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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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Prompt: What TV Show or movie fictional characters remind you of yourself?
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From a very early age I found Belle in Beauty and the Beast to be close to my heart because she is a bookworm and she goes for the beast, the guy others cannot connect to, and also, Jo March in Little women. Jo March was tomboyish in the beginning, didn’t care about clothes and looks and she loved literature, both the reading and the writing of it.
As to the family, my only difference from Jo was that I didn’t have sisters, but I had cousins who were close enough to me for me to consider them my sisters. Like Jo, I found romance in the unexpected man. For him, Jo turned Laurie down, because she was true to herself. Laurie was someone she knew since childhood. Jo had love and respect for her life partner. She didn’t care for appearances or riches.
As to the ideas of women’s place, I always liked women in the workplace better than only in the home, and Jo was that in most of her story. Also, Jo's Aunt March was a controlling, critical woman whose favorite phrase was "I told you so." In my life, I had wonderful aunts, but my mother was my Aunt March, with a few wonderful assets nevertheless. I always thought Mom and Aunt March had some trouble with their brains’ dopamine systems. 
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Prompt: When the moon is full, your personality changes. What is your personality like? I work in mental health and this happens!
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Logically, full moon affects the tides and the human body is more than 60% water, and material-wise, humans are part of the earth. Thus, we must be affected in some way, but then, doesn’t bizarre behavior happen throughout the month to everybody?
Since I haven’t been watching myself during the full moon, I cannot definitely say what happens to me during the full moon, but I am very sure I do not begin to howl. The only thing I can tell you is, I grab my camera and try to photograph the full moon with inadequate lenses. The lens that could grasp what I have in my mind is called AF-S-Nikkor-500mm-f-4D-ED-IF-II-Autofocus, and it costs $6,727.87, far beyond for what I paid for the original camera. I guess I could save for it, but I don’t think I have that long a life left. So, I still use my insufficient lens, knowing full well that whatever I do to the shot on the computer, it won’t work. If that is not bizarre behavior, I don’t know what is.
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April 28, 2015 at 12:57pm April 28, 2015 at 12:57pm
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Prompt: Ann Patchett says, “I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.” Do you agree with her or is the process different for you?
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First, let me just say that I forgive myself for my entire portfolio and whatever else lurks outside of it that came out of my pen.
As to taking a beautiful thing from imagination, that has never happened to me because nothing in its entirety forms in my imagination, ever, before I write it. If it did, I would probably not write it, for lacking the surprise-for-myself factor.
My modus operandi is to take a flicker of an idea or a snippet of something or other and to develop it as I write it. As to messing up the whole thing, yeah, I can relate to that.
Anne Patchett must be a very lucky writer to be able to imagine an entire beautiful thing before setting the pen on paper or placing her fingers on the keyboard. It may well be that I don’t have such good vision to start with. I know about the killing at the end but not the beautiful whole in the beginning.
I think any writer should be, and usually is, able to write something on any given idea, prompt, or imagined concept. How good it may turn out can be up for discussion. I also think, if we writers are aiming at doing the best we can do, what we choose to write about is usually far more important than any decision we make as to how to write it. This doesn’t mean, however, that we should not try untrodden paths since we never know what we can encounter on the way.
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April 27, 2015 at 10:19am April 27, 2015 at 10:19am
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Prompt: Let’s put on our editor’s hats and help someone who has handed in his novel’s manuscript. Even before the middle, you find out that the central problem is extremely weak, so weak that it doesn’t even make sense (to you) for the writer to have written as much as he has. In which ways would you assist this writer, or else, what would you say to him?
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I guess this depends on the writer’s ego and how well he can stand the truth, plus why he wants to write this specific novel. If his reasons for writing the novel is flimsy, I would probably take a chance and tell him to save this manuscript to use its good parts in a future work and to try again with a totally different everything, characters, plot, conflict etc.
If he wants to write this novel and this novel only, for a serious reason, like he promised his dying dad or something close to it, my recommendation would be a rewrite with certain points in mind. Those points would probably be:
 Basics: Make the central problem more serious by making the problem fit the character, making sure the subplots are connected to the main problem, making sure the problem can be stretched over the entire manuscript, and making sure the problem does not have a logical solution that the character has ignored or is ignoring, because the more unsolvable the central problem, the stronger the suspense.
Using the backstory, make the protagonist more vulnerable, especially emotionally. For example, he can’t take action in certain ways because it will mean breaking a promise to a demigod.
Raise the stakes. If the character’s very serious project is in danger or failing, make sure his relationship or marriage is failing also, and/or a member of his family is diagnosed with a serious illness.
Boost the antagonist by making him more capable, giving him extraordinary powers, or having him be in a relationship with one of the protagonist’s allies.
Add a ticking clock. The problem has to be solved before the earth shatters.
Add an additional obstacle. For example: Your space-traveler protagonist needs to pass through the wormhole to get to earth, but there are too many wormholes and he doesn’t remember which one he should take and he is afraid to try another one in case he travels even farther away and end up in a more dangerous situation.
Then, if none of the above works for your writer, pass the buck to another editor.
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April 25, 2015 at 12:25pm April 25, 2015 at 12:25pm
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Prompt: Please, create me something using the following words: Garden, rabbit, aroma, picnic, helicopter and determination. Have fun.
True Story:
If I had a helicopter and enough determination, I’d fly over the neighborhood gardens, to figure out--from the aroma of their barbecue--who is having a picnic, and I would send them a fire extinguisher, just in case. The reason is, most of the houses here, like ours, have closed-in back porches, partially walled in and partially covered with wire mesh, and those who barbecue sometimes put their outdoor barbecues, inside those porches too close to the houses. Not that everyone barbecues all the time, but those too lazy to cook or those who are having pool parties do.
And did I tell you we live in a neighborhood with weird neighbors? Some of them are very old, like us, and thus, they have the age excuse to be odd. I guess the younger set, when they see the older set, think they have to outdo them in acting in a weird fashion.
Case in point, the three women who moved in next door three months ago. Yes, they barbecue, and they are young-ish, and sometimes have children and a few guys visiting them. From what I see, they keep very busy doing stuff on their lot around the house. None of them have ever talked to us or waved or nodded or smiled. If anything, they look away when we are out.
Then yesterday evening while hubby and I were sitting inside our porch, one of them looked through the mesh and said hello. Surprise, surprise! We returned her greeting and asked if she’d like to come sit with us. She declined but asked, “Would you folks like some tomatoes and cucumbers?” Not knowing whether she was selling them or not, I said, “No, thank you. We just shopped today. We have enough.” Then she said, “Oh no, I am not saying for today. I just put in a couple of plants. When they have fruit, I’ll bring them over.”
I can appreciate the thoughtfulness, but we live in a deed-restricted area and the neighborhood association wants us to put in our lots only the plants on their list. Cucumbers and tomatoes or any other veggies are not on that list. Plus, anything bearing fruit outside, in this climate is subject to pests starting with rabbits, raccoons, large birds, disease, etc. And for a person who never greets her neighbors, to offer a future prize felt very odd to me. That is, if that future prize holds up. We’ll see. Who can say I don’t have color in my life!
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Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was set during a spring pilgrimage, was one of the great early contributions to English Literature.
What are some words you use today that would not have been around in the late 1300's? Do you think you'd have a tough time talking with people back then? Why or Why not?
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Some of the Middle English words since the 1300s have evolved in meaning. The word “above” meant superior then, and “able” suitable, “bath” cauldron, “cow” a crow-like bird, “repair” visitors, “undertake” affirm, etc. Other words like coy, paramour, potage, accord etc. have remained more or less the same. Some of the words are similar or the same but are written differently like symple for simple and theef for thief.
Canterbury Tales, however, is quite understandable when you put your mind to it and use a Middle English dictionary.
“Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was a duc that highte Theseus;
Of Atthenes he was lord and governour,
And in his tyme swich a conquerour,
That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.”
Once as old stories tell us,
There was a duke called Theseus;
In Athens he was lord and governor
And in his time such a conqueror
Greater than him was not there under the sun
I am guessing those guys wouldn’t understand our talk well, and I’d have a difficult time conversing with them in the way they would understand, especially if I talked street talk such as using the stuff in our Urban Dictionary. If they could somehow come to our day, some of our four letter and f words would make their hairs stand on end, since cursing or talking the “ungodly” talk was taboo for them. I can just imagine the expressions on their faces if they heard our ways of communication.
Here is a link to more on Canterbury tales and Middle English, if anyone wishes to read or hear the stories from their original.
http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm |
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Prompt: You are chosen to be part of a movie production. You can't be a writer for the movie. What is your job? Producer, Actor, Director or what?
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What? I can’t be a writer? Now, that’s a low blow. If I can’t be a writer, I might just go jump in the lake. I guess this restriction also rules out the writer’s assistant jobs.
So let’s see what I could possibly do. Webcaster is out. I can barely wrap my mind around what streaming video is, and I think what I am doing here in WdC and in FB is more than enough webcasting for me on the internet. This negative also takes care of all web jobs such as the web developer and other web blah blah.
I might be able to work with the wardrobe people, but they’d only give me mending jobs, so that’s out, too. I don’t like mending, unless absolutely necessary. Voiceover, visual effects, videographer, videotape operator, video playback, video engineer and video editor jobs also require a head for electronics and technical stuff. My head to them would be as helpful as the huge stone heads at Easter Island.
Accounting anything, forget it, I’m not messing with finances to be blamed for one thing or another, especially for putting the movie company in arrears, later on.
I guess stunts dept. is open, but I could only do that if they need a clown who botches up the scene and gets herself hurt.
I wouldn’t be comfortable with those jobs of executive anything, producer anything, editor anything, or engineer anything, which eliminates just about everything.
Except the set…Yes, that’s it! I can work in the set-decorating department as a set painter or something, since I have some experience and a couple of certificates in art.
Better yet, why not get paid as a viewer-person among the first trial-target audience to see the movie and offer my opinions on it? Oh no, on second thought, this, too, might backfire, since I hardly ever like any movie I see. My criticism would be so acerbic that no movie would ever make it to the theaters.
In which case, I think I’ll remain sticking my hands into the paint cans or possibly wearing the paint cans on my head where this production biz is concerned..
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April 22, 2015 at 11:50am April 22, 2015 at 11:50am
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Prompt: If you go anywhere for a writing retreat, where would it be and why? What project would you work on there? Do you think you would finish this project?
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Ahha! Here’s a list from The Writer’s Retreat network.
Bostic, North Carolina, USA
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, USA
Craftsbury, Vermont, USA
Heron's Reach, Dingle, IRELAND
Hopkinton, Rhode Island, USA
Klamath Falls, Oregon, USA
Murphy, North Carolina, USA
Ojochal, COSTA RICA
Punta Sur, NICARAGUA
Santiago, Lake Atitlán, GUATEMALA
Schull, Co Cork, IRELAND
Sharpsburg, Georgia, USA
Tamworth, Ontario, CANADA
Ventimiglia, ITALY
All of the above are fantastic, but none of them would work for me. I need absolute quiet and nothing interesting to attract my attention. If I went to any writing retreat, I would so get wrapped up in watching other writers (because I am a people watcher) and all the surroundings that I would only be taking notes and writing nothing except in my personal journal. So my best bet for a retreat is to go to a place alone and rent a room and stay in it until any assignment I give myself is finished. For this purpose, a hotel room is better. A Bed and Breakfast would be the end of my writing because I’d end up relating to every other guest and the friendly personnel, plus watching them.
Having said that, a retreat can help some writers through the give-and-take of information, tools and business of the craft, getting in touch with the other writers, and possibly attending classes if the retreat holds any, as some do. If I ever ended up in such a retreat, I would probably do a re-write of anything in my port, as I consider anything I have as first draft, no matter how many times I've edited it.
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Prompt: “Writers write about what obsesses them... I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.” Anne Rice
What do you think of Anne Rice’s approach? Do you also go, in your writing, to where the pain is?
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I don’t start writing about what pains me, on purpose, but I find that no matter how objective I try to be, my own personal pains end up getting reflected here and there. This especially happens with poetry, and with poetry, it specifically happened when we had the slams. It also occurred with just about all my novels; however, the pain is so hidden within my prose and inside the characters that even those who know me well cannot detect it, but I know it is there. So the obsession concept in the quote has some credibility.
About Anne Rice’s approach, there is no reason why any writer shouldn’t write about her or his own pain. After all, in our human experience, writing is a great friend and it offers some effective consolation to the ills that take us by surprise or shock us in a negative way. Especially in Ann Rice’s case, this must be a fact, since her writing is so powerful.
Anne Rice is probably discovering her characters’ psychological world within her own world and finding out that fear is an ally when injected into characters and situations. This is a great approach because it can give multiple dimensions to a writer and to his characters as well. I think Anne Rice and other authors like her deliberately channel the tragedies in their lives to creative fictional masterpieces
As for me, I have the habit of facing my pain after a good amount of time passes over it. I don’t know how this quirkiness happened to come about in my life, but it must have something to do with my inability to cry when some grievous event takes place. Probably for the same reason I am only aware of the pain in my writing, after it shows up on its own.
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Prompt: Emotional intelligence.
If you were to design teaching emotional intelligence in schools what would your curriculum include?
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I define emotional intelligence as being aware of one’s own emotions and being in control of them when it comes to one’s actions. Psychologists take this definition a step further. They say, emotional intelligence is the term that describes how well individuals can manage their own emotions and react to the emotions of others. I say if one is aware of oneself and is in full control, surely they can relate to other people’s emotions through analogy.
I also think the learning of emotional intelligence begins at home before any schooling. It is as simple as the parents naming the emotions a toddler is feeling. To give a few examples:
- You are angry that your toy broke. You wish it hadn’t.
- You are jealous of your brother. It is okay to feel jealousy but hitting is not allowed when we are jealous of someone.
- You are feeling upset and sad that Grandma is leaving. That is why you have tears. Just think she is going to come for a visit again very soon.
This is not always possible with every household, however. Some of us have grown up in households where some or all emotions were taboo. To give a few examples:
- You can’t be mad at your father. Being mad at grownups will get you a spanking.
- In this house, we don’t hate anyone. Hating is not Christian.
- You don’t know what being really sad is. You’ll be sorry when you find out.
According to psychologist Daniel Goleman—Emotional Intelligence (1995, Bantam Books), emotional intelligence has five key areas: Self-awareness, self-management, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Since most children are not the products of model families, to pick up the pieces is left to school personnel, school psychologists, teachers and the like.
If I were to develop a curriculum for any school, with grade schools, middle and high schools in mind, I would first insist on two separate periods in a week for this learning and training for every grade and every year. First period of the week would be giving the assignments and explaining them and the second period would be for the discussion of that assignment.
The assignments would include: keeping an emotion journal, in which kids would write things that happened to them, how they felt about it and how they dealt with their feelings. These journals would be private, probably for only the teacher’s eyes, unless the student wants to discuss something during the discussion period.
The teacher, either from his/her readings from student journals or by presenting a possible scenario, should ask the students for their input. For example, what kind of a reaction to a given situation would be appropriate or which reactions would show strengths or weaknesses?
The students should be instructed to pause, slow down, and think (or meditate) when a powerful emotion takes hold of them. Each emotion, how it affects a person's thinking and his body, should also be discussed one by one throughout the semester.
Another type of an assignment could be to have the students write down a conversation with themselves when faced with a dilemma or an overpowering emotion if and when they might face a certain difficult scenario.
Students can also be shown how to turn their emotional energy into motivation, or in other words, something productive, such as a booed baseball player focusing his attention and hitting a homerun or a young musician creating a song out of his misery. Yet, in order to do this students need to examine and identify their own values; that is, what is important to them and what makes them tick, and possibly making lists of those important values, so they can revert to them in time of need.
Then, as to teach empathy, they should be taught how to listen to other people; this could be achieved by either with people brought in from outside or the students in the class interacting with each other. The students should be told that they have to put their preconceptions and skepticism aside, and allow the other person have a chance to explain how they feel. When the listener tries to cut the speaker with “I know, I know but…” he or she should be instructed to put himself/herself in the other person’s place, and muse on how their life would be different if they were the other person.
Then, toward the end of the semester or school year, students should be taught other social skills as well, although not necessarily the Emily Post’s Etiquettes, but being kind, understanding, and yet assertive when a situation arises, and to always end on a cooperative note, be it in family life, business, or pleasure.
Self-management is a tough area to master, especially for students whose backgrounds are lacking. I have the belief and the hope that once people can learn to handle their own feelings and reactions and succeed in getting along positively with others, most of our society’s ills will be eased off.
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Prompt: Trees can live for a particularly long time, even longer than humans. Describe what a tree might think upon watching a human grow up all the way from infancy to old age.
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Abide with me, as you pass by, while I cry, after I’ve seen that damn Jenny Green change from tiny tot to brat, to young vixen, then to this old hag with the crooked hat. Through all that, without throwing a glance, perchance to my whereabouts, now, she has asked the tree man to cut me down, so they can dig for a pool, and wouldn’t it be cool to sip iced tea with her bridge club smarties at pool parties…without any regard to birds’ nests’ and me, or as a guard, when I took her son in my arms away from all harm and charmed him with tales my leaves spun when a wind gust passed through. I feel betrayed and dismayed, with my fate sealed and tossed aside, and there’s no place to hide, except when she steps close to me, I plan to drop a branch on her head without strife and gain a chance to life. If it’s her or me, this is gotta be.
So I answer the prompt with a silly on–the-spot prose-poem today, but since April is poetry month, I feel okay about it. One of our poetry prompts coming up on April 21 in "Dew Drop Inn"  is “a snippet of overheard talk.” In preparation for it, this afternoon when we went out, I started to write down the snippets of conversations that I heard. I found most of them to be highly inspirational, and it occurred to me to make a book of several poems from those snippets, which will take a while of course. I just hope this won’t be one of those hare-brained ideas that occur to me, in which I lose interest and don’t follow through. |
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Prompt: While some people don't care for dandelions, they do actually have helpful properties and have been used in medicines and for coffee substitutes.
What is an example of something in your life that has many different uses? What do you use it for and why?
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Not for everyone, but I enjoy very much dandelion salad with garlic, olive oil and lots of apple-cider vinegar. I also like the way dandelions look on a field where nobody bothers with chemicals and stuff. I love the way their yellow petals turn into feathery puffs and fly in the wind. I don’t know how this plant can be substituted for coffee though. I just don't substitute anything for coffee.
As to example of something with many uses, besides my hands that I use all the time, there is one thing I never throw away, which people discard or send to their local recycling plant. I have to tell the brand name here. It is Syfo sparkling-water glass bottles, not the kind other manufacturers of soda water sell in plastic bottles. I have no use for the drink inside, unless I am baking bread and I use that instead of water, but the bottle is terrific. It keeps just enough drinking water for personal size (10 oz.), once I drain the bottle, wash it, and get rid of the label.
I don’t like my drinking water in any plastic container. These glass containers do not let nasty chemicals leak into them and they are just the size to fit in our hands. Plus this bottle doesn’t have a metal cap to rust, and its hard plastic cap doesn’t touch what is inside it.
In our car, between the driver’s and passenger’s seats we always keep two bottles with drinking water inside them. We also help store in them other things, like iced green tea, or iced coffee, or salad dressing or anything else we like. In our fridge, we keep an entire row of these bottles with drinking-water in them. They are cool and easy to hold in hot days while we watch TV. We also use them on our night tables, without the risk of knocking over any glass of water.
Just a few days ago, I bought Syfo again for its bottles. If I had searched for these bottles elsewhere, chances are I would have paid a lot more than the $ 2+ for six of them.
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Prompt: Planet Janet. You have inherited a newly discovered planet. What does it look like? Weather? Rules? Tell me about it!
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My planet would be earth-like, except its natural system would be very different. In it, nothing would need to survive by eating anything else. Even if something did eat something else, this abominable action would lead to its demise. Where nourishment is concerned, just breathing the air would feed all living things. I would also like rocky tall mountains and flowing water and oceans. I would like the denizens of this planet to have larger and more complex brains and be more oriented in thinking smartly so they won’t hurt, kill, or fight with each other.
But what am I doing talking about this planet? Except for a passing whim that led me to the astronomy club in school way back when, what do I know about planets? Granted two earthlike ones have been recently discovered. Or people think they discovered them. Who knows, maybe the universe is a huge, many-sided mirror and they have seen the reflected images of the earth.
If I am correct and there are no other habitable planets besides what we have here, then, when what we have lives out its course, we are all doomed. So we might as well be ready for Armageddon, don’t you think?
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April 15, 2015 at 11:57am April 15, 2015 at 11:57am
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Prompt: "I am still a cat when I see a mouse." Jane Austen
Jane was referring to her weakness for tea. What is your weakness or cat and mouse moment?
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My weakness as to cat-and-mouse moments is choosing flight instead of fight. I am not a fighter, but if it comes to fight when I must, beware. Probably that is why I choose flight instead. I would hate to hurt anyone in any way.
If addictions are weaknesses, I also have a weakness for tea like Jane Austen, and for babies, animals, nature, those I love, and life in general. My everyday ongoing weakness, however, is reading. If a day passes without me reading anything from a book or Kindle or Nook, that day feels wasted for me.
Coming back to Jane Austen, I don’t think her major weakness was tea. It was more like finding a man like Mr. Darcy. I think, in her real life, she replaced him with tea. As it was portrayed in the PBS movie, Miss Austen Regrets, Jane says:
“The only way to get a man like Mr. Darcy is to make him up.
I like him gentle like manner.
You have something much more powerful and something much more desirable than experience. You have imagination.”
So sad, when we have to fashion our partners in our imagination...instead of accepting and loving people as they are. |
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Prompt: French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil (1909–1943) said, ““Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.”
What is your interpretation of her words?
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To put in other words, I think she meant, in general, not to let anything negative become worse or bigger because of our actions and the way we interpret evil.
In particular, if we take apart how we address each item in anything negative, we have to start with the way we focus on the issue at hand. That is, to deal with difficulties that actually confront us, and not the side issues that spring from them or any related issues that happened in the past. Anything imaginary or irrelevant needs to be deleted from the immediate focus.
Another point is not to give in to temptation, especially the temptation of hurting oneself physically and /or emotionally out of regret or guilt feelings. Self-immolation amplifies whatever is nasty.
Another temptation can be to dominate others by using the idea of protecting them or making them feel responsible for what happened. And yet, another one could be the temptation of perversity, which fosters the idea of 'if I am hurt, so will I hurt the others'.
How we act when we come face to face with evil or anything nasty is very important. What is real and has actually happened is secondary to our judgment of it. We need to be wary of what’s subjective inside our minds, all the time.
This quote shows Simone Weil’s exceptional compassion and concern for the well-being of others. She died from TB in 1943 while helping the French Underground during World War II. Her life story is that of a mystic and a godly humanitarian being.
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April 13, 2015 at 12:39pm April 13, 2015 at 12:39pm
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Prompt: After having the worst, the most tiresome day ever, who do you wish to come home to: someone, some animal, or something imagined?
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I always come home to someone I love. Just the sight of him and a quick touch to his lips gives me a reason to breathe. It used to be, I used to come home to him and to our babies. Now that the babies gained their own wings and have flown away, my first home is where he is.
I used to come home to a dog and a cat, too. There is no other welcoming posse as ecstatic and exuberant as one’s animal companions. Yet, we decided not to have animals living with us in old age, in case something happens and we cannot take care of them properly.
Nowadays, since I have grown into being a homebody, I love coming home to our house, to the walls with memories hanging on them, to my desk, to my kitchen, to my writing. It feels to me I come home here to my entire life, imagined or real from beginning to end, so comforting and so familiar.
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Since it is Sunday, a non-prompt day, I’ll write about allegory.
Allegory is defined in very many ways, none of which, to my knowledge, is adequate. Allegory is not a simile, symbolism, or metaphor, although it does use symbols and figures of speech such as metaphors, and by some it is considered to be an extended metaphor.
An allegory is a complete work or volume of a narrative in which events and characters stand for a large, abstract concept or a widespread event. The most famous allegory taught in schools is Plato’s Cave in his Republic.
Here Plato has Socrates talking to Glaucon, instructing him in the nature of knowledge.
Socrates (or rather Plato) likens people to ignorant prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, passing behind them. What the prisoners only see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects.
These prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows. If a book is behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, the prisoner says “I see a book.” He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow, although he uses the word book.
Should the prisoners be allowed to turn their heads, they would see the real book, and not think the shadow of the book is the book itself. The question is: Are we really seeing what we think we are seeing? This is an example of perception allegory in the nature of knowledge.
As such, John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” is an example of spiritual allegory, in which the road to Heaven (salvation, moral behavior, glory) is not easy and it is full of obstacles (humanity’s sins and world’s ups and downs).
In the same vein, most religious scriptures are full of allegory. Possibly for that reason, some writers turn their noses on allegory, such as Schopenhauer who said, “Man should (would) grow out of his allegorical primitivism as out of his childhood clothes." Better thinkers and writers do not agree with him. Actions, things, and words may mean more than one thing and cast ambiguity to the meanings in it. I am sure you have heard people say that a religious text, let’s say Bible, is full of contradictions. Allegory clears the meaning in regard to the entire text by compressing many truths into one huge complexity.
Haven’t other writers used allegory, however, in a slightly changed fashion? These works come to mind: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Portrait of Dorian Grey, The War of Worlds, The Sound and the Fury, The Road (Cormac McCarthy), Carrie (Stephen King), and quite a few Sci-fi texts.
Another writer, Edgar Allen Poe, also sneered at allegory, as he criticized Nathaniel Hawthorne severely. “One thing is clear, that if allegory ever establishes a fact, it is by dint of overturning a fiction.”
But then, he himself wrote The Masque of the Red Death, in which a pestilence (Red Death) is so deadly that the carefree Prince Prospero (from The Tempest?) orders an end-of-the-world masquerade ball within the seven rooms of his abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim's corpse enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. Under a gigantic ebony “ticking” clock, Prospero dies after confronting this stranger, whose "costume" proves to have nothing tangible inside it, and his guests also die.
I didn’t mean to write this in too long a detail, but allegory got the better of me.
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For Plato’s Cave:
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm
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Prompt: Winter can be too cold and summer can be too hot but spring and autumn are usually the most comfortable temperatures. Which do you prefer? What are some places and things that make you comfortable? Why do they make you feel that way?
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Where I live it is perpetual summer with a few days of cool spring or fall if we get a front that dips down to surprise us. This I think is better than shoveling snow, but I also miss the snow-covered scenery under moonlight, although not the biting cold or the snow turning to slush.
My ideal weather is 60-70 degrees with sunshine and some rain because I love rain and sunshine equally.
As to choosing spring or fall with their ups and downs over the other two extremes, it is a possibility, but I remember days, from when I lived in a four-season state, that spring and fall were not all that dependable either, since I recall a Thanksgiving blizzard and Easter snow and extremely cold days in between. Even so, when I was younger, I preferred enjoying all the four seasons.
I don’t know of any place that has the perfect weather for me, now, except for California, which is a state with its own demons such as landslides, fires, earthquakes, and far-out people, and not every place in California is all that even-tempered either when it comes to weather.
In my later years, call me self-centered, but I don’t like any discomfort. I wouldn’t like to be blown out of life with a frigid winter flurry. Neither do I want to feel the melancholy of watching leaves drop one by one in fall in addition to my irritation at my fall-time allergies, no matter how sensational a vision this time of changing colors can be. As to summers, extreme heat and summer storms are just as threatening as skidding on ice in winter. This leaves spring, which I can warm up to better, especially late spring when buds and saplings sprout to give new meaning to hope.
All this empty talk could be because I haven’t learned from life its laws, dynamics, and balances fully, as my basic needs depend on food, air, sun, water, shelter, sleep and comfortable weather. I haven’t learned that the seasons and changes in the weather is based on renewal, be it through hard-edged seasons. Maybe someday, I’ll imitate the migrating birds and follow the weather of my choice. Someday when I can fly; someday when air currents to carry me will stop being so unpredictable.
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Prompt: Here in the states, one week in April it is free to visit to National Parks. What do you think you would see at a National Park that you would not see in your local woods? They advertise that the images you see in a National Park you will remember for a lifetime. Do you think this is true or false?
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I am not really all that much into National Parks. I understand visitors may mean money for their upkeep, but this also works against the reason for their existence, as they are made for conservation purposes. I don’t see them as public parks for giving pleasure to vast populations. Having said that, I am glad they exist because I believe in the safekeeping of the earth’s resources and wild life. Despite my objection to too many visitors to such places, I have to add that I didn’t stay away from visiting a few National Parks, but only because we were with a tour as a group and I couldn’t tear myself apart. I never packed up and headed the way of a National Park for my personal enjoyment.
It might be true that images one can see in a National Park will be remembered for a lifetime, such as the Muir Woods and the Redwood Forest that I can’t forget, and will always remember because one of my loves in this earth is the trees. I also feel bad for what people are doing to the rain forests in South America and to other riches of the earth in other countries. Considering this, we might as well be the best in the business when it comes to National Parks and care for the natural environment. Still, I think more caution and fewer visitors are needed in the upkeep of all preserves and National Parks.
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Prompt: "The Edge Of Tomorrow." What does this mean to you?
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This, I found out, is the title of a military sci-fi movie with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, which I haven’t watched. To put it bluntly, for this reason of ignorance alone, I give me permission to write whatever pops up inside my mind. (As if I ever needed permission for that!)
Talking about tomorrows, let’s say tomorrow is a blank slate, and while standing at its edge, I am faultless since I didn’t do anything…yet. Tomorrow is a dream at this point, but when tomorrow becomes yesterday, you can bet I have stepped in all the you-know-whats thrown in my way by then.
Luckily, my edge turns into a hedge right away, preventing me from the full vision of that once-clean tomorrow which turned into yesterday. By the way, it is not a copout to view yesterdays through blinders, if I want to keep my sanity intact and not wallow in self-pity, even if you may want to say my sanity is not so intact.
The edge of tomorrow also can become the minutes of today when I go to bed at night. These sometimes make me lose my sleep, because the clean slate image has evaporated now and the threat of a ghastly monster lurking in shadows of the morning hours is about to take over, making this the time of the day to produce and wallow in horror stories pertaining to my life.
“tomorrow is our permanent address” says e.e.cummings. For all I’m concerned, he can stay in that permanent address. I’m perfectly happy with my today, no matter how I mess it up, and as I have never been suicidal, I don’t like standing on any edges.
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