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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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Do you experience psychological challenges of living with machine intelligence since computing power is woven into everything, and sometimes extremely erratically?
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I have no problems with machine intelligence. If anything, I highly revere the computer technology and its leading us to such new horizons we could never have imagined. Machine intelligence, wrongly named as artificial intelligence, is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that show intelligent behavior. What people and especially companies, large and small, do with this technology is something else, however.
As to my psychological challenges with it, I can only mumble the first few words of a song. “Where do I begin to tell the story of…”
To begin with, if you ever called a company and were given the runaround by a computer without even touching the issue at hand, you’ll know what I mean.
This is a computer speaking at the other end:
Thank you for calling (company name)!
Comprimé el número nueve para Español. (A possible full minute of waiting, but only here; for other options waiting period is much less.)
I see that you are calling from (your number, character by character repeated back at you as if that was what you needed.)
Please be advised that this call will be recorded for training purposes.
Let me pull your account. For security purposes please say your father’s first name. (You say-for example-Fred)
Sorry, I didn’t get that.
Another question then. Please say or press on the keys the number of your residence. (You press 355)
3-5-5, Is this correct? Please say yes or no. (You say yes)
Sorry, I didn’t get that.
Another question then. Please say or press on the keys the last four letters of your Social Security. (You press, for example, 1089)
1089. Is this correct?
If this is correct say yes. (You say yes)
I didn’t get that. If this is correct press one. If not press two. (You press one)
Now how may I help you?
Please press one if you are calling for (Whatever option one is).
Press two (whatever option two is) … (additional options and additional numbers are given after that)
And this goes on and on, and if you are lucky, after half an hour or so, you are talking to an agent, most likely from Mexico or India or Timbuktu or Wherever, who asks you the very same questions the computer has supposedly clarified, just to answer a yes or no question or he or she is incapable of understanding your issue, so she connects you to a higher-level agent, but if through her connecting your call is dropped totally, it means you’ll go through the above process all over again. And this is one of the simpler examples. I have some horrible ones, which would have taken ten times longer to write about. But to add some comic relief to the issue, my hubby gets so flustered that he talks back to the computer: "No, you are mistaken. This isn't what I said. I said....) 
It used to be, a few years ago, we were given the option of talking to an agent, but that option is totally erased nowadays, through the inherent cruelty of companies or their programmers. If this doesn’t frustrate a person, I don’t know what does! |
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Prompt: Joseph Campbell said: "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
What do you think makes someone into a hero?
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I agree with Joseph Campbell. It is a valiant undertaking to decide to tackle something bigger than oneself, in other words, to at least attempt to do something about an issue no matter how undoable it seems.
In addition to undertaking huge and sometimes insurmountable projects, a hero is someone who displays courage and resilience when faced with a problem or a hardship. A hero will also rise to the situation when someone needs help or needs to be saved from a dangerous situation. There are heroes in uniform and there are heroes in civilian clothing. What makes a person a hero comes from inside him or her and shows in their actions.
Heroes are people like us and most of the time they are scared, too. Their heroism, however, doesn’t let fear get the best of them. Nor do the real heroes wish to do anything for fame and fortune. If they did, that would cheapen their deeds. A hero performs with the recognition of risk and cost and predictable sacrifice but without the anticipation of external gain.
Why do heroes become heroes? This is a puzzle. It could be that there is a hero gene or the love hormone in the brain, which increases the likelihood of altruism, or it could be just that heroes feel more empathy and compassion to perform heroic deeds in service to others in need, be it for a person, persons, group, country, a moral cause, or ideal. In short, no recipe exists for creating heroes because heroes just are heroes or they become heroes in a variety of quiet ways whether we recognize them or not.
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Prompt: Beaches are some of the greatest and most enjoyable natural features this earth has to offer us. Is this true or false? Why do we, as humans, naturally gravitate towards the beach? Does it have many positive effects on a person both physically and psychologically?
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True. Beaches are my favorite places, but then, also are the mountains. No wonder, I always move in contrasts, but then the first thing I learned in painting was contrast. We had a teacher who walked around repeating his watercolor mantra, “light against dark, light against dark, light against dark…”
In the past, I have scared many a people and later my husband by standing motionless on the beach, looking out toward the ocean. The air was always fresh, even if that freshness could be impenetrable and cruel on stormy days. I also liked the waves, their diamond spittle when they crashed against the rocks, how their foam bubbled feverishly and vanished almost immediately, how the water lapped the sand, feeling like silken underwear on the skin if I stood too close, and retreated taking away from under my feet some of the sand and other debris to bring those back again with additions.
It isn’t just the ocean but also the sea birds, gulls to be exact, the music of their cries and flapping wings as if they are trying to communicate in a language in extinction. These tie me to the beach, together with the tiny fortunes I pick like iridescent sea glass or seashells or the gnarled wood with twisting, snaky branches that the sea has borrowed from land earlier and stripped naked to return to the beach. Then, how about being mesmerized while watching the beauty of the moonlight rippling on the ocean?
I guess people in the past have been drawn to live near the seas and rivers for the security of easier trade and possibly because most of the percentage of human body is water and water gravitates toward water like the raindrops on windowpanes merging into one another. That must be true of me, for sure, as I have always lived on coastal cities and I have always loved the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers.
The full moon casts
its shy light over the ocean
with the slight chill
of cold hands
forward onto the beach
where the water beats
offering itself like a heart
on the stilted world. |
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Prompt: Write about the last book you read or the book you are currently reading.
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OMG! Me and book reading is a mixed-up and fast-paced affair. I just finished, last night, And So it Goes--Kurt Vonnegut: A life by Charles J. Shields. Also, yesterday, I finished The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoir by Chil Rajchman; Solon Beinfeld, the translator. Then a fortnight ago, I finished The Gambler by Dostoyevsky, my second time reading it, since my teen years. This is because I usually read several books concurrently.
Then in Kindle Fire, I am reading a chapter each night from a book US History’s Greatest Hits by Hans Thayer because I don’t want to rush that one. I just finished a non-fiction book on Coffee by Schlomo Stern, on Kindle Fire also. It was very informative.
Another one I am not rushing to finish is the Outlander book 8: Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon, only because it is in 38 CDs, and CDs are hard to listen to, as I have to sit down and listen with ear phones or have them played out loud, which would annoy hubby for he has no love for fantasy, time-travel or anything not reality oriented. Still, during the last month or so, I made it to the 33rd CD.
I have two other books going on at this time in my two other Kindle E-Readers. After this upside down, right side up mishmash, I’d better talk about one specific book, The Last Jew of Treblinka. The book was written by its survivor Rajchman who managed to or was lucky enough to escape from the death camp after the Treblinka rebellion.
Inside the memoirs, he talks about how the camp operated, the cruelty of the Nazis, and how they put together a practice of transporting, confining, torturing, gassing, burying and incinerating the victims, but the shocking part for me was how they came up with the idea of the assembly-line practices and how they made the stronger men among the Jews work for them as laborers. These men had to cut the hair of women who were being led into the gas chambers, extract false teeth, gold, and other materials from an astounding number of corpses, unpack corpses from the gas chambers, convey them to be buried in pits, or load them into ovens. The corpses that were put in the pits were later dug up and incinerated in order to hide the crimes and get rid of their traces.
The Nazi attempt at hiding the crimes was probably what made the memoirist do everything in his power to stay alive, for Rajchman wanted desperately to be able to tell of the atrocities because all the evidence was so expertly erased. Most of the other laborers like him either killed themselves or did something to be killed. About twenty people managed to make it out of the camp with Rajchman during the rebellion, but most were picked up and shot.
I have read many other books about the Nazi death camps, but I don’t remember reading a book by anyone who the Nazis used for their such dirty work and to this degree or, if I read other survivors’ memoirs, those people didn’t mention the work they did in such horrid details.
This has been a horrifying read, but an important one, I think.
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Prompt: "With freedom, books, flowers and the moor, who could not be happy?" Oscar Wilde What is your take on this?
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I fully agree with the happiness freedom, books, and flowers can bring; however, for not having seen it, I cannot vouch for the moor, but I hear it is breathtaking and know that it has served as a background for many a story that I love.
Freedom is precious because the opposite of freedom means to be denied the life one believes in. This, for an author, has to be devastating. Then, who can deny the positive input of flowers, as Emerson noted, “The earth laughs in flowers.” Yet, books are like souls to a writer or maybe his best friends. As a child, I used to say, “Books are the best people in my life,” to my mother’s consternation.
This quote is from Wilde’s book De Profundis, published in 1905, next to his last work which would be The Ballad of Reading Gaol. De Profundis is his 55,000-word letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. In it, he rebukes Douglas for his cruelty and indifference despite the loving devotion Wilde had for him, as well as talking about his spiritual journey through his time and trials in the Reading jail.
This quote’s voice is quite different with its cheer and exuberance from the tone of the rest of De Profundis since, while in jail, Wilde was assigned to distribute books to the inmates from the limited library, which held only the classics. This type of reading plus the horrid treatment he received there changed his voice a bit, making it more arrogant, excessive, florid, sentimental, vindictive, and self-pitying.
My favorite quotes from De Profundis is: “Art only begins where Imitation ends” and “Supreme vice is shallowness.”
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Prompt: From what you see of the books in the market, do you believe that the massive increase in media during the last fifteen years or so has led to a breakdown of people’s understanding of subtlety and is that why the literary genre has taken a back seat to the more exciting genre writing?
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This question was put to me in Barnes & Noble’s by another reader. She complained of the lack of “good” books and that they mixed all the fiction together, except for the romance genre. Although I didn't argue with her, my understanding of this situation is somewhat different.
First, a bookstore’s first goal is a financial one and it depends on selling whatever sells the most. Second, few people write nowadays a la Faulkner, Hemingway, or even Philip Roth, but then, each generation has its own stories and understanding of the world, as also seen in music and other arts.
To begin with, genre fiction can be literary, too, although it had been mostly thought of to be for entertainment in the earlier times, as in for escaping reality. Literary fiction, on the other hand, has been thought of as a means to better understand and feel the world, and for that reason, it has persisted doggedly on highly detailed characterization. In our day, genre fiction also gives importance to characterization, and it is also entertaining.
The way I look at it is, neither the literary nor the so-called genre fiction need to be hyped as being the better of the two since they are in the process of mixing with each other. I also don’t think this has anything to do with the people’s understanding of subtlety. People with better literary experience appreciate all good writing, regardless of the genre, and for that reason, I don’t think any genre has taken a back seat.
As to the massive increase of the media, I applaud it. The more the merrier. It is better to have all writers find a venue for their work than getting rejected by hoity-toity publishers and feeling discouraged. The increase has given voice to the masses and, despite the abundance of lemons, has produced more quality work than ever. Once this excitement simmers down, I am sure serious writers will think twice and pay more attention to their revisions and editing before rushing into the publishing market.
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Prompt: Edgar Allen Poe said: “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” Is this true for you? Do you have to be horrified by reality to be impressed? Or does Poe mean something else? What do you think?
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If we substitute the word horror in the quote with words like emotion, excitement, or intensity, then what the quote says would be true for me because I don’t have to be horrified to be impressed. Knowing me, if I were to be horrified, from fight or flight, I’d choose the flight, and yes, I would probably be more than impressed, too, and probably end up suffering from a kind of mini PTSD.
Words, on the other hand, have definitely a great power, aside from being elements of speech and writing. “In the beginning was the word.” Remember?
It might just be that the words have their own direct energy, and who knows, they may just transform into some kind of magical vibrations to affect us. Come to think of it, wasn’t Hitler some kind of a dark magician to pull the wool over the eyes of his entire nation? Don’t the presidential candidates do the same thing to us regardless of the context of what they say?
The quote, however, reflects Poe’s feelings perfectly to show how he created his spine-chilling and bizarre work, which is also magnificent, brilliant, and beautiful. To say Poe operates from an eerie mood would be understating it; however, through his horrendous descriptions and imagery, he manages to create that very mood in the minds of his readers.
The reality of that “exquisite horror” in Poe’s words owe their impact partially to his great art of foreshadowing, so even before he lays a scene of terror in front of your eyes, you are already in a grim and ominous mood.
As an example here is one of my favorites where Poe’s foreshadowing is concerned.
Now, this, together with the earlier stanzas, is before the raven comes in the poet’s chamber:
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Need I say more?
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I am no hero, but my protagonists are, and I can certainly use the hero's journey in my writing. The template for it should not apply only to an epic journey of a hero like Odysseus, Luke skywalker, or the hero in Cormac McCarthy’s Road. It might apply to a love story, mystery, or any genre one can think of. This is because the steps in Hero’s journey shows the hero’s or any chosen protagonist’s transformation:
Here is the template for it:
I.
The Status Quo –Hero’s everyday world in the beginning
The Catalyst—The event that urges the hero to begin the action
Denial—The Hero resists the catalyst, most of the time, through hesitation, pride, or fear but other factors may play in as well.
Encounter with the Mentor—This Mentor is someone whose knowledge or wisdom would help the hero along the ways. Sometimes a mentor may be an unlikely person at first glance, but he can act as a mentor nevertheless.
Acceptance and Action—Here, hero changes his mind and decides or is made to act.
II.
Trials and Tribulations with Friends and Foes—Like Harry Potter’s first experiences in the Hogwarts school, the hero meets his friends and foes.
The Edge of the Abyss—Here the hero regroups, takes into account what has happened to him so far, and plans his course of action.
The Plunge---In this stage, the hero faces his greatest fear or challenge, and dives into the action with open eyes.
The Payoff---Having survived the plunge, the hero gets some prize or reward or the news of a failure if this story is dark.
III
The Way Through---In this stage, the hero is about to face his real test. Here he is usually trying to stay alive or run away from what happened in the earlier stages. In action/adventure or mystery/crime stories, this is usually a chase scene.
The True Test---This is the final and the biggest test where the hero proves he has learned his lesson.
Return to a New Normal—With his physical or metaphorical reward gained, the hero returns home or makes his new surroundings his real home.
I am putting this in my blog for future use. Feel free to copy it, if you wish. 
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Prompt: Creation Saturday! Let's play with the random word generated for your writing pleasure: chaos, council, night, crust, pound and hectic.
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Night-Work
Beneath the crust of chaos
a council of hectic dreams
pound their rusty gavels
on slumber’s podium.
Shall I be wary of,
or maybe, embrace
their frenzied topography
and cunning radiance?
Thus, on awakening,
hiding my head
in the crook of my arm,
I wonder why
the memory blows its smoke
into altered shapes
and sprays caustic spirits
inside me and why,
despite the discipline
of such night-work,
I can’t capture
even a shadow of myself
in my stories.
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Prompt: What is more important what you say or how you say it?
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They are both important, but how you say it enhances what you say. The down part in this is that how you say anything does not count in a court of law as it is considered conjecture.
In my experience, with the exception of job interviews and interpersonal relationships, how you say it is secondary in Western civilization. In other different cultures, however, how you say it will either exonerate a person or lead to his execution. This, I believe, came about from the times of the earliest human existence, long before our species developed language skills, when we used nonverbal clues, gestures, and intonation, in our communications.
In most of our communication processes, however, how we say it will connect us better to our fellow humans. How we say anything with words, gestures, eye contact, and body language will matter. Our facial expressions and voice tone, inflection, and volume must match what we say, think, or feel, as well.
Not only how we say anything but also how we listen carries some weight. A person who seems to listen to our words with a blank look while he or she slouches, jiggles a leg, or worse yet, checks her cellphone, or furtively texts has to be showing signs of boredom. Most interview candidates are advised to display a listening posture to their interviewer by sitting up straight, leaning slightly forward, making eye contact, and nodding. They are also told to be wary of their nervous habits such as hair twirling, pen tapping, or doing any other thing that would make the person opposite them uncomfortable.
In short, what we say has to be accompanied with how we say it if we wish to leave a positive impact on others, but also we must mind what we say, our exact words, in case, our words might be needed to become admissible in a court of law. |
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Prompt: Everyone has a story. Are you brave enough to write yours and have it published?’’
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This depends on what the story is. If the story is fiction, something I invented off the top of my head, sure. Why not?
If it’s my life story, however, no way. My life is mine; it is a no-go for anyone else. In the first place, I don’t see the reason why it would be important to me to write it. Besides, can anyone know a person’s entire story from all angles? I guess not. In some cases, even the person himself or herself is unaware of everything about it.
Someone I know well enough who is a VIP in her own right had her memoirs/biography published during the last few months. While I read it, I found so many holes, so many factual mistakes, and so many self-aggrandizing passages in it that even I felt embarrassed on her account. Her redeeming part in this is that someone else wrote the book, even though with her blessings and under her directions.
Yet, there are autobiographies I have loved reading. The latest one is by Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake. In fact, I listened to the audio version of the book rather than reading it. I loved the way the author looked at her life through different times and at various aspects of it. Her examination of life, her values, her love of solitude and many other things I found very close to my heart. Better yet, she made me believe in the truth of her every word. I found no self-applause or self-abasement. Although the reviews of it by others are not so positive, (Could it be jealousy, since those reviews are by her journalist peers/friends?) I think Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is one of the sincerest autobiographies ever written.
Another good book I have read during the last couple of years is Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg. Here, the author’s private memories somehow ended up becoming universal, but then this is Natalie Goldberg, and possibly she can do no wrong, at least the way I look at her work.
Writing an autobiography or one’s memoirs is a monumental task. It is practically impossible to squeeze an entire life in a volume or even several volumes. Yet, the ethical rule of it is to be truthful as much as one can, regardless of the length. The next thing has to be choosing and organizing the topics. Many writing coaches give lists suggesting chronological factors and ideas to would-be memoirists. Plus, there are several books on the market for those who are thinking of such a venture. Then, there is the http://thememoirnetwork.com.
Here are the few books I know that are in the market, which might help if anyone in WdC would be interested:
Memoir Writing for Dummies, by Ryan G. Van Cleave, PhD
Teach Yourself How to Write Your Life Story, by Ann Gawthorpe
How to Write Your Life Story, by Ralph Fletcher
Writing Life Stories, by Bill Roorbach
Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, by Judith Barrington
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer
Writing About Your Life by William Zinsser
Inventing the Truth by William Zinsser |
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Prompt: You have a Pandora's box in your possession. It contains one of these 5 things: Evil, Love, Peace, Hope, and Friendship. If you open the box, one of these will be released. Do you open it? Do you hide it somewhere? If you are brave and open it, what happens? Write a story or poem or whatever you want about this.
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Note: I am an all or nothing-at-all person, so I'm letting everything out, not just one thing.
The Box
Following the ruts in the mud, I found the box
inside a field of wheatgrass and timothy,
and before I could bend the latch to open it up,
I recalled holding it once, in a clueless life,
on a stormy sea, until it was swept overboard
and gathered shells that made intricate designs
and wavy lines on its surface as if crocheted lace.
Amazing! In reverence, no sharks had circled tight
to chew it to chunks, I assumed, due to its contents.
So, thinking fearlessness is a painless death,
I bit my lips and unlocked what had long remained shut.
Craving air, the contents jumped leaving skid marks
and I blinked through their fervent revelations of favor
and altogether with precision, peace, love and hope
flew into my far-out mind, pulling friendship in tow.
Yet, flaunting its scaly skin and neon eyes, evil
fluttered overhead distorting perspectives to block
the beauty and what lay beneath the rain-washed skies’
however, I fled with haste, akin to Pandora,
blighted by a cursed aura and bad conscience, to outlive
my own vilification, walking a tightrope, on
the outsides of my feet. So hard to keep my balance,
for the least believable story is the truth and
there are many ways to be lost and crippled, unless
the hope in me heaves with the tides and insides
of love, peace, friendship, and despite my inner chaos,
--like a miner stumbling wide-eyed on a vein of gold--
I rise with a scrap of victory and polish my stained self.
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Prompt: How strong is your taste imagination? Have you ever felt the taste of any food inside your mouth just by thinking about it? Write about this.
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I have no criteria to test my taste imagination, and I wonder if one exists. The only thing is, I love food, and when I think of certain foods I like, my mouth waters. What is true for me is: I know how things taste but the memory of them do not bring the actual taste into my taste buds.
On the other hand, some people have claimed that this happens to them. During World War II, GIs and other people who were locked up in German camps and suffered from hunger passed the time thinking and talking about some dishes and actually feeling the taste and feeling good about their sorry conditions; however, this might be due to the human-resilience factor. I like to read about the holocaust and World War II because it is something that should never be forgotten, and I am now reading the biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes by Charles Shields. In it, Kurt Vonnegut, as a US soldier, is captured and sent to a camp. Shields writes that the POWs there also reminisced about food, possibly experiencing the same or similar feelings.
Obviously, there is such a thing as taste imagination. It is certain that imagining the foods we like does offer an aesthetic pleasure, but I am doubtful about feeling the exact taste in one’s taste buds. I wish that could be true, though. It would make losing weight so much easier.
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Prompt: What do you think is the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths? Have you ever had to deal with people who seemed to belong to either group?
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To know the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths is important for the fiction writers, even though some forensic professionals and criminologists sometimes disagree on the differences between the two kinds of people or if those differences exist at all.
Sociopaths, being nervous and easily stressed, do not form attachments to others and live on the fringes of the society. From the outside, they look extremely disturbed. If they commit crimes, their crimes are haphazard and spontaneous rather than planned. Sociopathy is thought to be mostly the result of the environment and the lack or improper nurturing in early ages.
Psychopaths are cool, calm, meticulous, and charming. They do not form emotional attachments or feel empathy, but they may mislead others with their charm and can easily gain their trust because they can be extremely manipulative. They can mimic emotions very well without feeling them and may appear normal. Often well-educated and holding steady jobs, they may have families and can sustain other long-term relationships. Their crimes are carefully planned with every detail intact. Psychopathy is thought to be the result of genetics or nature.
I met one sociopath, although I am not aware of any crimes committed by him. On the other hand, I knew several psychopaths not close to me. One of them is a successful businessman; the other is a woman lawyer who acts as if she cares about the women’s issues and has others believe in her. (Geeez, I just noticed how what I said may sound like.) No, I am not talking about the presidential front-runners. The people I have mentioned are those I personally met and have evaded to the degree that I could. Once I recognize the fakery factor in such people, I try to stay away from them.
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Prompt: I've included a link about organizing, just in case you're looking for new ideas. I know I always want new ideas to get me on track. What are your best organizational tips?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/cleaning-and-organizing/18-organizing-ideas-f...
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My best organization tip is: If the person or people living with you do not respect your efforts and throw things every which way, you need to stop organizing and picking up after them. Otherwise, you’ll be greatly frustrated to the point of murdering someone.
In my case, I rather live in peace than in war, but also, I refuse to become a slave to any one person or idea.
I know, I know. Most of us want to live in pristine, well-kept houses. Believe me, I do, too; however, after realizing that I either live in a topsy-turvy place or I live alone, the topsy-turvy won the lottery. Thus, in my house, I gave up organizing the community property. My books, my own personal things are organized enough for me not to get lost in them, and I have a rule that nobody touches my things, which works to some limited degree of success.
In reference to the link Lyn has posted, (Oh, so many examples, but here's one) several years ago, I had done the placing of cords in paper-towel tubes. In about a week or ten days or so, they were all thrown away. Reason: It was thought I didn’t throw away their first packaging from the store; so, the person accommodated me. I did it again after a lengthy explanation, but with the same result. The reason this time: “They are hard to get to. You can put them back in if you want that so much.”
As such, the pudding dishes missing from the kitchen cupboard are around one of the sinks in the master bathroom holding the other person's small toiletries like cue-tips, etc. Replacing them with small plastic containers didn't work. Pudding dishes won again. Solution: I bought more pudding dishes. The problem with such solutions: Too many kitchen knives, scissors, dishes, garden tools, etc. are adding to the clutter.
Need I say more? |
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It's Friday the 13th, a horror writer’s favorite day, I am told. I think horror is an interesting genre; what do you think? Could you easily write horror? Or would you rather just read it? Pass on it. Do you have favorite authors?
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I am not too crazy about the horror genre only because some horror writers take it as a means to scare people with disconnected and inane scenes and events. On the other hand, authors like Dean Koontz and Stephen King make it into an art form that enhances the suspense and mystery in a strong and meaningful plot and characters.
When it comes to reading other horror writers, not always finding the same quality in their work, I am hesitant to read them.
As for me, I could probably write horror, but even a short story would take me years, if I could make it fit my standards. That isn’t to say I haven’t written any. I have but, to be honest, I am disappointed in them.
The horror genre is being thought of as being somehow analogous to Friday the 13th, for the unlucky idea in the day, which is a total superstition. Fear of Friday the 13th, one of the most popular myths in science, is called paraskavedekatriaphobia as well as friggatriskaidekaphobia. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13. The fear is in the fact that I think I’ll lose my tongue, my mind, or something else trying to pronounce these Greek words.
As to Friday the 13th, I don’t think it is unlucky. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Believe me, I wouldn’t. I am not a glutton for punishment, but then, there is that saying:
“Don't be superstitious. Nothing will happen on Friday the 13th that cannot happen on Saturday the 14th.”
Now, should I be worried about tomorrow, too?
Answer to the Bonus Question:Do you have friggatriskaidekaphobia?
No, I don't. I rather like number 13. SMS was born on a Friday the 13th. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13. When you add the numbers in 13, you get four. Four is the number of the legs on a traditional table. It holds everything up. |
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Prompt: Fog, Crossroads, Stairway; use these words any way you want in your writing entry today.
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Something hangs there to be said about fog, muffling the sharp edges in a gentle blanket, the shrouding element of it with a soft grayness as if it is a “stairway to heaven.” Why is it that, anytime I start to write anything, a song breaks through my consciousness? Oh, what the…, I might as well go with it.
For the one who is buying the stairway to heaven, “If the stores are all closed/ With a word she can get what she came for…” She can? Maybe that floozy knows how to handle the crossroads in getting what she wants, how to take the “less traveled road.”
Go away, Frost! I am trying to stay with the fog, today. “'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings//In a tree by the brook//
There's a songbird who sings// Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiving/” And maybe she really has bought the stairway to heaven.
Whether she made it up on that stairway or not, the fog is sometimes a heavy feeling of being only half-awake, of living in a dreamlike state, something like sleepwalking. That, in reality, is a mental disorder caused by a faulty thyroid, which makes “our shadows taller than our soul.” Thank you, Led Zeppelin, but enough for now.
Related to shadows, maybe the fog is only an external vision of the mind, and the soul, in our core, is the more important dramatic part that intensifies our colors as in a sunset or sunrise. The fog may point to a scene like in Dickens’ muddy and extremely polluted London streets of the mid-nineteenth century, in hyperbole because all writers love hyperbole, to show the lowly coal-burning “making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot” versus Dickens’ loftier writing soul cheering the inimitable British Empire.
And my mind, in its foggy state, roams around “every which way, but loose.” What, Clint Eastwood now?
That does it. My fifteen minutes of entry-writing time is just about up anyway. Read at your own risk. |
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Prompt: The moment I pulled into the driveway with the real estate agent, I was embraced by the inn's appeal. Oh, yes with its natural bright natural light and large windows that overlooked the cove, this B&B felt like home already. It was the perfect for starting my new life.” The Inn At Rose Harbor Debbie Macomber
Have you ever wanted to run a B&B? Write a poem, short story or whatever you want about it.
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No, I never wanted to run a B&B, but my daughter-in-law does. I think she can do it for she is capable and has good taste. Such an undertaking would be both interesting and wonderful because not everybody can run a place like that with much success.
I have been to a few B&Bs as a guest. The first one I went was in PA, but it was such a long time ago, during the late sixties or early seventies. I don't recall the name of the place or even the name of the town. The visuals of it are still etched in my brain, though. I remember eating dinner with a whole bunch of other guests, possibly twenty people who had no connection with one another. The dinner conversation was a heavily labored one because there were a couple of other people who assumed things about everyone else and annoyed everyone. One of them talked against religion and ministers. Another guest’s father was a minister and he turned hot under the collar. Then the other person talked against working women, as it was the time when baby boomers were up in arms about women’s and human rights. The three working women plus yours truly defended a woman’s right to a well-paying job. It was uncomfortable for everyone.
My last B&B visit was on 2009 summer, July I think. Hubby had taken a temp job in Monticello, Florida, and we stayed in a very interesting B&B. The owner, manager, and the worker was one very nice woman, named Pat, who employed local women on an hourly basis when the work became too much for her. What was so interesting about this place was that it was an old haunted Victorian mansion, built in the Italian style with a cupola and front porch. At the turn of the century, the house served as a bordello. When I learned that, I laughed out loud; after that experience, I can easily boast that I stayed in a bordello, although Pat the owner didn’t like to talk about that part of the mansion’s history.
Pat was also a minister and she conducted séances. We stayed there about two weeks, but at the time, there weren’t many other guests in the place. Those who came didn't stay more than a night or two. I had my laptop with me, so I did some writing, edits and reviews etc. Most of the time, I was alone there, and twice when Pat went shopping, I was the only one inside the entire mansion. Honestly, the ghosts were very nice. I didn’t hear or see a thing. If anything, my own house which was built in 1978 creaks and emits sounds of knocks and rumbles a thousand times more.
In my old blog, I have an entry written while we stayed there. "Poem-Walk"  has the photos of tall trees with kudzu hanging. That was the view from my window.
I think, later on, Anderson Cooper did a report on the place. I am posting the black and white photo of the house. More info and photos in color can be seen on its website.
http://www.johndenhamhouse.com
This is what the place looked like:
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Prompt: What do you think of the medical profession and do you trust your doctors? Should you trust them?
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In general, I do trust medical profession because it is the best and the most proven answer that we have. I trust it as the result of a personal experience as well because it saved my life. About twenty-five years ago, I once developed a sudden tumor that was huge. If it weren’t immediately found, it would have burst and killed me. I didn’t even have any serious symptoms to alert the doctors. A surgeon alerted by another doctor even opened up his office on a Sunday. Luckily, it was only an endometrial tumor, and an immediate total hysterectomy saved my life.
Is the practice of medicine, however, 100% reliable? It is not. Medicine is a difficult, complicated science still in the process of development. Many things about the human body’s workings have not been discovered yet. Moreover, new and different problems and diseases keep showing up. To add to that, many a mistake has been made and will be made; plus, there =are many untrustworthy and greedy professionals practicing it. Because of all that, health is something where the primary responsibility has to be with the patient.
If we beat up on our bodies and do rotten things to hurt them and do not take good care of ourselves, isn’t it ridiculous to blame the medical profession?
It is up to us to decide whether the doctors we see are up to par. It is also up to us to be informed enough to figure out what is important enough to tell the doctors and be truthful in answering their questions. In my experience, too many baseless complaints make the doctors turn a deaf ear or, worse yet, concentrate on the wrong complaint and misdiagnose.
I would say yes, trust the doctor, if you are sure your doctor is a good one, but before putting every aspect of your health in the hands of the medical profession, trust your own good sense and knowledge.
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Prompt: What, do you think, creates the most delightful usage of language in literature? Descriptions, dialogue, rhetorical devices, style, voice? Anything else?
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All of the above and then some.
Literature can be any piece of writing that has an artistic beauty in some way. What creates the delight in literature does not always depend on the subject matter but the way any subject is handled through language arts because form and content are dependent on each other.
The effect of any text is mostly determined by voice and style. Style in literature is dependent on the context, or the way the author through his characters chooses to speak to the readers. Some writers may be limited in the range of styles at their command or sometimes they flaunt their own style if they don’t fit their expectations. A newspaper article written in the style of a formal poem or a romance story written as a school report would be ridiculous.
Style of a text depends on diction (word choices) and syntax (sentence structure). Closely related are the rhetorical devices that focus on rhythmical patterns and sound effects.
Where diction is concerned, these concerns are significant: Whether the choices are simple or complex, Latinate or Anglo-Saxon, abstract or concrete, formal or informal, neutral, evaluative, emotionally charged, vulgar or refined, jargon or subject-specific, appropriate or inappropriate in the context, words used in unusual combinations or words to fit in with any particular society’s lexicon.
Where syntax is concerned, what is important is the choice or the mix of sentences: simple, complex, long, short, exclamatory, statement, question, command, or paratactic (sentences, clauses, or phrases placed together of without any conjunctions as in “Get outa here, heck, you don’t mean that!”
Rhetorical devices are the elements of figurative language such as imagery, symbols, similes and metaphors, plus the arrangement of sounds (alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia) and different sentence structures.
Voice may mean active or passive voice, but what I am referring to is the distinctiveness of the voices of each character or each author. It is their speech and thought patterns that stand out among others. Tone, choice of words, choice of content, and even punctuation adds up to a literary voice. A voice can be commanding, influential, pompous, funny, chatty, warm, or a combination of different qualities for one single character. To me, finding the voice for each piece and character is very important for an author.
Descriptions, dialogue, characters, and plot have more to do with the author’s imagination but they make up what is delightful in literature together with the above-mentioned aspects. As Gustave Flaubert said in Madame Bovary, “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
May we all be able to make music to melt the stars through our work! |
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