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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 29, 2016 at 3:55pm February 29, 2016 at 3:55pm
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Prompt: Happy February 29! What does ‘leap year’ mean to you and, what do you think are the positives and negatives of being in one?
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The word leap year feels like an off year, at best, and sounds like the calendar has jumped up and down in place as if jumping rope. This leap year is slightly more weighty because it is the Monday before what the TV calls Super Tuesday, the Tuesday which is phantomlike, crouching low, ready to attack, so to draw swan songs from a few presidential hopefuls. When all is said and done, the fewer of those hopefuls, the less nauseated I'll feel.
Leap year, to me,is an extra day in February. The positives are--however mistakenly--I feel like I gained a day in my life; akin to the time when the clocks are set back an hour in Autumn, I feel I have an extra hour. What's more, today is another day to keep me from doing the things I usually do on the first of March. The negatives? I can't think of any, except for calling February 29 a false positive.
The idea of adding a day to make up for the smidgen of time left over from other years due to the earth’s decimalized rotation around the sun goes back to ancient Egypt. I am guessing that’s why the Irish legend for women to propose to men on a leap-year day could originate in the olden times. The funniest rule of this practice, I think, was put into effect by Queen Margaret of Scotland who set fines for the men who had turned down women’s marriage proposals on a leap year.
I guess, my father and I, who have the same birthday, held on another day to be born in order not to be leap-year babies, not because of Queen Margaret, but possibly because of the birthday cake and other stuff that come with birthdays. Imagine celebrating one’s birthday every four years! Kinda like Pope Paul III, who was a leap-year baby. Yet, regardless of the great people born on a leap-year day, the richest lives are the simpler ones, and I am glad my life was not any more complicated than it already has been, had I been born a few hours earlier.
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February 28, 2016 at 2:53pm February 28, 2016 at 2:53pm
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Inspired by the ongoing political debates, in which the factfinders find the holes in facts and errors made on purpose, this Sunday, I wanted to write about mistaken judgments, not involving our circus-like political scene, but the writing of fiction. Funny, from where we all find inspiration!
As a principle, I respect everyone’s judgment whether it agrees with mine or not, but if a judgment ends with disaster, shouldn’t we call it mistaken? A mistaken-judgment situation in a piece of fiction needs a character who is mistaken, the victim of his acts or thinking, and the catalyst as a possible instigator or an incident.
The mistaken character can be one who is gullible as he believes in and trusts others or an intelligent one who is cold and calculating. He or she can be impulsively rushing to judgment and is not hesitant to stab another character in the back. This character can be the protagonist or the antagonist.
His victim or victims can be the protagonist and/or any other secondary character. He or she can be just a bystander or somehow-involved-in-the-mistake person or persons.
Some of the leading passions and emotions involved in the story can be:
jealousy
false suspicions or rumors
taking some event or some idea out of context
knowingly allowing false suspicions to support friends or allies
subconsciously trying to cause an event repeat itself, an event that hurt or helped him in the past
the general belief that someone or some notion is an enemy
errors purposely provoked by an outsider or an enemy
the indifference of the secondary or third-place characters or to what really matters
The catalyst, on the other hand, can be an event or a person. If a person, he or she may have some self-interest, may dislike or hate the mistaken character or his victim, may feel jealousy toward either one or both.
Now that I’ve listed all I could think of, isn’t it a coincidence that so much of the political scene fits so easily into here?  
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February 27, 2016 at 7:17pm February 27, 2016 at 7:17pm
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Prompt: I spy with my little eye- You’re at work, like any normal day, and happen to look out the window as you head to the break room for a second cup of coffee. What you see makes you stop in your tracks: What is it?
Show us what you got...
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I am getting that second cup no matter what. Eric, my grumpy boss, might not realize that. I need my coffee before this hellhole of a job swallows me whole. Determined, I take confident strides toward the break room, but I abruptly slow down by the window near the door, since I see them, the clouds. Overhead, they are thick, dark, and foreboding.
Noooo! Not again. I am now cemented in place. Then I hold my breath and try to see, to envision, something else. Instead, I shake from the pressure of all that I know, all that I have seen coming. Maybe I am just born differently from others, for my senses are sharper, my primal instincts pure, and my resolve and courage unshakeable.
My self-styled knowing is not a foolproof system by any means, but I know clouds like these, in their gloominess, always replay the events from the past and the future of the cosmos. I say replay because whatever there is, whatever there will be, was already written before the sixth day of the creation. I know that, too.
“If Eric sees you dawdling here, you’re history, girl!” I recognize Candy, my co-worker in the next cubby, from her whisper voice, for she hisses like a cobra before leaping to attack. I shrug but don’t answer her.
She leans in to see what I am staring at. A few seconds later, a sudden flash catches our eyes. Was it a shooting star at daytime? I see it race through the air directly in front of the window and crash on the parking lot behind the business compound.
Candy gulps as flames with luminous streaks rise from where that thing crashed. “Did you see that? I mean did you see that earlier than me? Were you waiting for it?”
I nod, but I can’t even open my mouth. I can’t even tell her what that thing is.
She continues. “When you were looking out before, there was nothing. Then suddenly…that! As if you were waiting for that. Were you?”
From the fire smoke rolls in with the thickness of a dense fog. People on the street, right down below, have difficulty walking. I see them covering their mouths and coughing. Someone totters off-balance and falls.
“What is it?” Candy asks again.
I don’t answer her but point out to the tall, thin, and ghostly shape with many arms, two legs, and a head of sorts that emerges through the smoke. It is easy to notice that he is trembling. I gasp.
I know him. I know he is coming for me.
Abruptly, I push Candy aside and rush into the break room. He may come for me all right, but not before I get that second cup of coffee. Be it fire, flood, storm, or another-worldly creature, they can take anything away from me but not my black brew, as my second cup coffee is a rare possession I won’t part with.
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February 26, 2016 at 11:47am February 26, 2016 at 11:47am
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Prompt: We are bloggers, which means we have a platform and a voice. Use today to talk about the cause most important to your heart.
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The cause which is most important to my heart, unfortunately, is an unattainable one, given the human frailties and the mob behavior of the masses. Still, I’d like to write about it because, as hope never dies, if we somehow manage to find it, this planet will be a true heaven on earth. What I am talking about is peace on earth, a phrase which should not remain as only a Christmas jingle.
Wishing for world peace has nothing to do with religion, but it has to do with acceptance and kindness of people toward one another. This can only happen with the practice of non-violence that comes not only from one nation, one group, or one section of the earth but from every nation and every human being, all at the same time.
All at the same time, because if one side acts with kindness and the others gang up on it with all kinds of cruelties, the peace-loving one will be overpowered and vanquished. Neither can a section of people, on an island, separate themselves from the rest of the world and stay untouched. Others will get to them in no time. History shows it.
How can we go about reaching world peace, then? I don't know, but I think it has to start on a personal level. Each one of us must stop being petty and let go of the idea of “What I have, do, or believe in is better than anyone else’s; therefore, it is the best in the world and everyone should practice it.”
We are used to wielding our swords of personal choices and defending ourselves and what we belong to with such passion that anything anyone says or does irks us and makes us attack that person. Feeling irked may be unavoidable, but acting on it is not; therefore, the first thing to do is not to act on our annoyances unless our life is threatened.
If we can achieve this, then, maybe, the notion of us-against-them will weaken, and in time, we will abandon our beliefs of ‘otherness’ and understand and adopt ‘togetherness’. If we can all succeed doing this on a personal level first, group level second, and national level third, there may not be a separation of race, nation, culture, or religion anymore, but we will belong to a peaceful place, each one of us free to choose the way we want to be while fully accepting another person’s choices. Then, with some luck, we may be able to act as a model to the rest of the planet.
Although I have talked big in the last few paragraphs, I don’t think what I said can or will be done worldwide, but at least, each one of us can practice loving kindness for one another and hope that the internal peace it brings will spread around. Then, as in the John-Lennon song, “You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.”
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February 25, 2016 at 9:42am February 25, 2016 at 9:42am
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Prompt: What are your favorite TV commercials?
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Most of what we watch are on the DVR, which means we fast forward the ads or when we watch directly from the TV, such as during the news programs, I go do something else either on the computer or in the kitchen while the ad is on. At the moment, I can’t think of a recent TV commercial offhand, but several years ago, I had watched a TV commercial awards program; I think it is called CLIO. On that program, there was an honorable mention winner from Japan. I can’t recall the product they were advertising but it showed two little boys in a bathtub. One of them passed gas and the camera showed the bubbles from it rising to the surface of the water. I thought that was funny and cute.
TV commercials, even if they may annoy us like the AFLAC duck, are not that easy to make. They are quite important for us here because the companies employ writers to create storylines, either heartfelt ones or satirical and with a sense of humor. As in all fiction, the ads have a theme and a main character. The idea is to represent the brand clearly without cutting corners yet keeping it simple. For example, focusing on the image of a product can arouse more interest than burdening the viewers with lots of facts.
In addition, local commercials to save actor fees, opt to use the people who own the brand, but usually, those ads end up as being crude and silly. Still, the commercial ads people need to take into account the limitations of a small budget but try to not come up with fake-sounding and annoying commercials that resemble political campaign ads.
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February 24, 2016 at 11:36am February 24, 2016 at 11:36am
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Prompt: "I don't know who I am. I am like cat here, a couple of no-name slobs. We don't belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don't even belong to each other." Holly Golightly--Breakfast at Tiffany’s What is your take on this?
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“We do not belong to anyone, and no one belongs to us,” is true for everyone. This may only happen by contract on the surface. Still, contracts can be broken, or otherwise, people are forced to belong to other people as in the times of slavery or in today’s third-world-country marriages. Yet, even that is not a total belonging. Inside themselves, those so-called slaves have not been and are not slaves at all.
No one can and should run anyone else’s life and profit from it, although this still happens in several ways. The earnings, the entertainment, or the joy of one person should never cause the damage of another one, although in our world, it still does under many disguises to some degree.
Many people exist on this planet, none of which are the same. Each individual has his or her own perceptions of what is good or bad for them, and no one else has the right to tell them what to do, how to feel, or how to decide.
We are here to be and to do whatever we believe is good for us so we can fulfill our purpose in life the way we feel we should. This purpose could also be making mistakes and learning from them, just the way Holly did in the movie. Even as a person who broke grammar rules and let herself be used by other men, she knew when true love showed up and she broke the mental chains that bound her to the person who had bought her, and then, she followed the man she chose with her heart of gold. This was a good movie, which I enjoyed, although, at the time of its first showing, it created some turbulence among some folks. And yes, I am old enough to remember that.
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February 23, 2016 at 7:02pm February 23, 2016 at 7:02pm
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Prompt: You see a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper. What are the kinds of stories this image brings to your mind? About the guy? About the bench? About the park or any other setting?
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Two landscape workers were raking the gold and amber leaves into mounds with unbelievable languor. One of them cursed when his rake hooked a partially deflated soccer ball, while a chubby mongrel waddled across the grass and peed by a tree trunk. Like every other day, the usual business, I thought, despite the strange sense I felt, something like déjà vu.
I was right. In the next three minutes, this scene became completely altered.
With a sudden jolt, I felt an unexpected weakness in my knees. My heart began to pound. My jaws tightened. I took a couple of steps, stumbled, and leaned against a tree, but if it weren’t for the little boy screaming with horror who ran past me, I wouldn’t have noticed the man on the park bench whose newspaper was covering his face. I looked carefully at him to see if he could be who I thought he could be.
This abrupt change wasn’t only heralded by the terrified boy but the flames coming out of the bakery, the sound of cars crashing into each other on the street, and all the other city noises now coming in crescendo through the trees. I pressed my trembling knees together. It had to be him, there on the park bench. How dreadful!
He slowly lowered the newspaper. “I was waiting for you!” Although he yelled, I could barely hear him with all the commotion. I took a couple more steps toward him. My first feeling was one of trepidation. How could I avoid more trouble?
Yet, he stared at me and chuckled. Beneath his smirk, there was a layer of something, something heavy and inescapable. Something acutely personal and significant.
“You keep it all in your head, don’t you!” he laughed. “You are again composing another piece of your tainted fiction. You should write these things down in a notebook, some time.”
“Sorry, I am late,” I said, quickening my steps while I shook my head to clear it. “I tried to call, but your secretary said you had already left.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, folding his newspaper. “Let’s go. I know this fish place…”
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 The man sitting on a park bench reading is a prompt some creative writing teachers used to use in their classes. I thought if would be fun to try it, here.
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February 22, 2016 at 2:45pm February 22, 2016 at 2:45pm
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Prompt: What has surprised you the most about your life or life in general?
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So many things came as a surprise in my life, but the most surprising of them all was that I have a happy marriage, in all fifty years of it. What is so surprising about it, one may ask since many marriages make it to fifty years and beyond.
Mine is a surprise to me because of the earlier negative opinions I had about marriage. My parents in their thirteen years of married life spent more time apart than together, and when together, they argued all the time, until my father died when I was six years old. My mother never married again. All her friends and practically all the older women in my young life, with the exception of one of my grandmothers, complained of men, making them into monsters. Although I had wonderful and caring uncles in my mother’s extended family, I too became wary of men, and I sort of wrote them off together with the idea of marriage.
Then I met my husband…
Lo and behold! In hindsight, I find my initial opinion to have been so wrong. Not only is my marriage good, but in my life, I found men, practically all men I had anything to do with to be very nice and helpful to me. Maybe I was extremely lucky with my experience with men, be it as friends, teachers, uncles, co-workers, neighbors…etc.
If anything, any negativity that existed in my life was caused by women, but this is my experience and definitely not true for all women. I am not badmouthing women at all because I also find wonderful, lifelong friends in women, and I do understand the troubles they go through when coupled with guys who are abusive and not-caring.
As to the surprising things in life in general, quite a few things have gotten my attention. When I think about it, on top of everything, I find the organization of life--the different species on earth, the earth itself, and everything else in the cosmos--to be awesome, however in a repetitive way sometimes, and I only wish nothing and no living being would get its sustenance from other living things. I don’t like the idea that living things have to eat each other to stay alive, be it animals or plants. For these reasons, Shock and Awe should be the nickname given to life instead of a war initiative, in my opinion.
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February 21, 2016 at 10:47pm February 21, 2016 at 10:47pm
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Did you know that the term skid row comes from Washington State’s logging industry? Loggers there built roads out of logs and then skidded newly cut logs down these “skid roads.” Later on, saloons and brothels were built along these skid roads and that’s when the phrase turned to mean a district abounding in vicious characters and the practice of vice, with the word road changing to row in colloquial speech. Then, somehow the idiom to be on the skids came to mean to be in a decline as to celebrity relationships.
Another idiom we associate with a place is to eavesdrop, which is to stand under the eaves of a house so to hear the talk inside the house. In its metaphoric meaning, to eavesdrop is to listen secretly to private conversation.
Yet, another noun that came from a place refers to our bathing suits, not that I wear one for the obvious reasons of aging. Anyhow, the word is bikini, the two-piece bathing suit for women that came from the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where atomic bombs were tested in 1946, hinting at the "explosive" effect.
One of my favorite place nouns is donnybrook, with the figurative meaning of a brawl or scuffle, derived from Donnybrook Fair, the horse fair in a Dublin suburb, disreputable for fighting and drunkenness.
Then, who can give up on The Bronx cheer, the noise people make with the intention of mockery, after a borough of the New York City?
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February 20, 2016 at 3:21pm February 20, 2016 at 3:21pm
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Prompt: What makes dialogue sound forced or phony? How do you keep it from sounding flat or boring?
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As there are many ways of making dialogue sound forced or phony, there exist many ways of rescuing it.
To start with, dialogue should imitate real speech. People do not talk in long, fancy sentences and in long blocks, unless they are bores who hog the conversation. Most of the time, people in real life use very short sentences or they repeat a word within a sentence or they pause in the middle and then continue on. All these things can be shown with punctuation and through other means. The idea is, each person is unique in his ways of speech that reflects his education and background.
Where dialogue doesn’t imitate everyday conversation in a story is in its context. Every section of dialogue should highlight, add, and progress the plot. The unnecessary talk that doesn’t involve the main storyline should not be included in a dialogue section. In other words, Chekov’s Gun Rule--Everything that is introduced in a story needs to have a function--applies to dialogue, too.
Then, when every character in the story has the same speech as to the choice of words and sentence structure, you know that the writer is putting his own way of speaking in each character’s mouth; therefore, according to each character’s traits, a specific way of talking should be assigned to him or her. Maybe a character has a way of not completing his sentences with his voice trailing off at the end or he has a specific word or phrase that he keeps uttering.
The speech pattern of a character has to fit the character, too. For example, a straight-shooting character won’t beat around the bush. He’ll be direct with the shortest amount of words and won’t coddle the person he’s speaking to. On the other hand, another less confident character’s speech may be more apologetic, more defensive. If a character changes by the end of a story, that change usually shows up in his way of talking as well.
Writing teachers differ in their opinions on the dialogue tags. Most, nowadays, seem to prefer only the ‘he said-she said’ tags. Speaking for me, I don’t mind reading other tags if they are used sparingly and with a purpose. Then, if only two people of different genders are speaking, there might not be a reason to use tags at all but to let the context of the conversation carry the burden as to who is speaking.
In addition, if dialogue in a scene lingers a long while and the dialogue sections are too long and tiresome, it might be a good idea to convert some of the information in them into narrative action.
Dialogue, in general, helps to progress the story as well as show some of the make-up of a character. When it is not doing either of these things, it should be taken out of the story. In short, the dialogue should have the clarity of purpose inside a scene and within the greater context of the story. |
February 19, 2016 at 8:03pm February 19, 2016 at 8:03pm
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Prompt: Create a story, a poem or simply discuss what these words mean to you... audacity, octopus, Americana, bomber, insanity and flutter.
Yes, I was playing with random word generator again. Have you ever used this to help your creative juices flow?
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I do use random words to write free-flow, but I've never used the word generator. I usually get a book, any book. I open a page without looking and put my finger on a random place. I don’t use the conjunctions, articles, and the like but nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I repeat the process a few times until I have a few words. Then I write longhand in notebooks, using the words. This is my favorite-fun type of writing.
I don’t know from which part of me the following piece came from, but here it is:
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Medals
While waiting for my stop, I am watching my image reflected on the bus’s window, the image that rolls and floats like a ghost on a diner’s walls with colorful graffiti and a bold, red sign that says Americana Café, as if my likeness were double exposed. These walls of the city must now house many wars. Except its inhabitants do not wear medals.
For years I never mentioned war, my medals, or the guilt and the shame attached to being a bomber, the insanity of it all, for I could never tell what the reaction would be because, after the war was over and done with, everyone wished I could put it all behind me, as if I went to McDonald’s to have a burger and now I was home. Not that easy, is it!
What they don’t take into account is the audacity of my recall like an octopus grabbing me with its many tentacles and pulling me under the surface, while I flutter in and out of the waves of pain, haunting images, and my bit of indignity, as I try to hold on.
The bus keeps moving and I am still staring at me, at my image reflected on the glass, pasted over the city scenes. This could be me; it should be me, but it isn’t. Something has gone awfully wrong. I now feel jealous of the person I could have been, but all I see is the rage superimposed on my image, on everything, even on my medals.
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February 18, 2016 at 2:53pm February 18, 2016 at 2:53pm
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Prompt: "A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill." Jane Austen Do you agree?
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Truth is, I would rather receive a short note written in sincerity than a long letter full of deceit that keeps beating around the bush. On the other hand, a long letter written in sincerity would be a delightful gift to receive and keep as a memento.
Still, to say that I agree or disagree with the quote would be wrong, for I am not sure if that quote has a profound meaning. In Pride and Prejudice, there are many references to and sections about letter writing to show the relationships between the characters. Letter writing was the means of communication in those days, and it might as well suggest a lot of emotion, which in my time, I might fail to understand and appreciate.
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Prompt: You are lost in the woods and it is getting dark. What happens next?
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What happens next depends on if I have a survival kit or a bag with me or not. If I have one, I would probably have a flashlight in it with extra batteries so my rescuers can find me.
Whether I’d have a flashlight or not, the first step for my survival would be to take stock of my situation. Instead of panicking, I would start to ask me questions such as:
 Where am I, or rather, where do I think I am?
What is my condition, as to health, emotional strength, clothing, etc?
What are the conditions like, such as weather and wild animals?
What do I have with me that can be useful?
What’s available in my present environment?
Will people know I am lost?
Would trying to find my way out help or should I stay where I am? For if wander about I may miss the rescuers? Besides isn’t it a good idea to conserve my energy until I am rescued?
Once I take stock of my situation, I must make a shelter for myself with what’s available in my immediate environment, such as under the sloping branches of a pine or a willow tree. Then I should devise things to help protect me like stones and thick branches that I can wield easily.
Next to my safety, water could be my biggest problem. If I know there will be no rescuers in the immediate future, I should look for areas where there is a thick vegetation growth, as that would indicate that there is water nearby. I should also try to use my ears and eyes well to help find water.
What really happens next, I might tell in a fictional story when I have the time. 
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February 16, 2016 at 1:17pm February 16, 2016 at 1:17pm
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Prompt: The award-winning Sci-fi author Nancy Kress names frustration as the most useful emotion in fiction. Do you agree with her, and if you do, in which ways do you think she is right?
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I don’t know if frustration is the most useful emotion in writing a story, but it is a fact that most other emotions start with some kind of frustration. When a character is not getting what he wants, his first emotion is frustration. Other emotions may follow it in varying strengths, and even those, I believe, are mostly in direct ratio to the original frustration that the character feels.
Frustration leads to a chain of other emotions. The first emotion after frustration is usually anger and then grief or sadness for the heartbreak of the failure. Trying harder may follow it and if frustrated again, blaming oneself or other ways of coping with it could be the next step.
The actions that may come after those initial emotions may be depression and taking to drinking or other vices to ease the pain, but stronger characters usually want to take revenge or try a different route to their goals. It all depends on who the character is.
The problem with frustration in a plot is in the portrayal of it. Stronger emotions are easier to show, but if the initial frustration is just a feeling of being upset or a slight annoyance because of inability to change or achieve something, the writers need to be creative in their interpretation and depiction of it.
Frustration is usually accompanied by confusion; therefore, using confusion is a good ploy to consider but only at the beginning, since we don’t want totally confused characters from the beginning to the end of our stories.
We can show a character’s frustration through his bodily signs such as stiffened posture, pinched lips, the shaking of the head, and the gritting of the teeth. We can also show it in his actions, such as pacing the floor, slamming doors, or pounding a fist on a tabletop. Then if we can get into his head, we can show it in his thoughts or listen to him as he talks to himself.
Frustration may serve as a window to self-discovery, too. For example, people who suddenly find themselves in a bad situation, say an enemy attack, can feel frustration followed by shock, fear, and uncertainty, and then, they may be compelled to look inside themselves and reassess their lives and their ability to be resilient.
The way we show the initial frustration can foreshadow the ending of the story. For that reason, its dramatization is something we need to consider seriously.
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February 15, 2016 at 5:54pm February 15, 2016 at 5:54pm
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Prompt: What do you think unconditional love is, and how would you act if you loved yourself unconditionally?
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When I think of unconditional love, I say “Wow, is this even possible?” Just who can love anyone no matter what? When I try to find a description of unconditional love, regardless of what the dictionaries say, I only come up with: as-is love.
As is? Can we love someone who kills our children, maims our pets, or burns our houses down? Can we love people who maliciously attack our country with acts of terrorism? Yes, we can be lenient, maybe, but love?
With most people, love is never free. We see that in their actions. Most of the time love is earned, and sometimes, well-earned…hopefully. Even then, there's always an expectation attached, at least, the expectation of not being wounded by those who are so loved.
I strongly believe that it is understandable and perfectly acceptable when we do not want a loved one to hurt us or to be hurtful to others. On the other hand, to hold someone we love responsible for our happiness is not love at all. Some people, however erroneously, demand this. If you are not happy with your life at work, you cannot expect your partner to make up for your unhappiness.
At times, people who profess true love can hold back their love; such as mothers, although they may be doing it with the best of intentions. So, it means there’s a caveat even in what we consider the purest forms of loves.
Sorry if I am going to ruffle up some religious feathers, but even the Creator, according to most religious texts, has a place called Hell, and His love is regarded as the only top unconditional love there is.
Having said all that, I am quite forgiving of the foibles, missteps, or impulsive acts that are negative where most people in my life are concerned. Still, if I can help it, would I let anyone do anything hurtful to me or to those I love? Definitely not. Well, so much for my exercising unconditional love.
As for loving myself unconditionally, sorry, but it ain’t happening. I understand and defend myself for those thoughts and acts I have committed unknowingly or without enough information, but I have not, shall not, and do not excuse me if I ever hurt anyone or anything on purpose.
I am also hard on myself for my tiny acts of carelessness, although with age they are bound to happen more often and they are now happening to me. Still, after I think about them, I give myself a forgiving hand especially when that act is unintentional.
It may just be that I am not capable of unconditional love. Maybe no one is.
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February 14, 2016 at 1:18pm February 14, 2016 at 1:18pm
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The following are the few quotes that made me think during the recent few days. I figured I'd enter them in my blog.
 On Love:
I think this is the subject which evokes the strongest and yet most varied ideas and thoughts that sometimes clash.
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
John Green
“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.”
Haruki Murakami
“I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”
Maya Angelou
“Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
Milan Kundera
Importance of Action:
“In the beginning was the Word.” Western civilization rests upon those words. And yet there’s a lively group of thinkers who believe that in the beginning was the ACT. That nothing can precede action—no breath before act, no pervasive love before some kind of act.”
Mary Ruefle
On Friendship:
“Otters sleep floating on their backs, sometimes holding paws with their friends so they don’t drift apart.”
Reader’s Digest - February 2016
About the belief usually pushed on writers as “Write what you know”:
"Sometimes, you can use a particular experience as a start point in your story, but many times, you'll find yourself holding on to the "reality" of the experience because you want to be "true " to the situation or incident. And you've got to let the "reality" go so you can dramatize it effectively. "Who did what" and "Where it happened" usually end up as a thin story with little or no dramatic value."
Syd Field--The Screenwriter's Workbook… Where the Writer Begins, Page 8 |
February 13, 2016 at 4:47pm February 13, 2016 at 4:47pm
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Prompt:
Roses: What Color Should You Give and How Many? Tell us about the first time you received roses or gave someone roses? How did you feel?
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I can’t remember the first time because my family, the one I grew up in, is rose-crazy. Everyone gives roses to everyone, even to little kids after removing the thorns. Roses have a spiritual meaning to them.
My husband used to bring me pink roses at first. Then with the birth of our second son, they turned red. I never asked him the reason for the color change. I figure, better leave well enough alone. My second son’s birthday is February 12. While still in the hospital, he brought a large bouquet of red roses, causing other new mothers tease me with all kinds of jokes.
Now every year, I get red roses, not on Valentine’s Day, but on my son’s birthday. Go figure! Valentine’s Day, however, brings to his mind candy, which is usually chocolate which is for sharing. I am not complaining. Who’d complain of chocolate!
I guess all colors look good with roses. I like large bouquets with all colors in them. On the other hand, I know a woman who demands(!) one single red rose from her partner as a show of affection. As they say, to each her own.
Enjoy Valentine’s Day, tomorrow, everyone!
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February 10, 2016 at 11:52pm February 10, 2016 at 11:52pm
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Prompt: "Carry out a random act of kindness, with no explanation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you." Do you agree?
No, I don’t agree. If one shows kindness to someone, it is for the sake of kindness itself. No reward should be necessary from anyone, even a higher power, at any time.
Frankly speaking, I don’t even like our government’s tax system that gives tax breaks to donations. Granted, the charities get more assistance this way, but it kills the feeling inside the people to do good for goodness’s sake.
Prompt: What person in history would you like to have been?
Florence Nightingale. She and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, reducing the death count by two-thirds. She was the lady with the lamp doing night rounds, giving personal attention to the wounded. I also like the fact that she was a strong, willful woman.
I think she started doing something really special. I love nurses, especially the dedicated ones, but I don’t think I could live up to Florence Nightingale's image had I chosen her profession, which is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest.
Not that there weren’t caregivers earlier, but her name popped up in my head right away when I read the prompt. |
February 9, 2016 at 1:08pm February 9, 2016 at 1:08pm
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Prompt: Do you believe analyzing human behavior or psychology is a young science in comparison with other sciences?
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I don’t think analyzing human behavior, called psychology in our time, is a young science. The proof to my understanding is in the oldest manuscripts and even those legends or whatever we have unearthed that were written on stones and tablets.
We have called this observation of human behavior psychology after 1879 when the German scientist Wilhelm Wundt brought it to his laboratory and started experimenting with it. Since not every science has to need a laboratory experimentation to be called a science, I believe it is erroneous to say that psychology began with Wundt’s experimentations.
Another point is the term science itself was coined in the 1830s. Besides, any area of study whose name ends with –logy begins with the thought and the philosophy of it. This makes psychology one of the oldest fields of study.
Having said all that, the reason why psychology today sounds like gobbledygook is because so many different approaches and the drastically varying results of invalid laboratory experiments have made it so, to strengthen the opinion that psychology is a new science.
Maybe psychology would fare better if large masses of people were to be observed in real life, in their natural environments--like the ancients did--rather than in laboratories where the experiments muddle up the subjects’ behaviors to add to the gigantic amounts of confusion this field is dealing with.
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February 8, 2016 at 7:08pm February 8, 2016 at 7:08pm
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Prompt: Jack Kerouac has uttered the wildest writing tips. Here are five of them. Choose one and explain what you understand from it and if you would like to use that tip in your writing:
*The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
*Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
*Blow as deep as you want to blow
*Visionary tics shivering in the chest
*Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
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These tips show that Kerouac was of the beat generation dependent upon what most of his generation of people of all arts were addicted to. Basically, I agree with him to a point and only when writing the first draft; on the other hand, I give a lot of weight to the rules of language, grammar, and usage.
For this exercise, I am picking the “Visionary tics shivering in the chest." After this, I’ll try to write in a few words what I understand from the remaining four.
I think Jack Kerouac is referring to inspiration, here. When the inspiration hits, we writers feel it very strongly, possible in the middle of our torsos where most strong feelings punch us severely. At least, that’s where my strong feelings hit me. By chest, however, he may also mean the heart as, when things come from the heart, they carry the highest truths. It is also interesting that he refers to tics, which mostly happen with repetition, just like an idea that bugs us until we put it to words.
Creativity is a huge concept, and everyone goes about it in a different way, but when the idea or inspiration hits, we know it’s something we mustn't let fade away. To hold on to this inspiration, we need first to trust ourselves. If we empower ourselves to try something, no matter how far out and give ourselves permission to fail, that feeling of inspiration has a very good chance at success; moreover, should we lose, losing when we follow our passion doesn't feel important at all.
Kerouac also raises the ideas of vision and visionary. Vision is something he has referred to over and over; thus seeing, truly seeing, be it with our eyes or our hearts, is the most important thing in all arts.
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The other four tips (The way I understand them):
**The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye:
This one’s kind of transcendental and beat. I think he means the most profound and valuable thing is what you see within what you have seen, possibly referring to seeing with your inner eye or third eye.
**Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind:
He might mean writing from desire and at full speed without any regard to rules or any obstacles, in other words, pushing the limits all the way to find out where the real limits lie. Crazy to him may be being enthusiastic, wondering and wandering, plus bewildered. As saints are usually mystics, they may seem dumb from the outside, as does a first draft written only with inspiration and no pre-planning.
**Blow as deep as you want to blow:
Be spontaneous like a jazz musician. Get into it fully. Write as profoundly or as impulsively as you wish and satisfy your own senses first, so your writing resonates into the hearts of others.
** Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
The middle eye, the third eye, or what you see within creates the language and the language gives form to thought; then the writing catches up to the thought. This is the way writers let the words disclose what’s inside them. They immerse themselves in words letting the words save them from drowning.
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February 7, 2016 at 7:26pm February 7, 2016 at 7:26pm
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Some define the inciting incident as the exciting incident. Not really. The inciting incident can be exciting, but there may also be other exciting incidents in a story.
Inciting incident has a specific function. It is the first turning point. It starts the story by jolting the main character into action. Inciting incident is not a situation or a position taken in respect to certain condition.
Inciting incident needs to be an event and must be written as a scene. A warning here is warranted. Do not write it as a melodramatic scene. Write it as a dramatic scene. Dramatic scenes up the action and lower the volume of the melodrama.
Where the inciting incident scene is concerned, it is where the writer may create the main character’s initial surface problem so he or she can spring to action, and while doing that, the writer gives an inkling or foreshadows the true story problem mostly even without the reader’s becoming aware of it.
Since the true problem of the story always relates to the inner psychology of the main character, the story will have depth if the hint or foreshadowing given in the inciting incident has something to do with the main character’s inner psychology.
A writer can use the inciting incident in the opening or not, but in shorter stories or better novels, most opening scenes provide good hooks with the dramatization of the inciting incident in a fully developed scene. If that is not possible, then it is a good idea to put the inciting incident closer to the opening, or at least, inside somewhere in the first quarter of the story.
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