|
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.
 
|
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.
| |
Prompt: In writing, there are different categories of tells: motivational, emotional, mental, stage direction, descriptive and passive. Do you understand what each is? How important is telling at the sentence level? Keep in mind, that tell is subjective.
========
I don’t know what you mean by each of those things in the prompt, as I was never taught or came across the exact words of “different categories of tells” (possibly my teachers used different words as it was such a long time ago), but this is what I understand from them.
Motivational writing (voice and tone)-- focuses on the relationship between the writing itself and the writing’s outcome in the sense that the writing makes the reader’s mind bend toward the essence of the subject. This may have something to do with ethos, or in other words, ethical appeal.
Emotional writing (voice and tone)—a writing’s persuasion that's designed to create an emotional response in the reader. This may have something to do with pathos, or in other words, emotional appeal to a reader’s needs, values, and emotional sensibilities.
Mental writing (voice and tone)—This may be argumentative writing emphasizing reason or supporting a claim.
Stage direction—This might be a constructional direction of organizing the text as to writing what and when and how the characters enter, move, speak, or feel. This is usually the term used in stage or film scripts.
Descriptive writing—may be writing with the primary purpose of describing the elements of a story in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader’s minds.
Passive writing—I can’t say whether this refers to passive voice or not, but it may be the kind of writing where the meaning is clouded on purpose or it may be the kind of writing where the words I and we--and even the other subjects in a sentence—are avoided to write an idea in a generalized form.
As to telling, sometimes—depending on the story--it is important enough to use it, but showing anything through character action is better.
Each of these things is important and all of these can be used as needed, as long as the text does not become boring or full of contradictions. This is only my opinion. 
|
| |
Prompt: "Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life." What are your thoughts on this?
==========
Ahha! Big sister Charlotte again! The domestic realist.
In Charlotte Bronte’s time, realism meant copying external life and nature with correctness; thus, it is understandable that she would utter those words, and I agree with her, but only to a degree. If one’s style is stark realism such as when writing contemporary, historical, or psychological fiction, the study of real life would help because that will be a factor and a solid basis to add believability and relatability to the work.
Then there’s the profound and literary style of writing regardless of the genre. With that, a semantic confusion occurs as to the discrepancy between what is real and true. If an imagined character or situation is imagined but not “real” and if it is showing a hidden truth about the inner workings of humanity, a serious study of real life could help but only up to some point. As imagination is a strong asset, it needs to be given its very own platform, too, regardless of what Charlotte Bronte calls the real life or the social framework and its significance.
In any case, it is good practice for writers to be on the lookout for anything and everything happening around them, just in case those things will pop up in their imagination changed into one form or another to enhance their writing.
Prompt: Emily Bronte wrote "Wuthering Heights." After Emily died, her sister Charlotte rewrote this novel. Would you like someone rewriting your novels after you have passed on? Just curious.
========
To tell the truth, I don’t care as I don’t sweat over things I can't do anything about.
Each generation can do what it likes with what’s left to them from the earlier generations. That’s the way of the world and that has proved to be good or not so good over the millenniums. Imagine all the good stuff that has been lost to wear and tear and neglect, for example, but are we going to cry over spilled milk? No.
What we do at this time shows our ways of looking at the world and gives a hint of our personal experiences. If by some chance, in the morass of today’s publications and what is posted on the internet, another person finds and takes what I have written and rewrites it, it will be their business, not mine.
|
| |
Prompt: Recently, women wore ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ robes during their protest at Texas Senate. For what reasons, do you think, clothing can communicate certain ideas for different occasions, and why do we humans resort to using clothing to send a message?
======
In today’s society, in general, people wear uniforms in the armed forces, in some schools, workplaces and emergency, hospital, and police services. This is for the workers and the public to recognize the people who work in a specific work environment, especially where too many people are employed. Then, wearing similar clothing also provides solidarity, a feeling of belonging and equality, an imposing effect on the public, and a means of pride.
People who wear uniforms care more for their colleagues and for their growth as well as their own, and they project a certain lifestyle to the onlookers. Wearing uniforms has been around since the earliest of civilizations; therefore, it must be a human thing to recognize people and their vocations from the clothes they wear.
It must be this recognition that demonstrators, protestors, and some anarchists may be counting on. Anyhow, most semi-serious organizations and activist groups who work only temporarily or plan demonstrations for a certain cause may not have a complete dress code but possibly a piece of similar clothing with a special meaning to the group. Apart from this norm, Ku Klux Klan outfits and Handmaid’s Tale robes are full uniforms instead of just the weird hats women wore to protest today’s president’s presumed stance on women, but this didn’t matter to them as long as their clothing delivered their precious messages.
Speaking for me, I don’t exactly grasp why the second group of people resort to wearing similar clothing during the protests and demonstrations, but my feeling is, this has to do with giving one another moral support, so nobody dares to chicken out of their planned activity.
|
| |
Prompt: Do you think intentional daydreaming can help performance and achievement? And in what ways do intentional daydreaming and the mind's wandering differ from each other?
==========
How often do we daydream during the day? This is a good question to think about. I used to daydream a lot more when I was younger, but at my age, I see myself, in my mind’s eye, as doing and finishing the things I’ve noted in a list. Seeing myself in the action, somehow, quickens the jobs or whatever it is I might have planned. I guess this is what psychologists call intentional daydreaming. If so, yes, daydreaming could help performance and achievement. Intentional daydreaming may also work in the long run, as in life goals, book revisions for writers, or inventions in the making.
The mind’s wandering is not intentional, however. It just pops up on its own in a stream of consciousness about things that happened, people a person knows, or future apprehensions and fears. The mind also wanders more under boring conditions into content with fantasy, stuff to do, worries, and problems. Sometimes the mind sends messages similar to the pop-up ads that surface on the computer screen. All this may not be so bad for its entertainment value, but people who can control the mind’s wanderings usually have better attention spans and they are less worried about petty stuff.
On the other hand, for writers, artists, and inventors to let the mind wander may produce creative results if the haphazard wandering, at some point, can somehow be channeled into a specific context, which may mean letting intentional daydreaming take over the thought processes. As Sartre said, "“Before experimenting, isn’t it appropriate to know as exactly as possible on what one is going to experiment?”
|
| |
PROMPT: Do you think Artificial Intelligence will ever surpass human intelligence? Or has it already? With our reliance on digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, how far off are we from having them walking and acting in person rather than being part of our electronic devices?
=========
I tend to think that human intelligence and artificial intelligence are two different things. In some areas, artificial intelligence has surpassed human capability already. I am not sure even if in human form, a machine can be like a human being, no matter what its mechanical and computational assets are and no matter what today’s sci-fi stories claim.
Machines may be able to act, compute, and even reason better than humans, but they don’t have emotions. Most of human intelligence, I surmise, is fueled by emotions. I don’t have Siri, and Amazon just put Alexa in Kindle Fires, which is driving me nuts, as did Cortana which I disabled. Then try calling any company on the phone whose phones are first answered by a computer. For the simplest things, one has to push many buttons to get a decent answer. For that reason, one of these days I may break all the phones in the house, be it they may be attached to the landline or are cells.
Having said all that, I am so very sure I would have greatly appreciated a robot helping me today, as I cleaned the oven and took the oven door off first to do that. Putting it back was a major chore, although it was something I had done many times earlier. I thought I was going to have a heart attack doing it. If it weren’t for my hubby saving the day after two hours of trying, I’d have an oven without its door attached till kingdom come; therefore, a robot that could fix things around the house would be very welcome. Come to think of it, a house cleaning robot would get my eternal devotion, too.
|
| |
Prompt: Write your entry for today about a place that you have spent a considerable amount of time in--perhaps somewhere you lived or worked before--and whose smells are curiously linked with your recollection. Describe the emotions and events from that period that those smells conjure up, and the ways in which your memories may have been colored by your preference or distaste of those smells.
==============
I didn’t spend all that much time in Fulton Fish Market, but this place, the overwhelming smell of the insides of fish while being discarded by the fast-moving cleaners of it, made such an impression on me that in any other city I traveled to, I searched for its fish market. No matter where I went, however, Fulton Fish Market’s sights and smells followed me. No other fish seller could rival the sellers of this place as far as I was concerned.
Most people are impressed by the restaurants, tents of merchandise, the yacht tours, and the museum here on Fulton street. Not me. My nose remembers the pungent musty odor of the fish mixed with crushed ice staring at me with dulled eyes. My nose also remembers the mussels and clams’ sea-weedy smells.
Smell is an ignored sense, especially in the cities; yet, I think stinky smells are crucial for our experiences, as this gives some quality to a city’s odors. Maybe because of the overpowering negatively scented smell of the Fulton Street, to this day, fish has stayed as my favorite protein food. This makes me think that smell has a special link to memory that other senses lack, for each time I smell fish, my mind reverts to the times I walked on Fulton Street.
|
| |
Prompt: "For I remember it is Easter Morn and life and love and peace are all new born." Let's write about Easter.
==============
At one time, all I cared about Easter were the chocolate bunnies. The story is that the chocolate pieces hid here and there has to do with the task of a white or pink bunny whose earlier name, as I learned later, was Easter Hare. Easter Hare was changed from a bird to a rabbit by a pagan (Saxon) goddess.
Then came all the other hip-hoppings like spring breaks, searching for candy in odd places, egg hunts, and watching kids on TV rolling eggs on the White House lawn.
In addition to its fun and its sacred connections, Easter’s poignancy, for me, has to do with my daughter-in-law’s grandmother who was born on Easter day as she is a lady I like a lot. As much as Easter points to rebirth, a favorite person’s birthday means the joy of life, a life of meaning, and when these two things combine, they make for a special kind of celebration.
|
| |
Prompt: "Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day-like writing a poem or saying a prayer." What are your thoughts on this?
========
Not in the morning! Enjoyable things like arranging flowers or writing a poem or even going online take place after my hectic mornings are dealt with.
My first thought when I read this prompt was how in the world would I find time in the morning for those mentioned things, except for the thoughts and prayers that can be said while doing other stuff. Then, forget about arranging flowers and such; I don’t usually have the time to change the water in the vases if there were flowers in them from the day before.
I understand that it’s important to create a quiet space in which to think. A quiet focus is important for any person. What I first do in the morning is to feel grateful for being alive to face the day. Gratitude is important for me at any time, and it is vital to think about a thing or two that I’m grateful about, especially when I start the day.
Despite my often-hectic mornings, I rather feel calm and focused overall, unless someone says or does something that irks me, which doesn’t happen very often. For a sense of quiet, most therapists suggest keeping noise to the minimum, such as the TV, radio, etc. Even noise doesn’t rattle me, anymore because, over the years, I‘ve trained myself to ignore it.
I work with lists for everything, so I am not distressed over undone stuff. Still, undone stuff is inevitable in life. I have accepted that. This acceptance adds to my sense of calm, too.
|
| |
Prompt: What do you think 'shared experiences' do? Do they bring people together or do they do just the opposite? Or whatever their influences can be, are they forgotten eventually?
=======
I think a shared experience may bring people together or it may split them apart, depending on the nature and duration of the experience.
On the other hand, in contrast to a single experience, a collection of shared experiences can be more lasting in the memory, even if the initial experience may be the strongest or the weakest in intensity. Then, in time, any experience can be forgotten, but the memory of a shared experience will live longer as more and more people recall and relive it through their conversations, artwork, or writing.
On the negative side, sometimes, people do not like to be reminded of a distasteful, hurtful event and thus shun the company with whom they went through a certain undesirable experience; however, on the positive side, a shared experience or a chain of experiences validate the fact that more than the person alone is bearing witness to the existence of the person and the experienced events.
By their true nature, some specific events make us question and answer the concept of who we are and the worth of our existence. A birthday, a wedding, a graduation, a funeral, winning an award or a praise, being in a good place or enduring life in a rotten one, for example. A lack of company to witness such events can be unbearable at times, even for people who value their solitary moments. If this weren’t so, why would people take photos or write about their experiences to share on Facebook and elsewhere?
I tend to believe a lot of good comes from shared happy experiences in contrast to the hurtfulness of a distressing experience. Even in the latter case, having gone through something upsetting with others is more of a solace than having faced an undesirable situation alone.
Then again, being dependent on others for more meaning with our experiences makes us psychologically exposed, as our thoughts and feelings seem to be out of our personal control. Still, in such a case, the idea that the experience doesn’t belong to us alone ties us to a group, and in succession, to the entire world of humanity. After all, we humans are not separate lonely islands but a whole continent and even an entire planet.
|
| |
Prompt: Totally different from the scientific and cosmic black holes, imagine your very own, fictional black hole. What would it be like? Describe it or use it in a flash fiction story or poem if you wish.
=========
My black hole is a living, breathing being, a cosmos onto itself because inside it, lots of other matter and creations, mostly creations stolen from my mind, exist. It is a seductive place that calls me to it. Into it, I sometimes enter willingly to learn who I am even if I am wary of its outwardly calm yet violent and cruel heart.
Despite its dark façade, my black hole has a passionate embrace that grasps and hurls me into its chaos, yet expects me to create order within that chaos. Inside it, it's like being in the eye of a storm where my unnoticed illusion and attachment tornados swirl around me. I try very hard to notice what those tornados are made up of before they can jump into my life and suck me into their vortexes. Usually, I succeed and learn a lot, then squeeze myself out of my black hole through its intimate, mystical pathway to illumination.
Over the years, I learned to value my black hole because each time I find my way out of it, I am astonished at my evolution, which makes me think any black hole is never as dark as it is painted.
In fact, anyone's black hole may well be the means for the rebirth of an entire amazing, advanced universe, which can also be called a truly authentic human being.
|
March 19, 2017 at 12:49pm March 19, 2017 at 12:49pm
| |
Prompt: Chuck Berry, who passed away Saturday at age 90, once said "I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint." I don't really have a prompt for you today; just be an artist in some way with words.
===========
Chuck Berry did not invent rock’n roll or its haphazard abstract concept, but he was intelligent, powerful with the guitar, and gifted with words, so he took his music to the stars, leaving an artistic legacy of finding a larger greatness in rock’n roll.
Since Chuck Berry’s quote is in the prompt, here’s something I cooked up. I hope I didn’t put too much salt in it.
You, the brown eyed handsome man. with Carol, the little queenie, are back in the USA, Memphis, for certain, to let it rock all the way to the Promised Land just to meet up with Nadine, for thirty days.
Come on, Johnny B. Goode join the flock. Never mind the school day and just say "Roll over Beethoven," not that Beethoven can hear you, but Maybellene, that sweet little sixteen, can, rocking and rolling under the Havana moon.
And you’ll never be, during the wee wee hours, in a down bound train , around and around, with no particular place to go, but you never can tell if Tulane would be reelin’ and rockin’ with too much monkey business.
|
| |
Prompt: When we look at the bigger picture and all the things we wanted to accomplish and then just never found time, it can be disheartening. Pick one thing that did happen and imagine how your life would be if you had found time for another one of your dreams instead. Would it be the same or totally different? Do things happen for a reason?
==========
Answering from the end question to the beginning ones, I think things usually happen haphazardly. I am not, however, denying the possibility that a higher being might have planned them for us, as such planning, professedly, might have happened to me, but if so, why the insistence on the free will? You see, each question leads to others that our tiny minds cannot answer. Life is a puzzle we can only solve, if at all, when we step back and look at things from a higher elevation.
Maybe I am not much of a dreamer because I usually did what I wanted to do, at least tried living a dream for a while, and if it wasn’t doable, I let it go. I am not the kind of person who’d cry after lost dreams because what I might have dreamt at one time or another, I've let that dream go, knowingly.
Looking back, I’d seesawed between staying with the academia or having a family; the two weren’t compatible at the time and with my circumstances. I chose family and I am not unhappy about letting the other option go, especially when I come across material written in academic mumbo jumbo  or the miseducation such a path sometimes can offer. If I had picked that option instead, things would be totally different; my life would be duller and possibly my personality would suffer, and this is not sour grapes either.
Prompt: What does art mean to you? Write anything you want about art.
========
Art is nostalgia for beauty, the beauty we each define for ourselves. Practically everyone can be an artist for art in its loosest definition is creative activity born out of human skills and imagination. Art can be expressed through many mediums, such as music, writing, visual or auditory arts, and creativity in all areas. To call only painting and related processes arts is unfitting. A person can be an artist in any area and not only in painting.
As such, taking up painting is the handiest excuse for being an artist. You say you are an artist, in such a case, and people may or may not believe you or they may accuseyou for being a wannabe or a pseudo-artist.
Yet, who can determine what a true artist is? I'd say, better be a pseudo-artist than shrugging off the arts totally. Does anyone do that, you might ask, and I have to answer, yes, but only rarely, as I have met such people who didn’t recognize the love of the arts within themselves or in others. Such people have looked down upon artists for not making enough money—in their minds, for not being successful enough in life. Such people have evaded the process of seeing themselves in things that are not them. Such people have taken any imitation as art, sometimes correctly and sometimes not.
In The Republic the dialog between Socrates and Glaucon answers some of the questions that might arise as to painting being the imitation of life.
“Socrates: Which is the art of painting designed to be—an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear—of appearance or of reality?
Glaucon: Of appearance.
Socrates: Then the imitator…is a long way off the truth…”
Socrates has a point here as we cannot possibly imitate nature or what we see around us as it exactly is, but we can certainly load it with our personal truths, doubts, passions, and ways of seeing things. As Oscar Wilde said, “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
To me, art is the only serious thing in the world, no matter which form it takes.
|
| |
Prompt: "I love spring anywhere but if I could choose, I would always greet it in a garden." How do you feel about this?
==========
Surely, gardens can be delightful especially if they are well-kept. I particularly like English gardens with green rolling hills and wide-open landscaping; then, when they are topped with a historic building, a Gothic structure, or a column and a fountain, such gardens are absolutely charming.
As much as I like gardens, in early spring, I would want to be out in the wilderness where wild flowers, weeds, ant hills, and birds on budding trees sing their songs to the awakening mother nature. Sometimes behind the brush or near a boulder, I would love to come across a sprawling doe or a twisting creek newly born from the spring rains. But then, I always liked wild things, the way nature took care of them on its own without the human hands butting into its business.
Up north where we had a large land once, we left the end section of the land free and wild in respect of nature, because we had read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and was greatly impressed by it at the time. We didn’t venture in that wild area and neither did we let our kids enter it.
One spring, out of curiosity, I dared to make my way through the brush, the thickets, and the closely webbed trees into our little wilderness. I was flabbergasted when I saw that, there, rhododendrons, forsythia bushes, and azaleas had been growing profusely surrounded by and under the canopy of tall trees, whose fallen leaves in the fall had left a rusty carpet on the ground, like a hidden magic fairy garden. I know no one ever sowed those bushes there; so, it had to be the birds and the squirrels. The way I see it, human hands couldn’t accomplish that beauty so easily, especially in a place left intentionally wild. I think mother nature knows its business much better than we ever give her credit.
|
| |
Prompt: How do you know you love someone or something? What are the signs, feelings, thoughts, according to you?
==============
I think I don’t have a clue as to how I know I love someone when it comes to romantic love. To me, that happens over a good amount of time. The first sign, however, is when I start obsessing about that love. Then obsession can be a fleeting thing, too. After the obsession passes and I feel still good when I am in his company, even better than when I am with anyone else, I might start thinking that could be true love.
But then, there are many kinds of love. I just don’t trust the at-first-glance types of loves. One has to be out of her wits to call those “love”; when such a thing happened to me, once upon a time, all my alarm bells went off. One doesn’t know where such crazy feelings come from. From the malfunction of the brain or the hormones? I certainly believe, not the heart. Definitely, not the heart.
At first glance, one may like the looks or the gestures or maybe the words of a person. In further knowing or getting better acquainted with, love may develop in time...or not.
Someone once said that we only accept the love we think we deserve. There may be some truth in that. If someone comes to me out of the blue and tells me he loves me because he respects my family or likes my face or something I did, I wouldn’t trust him. I think love doesn’t happen for any one reason, but it develops over time when two people first like and then really get to know each other, but then, I also understand and accept that there are as many ways to and definitions of love as there are people.
My favorite kind of love is the love Greeks called Agápē. Agápē is the kind of love one feels for all humanity, living things, and what he or she knows of all the creation. I think I have a bit of it in me, as I feel love for all the  "nasty women" and the "deplorables" alike and also, for other species, too, such as both the raptors and the helpless little birds.
I think where love is concerned, as usual, I like to revert to Shakespeare. ““Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” -from All's Well That Ends Well.
|
| |
Prompt: “Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” Rumi
What do you make of this quote? What does Rumi mean when he says, “dance”?
====
The way I see it, Rumi is all for setting one’s soul free and for paying little or no attention to what happens in the world because he believes in the eternity of the soul and in the fact that the earth or any planet or solar system or anything material is not eternal. He believes in transcending what is material as, for him, being wounded physically or emotionally, fighting and wars, negative feelings and actions, or wordly pleasures and joys are all material things.
By the word dance, he means the ritual of love, to rejoice in the soul and to concentrate on what is totally transcendental. Although one has a body and that body and all the other material things that support the body cannot be denied, the rejoicing in the soul of what is eternal can elevate the quality of what is material in one’s life, and thus, the dance and its perfect understanding can become the totality and the power of the Whole.
In this way, dancing becomes a way to unite with the cosmic powers and eternity. For this poet, knowledge is beyond the physical and this can be attained through the understanding of the soul and giving in to its joy. This is because the soul works through the freedom of love, and the thorough thinking is not the way to the freedom of the soul, as it is mistakenly understood by the western philosophers.
According to Rumi, concentrating on the essence of what one searches for and reaching beyond the burden of the material is the way to go because using the body as an instrument of this dance can release the person from the mind’s domination to let the soul have free reign on the dancer.
In short, he says, "Dance with the ecstasy of the soul to let yourself dance the dance of love successfully through anything that exists in the material world."
|
| |
Prompt: A lot of celebrities, actors, musicians, and otherwise famous people died in 2016.  died in 2016. Is there one you'll miss the most, or one who had any particular influence on any of your writing?
===========
I checked the link and among those on that list there was nobody among actors, although I preferred some to others and liked all of them just fine, but on the other sections, I was definitely moved by Pat Conroy, the way he wrote the emotional stuff with feeling and realism but not sappiness. In fact, he might just be my favorite author of all time. I’ll always miss him.
Following Pat Conroy is Elie Wiesel who--through his writing with emotion and directness for he had suffered in a Nazi camp-- used his moral authority to force attention on the atrocities around the world. His wise words should never be forgotten.
Next comes Umberto Eco, whose work I discovered a few decades ago. I may not agree with his every word, but I respect his art greatly. I especially like his historical sense, complex ideas, cynicism or rather his skeptical look at humanity, and Italian intellectualism. Plus, I think he is very readable. In addition to his many maxims on the importance and love of books, this quote by him says what he is all about: “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” from Foucault's Pendulum
Prompt: Pick a brand name and scramble the letters. Write a short piece using the scrambled word as a brand name in an alternate universe.
Cadbury (Chocolate brand name)
Cuy-bard
Chocolate
The tunnel straightened itself without any effort to accommodate us painters. I sat on its rails with a mannequin in front of me, painting eyes and lips on it, slowly and with precision. She was to be used as a spy in interdimensional espionage.
There were thousands like me inside the tunnel, which was pleasantly cool and narrow, with doors on both ends sliding open and closed. I concentrated on the face, which had turned into the color of a green soap, and I bit down hard on my lower lip. How could this be a spy? No way we could send this mannequin down to spy on the humans on earth of the second universe with such a face color. When I had asked where would my piece go, the manager had said, Earth, but nobody on earth had green skin to my knowledge. My puzzled look reflected about me and the being behind me caught it.
“That’s a special one,” he thought-projected. I turned around. He was an elegant wedge-shaped being with polished shoes.
“What gave you that idea?”
“I have the possession of the decrees and the list.” He pushed forward the holograph of the list. The list was stately and unflappable, no question about it, and he had to be my monitor since he was sitting behind me and watching my work.
“How so?” I asked.
He took his time answering. “It is a special one you have. Progressive. It will be used in three universes, not only in one puny planet at the edge of the second universe. Look, it has already been given a name, Cuybard.”
“Cuybard? What’ll it do?”
“Look for yourself.” He lit up the holograph brighter. “She’ll be able to sell anything to anyone. She’s a selling mechanic.”
“Cuybard, the selling mechanic. Why of course. Thanks!”
I stroked the mannequins face. It opened its lips and said, “I like you. You’ll like my product, too, because it tastes exactly like chocolate, but with no calories. It is love.”
“See?” the one behind me thought-projected again. “Cuybard read your thoughts about Earth where love was supposed to reign but didn’t. Humans messed it all up. It is, however, mixing up chocolate with love. Make sure it gets corrected before it is sent.”
“Is it selling love, now? And what is chocolate?”
“Love cannot be sold, but chocolate comes a close second and it can be sold. It lifts up spirits and calms nerves. So Cuybard will probably sell chocolate, if they send it to Earth after scrambling its letters, of course.”
“With a green face?”
“The green face is for the third universe. For the second universe, it’ll change to a human’s color in the wormhole. Just look at the holograph more closely.”
“Oh, now I wonder what chocolate tastes like?”
“Are you wondering now? See, Cuybard is an excellent seller. It got you, didn't it! So, you want to be sent to Earth, just for chocolate? I could put in a word for you to those who might listen.”
“Yes!” I was really eager now. “I would go there to earth just for chocolate, even if nothing else works!”
|
| |
Prompt: Rock Legend ~ Write a brief list of things that a stone might be upset about. Now craft us a story late at night about your stone confiding to the moon all the troubles it's having. Have fun!
Stone’s Complaints
• It thinks it is simple and closed up, but it needs nothing and asks for nothing.
• Its hard surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t have feelings.
• No plant grows in it.
• The sea is its enemy and, in alliance with the elements, it wears down the stone into pebbles and sediment.
• People say negative things about stones.
===========
Now the story:
What the Stone and the Moon Keep Inside
The evening descended as an amaranthine mist enshrouding the ocean and the land around it, together with the large stone, which had once been a boulder holding the waves away. A little while later, the nightfall turned everything into navy and then even darker colors, letting the flashy full moon flaunt its mystical existence.
“Hello, Moon,” said the stone, as it stood transfixed on the spot near the fence that overlooked the sandy beach. It was happy to see the moon, a larger being of its very own family, a family to which time always proved to be the enemy.
“Hello, there, Little One,” answered the moon, sending its beams to caress the stone’s surface. The stone felt a happy shivering inside itself, but its surface failed to conjure an expression.
All of a sudden, a distant rumbling became audible on the beach. The moon laughed, but the stone didn’t flinch. Strange, how it had become immune to the ocean’s petty jealousies! The moon rose higher and sent more of its beams on the ocean since the ocean’s defiance seemed superficial at that moment, but the ocean rose together with the moon anyway and began bombarding the beach with its waves.
“The ocean’s at it, again,” moaned the stone. “It wants to tear me down and gobble me up into its big belly.”
“It can only take the sand from the beach,” said the moon. “You’re safe behind that fence. Don’t you worry!”
“But I do. The ocean is my enemy.”
“Little One, don’t think of other beings as your enemies,” said the moon. “They are doing what their nature dictates. Why don’t you turn your thoughts into yourself, instead?”
“All right, if you say so, which means I have to open my heart to the skies. In reality, I am an unintentionally simple being, closed inside myself. I need nothing and ask for nothing, but no one respects that.”
‘That is a difficult existence, I have to admit,” said the moon. “But it is better than being one of those large, fierce creatures covered with scales. They once inhabited the earth, as you might recall. And you know what happened to them.”
“I certainly do,” said the stone, eyeing the waves on the beach again. “Because I have been around for millenniums, I’ve seen all and experienced much. I was a huge boulder at the time of the giant scaly creatures before the ocean took over.”
“Never mind the ocean. Just look at the beautiful things other than the ocean.”
“Like what?”
“Like the plants, the trees, the flowers. Those things behind you in the garden.”
“That’s just it,” lamented the stone. “No plant grows in me, except when I have a dent and some soil creeps in it. Then I may get a weed or two sprouting from it, which is very rare. That I have a hard surface doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings.”
The moon didn’t say anything as it had climbed to the highest peak and was looking down at the waters that had been rising.
“It is not just the green things,” the stone continued. “The people, too, although I must admit, at the time when I was bigger, a couple sat on me and watched you in ecstasy. That was during my happier times, but then, when people walk around, I hear them badmouthing me. So much so that each generation of them says the same nasty things about me.”
“Are you sure, dear stone, you are not being paranoid about that?”
“No, I am not,” exhaled the stone defiantly. “Here are a few examples, and don’t tell me you haven’t heard them.” And the stone blurted out what it had heard and was keeping to itself for centuries. “Beware of the scorpion that rests under the stone; Call on God but row away from the rocks; The good mill grinds stones.” The stone watched the moon lower itself from its highest peak in the sky for a while, then added, “Plus. what about the nasty way they use my name, as in throwing stones at unwanted things or stoning people or stoned addicts?”
“I admit,” said the moon wearily, “People’s speech gets to me, too, but you shouldn’t worry because people usually do not bother with stones unless they’ve formed them into gems like tiny diamonds and such.”
“Diamonds!” rattled the stone, “I do have one hidden in my core, but imagine what would happen to me, if people knew about it.”
“My lips are sealed, trust me,” said the moon. “Since I, too, have a few of those hidden in my core.”
“Shhh!” said the stone. “The ocean might be listening, even if it has quieted down and seems to be sleeping, now. Don’t trust it. It talks to people.”
The moon winked at the stone, then, and the stone and the moon snickered together, gloating over their little secrets.
|
| |
Prompt: To know and be known by people whose memories are long enough to tell you how much around the eyes you look like your grandmother gives you a deeper context than you can give herself. What are your feelings on this?
===
I don’t look like either of my grandmothers, at all. I kinda look like my mother, like a fouled up, distorted version of her; therefore, I am annoyed when someone says that they think I look like my mother.
As to any deeper context, I don’t think so. I am me. I turned me into who I am. On the outside or the inside, I like to think I am not like anyone in my family. If I wanted to look like someone, it would probably be an uncle who, in the first place, didn’t look like anyone in the family, either because he, too, had grown into his own version of himself.
Prompt: "Approach your lives as if they were novels with their own heroes, villains, red herring, and triumph." Mary Higgins Clark Do you agree with this statement? Is this how you see your life?
====
Not really. My life, as weird as it has gotten at times, has nothing to do with what a writer’s mind would invent. If it were to be a novel, it would probably be a badly written one whose protagonist did whatever pleased her, but she did it in an intense fashion and bailed out at iffy moments. Some people might like the protagonist or they might be nice enough to say so, but most anyone would be annoyed with the haphazard plot construction.
Red herrings? Yeah, my life has been filled to the brim with those things that didn’t amount to an ant’s footprint. It is true, however, it was full of surprises and unexpected turns, but not everything in it made sense. Heck, what I did sometimes didn’t make sense!
Not to mention the fact that my life has been filled with the deus-ex-machina moments, which any writer would be scared out of his wits to use in constructing a novel.
|
| |
Prompt: Let's create a list of ten things that happen at night. Look your list, what bothers you the most and what makes you the happiest? Are certain nights better than others?
1. Blankets falling to the floor
2. Moon peeking in through the curtains
3. Hearing the air-conditioner or the heat come to life
4. Spouse’s snoring, mostly crescendoing in lower musical notes
5. The sound of a siren from a distance
6. The clock’s light responsibly bright
7. The haunting shapes of the furniture in the room lacking their colors
8. Feeling my hair spiny and messed on the pillow
9. The thought of a misstep I took during the day that enforces a smirk
10. Imagining a wormhole through the walls, opening to the unknown
Hubby’s snoring and the moonlight make me the happiest, and I also like imagining stuff, be it scary.
The least I like is probably the siren in the distance. It makes me worry about an unknown someone in trouble or pain.
All nights are good for me, especially those when I read before I sleep. Good or not-that-good, a night doesn’t etch too much negative feelings in me. When push comes to shove, I tell myself, “I’m still breathing, aren’t I!”
Prompt: Spring. Green grass, bunnies, robins, rain, Easter. Let's write about spring.
I've grown wishful for spring,
imagining the garden
wrapped in its green-grass cloak,
bunnies like nosy toy cars
whizzing about in the rain,
robbins singing cotton-candy songs,
and Easter rolling off my tongue
while I walk around
with Chaplin-esque steps.
|
| |
"To find yourself." What do you think this phrase means? Write anything you want about this.
======
This phrase always made me grin because, in order to find yourself, you have to lose it first.
In that case, how do you lose yourself? If the self you have is not acceptable to you and you keep living and operating from that self, it might be a good idea to lose it for it may be keeping you hostage. Then you can create a new better self that is more agreeable for your existence. That is, if this is at all possible.
If the phrase means self-discovery, however, that would be something else, since you were already there and may not have been aware of what you held inside your persona or soul. Then it may also mean learning and maturing through your life’s journey.
Frankly speaking, I never lost myself. I was always there. Sometimes, too much there. I hope, however, I learned a few things and will keep on learning and growing as long as there is breath left in me.
Prompt: What happens when we deny our difficult emotions, at least the ones we think are difficult to face? What are your thoughts on this subject?
======
Anger, fear, jealousy, sorrow, etc. All difficult emotions, but are they, really? I rather like to think that they are informing us about the problem areas of our lives, so we can deal with them.
When we refuse to deal with them, or worse yet, deny their existence to ourselves, they take the reins in their own hands and explode in the most inconvenient time and place. To avoid such an occurrence, we need to listen to our emotions, even talk to them to ask why they have sprung up on us because such emotions are not meant to be repressed or to be sent away. They come up to help us respond properly to what’s happening in our lives.
We writers are the lucky ones in the sense that we can always let them loose in our writing, but one doesn’t have to be a writer to give voice to his or her emotions. There are many other ways both in the arts and in our daily lives. It is up to us to find the most genuine answer to why we feel them.
Prompt: “Our minds are big enough to contemplate the cosmos but small enough to care about who wins an Oscar,” said Dean Cavanagh.
What do you think about the Oscars and what role has the Academy Awards played in your life this year or at any other time?
======
I have to say to the quote that I am much more interested in what goes on in the cosmos than who wins the Oscar.
As to what I think about the Academy Awards, when the film industry minds its own business and comes up with good movies that show true art, I may be able to applaud them. Every once in a while, that happens, but what I think is art rarely wins an Oscar. Rather, the gifting of those statues depends on the favorite political and social norms of the hour Hollywood as an entity adopts and nurtures. This is just not acceptable.
Some people watch the Oscars for the glitz and the clothes. This year, my husband and I watched them and enjoyed ourselves because some of the evening gowns were far out. I somehow wondered if this event were more for haute couture than for the movies, but it was a good experience. I thought I may use it in a story or something and filed it away in a corner of my mind.
|
© Copyright 2024 Joy (UN: joycag at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Joy has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
|
Comment 
