny short. 
Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes
Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)—one of my favorite poets--was an Irish poet and playwright. He won the Nobel Prize in 1923.
His quote about poetry is my go-to poetry quote: “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”
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February 26, 2015 at 12:29pm February 26, 2015 at 12:29pm
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Prompt: What items do you put on your walls? Posters, pictures? I am curious.
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From Robert Frost to Kavafy, poets have taken the idea of the walls in the negative sense of building inaccessible fences around oneself with a meaning of not being open to life and other people.
To me, walls are upward structures that hold a house together, and their secondary benefit is to serve as a showcase for whatever the inhabitants want to exhibit. In our house, almost all the walls have paintings, family pictures, and souvenirs on them. In my bedroom, besides the family photos, a cherished possession is a framed embroidery done by a dear old aunt, now deceased.
On the living and dining rooms’ walls are my younger son’s wedding photo, older son’s portrait in oil, the photos of my husband and I together, plus actual paintings in oils and several framed gifts of marbling (ebru) art given to me by a friend and great master of that art. In the hallway, I have framed miniatures and a photo of Hemingway’s cats at the door of his Key West House.
On the kitchen walls are family photos and funny stuff I print out from the web such as cartoons and those of Auntie Acid. The funny stuff keeps changing according to what I think will put a smile on my face.
In the other rooms, not much wall space is left due to bookshelves. On what little room remains, we have a few family photos.
In the family room where we also eat and work, my husband and I put our parents’, our children’s, and other family members’ photos, plus the photo of Freud’s Couch, which has to do with my husband's career.
Now, the real fun is in the corner at the back of the room where I put bookshelves and a small desk for my laptop. This is where I usually write. A half of the wall next to me is mine, and it is just as jam-packed as my brain. On it are the many photos of my family, current and extended, and especially those of my beloved cousins. I have two dream catchers, one of my sons’ third grade painting, lots of hand scribbled or printed adages and affirmations, one of which came from WdC, saying Life’s Better When You’re Writing. I also have three Shopping Lists on the end of the wall going toward the kitchen, one for food, the other for other things, and third as extra.
My hubby doesn’t object to the fact that my wall looks like a white-elephant sale because the alternative would be me working in the room designed to be my study when we first moved in this house, which would mean we wouldn’t be together all that much. As he, too, bought a laptop and made a corner for himself in our family room, instead of using the room that was designed to be his office.
As to my intangible wall, I decorate it with smiles and nods and hope that I am forgiven for what I hide behind it in shadows.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:44pm February 25, 2015 at 12:44pm
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Prompt: Take a quote from your favorite movie. This is the title of your prompt. Write it.
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The Empire Strikes Back is not my favorite movie, but this quote by Yoda is a favorite, maybe because I have a soft spot for all Yodas of the world, including my son’s deceased cat. On the other hand, the only quote that came to my mind from my favorite movie was, “Play it again, Sam,” and since I don’t know how to “play it again” in terms of my life—a life that I don’t want to re-live ever again as in the movie The Groundhog Day—“ I am not playing it again, Sam.” Thus, I’m reverting to, once and for all, Yoda’s words.
There is no ‘try,’ and that’s that. Only the timid or the evasive use “try” and, truthfully speaking, I am guilty of it, too. I may not always use the word “try” but possibly other words and phrases with similar meanings such as: Maybe I can…; I believe my ideas are…; if I may be so bold, let me say that… etc., etc.
Why am I--and why are those like me--with so much doubt and so little confidence? Why are we afraid to claim our ground and own our words and let our power show?
Whatever our reasons are, we need to aim at doing our tasks at hand with a positive attitude, but not with the attitude that we’ll only make an attempt and then let go. Instead of trying, we do it; we begin by finding the qualities inside us to reach that goal as we have to trust that they exist and that there definitely are ways to encourage those qualities to surface.
Our goals are not our problems, but how we approach them are. If a goal is not worth doing, why think of doing it or 'trying it' at all? We either do or don’t.
Imagine a hungry person at the dinner table. Does he think, “I’ll just try to eat” and only touches the food with the tip of his fork? No. He eats everything on his plate because he is hungry.
If we are hungry enough and determined enough, ”trying to achieve something” doesn’t let us go far. At some point in the game, we may even find ourselves with the opposite of what we want, which is frustration at having tried and failed. Yet, when we find something real in our experience, something worthy of being a goal, we need to connect to it in an authentic and serious way, so reaching that goal is no longer a question of trying. It is doing. It is, above all, being self-aware.
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February 24, 2015 at 12:14pm February 24, 2015 at 12:14pm
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Prompt: Fame.
What do you think fame does to people in regard to ambition and ego, especially when it is found and then when it is lost? Does a person’s life turn dark, weird, and funny, as it does in the Oscar-winner movie Birdman about a washed-up actor trying to make a comeback?
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Fame is achieved through some kind of success, although not every success will result in fame. As fame is the condition of being known or talked about by many people, it is dependent on the outside of a person; therefore, it wallows in its own value, regardless of the worthy struggle through which it has been reached.
Once fame is reached, however, the now famous person can become addicted to the act of searching for the situation of becoming talked about, and to achieve this end, he will try to satisfy what is outside of himself. This results in the formation of a huge ego, and the person forgets who he really is. This can be a major loss for the internal growth of any person.
A strong person, even if he is famous, will not pay attention to what others say about him, and he won’t try to impress people at all, as what others tell and think becomes totally irrelevant to him. What is relevant is the work he does and who he becomes.
Ambition when it takes the form of desire for perfection in one’s work is admirable. This kind of ambition elevates a person. Yet, when ambition takes the form of going after fame, especially after tasting and then losing it, it becomes deadly.
As to Birdman, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I read an article or two about it and watched it receive the best picture award during the Oscars on Sunday night. I understand it has comedic scenes with tragic ending, and as such, the movie should effectively show what happens to a person when the horse he is riding gets caught up in the flood waters of fame.
I think, as in Birdman, a person who has fallen off fame will try everything to get back on it and will push himself to ridiculous extremes, which will be the end of him.
Since I am always thinking about writing, how does all this relate to our craft? With the application of electronics and easier approach to becoming published, many writers neglect the true learning of their craft and rush to publishing numerous times. I have no qualms about publishing at all. All writers should work toward it. What I have trouble with is seeing the same mistakes from the same writer, book after book.
I think the lesson is, with any kind of fame, we should all work toward perfection but shouldn’t let fame encourage our egos to get out of proportion. As Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
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February 23, 2015 at 3:08pm February 23, 2015 at 3:08pm
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Prompt: Utopia and Dystopia are imagined worlds in which humanity lives in the worst possible or best possible conditions. If you were to write about either, which one would you choose and what would your version of that world look like?
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As much as I loved to read the weird experiences of Gulliver, I think Swift started this whole Dystopia idea. When I think back, I find traces of it in Homer’s Iliad, as well. Then, after Swift, I can think of Aldois Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. If I am not mistaken, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road made the idea rise to its present fame, or maybe I should call it infamy.
Nowadays, whether a dystopian story is free in E-book format or not, it is so copious and outrageous that when I see another book on sale on something dystopian, I want to gag. In book groups online that advertise E-books such as Pixelscroll, FreeBooksy, Bookbub, and Kindle Nation Daily, two out of five books have dystopian content. Too much of anything is nauseating for me.
I would, therefore, not choose Dystopia as the setting for any of my writings at this point. Utopia, maybe, if it were cloaked with science fiction in another universe or far away galaxy, since what I know of our planet, I can’t fathom any Utopia surviving on our earth.
In my Utopian world, living things—plant, animal, human—wouldn’t eat each other to survive. They may have non-living food that doesn't rot, feel pain, or do anything else negative.
Every action of the inhabitants would be judged according to its love content, and not in the name of justice, or for revenge, or punishment.
Giving birth to and bringing up new life would be much easier and would be considered something very special and rare.
There would be no sickness or aging, and to give space for new life, the old life would willingly fade out without making it painful for others left behind.
There would be no race, gender, religion, capability, intelligence, or achievement distinctions among inhabitants. Because of this lack of distinction, there wouldn’t be any wars.
That world’s denizens would create art for art’s sake and not for fame or fortune.
In other words, for me, both Utopia and Dystopia stink to high heaven, simply because, even in my utopian world, the art of writing would be bland, with fiction lacking conflict.
All things considered, I think I’ll stay where I am in our fault-filled planet, until it is time to take off. Anyway, my reading tablets are full of books I plan to read, books without Utopia or Dystopia and without billionaires’ far-out, erotic romances, so I am hoping my departure hour will be delayed.
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February 22, 2015 at 2:54pm February 22, 2015 at 2:54pm
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Typos are not only small mistakes or typographical errors, but they are also vandals. They louse up and thrash any good time I am having while I write. They are so frustrating to catch in my own work, no matter how many times I have edited or re-edited the manuscript. So, why do I miss those annoying little pests?
According to the psychologist Tom Stafford from UK, this is because we writers are smart. We do this because our attention is focused in conveying meaning, a very high level task. Well, that should make me feel a lot better---NOT!
Becoming blind to detail because the brain is working on instinct and knows the destination, therefore missing the darn things…Not a good explanation. This makes me want to throw a tantrum or throw up. I want all parts of my brain work concurrently, at the same intensity. Hear that, Brain?
Stafford suggests that if I want to catch my own errors, I should try to make that piece as unfamiliar as possible. I think there’s a truth to that, for when I read my oldest work, I see the errors most often, be it they may not be typos...by then.
MS Word, WdC, Google etc., do catch blatant typos, but if the typo is another word or a self-standing a or I, I am doomed. My typos, sometimes happen from trying to fast-type, but sometimes they are there because during the editing, I changed the word order and some word or a piece of it stayed stuck inside the sentence. So annoying!
But then, let’s look at the good side. If you google “Images for funny typos” you’ll get stuff like this:
Shoplifters will be prostituted.
Food Store Signs: Special! Fresh Crap!
Pop Turds $2.19
Barber Shop Sign: Noor Babber Shop
Road Sign: Stop! Heavy Erection Is Going On!
Door Sign: Executive Bored Room
McDonalds Sign: Try Our Anus Burger!
Parking Sign: Illegally parked cars will be fine.
Another Sign (part of it)—maybe in a school: School of Pubic Affairs -- Lady Bid Johnson Auditorium
Yessss! This makes me feel a lot better!
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February 21, 2015 at 12:25pm February 21, 2015 at 12:25pm
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Amy Peters says, "Riddles help writers think of images in new ways and to consider language in a different light." Let's write a question/riddle about nature for Saturday. I can't wait to see you each rock your creative minds.
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Here goes:
Who am I?
Although I am of the tall stock, you can pick me up. Those of you monsters like to strip me naked, tear my hair apart, eat my insides, then throw away the skeleton.
To the first one who solves who I am, Joy will give a nature MB.
Yeah, I know it is easy, but I am not good with riddles. Especially with life’s riddles. Truth is, if it weren’t for the groups of people who befriended me in my life, I wouldn’t even think about those. As my mother thought, some of those riddles were not to be thought upon as they might constitute heresy. As if God were to punish me for thinking…But then, each to his/her own belief.
Here are a few of the life’s riddles, I don’t know and can't find the real answers to:
Do miracles really exist or are they an extension of nature we haven’t discovered yet?
Does God have an inner and outer world?
That cause and effect thing, why doesn’t it always work, as sometimes the cause is inane?
Is there an invisible plane of nature, a plane neither our senses nor our equipment can detect?
Why are our senses limited? Is it because the creation or the creator would be afraid of our power?
Why are the people with extra-sensory perception have the same stinky bodies as the rest of us if they are so evolved?
Do our body parts play a subordinate part to our ego?
When a person is under hypnotic influence and not aware of his surroundings, where does his mind go?
Why do we fear what we don’t understand?
They say, nature’s laws must be universal; if so, why are the planets and other places in the cosmos are so different from what we can see with what equipment we have?
Is there danger in security, danger in staying ignorant?
Why do humans have conflicting thoughts and desires?
My point is if I can’t find the answers to life’s riddles, how can I properly give you a good riddle? Besides, I am awful in solving riddles, and if I continued to write more on what I wonder about, it would take pages. So I better stop here and wait for the first right answer to my rotten riddle.
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February 20, 2015 at 11:16am February 20, 2015 at 11:16am
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Motivational speaker/writer Stephen R. Covey says, "True leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Only then can you inspire others and create a community where people feel engaged."
Do you agree or disagree? Is this leadership style present in your world? Or are you subjected to a more authoritarian point of view? If you disagree what does leadership mean to you? What qualities are important for a great leader to possess?
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Encouraging people and showing them what they are able to accomplish, surely, is the idealistic approach to leadership. Is this enough by itself, though? Even if this could be one of the requirements of a leadership, don’t a few other factors such as gaining the trust and respect of people, play the primary role before “communicating to people their worth and potential”?
Simply put, getting people to take part in anything is a major undertaking. Although many may be willing in the beginning, making their enthusiasm continue is next to impossible. In addition, inside each group, society, or nation, negative and toxic elements do exist, and those will do everything in their power to undermine the good will and positive works in every way they can. This negativity combined with the shortcomings of what makes people human can eventually cause leaders to have a few or zero followers. Thus, a true leader should be able to overcome the negativity in groups as well as inspiring people and showing them their own potential.
Unfortunate as it is for us, true leaders are rare, and the leaders who are elected, given a throne, appointed, and ordained are not even good enough to lead, usually. Once they sit on the leader’s seat, they forget what they are there for, dismiss their responsibilities, and ignore their influence on the people. Any leader should never forget that she or he has the servant’s duty to the groups and masses and is there to serve them, and not for being served. In short, as leadership is built upon trust and respect, the integrity and strength of character has to come before the ability to influence people; therefore, his or her character and attitude makes a leader credible.
True leaders are the key pieces of the humanity’s puzzle, and their virtues are numerous. True leaders are most wanted for their ethics, strengths, and talents. True leaders are those who can dream and let the people dream with them. True leaders do not run away from or buckle under challenges. True leaders do not stop learning and observing. True leaders do not fear for their own safety and welfare.
Most of all, true leaders are who we need for their visions.
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February 19, 2015 at 12:23pm February 19, 2015 at 12:23pm
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Prompt: You have just cloned yourself. What responsibilities will you give your clone?
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Look here, Clone Joy, you have been a huge mistake, but now that you are here, I can’t do anything about it. Getting rid of you would equal to murder. So let’s get our priorities straight. I don’t want a new kind of identity theft by you. From here on, your name is not Joy but you will be called Coy. And coy you will be. Just stay in the background.
Except, you can impersonate me, if the doctors tell me I have to have another colonoscopy. You can have that instead of me. Believe me, it is an experience no one should miss. Just ask Katie Couric. By the way, I think she underplayed that whole thing.
Also as Joy you’ll be when waiting in the doctors’ offices instead of me, as sometimes this can be an eternity, and when I am called in, you will go instead of me. You have my whole-hearted permission for this.
As things stand, I am not asking too much of you for having cloned you and letting you experience life. In return, I expect that you make my life a bit easier by taking the medical establishment off my hair.
In a way, I am indebted to you, too. If it weren’t for you, I was planning to go live with the Sherpas in Tibet where no doctor can reach, but I did hesitate for being addicted to my creature comforts. Therefore, you can live with me and use all the conveniences, services, and goods that I have, and in return, you know what you’ll have to do.
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February 18, 2015 at 5:41pm February 18, 2015 at 5:41pm
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Prompt: "Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read." Cassandra Clare Do you agree with this?
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If the metaphor of life is a book, then it should have an infinite number of pages left, and therefore, even with the most number of pages that each one of us can read, the number of pages left should not finish at only a thousand but extend to infinity.
The mystery of the unseen is always limitless, and just how can we measure something like life? With our five senses?
Our eyes cannot see the smallest nor the largest. Actually, cats can see things we cannot imagine seeing. Our sense of smell is much worse than a dog’s. Our sense of taste is just barely adequate to taste the food we’re given. Our ears cannot decipher all the vibrations in the air, and if they did, we each would have acted like a radio. What we touch we only feel the coarser features of it and not its subtleties. All this goes to show that what we call our limitlessness is much tinier than the limitlessness of life.
Yet, I can’t say I know the secret of life or how vast it is, knowing that life is the most twisted phenomenon, full of cheap tricks. What I just said may sound like I am demeaning life. In one sense maybe, but in another sense, I think life is a magical mystery. Actually when I first read the quote and thought about life, the vision of a painting jumped into my mind. The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch, the same guy famous for his Scream. The Dance of Life is in the series called The Frieze of Life, intended to give a clear view of life and the situation of the modern man of 1899.
The Dance of Life can be interpreted on different levels. The biological cycle of human existence is evident as the ages of the figures vary. The way the people dissolve into the background shows that the human destiny is not separate from the rhythm of nature. This painting, even together with the others in the series, cannot begin to show the vastness of life, even if created by a highly perceptive painter as Munch.
Still, I don’t blame Edvard Munch or Cassandra Clare to make such outrageous claims as to define or hint at the boundaries of life. After all, if we shoot for the stars but hit the moon instead, isn’t that a big success, still?
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February 17, 2015 at 4:37pm February 17, 2015 at 4:37pm
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Prompt: What do you think about thinking itself, in general? Do humans think all the time?
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In my experience, thoughts come to me during the course of the day. I don’t think, I think knowingly. Well, it figures, doesn’t it!  I only think on purpose when I am writing. At least, that is something.
Yet, I see I just mixed up the process of thinking with its subject matter in the paragraph above, as there is a difference between the thinking process and the subject matter of thought. Usually, our emotions react more strongly to the topics inside our minds than what’s going on around us at the moment. When we think something upsets us, we react to the thought of it rather than the actual upsetting incident.
Fixated, we only think we are thinking when we focus on things bigger than us. The rest of what we think is a reaction to the world around us.
While I was in school, I did consciously think because my group of friends were always among the “thinking kind.” In high school, our subjects were of the more ethereal, spiritual stuff. Are we being told wrongly of the truth about the existence of God? Who made the universe? Is the Big Bang just a fizzle? What is right and wrong? Why do we believe in certain ways? Etc. A reason for this type of chewing the fat must lie in the fact that ours was an all-girls school. I am sure if boys were there, our thoughts would steer toward their way.
During higher education, our thinking and discussions and the subject matter shifted to more social and political avenues. Later on in real life, we became entangled in our daily lives, and even the old friends, when I met them on occasion, picked subjects along the lines of child raising, grandkids, wrinkles, recipes, the ins and outs of housekeeping, other life experiences, and when the election time struck, politics.
Probably that is why during the course of my day now, my mind can only stomach the mundane. Still, thinking must be a consistent thing, whatever it is we think. Accordingly, we must be thinking almost all the time whether we realize it or not. Whether we focus on everyday events or what is sensory, we judge, predict, and interpret through our thoughts.
I am positive that, besides promoting a decision or resolution, thinking has other virtues, such as distracting us with fantasies and letting us float over the tough life events. On sleepless nights, when worries seem to attack us, we are reacting to our thoughts and not the actuality of whatever it is that has happened or can happen. These reactions I do not consider to be thoughts but rather emotions, acting as the friendly and sometimes unfriendly alibis of thoughts.
In some instances, we might overthink (worry is the better chosen word here); or else, we avoid thought on certain matters, which is a worse habit because we drain power from ourselves when we choose being thoughtless and not knowing. Thoughts are important as they affect our health, and mental practice can change how our brains and relatedly our bodies operate. It is a scientific fact that identical twins, sometimes, develop different immune systems; possibly, their thinking makes it so.
Whatever it is we think, we must be addicted to thinking in some way, or else, why would anyone resist the practices of meditation? Yet, most do who take up meditation, at least at first, because it feels next to impossible to quiet a mind that is addicted to thinking and make it willfully blind.
The thing is, most of our thoughts just happen, without accomplishing anything immediately. Their accumulated long-term effects may probably be more intense, but I don’t know of any study on this; neither have I paid any attention to my own way of thinking on this accumulation factor.
Yet, thinking is an essential process, and possibly, we can guide ourselves in this area. Wisdom can be asking ourselves these questions: What could I think, should think, that I don’t think? Just what is it that I am missing here? This way, our thinking will not have a blind spot, and we’ll feel safe because we know, on any important subject, we have thought everything in every way possible.
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February 16, 2015 at 5:23pm February 16, 2015 at 5:23pm
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Prompt: What makes a writer a writer in your view? And accordingly, do you agree with this quote by Junot Diaz?
“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”
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I absolutely agree with the quote, not that I don’t think “writing well and easily and having amazing talent” is something to sneer at, but I have this mulish belief of keeping my nose to the grindstone anyway. I admit, this might come from rationalizing my desperation or my devil-may-care attitude to the details of any vocation, avocation, or an interest I have, but I don’t like giving up easily on anything or anyone.
Life beautiful. So is writing. Life will throw curveballs at me. So will my writing or the lacking parts of my craft when push comes to shove. Life humbles me. So does writing. And just when I think I handle everything well enough, life will smack me down with cruel indifference. So does my writing. Just because life does all those things to me, shall I give up on it like a coward? Of course not. And neither shall I stop writing. As my first sentence in this paragraph says, life is beautiful; so is the act of writing.
I know from experience that the reason most people never reach their goals is because they give up easily. Life isn’t meant to be easy; neither is writing. It is a constant trial and error with lows and highs. And when I can most believe I’ve done good or decide to persevere, that time and that decision may become the most tested.
Even so, even through adversity, I continue, regardless of any negative views of my life or reviews of my work, regardless of any testing of either one of them. A quote by Zig Ziglar always encourages and causes me to chuckle: ““People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” Imagine what would happen if we all gave up on bathing, although I assume some people may do it, feeling worn out from turning on the faucet in the shower.
This daily thing is a biggie for me...both for bathing and writing. For that reason, I try not to miss a day in writing in my blog and then some. I try to write as well as I can with the time I can spare and the ability I can muster. Is my every entry in my blog a success or does any line of poetry or a paragraph of prose live up to my satisfaction? No, far from it, but I keep at it, if only for the joy of the writing process, because something about writing touches my heart and defines me. For that reason alone, I have duct-taped the mouth of my internal critic and told him that the greatest risk with what I write will be to risk nothing.
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February 15, 2015 at 7:08pm February 15, 2015 at 7:08pm
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Have you ever watched someone sleep and went like “Aawwwww!”? I love to watch my hubby taking his zzzz’s. I just adored my babies when they slept. Well, maybe because then they didn’t get into mischief, too. Now that they are grown up and have homes of their own, I cannot watch them anymore, but only make do with their snapshots of slumber I dared to take. I even loved to watch my cats and dog sleep. They all are or have been so trusting, so innocent.
Something about the sleeping person or animal makes me turn to jelly, probably because it is a special moment in which the moon smiles and all other concerns are erased. As Shakespeare said in Cymbeline, “He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.”
The person who sleeps is so far away, having surrendered to his or her dreamland; yet, so near. If I weren’t afraid to startle him, I could touch him. Maybe it is this wanting to touch, but holding back thing that makes the sleeping beauties so dear, so close to my heart.
Here is a poem on this subject that I came across in a book called Selected Poems.
Watching You,
by James Schuyler
Watching you sleep
a thing you do so well
no shove no push
on the sliding face
of sleep as on
the deep a sea bird
of a grand wingspread
trusts what it knows
and I who rumple crumple
and mash (snore) amble
and ankle about wide
awake, wanting to fold,
loving to watch sleep
embodied in you my
warm machine that draws
me back to bed
and you who turn
all toward me
to love and seduce
me back to sleep "You
said 9:30, now it's
10:" you
don't seem to care
cold coffee (sugar,
no milk) about time:
you never do, never
get roiled the way
I do "Should I nag
you or shut up? If
you say, I will"
always be
glad to return to
that warm turning
to me in that
tenderest moment
of my nights,
and more, my days.
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February 14, 2015 at 1:42pm February 14, 2015 at 1:42pm
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Happy Valentines Day 
Prompt: Agree or Disagree ?
It's easier for a woman to read a man's mind then it is for a man to read a woman's mind.
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I really don’t know whether to agree or disagree with this claim: “It's easier for a woman to read a man's mind then it is for a man to read a woman's mind.” I will, however, try to speculate on the possibilities, based on my puny experiences.
During my youth, since the man had to take the lead especially in the matters of the heart, I found most men to be often self-conscious. Some focused so much on their own behavior that they couldn’t see what a woman thought. It was up to the woman to make him feel at ease and let him know what she was up to or what she wanted. With the arrival of women’s movement, I think, that burden of those charged moments and misunderstandings became a shared thing.
Where I am concerned, I don’t claim I can read anyone’s mind, men or women. I can only deduce an understanding from the signs they put forth. If they are giving false signals, they’ll get false insights from me. If the roles are switched and I don’t tell or show what I want, I don’t think anyone can read my mind either.
Just to be fair, when I checked trying to find out some kind of a scientific basis, the data was iffy and depended on who did the research. According to findings in brain studies, the male brain tied to emotion didn't activate as strongly as a woman’s when viewing the other person’s eyes. This and other so-called results may suggest that men are inferior in reading women’s minds; however, each of these studies are suspect from my point of view, and there is no way to exactly determine the truth in this matter. I will, therefore, conclude that men and women are just about the same in reading each other’s minds, although individual differences may vary.
Yet, the crucial question is, “Do we really want someone else read our minds?” Just think what would happen if everyone read everyone else’s mind. I can guess, CHAOS! This world would be a more mixed-up, more bewildering, and more scary a place.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” And I agree with that wholeheartedly whole-mindedly.
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February 13, 2015 at 1:19pm February 13, 2015 at 1:19pm
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Friday the 13th, also known as Black Friday in some countries, is considered an unlucky day in Western superstition. What's your take?
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Believing in the bad luck of Friday the 13th shows some kind of a confidence in human nature that everything has to have an immediate explanation, no matter how fragile or strange, and everything can be helped with and resolved. It is this false confidence that lets the human beings build tall apartment buildings on sand and cities below water level in the hurricane-prone areas.
Nature is beautiful though in a tricky and sinister way at times, as it can be indifferent, cruel, or uncaring. In nature, everything eats everything else, and the weather and other phenomena can create havoc in our lives without a warning. So are the relationships among groups and nations of mankind because we love to imitate nature for being a part of it.
Living in this harsh environment, we have let our imaginations run loose and let in superstition and dogma to play a role in our reasoning since the beginning of our time on earth. After all, to what we cannot explain, we add up or create coincidences, and find these new revelations to be as good as truthful explanations. This way, our ignorance saves face.
Since trying to find out the truth behind anything can be too difficult a task and one we may not want to deal with, we attach meaning to something totally unrelated. For example, if I slip and fall on a newly waxed floor, I can find fault with my new slippers being unlucky, instead of blaming myself for not taking care where I step. Trust me, this has happened!
A few of the intelligent people have known about this quirk of the human species. Millenniums ago, the father of medicine, Hippocrates said, about epilepsy: “People think that epilepsy is divine, simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that, someday, we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.”
And so it is with Friday the 13th, a black cat, breaking a mirror, leaving shoes upside down, opening an umbrella inside a house, walking under a ladder, stepping on a crack, and so on and so forth. And so it is with me for I feel like crossing my fingers each time I write an entry in my blog.
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February 12, 2015 at 2:04pm February 12, 2015 at 2:04pm
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Prompt: When was the last time someone told you that they were proud of you?
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Yesterday, but at this point, I don’t want to elaborate on it. Instead, I’ll talk about being proud of someone and telling them that point blank, face to face. Like a gunshot.
Like a gunshot, because sometimes, this is not a good idea, since the person may not like to be openly praised by someone else who thinks he or she is a god. Some people do what they have to do as this is part of their normal life or vocation or interests, and think nothing of it. They may even be embarrassed or feel belittled.
When people say they are proud of you, they are putting you on the spot. Plus they are acting as if they are your parents or superiors. Saying, “I am proud of you,” shows the other person’s vanity, for he or she is putting herself into her praise. Saying, “Thank you for the work you did,” is always the better approach.
On the other hand, I think saying, “I am proud of being in the same group with you or working with you,” is perfectly appropriate.
I wouldn’t mind a parent or a teacher or my superior (if in a work situation) telling me they are proud of me, but coming from anyone else, it feels as if I am being paid an underhanded compliment.
We can all be proud to be something or other, but to be proud of a person is taking it too far. We can always be proud of ourselves, when and if we deserve it, and thankful for other people’s efforts, but I think, telling them we are proud of them is a condescending attitude.
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February 11, 2015 at 3:23pm February 11, 2015 at 3:23pm
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Prompt: It was a dark and stormy night. What happened? Thank you, Snoopy.
================
It was as if the whole world trembled. Windows rattled with thunder, and the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by several violent gusts of wind that swept up the street into and over the stone wall. The darkness was pure, visionless, except for the occasional lightning tearing through the sky and haunting the underlings with bursts of blue, purple, and white light.
The night was dark and stormy all right, but the next day shone as if all the skilled painters in Heaven offered their brushstrokes to those of us on earth. Their creativity set the maples on fire, turned the oaks russet, and the beeches first yellow then to gold. Autumn’s brazen fire torched all the others, dogwoods, buttercups, cherries, into a palette of colorful light. This blissful imagery’s uproar lulled me into contemplation.
As living for me meant vision, the powerful flashes of lightning that blinded versus the lovely colors of the next day seemed to be joke, an extremist’s joke. Extremes hinted at a longing for death or violence, and I hated all extremes. Whoever created the vicious cycle of birth and death--of seasons, of people, of anything--had to be an extremist. Thoughts like this, when I told them to my mother, she washed my mouth with soap, and the priest gave me more Hail Marys than Mary herself would have liked.
So each year, in October, I decided inside my eight-year-old mind to skip town, the state, or if possible, the country, but then, sooner or later spring and summer arrived, and this decision together with all the other secret ones were put on hold. Who’d know then, that once I became of age, I would depend on the extremist this much and be grateful to Him all through my days, despite the dark and stormy nights and even those surprising bursts of fall colors, especially because nature in autumn encouraged my allergies!
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February 10, 2015 at 3:23pm February 10, 2015 at 3:23pm
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Prompt: What does being human mean to you? What constitutes an example of being human?
----------------------
To me, being human means striving for right vision, right thinking, and right action, in other words, reaching for the ethics of being, so life can contain beauty and dignity. Being human also means the tolerance of oneself in making mistakes and the wisdom of learning from them. Being human is accepting others can be fallible, too, and if possible, forgiving them.
A true human knows that bad behavior, even that of villains, criminals, and terrorists, is not predestined but is manufactured by rotten circumstances and societies.
A true human does not have to accept whatever he is told, but he chooses to think for himself and come to the right conclusion by himself. He corrects himself when he finds out he has misinterpreted any person or situation.
A true human accepts other people together with their beliefs, their views and ways of life, colors, and backgrounds, and even appreciates their differences. It is the responsibility of the human being to work toward making the world a better place and help others as much as he can, in the ways that he can, be it at least one person at a time, or a few people, or communities.
The true human knows that there is a positive lesson in every life experience and true beauty lives under the skin, and that as long as he lives, there will always be something more to learn. He also knows it is fine to feel sorrow for a short while, because after the grieving period, he’ll see the opportunity to grow and rebuild himself, to become the brilliant person he can be.
The choices a true human makes designs his personal life, as he has a choice to be the best he can be each day. He has the choice to appreciate what he has, choice to appreciate the present moment, the choice to make time for himself, choice to do something to make himself or another person smile, choice to laugh at his own silliness, choice to be persistent with his goal, choice to try over and over again.
Human beings, their having special physical attributes and an identical genetic coding as the great apes aside, are marvels of nature. Yet, are they superior over other life? That remains to be proven.
Scientists assert that being human or expressing our humanity depends on our highly developed brain and its frontal lobes, and that no other species has been endowed with this natural gift. This is a concept I haven’t bought into as of now, no matter what any religion, science, or belief insists on it. I think other life and humans are just different from each other, despite the claims that humans’ reasoning and feelings are superior.
Examples of those who are true humans are all around us. Just look for those persons who don’t cultivate negative emotions inside themselves and are rational, accepting, tolerant, empathizing, helpful, and always working on to better themselves and the world around them, regardless of their own backgrounds, life experiences, education, and wealth or the lack of it.
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Note: Now that this entry has turned into a sermon, I am kicking myself for not making fun of the questions asked (Okay, so I asked them). I need to be silly, now. I can't be this serious all the time.
Anyway, I hope any true human's behavior will be an encouragement to others, something like, "Monkey see, monkey do."
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February 9, 2015 at 11:53am February 9, 2015 at 11:53am
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Prompt: Anais Nin said: “Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
Do you think emotional excess is necessary for creativity and writing?
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I don't fully agree, although I feel I have to weigh this question more thoroughly. While strong emotion is needed for great works of art, do we as writers need to experience that emotion as strongly as a person who has lived it? I think not; but then, empathy is evoked more strongly when we have lived through the same or similar ordeal as the other person.
On one side, great works of art have come from the strong feelings of their creators. History of great art attests to that. On the other side, people who have lived calmer lives have also managed to create great works.
This makes me think that empathy is more important than approaching any emotion in a dramatic way. In addition, feeling any emotion too strongly has its downfall. Although such hard-hitting emotion can inject some truth to a writing, it can also end up making the piece sappy, sentimental, and trite. (I know. I have written a couple of such pieces. )
On the other hand, if the writer can show that emotion objectively through empathy, his writing would be more convincing. In the case of fiction, for example, excess emotion would be what the characters would feel, but the writer’s job is to evoke in the reader those emotions his characters are experiencing. In this way, the writer becomes the channel to conduct emotion from the character to the reader. To be able to do that, does he need to have experienced that emotion to its full impact? I think he only needs to be familiar with that emotion and feel the empathy for the character through his imagination.
This brings up the fact that the writer and the artist need imagination to be able to create, in addition to empathy. If not for imagination, would the writers of Star Trek know how the travelers in the Enterprise would feel when they encountered strange incidents?
The question in the prompt opened up other questions for me, such as: Do a person's growth and his understanding of the other’s pain require personal pain? Not for everyone, I think; although, an example in one’s own life analogous to the character’s ordeal would help.
From this point of view, we should not be afraid to fall apart for a short time, because this will open up to a wider worldview and understanding of others’ experiences; as long as we don’t forget to acknowledge the lessons learned from mistakes and all experiences—ours and everyone else’s--and try to be able to apply those to our work. To be able to create by going to pieces at the gates of powerful emotions, however, sounds too far-fetched to me.
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