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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: Playwright Anton Chekkov said, "People don't notice whether it is winter or summer if they are happy." Do you agree with him? Why or Why not? Would you say you are happier during the summer than other seasons? Why or Why not?
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Happiness is an inner affair. I don’t think it has much to do with the weather. Anyhow, where I live, I am not too crazy about the summers, but I am just as happy as I always am, provided the other factors that are important to me in my life are intact.
In addition, happiness has to be defined before one can pass judgment on it. I think what happiness is depends on each person’s wants and needs. It may mean sudden delirium of delight to some, for example. To others it may mean monetary wealth, and still to some, it may mean spiritual wealth. To me, it is spiritual wealth plus accepting and valuing the status quo plus contentment with the family and the people I love. Marcel Proust said: ““Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” He was so right.
Furthermore, even when we know exactly what happiness is for us, searching for it usually negates the meaning of it. The only thing we can do could be to make ourselves ready to receive it. Then, when happiness comes, we recognize it and meet it with open arms.
Happiness, even when found, can float away with internal or external reasons, which may mean that it is not a constant state either. If it were, Sylvia Plath--who said, “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery: air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy’”---would have stayed in that happy mindset without falling into depression and would want to live much longer than she did.
Coming back to weather, it only makes us only comfortable or uncomfortable. Attaching happiness to it can be limiting one’s options in life.
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Prompt: We all agree that loyalty is the foundation of relationships with friends and those we love; however, at times, our loyalties get tangled, put in danger, or clash with each other. How is it possible to keep our loyalties intact when people clash or destroy one another?
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This is what I call being trapped between a rock and a hard place. Something in this vein happened to us when we were newlyweds. We had two other couples as friends; both couples had been married for years and with children. One of the guys was a womanizer, unbeknownst to me. This guy had a string of office affairs until the wife caught on to him. The husband of the other couple knew about this, as they worked in the same place, and had told his wife.
Luckily for us, when all this was happening, we were out of the country, and when we came back, they presented us with their mess as if we were a couple of Supreme Court judges. The mess itself wasn’t too bad, but what was bad was that the adulterer had told his wife that the other guy knew of it. He also made sure to say that the other wife knew of it, too.
The adulterer’s wife picked on the other wife for not alerting her. Then the adulterer also said that the other guy had had some kind of an affair, too, which I thought he was possibly lying to take the down the other guy with him. Anyhow the four of them were like big cats, scratching each other. Worst was, they were all coming to us, telling their troubles, and purposely involving us.
Since I was still in my twenties then, I didn’t have the guts to tell all of them to get lost and neither did hubby. The result is, there was no result. Both couples stayed together, but we stayed away from them, after slowly easing ourselves out of their friendships.
Staying out of clashes and entanglements can be done but may not always be possible. I would opt for staying out of the clashes, and when it is not possible, dropping such loyalties. I guess to keep loyalties intact, one has to have a lot of life experience and a cool head. In addition, each case is different.
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Prompt: What would it be like to have a secret place, imaginary or real, where you’d like to go to escape from the grind of everyday life? Can you describe the landscape of such a place for you?
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About 40 years ago, I learned to do a few step-by-step meditations regarding different areas of being and coping with life. One of them was building for me a secret escape place into which I could invite people of my choice, and if I wanted anyone to stay out, they would forget they ever stepped into it, for nobody could get into there, without my consent.
In this meditation, I built my imaginary secret retreat at the edge of the universe, on a ledge as a large room made out of some transparent material, tempered glass or anything unbreakable. When something’s imaginary everything’s possible. From this place I can view the entire universe, including the solar system and the earth. This is the best place to escape to, for me, especially when the going gets tough.
In addition, I have other more accessible escape places. Sometimes, I escape into my head and search in it for something interesting. Sometimes my head opens up a few real memories. If those are pleasant, I linger for a moment or two, but only that long, since I don’t like to look back into past, good or bad, as it is done with. Or I escape into the settings of my stories and inside the heads of my characters. I also escape into reading, which has been my favorite thing ever since I could read. My two Kindles and one Nook are perfect for that, because they carry a lot and are not heavy to lug around.
As an actual physical place, we have a covered porch, where I go with a book or a Kindle, but at this time, it is too hot to be outside, and also, more often than not, someone usually sees me there and stops by to chat. So it is not much of a refuge. Actually, nothing physical is really a secret haven in my life.
So back to the drawing board, I retreat to my favorite transparent refuge at the edge of the universe on a ledge with the view of everything or anything I want to watch. 
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Write about an ordinary ritual/event in which something goes ...terribly wrong.
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Do I have to light a candle, say a prayer, burn incense, or wear a feather and dance around a fire in order to answer this prompt? I don’t think so. It would freak my husband even more than everything else I do that freaks him out. I just think he’s easy when it comes to freaking out.
Here’s one story that really made him freak out. Once upon a time, yours truly and the freaked-out guy used to live in a home with a large yard and tall trees.
There was one tree in the backyard that was totally dried out, with no life left in it, but it was at least 70 to 80 feet high. It didn’t have side branches too much. Each time I looked at it, I saw firewood.
“We should cut that down,” I said.
He said, “Too tall for us. I’ll get the tree people.”
Now, it wasn’t that we didn’t know how to cut a dead tree. We had done it together several times before. There is a ritual to it. You tie a strong cord to the tree in a Y shape, the base of which stays on the tree trunk. The upper two lines of the Y you tie two strong points could be another tree or something stable, so when cut the tree falls in between the two upper lines of the Y. Then you cut a wedge on the trunk above where the cord is tied, in the direction of where you want the tree fall. After the wedge, you cut a straight line on the exact opposite side of the tree. This way, the tree falls on the wedge and in between the two upper lines of the Y exactly where you want it to fall.
Back to the specific tree, days passed, but no tree people. Hubby said, “It’ll have to be when I am home.”
But he was never home as he was working two jobs at the time, and winter was only a couple of months away. I figured I’d do this myself. I tied the cord to the trunk, then tied one end of the rope to a strong oak tree, but there was no other strong enough place to tie the other end. There was an apple tree, but I didn’t want to risk the death of it. So I tied it to a neighbor’s aluminum fence. Then I sawed out the wedge, and cut the opposite slice, but the tree wasn’t falling down even though it was making creaking sounds. So, I ran where the fence was, and untied the cord. Holding on to it, I pulled, let go, then pulled again a few times. The tree started coming down, but instead of falling in the middle of the cord’s Y, it was coming at me.
I started to run with the tree coming after me. I heard my husband screaming, “Let go of the rope!” He had come home to get some papers he had forgotten in the morning. Then I realized I was running with the end of the cord still in my hand. I let go of the cord and the tree fell exactly where I had planned it to fall.
You could say, I was very lucky. You could say hubby’s screams saved me, or you could say I am a daredevil. I think you’d be right.
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These two photos are from my woodswoman days, 
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Prompt: Why do people join groups and then not participate? Is it important to belong to a group for the sake of community whether you are active or not? What do you think is the reason for the non-participation? If your name was removed for non-participation would you inquire why or simply leave things as are?
I know both Blog City and BCOF have similar questions and it is for a reason. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and there are alternate prompts if you choose not to answer my question.
Alternate prompt: Do you think the states/ countries should have to fund the expense of an official to run for another government position. Like here in Jersey Christy is running for President, while he is campaigning things here are neglected. Is that true where you live when officials are politicking. If your government is different explain, please.
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Hahaha! It looks like the prompt will end up being longer than my answer. 
I want to answer both prompts although I told myself I wouldn’t fool around with more than one.
Prompt 1:
If someone goes in a group with her/his own free will, I certainly expect them to participate, at least in some minimal way. I understand we all have other lives and do not have too much time. Still, there is such a thing as keeping to promises and commitments. Then, if I am kicked out of a group without any explanation, I’d respect the group owner’s better judgment, but this hasn’t happened…yet.
There is, however, a situation, which has kept happening to me in WdC for years. People include me in their groups, sometimes without even my knowledge. If a person is in a group she has no inkling of belonging and hasn’t made a commitment, you can’t expect them to participate, can you?
Coming to those who willingly ask to be included in a group, then they are missing in action:
Have you heard of the Impostor Syndrome? For some reason or another, --my guess is, for showing themselves as involved members in WdC to impress people, other writers, but especially the reds—WdC members ask to be a member of a group, then they evaporate into thin air. When I had a group or two, this absence by members happened to me. Eventually, I gave up on the group business. It works better for me to work in a group, then be the owner of it. Ownership is fine when there is a good set of rules and a body to enforce them. Since both the rule-setting and the enforcing body means the group owner, this has proven to be way over my head.
Back to the impostor syndrome: Impostor syndrome happens from fear: from resisting feedback or from fear of involvement. It lures the writer to sabotage himself/herself, by getting him/her used to abandoning projects, destroying them and other people’s enjoyment of them, and even destroying his/her self-respect and her/his image in the eyes of the fellow writers.
If a group member has been active and has suddenly stopped, first I would give him or her the benefit of a doubt. Heaven forbid, he or she might be dead or incapacitated in some way.
Or he or she may be planning to come back after getting over the hurdle of whatever it is that holds her or him back. Still, a heads up to the group or at least the group owner would be the polite thing to do.
Prompt 2:
My answer is no. Absolutely a big no.
After all, this is a job situation. Where is it seen that a Company-A shoulders all the costs of its CEO for his efforts to be accepted into a Company-B, and thus, leaving his work in Company-A shoddily done or left in the middle or undone?
I am sure the situation is the same here and everywhere else in the US. I think the only solution is not to fund those candidates and even expect them to resign from their current office before running for another office.
Although no one would ever listen to me on the subject, still it is here, my two cents. And I managed to write longer than the prompts. Me and my big mouth!
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Prompt: What is your favorite work of art?
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This is difficult because I have many favorites and not any one favorite. Rembrandt’s every piece is a favorite. His work can only be appreciated fully when you see a painting of his itself, and not its copies. The first time I saw a self-portrait hanging in Washington’s National Gallery of Art, I was mesmerized. It was as if the portrait was looking at me and speaking: even though the tones and hues were extremely dark, the eyes were something else; alive and out of this world are the descriptions that come to mind.
Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gauguin are other favorites.
I also like early Americans, almost every one of them, my favorite being Edward Hopper.
I love the works in watercolors, especially those of John Pike, John Singer Sargent, Andrew Wyeth, and Winslow Homer.
I also like a whole group of Russian artists, starting with Ivan Shishkin who paints trees and woods in rich lights and shades and in fine details and Vasily Polenov for his use of color.
I also favor Mondrian, Matisse, and Joan Miro.
I love The Scream by Edvard Munch, not for its beauty but for its expression.
I also love the many watercolor paintings of the people who are my contemporaries or of younger generations that I have seen in galleries, but their names escape me.
I am sure I forgot to mention a whole slew of names, especially the ones in the impressionist movement, but I like the works of each painter for a different reason. Some favor color, others shape or line, and still others expression. Expression always gets me as well as the interplay of the light and shade.
This is what I like, but if the question were to be an art appreciation question, I would probably come up with a not so-subjective evaluation; because art-appreciation can be learned, but liking or not liking is a personal matter.
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Prompt: "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." George Bernard Shaw Do you agree?
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I like Shaw just fine, but create myself? I’d botch it up. I’d have feet coming out of my hair or something.
Joking aside, if by creating he means in a psycho-spiritual way, I’ve done so many things or rather tried doing so many different things that I may end up being like that Sybill character with so many personalities.
Still, as long as I have life and breath left in me, I’ll keep on revising, re-doing, trying different things all the time. And when and if I can pass through the pearly gates, they’ll have a difficult time which one of me to judge.
I guess if I were to answer this prompt with my serious hat on, I would have to say something along the lines of: This prompt is about realizing that we have the ability to craft and shape who we are and what we experience in this world…blah, blah, blah…
Or I could say, I can forgive the past wrongs and forgive myself so I can become a better, re-created person…Blah, blah, blah. But the serious stuff is easy to say and difficult to do, but I do try. I think we all try in our own inimitable ways.
Still, my serious hat can be the joke and my joker’s pointy hat could be the serious one. I am never all that sure of anything. Come to think of it, I am not even sure of the most serious stuff I have ever written, either.
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Prompt: Trees
We get many material uses out of trees. Are there any other intangible, artistic, or philosophical uses of them that come to your mind?
Aside from their cooling shades and their inspiration for poets, writers, and all artists, trees have held symbolic charm for humanity. The tree has inspired several rich cultural myths. Thousands of years ago, it was believed that a tree held together the world, underworld, and the universe as the cosmic axis (axis mundi), such as in Teutonic and Norse mythology. Then, Gilgamesh of the Sumerian legends searched for the tree of life snatched by a snake.
The tree also has been widely used as a symbol in spiritual and religious traditions, starting with Eve and Adam’s apple tree, Buddha’s finding enlightenment under the Bo tree of wisdom, Druids working their magic in oak forests, and the Kabbalistic tree of life.
Yet, that is not all. Evolution of languages are explained through an image of a tree. The genealogical successions of human families are shown through tree shapes. From computer scientists to biologists, everyone uses the outline of a tree.
On top of all their physical and material uses, trees have inspired us ever since our species found life on earth, as each kind of tree has its own symbolism as well. A palm tree reminds us of the sun, sunny skies, and vacations. An oak talks of nobility. Cherry trees are the harbingers of a cheery spring. Sequioas are called the Goddess Trees for their height, age, and color.
It was a stunning eye-opener for me to experience the majesty of the Sequoias when we visited the West Coast, but then any tree sings us its own beautiful song and a walk in the woods or in a forest can be as impressive as a symphony. No wonder even Shakespeare mentioned a mythical musician in relation to trees:
“Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing…”
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Prompt: Rebecca Solnit says: “Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. Or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no someone to whom to say them.” Do you think she is referring to writing in relation to solitude? What do you think on the subject where your writing is concerned?
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I find this to be true for me in a roundabout strange kind of way. What I can’t tell people about how something is or was in my life, I can say it more openly, however in a covert fashion, in fiction or in a poem. Then some things are so subtle that their subtlety hides them even from my conscious thinking. Yet the whole thing comes out in view while I write. Sometimes, when I catch on to it, I am stunned beyond belief. The thoughts that come up, then, are in the area of: Didn’t I get over that already? Why did this haunt me again?
Whether the owner of the quote is referring to writing in relation to solitude or not, I wouldn’t know, but the writing process has something to do with us writers liking solitude for our minds to process everything in them. Surely there are some events, feelings, and thoughts that telling to someone, even a partner or a best friend, would sound odd, pointless, and out of place, or even scary. Yet when we write, we recuperate those things and even if serve them as a totally different dish, the basic ingredients are still there, and the dish is served to those presently absent readers who are willing to look at and taste it.
I do like to write in silence, but my life has turned out to be such that I end up writing with lots of noise around, with people talking to me, and with other things going on my immediate life that I need to take care of. I think, over the years, I got better in managing my writing whatever the distraction. It hasn’t been without losses though, such as a burnt meal or two, unanswered correspondence, unreturned phone calls, chaos in daily life, and I’m-telling-you-something-but-you-aren’t-answering admonishments and attitudes from family members. Yet writing is such a fascination for me that I am able to take it all in, process it, deal with it, and with each day, do more of that multitasking thing more efficiently than ever before.
It could just be that my currently absent, unknown, and faraway audience are the best listeners I’ll ever get, much better than a roomful of people who might or might not be willing to listen to what I have to say in my squeaky voice.
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Prompt 1: Create a set of circumstances which a reasonable person would indeed cry over spilled milk.
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Prompt 2: Create something with an unwise owl, a disloyal dog, a demanding cat, a slow rabbit and a fast turtle…story, poem, make it yours.
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Prompt 1:
Five days after the first hurricane, a second hurricane is raging outside. Why the nature’s wrath?
We’re totally isolated here, and it has been days that we didn’t have internet connection. The only connection is my son’s cellphone of all the cellphones we have, not only for the internet what for reaching out to others and news, any news.
Because there is no electricity, we are trying to eat and drink everything as fast as we can. Although we have an Orca Cooler that keeps stuff cold up to ten days, our allowance of days on it are diminishing. My husband takes out the milk carton and pours himself a glass of milk. Then he turns around to put the milk carton back in the cooler.
All of a sudden one of the cats jumps on the table knocking the glass of milk on my son’s cellphone. He rushes to its rescue, giving me a sideways glance, since I had warned him not to leave the phone on the table. But to no avail. The phone is soaked and any connection is lost. Every person in the room is shocked, more so at this new disaster than at the wind rattling the shutters which we have somewhat gotten used to by now. I look around and notice that we all have teared up, crying over spilt milk.
Prompt 2:
No matter how much I try to hush her up, my inner child wants to speak to me, and the unwise owl that she is, she wakes me up in the middle of the night and prattles on:
“I am so proud of you for coming so far despite those around you who bite like a disloyal dog, meow non-stop like a demanding cat, run to your aid like a slow rabbit, and escape from your troubles like a fast turtle. I have watched you stay your ground and then say to me, ‘Don’t you mind. They don’t matter.’ Still, this isn’t just my imagination that it is you who can’t sleep while wrapped up inside the refuge of your bedsheets. If you’re telling me not to mind, then why are you losing sleep? Don’t you see yourself that you are standing right side up in this upside down world?
You tell me that all life is an experiment. If so, why do you not take your own words to heart?”
I think maybe my unwise owl is not so unwise. After all she can see in the dark.
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Prompt: How to address summer slumps with blogging.
Do you have any suggestions to keep our blogging on track? I know some of you are not in summer right now but you probably have the same fatal attraction with real life... as those of us here in the states. Help, what works for you?
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Writing to prompts works for me. Before I started with Blog City, I was still blogging, but because I limited myself to blogging about the writing craft and surrounding issues, my blogging was highly irregular. Once I started with BC, blogging became fun, even on the busy days. Sometimes, when the prompts are startling or out of my range, I try to catch them from their tail end or from any edge or point, and something---good or bad—always surfaces.
The only time when I stopped blogging was a few days after we were into G.O.T, probably because I wanted to do the games full time, and since G.O.T is also writing, I consoled myself with the idea. The same thing may happen when NaNo arrives in November, if I decide to do it this year. I skipped it last year and felt its emptiness inside me. I don’t want to skip it again, but it is still too early to decide.
Summer slump means nothing to me, since where I live the weather is so hot and humid or stormy this year, we rarely dare to go out unless it is absolutely necessary, but still we have things to fix in, around, and on top of the house with workers coming and going all the time. With all the distraction and things to keep an eye on, my time is again limited.
In addition, my hours are not as regulated as they were when, in our house, everyone worked or went to school. I don’t have the regular work and play hours anymore, but it is much worse now, because I don’t know just when whatever emergency or a need either in my house or somewhere around the neighborhood will spring up on me. So I write the blog piece just as soon as I can. This entry, I have started writing at 11:50 PM and probably will post it sometime after midnight.
To put all this together in a nutshell, writing the entry as soon as I can by using the daily BC prompt works for me in any season.
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Prompt: You wake up, get out of bed and open the door. You are in OZ! You meet the munchkins, scarecrow, lion, tinman, the witches from the second movie {The Great and Powerful Oz} and James Franco is the Wizard. What happens next? This is your adventure.
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I already think I have been living in the land of OZ ever since I was born. If you met my family members, past and present, you’d know that Munchkins, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, Tinman, Wizard, the Witch of the West etc. have been living with me or around me, using aliases.
Like most anyone, The Emerald City is the city we all are searching for, but we haven’t found it yet. Forget Emerald City, each city we’ve looked at has slums, poverty, too rich and too poor people, lawlessness, and lackadaisical governing bodies.
Fact is, I never thought I was in the USA…ever, let alone in Kansas. If I were, wouldn’t I and everyone else have the best of anything? Such as the best Congress in the world? Not that anything is unsavory, but I worry about the yellow brick road that we are following. I think it is a fake yellow brick road, and we are off the planet earth. Or this planet is a bad imitation of the supreme planet earth that the creation designed.
The problem could be that, at my age, I cannot hop and skip like Dorothy on uppers. Still I feel very lucky because I’ve found this wonderful place that keeps building and rebuilding itself, however, in cyberspace. No, it is not Kansas; it is home. It is WdC.
See I told ya, my fancy Emerald City of a place is off this planet.
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Prompt: Which good memories are better-the recent and vivid ones or those that time has covered in a sweet haze?
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This prompt makes me want to sing. I can think of three memories songs. There is that memory song from the Cats, then those most of the youngsters here won’t know or remember: the one Elvis crooned strumming his guitar and the other Barbara Streisand sang way back when in the movie, The Way We Were.
As an aside, no need to run for the hills, you can’t hear me sing through my laptop. Even if you could by some fancy programming trick, I have the sound off, since computer beep beeps annoy me.
Coming back to the subject of memories, for me, the answer to the question is: it depends on the kind of the memory. I cherish some memories from my dinosaur years that time cannot “cover in a sweet haze.” Then I have some recent good or good enough memories that do have some kind of a mesh or sometimes a tarp thrown over them.
It is been said that, if moments feel like they are fleeting way too fast, memories gain permanence, which means most cherished memories stay bright through time. This may be true for me, but I am not sure it is true for everyone else; after all memory is a complex system and a brain function. Fact is, I can’t ever vouch for my memory simply because, when someone sends me a review of something I wrote many years ago, I have to check and re-read the stuff, and at times, that text is totally foreign.
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Prompt: Sense of Humor
“Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.”
Do you use that comedic view for the ills in your life? And how successful is it?
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Having a sense of humor is a successful approach to things that may go wrong. Someone who applies this idea well is ⱲєbⱲitϚћ is 18  . If you have read her hilarious newsletters you’ll agree with me. Only she would make a hip replacement sound like a lark.
Unlike WW and others with a great sense of humor, I need crutches to face the downers of life. I, therefore, have accumulated a few tips from Facebook and other sources that remind me not to take the negatives too seriously.
One of them by my desk is: “When something goes wrong in your life just yell, ‘Plot Twist!’ and move on.” Even though my voice box is worn out from yelling Plot Twist, there is so much truth to the idea there. If I treat most anything foul as if it is a plot twist in the fiction of my life, I stop seeing it as an earth-shattering disaster.
Another one is on the bathroom mirror at which I stare while combing my hair in the morning. It says: “We all know mirrors don’t lie. I am just grateful they don’t laugh.” This makes me chuckle every morning and sends me into the unknown pitfalls of a day with a positive attitude and a sense of humor.
I also printed out some of the Aunty Acid cartoons to circulate them on the kitchen wall. Aunty Acid may be an acrid lady, but she always finds a way to put a smile on my face.
While some of us have an inborn sense of humor, others of us like me need reminders not to take life too seriously. After all, it is: “Don’t sweat the small stuff; everything’s small stuff.”
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Prompt: How do you think fear and courage are related? Does fear provide the opportunity for courage? Or is courage an entity on its own without the catalyst of fear?
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Some believe that courage is the act in spite of fear, which sounds true to me. I don’t see courage being an entity on its own or standing alone without fear, although courage may exhibit itself in different kinds of acts with the catalysts of varied kinds of fears.
For example, a fireman running into a building to save a kitten on the ledge may have the fear for the life of the kitten and the fear of how he’ll feel later on if he didn’t do anything to save it. He may have also feared for his own life, but the other fears were more overpowering for him.
Then, there are other physical acts of courage people say they undertook without thinking on the spur of the moment. I believe these kinds of acts still have a fear and courage connection, except that connection has to be running in the background of one’s mind, in the subconscious.
In addition, the acts of courage that do not involve physical action too much also occur. These can be intellectual, psychological, philosophical, and conceptual. The exercising of one’s freedom of speech falls in this area. This type of an involvement has to take the most courage, because the fear and the courage here is not instantaneous or depending on only a few minutes or a very short time.
When an artiste in any area writes, paints, gives a speech about, or makes a caricature of something, he doesn’t get off the hook easily and with speed. His work will come to haunt him and other people who follow him, and not only that but also his concepts and his life and the lives of his loved ones will be challenged and threatened by those opposed to his ideas.
Although instant physical acts of courage may bring more sudden fame, I value the intellectual kind the most, for this kind of courage has to do with Abraham Maslow’s self-actualization principles, despite the fragmentary or continuous feeling of fear related to the courageous action.
Self-actualization is mission oriented, and it leads to the emergence of the true higher self. The fears here involve unpopularity, loss of privileges, and physical action against oneself and others. Opening the self up to these kinds of fears means identifying defenses and finding the courage to stay intelligent and honest.
This evaluation of courage takes my thinking back to the concept of love. When we love someone, something, or some idea or belief deeply enough, we find the courage to claim and defend it despite our fears. This has been so, all through the history of mankind. As Lao Tzu said, sometime around 600 B.C., ““Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
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Since this is a prompt-free day, I am going to write to a prompt from the many prompting books that I never use. This prompt is from 3 AM Epiphany, in condensed form.
Travel to a place where you’ve never been, in your imagination.
As long as I am imagining why don’t I imagine I am purchasing my own island in the French Polynesia? Not that French Polynesia will allow me to purchase anything from them, as anything French has a resistance to foreigners, but this will be part fiction, part my wishing for it.
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Situated in the middle of the Pacific miles away from civilization, is my island--an atoll or a coral island, surrounded by blue-green clear water with sandy beaches all around it. As soon as the helicopter lands, I jump down not waiting for the letting down of the ladder.
The sand is so fine and milky white as it flows from my fingers... I laugh with delight for the craziness of what I have just accomplished.
Gaston, the guy in the helicopter who has been my right-hand man, laughs, too. “I can’t believe you did this,” he says, “You, the woman who loves crowded cities and her own creature comforts. Well here it is, all five acres of it.”
“Small, isn’t it for an island?” I say. “But this is all I need. I can write in peace here.”
“I had a receiver tower built in the back of the house,” he says. “You can get Wi-Fi and phone connection from the main island, if and when you’re lucky. You need anything, call me, or better yet, put a note in an empty bottle and let it loose on the ocean. If we’re lucky, I’ll get it faster than your phone call.”
He snickers. Wise Alec! Then he dumps my bags on the beach. I wave at him as the helicopter takes off.
The house is a cottage with a thatched roof, with solar panels installed on top. How they could do that is a conundrum. Inside the cottage are three rooms, sparsely decorated. That is, with minimal amount of furniture. I made sure that Gaston understood my need for not dusting and cleaning much. Kitchen is smaller than the bathroom. Perfect! Now I can do more cookouts with little to none cleaning problems.
What I love most is the wide porch that circles the entire house. This is where I’ll live the most, and this is my primary place to write, for sure.
Gaston figured it out well. There are built in seats and tables on the porch on all sides of it. Heck, I might even sleep here.
After dragging in my luggage, sandied or what—who cares, I take a stroll around the island. Good idea to do this every morning. This will help with the 10,000 steps I always plan to do but reach the count rarely.
The island is Y shaped. The outer arms of it lie very low, almost at sea level, but the navel of the Y is at least six feet off the sea-level, and this where my cottage is. There are trees, woods actually, on the back of the house. The front looks at a long floating pier with two boats on it. They both have oars. Gaston goofed on this one. If he thinks I am going to row to anywhere, he’s dreaming. To begin with, I like to keep the flabby wings on my arms for eternity.
A dog or a cat would love to share my island with me, and I’d never have to put them on a leash or keep them indoors against their wills. I must ask Gaston for my animals to be, when he drops by to bring groceries. I may be away from civilization but not that much. I just learned that Amazon is expanding its drone service to the Southern Pacific. Could they send me a dog on it…I wonder. Better yet, I’ll ask Gaston. Who wants an animal that is scared witless while being carried by a drone!
Anyway, I love my very special island. I think I’ll stay here for a good while. Let me see, what I’ll write from here next… I think I'll...
“Honey, when are we having lunch?” Sounding like an alarm clock, hubby suddenly materializes in front of me. I check the time on the right bottom of my laptop: 2PM! And no lunch!
So much for my island in the South Pacific. Dreaming is more fun when contrasted with reality, which is also very satisfying, especially if all I have to do is to heat up leftovers. 
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Prompt: Do you think artists should connect with their fans via social media or leave up the wall between performer and audience?
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Connecting with fans via social media or not is up to the character and personality of the artist and their capacity of how much stress from the fans they can take. Each artist in any field will have to decide on that for himself.
As authors are artists, too, some love the action the social media provides, while others like Harper Lee and JD Salinger hate it so much that they even stop publishing. Even if we don’t have access to these authors’ later writings, I am sure they must have written on the sly. I can’t say what they did with what they have written for themselves, but one thing I am quite certain is that they have written, since we all know how writing is a bug and the kind of bug that it is, once it gets into one’s bloodstream, no antibiotic except death will kill it.
I can understand any artist’s dislike of fame because it would mean giving up all kinds of personal freedoms for them. Those of us who are private people at heart would be annoyed by being stalked, being continuously mentioned in gossip columns, or being unable to have a quiet stroll on the streets and the park.
Especially authors, since they are all people watchers, do not like to be noticed or hassled by the rude tabloid media, especially when they are gathering information and doing research. This may be why some of the artists of any field opt to live on foreign soil.
Where writers are concerned, one question they must hate has to be: What are you going to write next?
I mean, who knows? Writers sometimes write on a whim; other times, they search for something to write. Heaven forbid if the media catches them during that research and holds them to the subject they are researching. Sometimes, a research is just a research and the writer may or may not use that information, if he gives up on this particular project.
Putting anyone on the spot is a very rude activity, I believe.
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Write Brain Exercise by Bonnie Neubauer (Thanks Lyn!) 
Prompt: Use all of these words (Mayonnaise, Soy Sauce, Mustard, Relish, Ketchup, Pickles, Hot Peppers) in a piece that starts with: My Condiments to the CHEF in any way you want. Have fun with it...
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My condiments to the chef, as your food is fatty and needs help with acidity, you opt for ketchup on fries to fire up my taste buds. Not quite correct to inspire my exalted sense of food, no matter how much anyone tries..
And if you think you are being haute and esoteric with mustard and relish, you’re in pickles of a kind not fermented right, but if the appeal of soy sauce heightens your sense of invention, it deserves an intervention not by hot peppers and mayonnaise, but may I suggest saffron, wasabi, and tamarind glaze? Or pesto or an elegant tropical fruit salsa? How about olive tapenade, and cherry sauce?
Better yet, here‘s a list that starts with Balsamic garlic vinaigrette, basil oil, green butter, and horseradish aioli, or Merlot wine jelly, and never say Roquefort Dressing is too French. Nothing’s too French. Not even the French is too French.
Since you are drowning and in trouble, grab at my lifesaver list on the double, so you can strut, wearing your white tophat and shaking your savory butt. |
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Prompt: What's the coolest thing you have ever seen in a museum?
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Dinosaur bones were the top coolest things and I saw them several times. A few times in NY City, a couple of times in D.C, and once in Massachusetts Science Museum.
Also another cool thing was the huge fish tank the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.
Then the next cool thing was the Topkapi Palace (museum now) in Istanbul where the Ottoman sultans kept their harem and all the fancy stuff like old arms and buggies and the huge jewels and the explanations of those very different lifestyles of very long ago.
If I go like this, I’ll end up with a long list of cool things. So I better return to the first and the coolest one: dinosaur bones. The biggest is the Dino Tour in the American Museum of Natural history. Although we took our children to this one, I think I was just as much or maybe more awed than my kids. Tyrannosaurus Rex had an enormous mouth each tooth the length of my then seven year-old son’s forearm by his assessment. Oh my God, these things always had huge heads with the exception of a plant eating tall one; its name escapes me, but I think it starts with a b.
In the Smithsonian in Washington DC, nothing was fabricated. It was all bones of different types of dinosaurs. This was about 30-35 years ago when we visited the place with the kids. I heard they closed the fossils section and are rebuilding a new wing for it, if I remember correctly. Also here, we saw the hope diamond, but it is really like a stone that’s blue and transparent, round in shape, nicely cut at the borders. Nothing I would like to wear; too big for my taste and far too fancy.
In Boston’s Science Museum, Triceratops was a sight, with another big head. These bones were scattered--at first--everywhere, then were picked up one by one and glued and mounted together. Very few of the links from plastic were later added, to the best of my memory.
When I read this prompt, the first thing that popped up to my mind were the dinosaurs, possibly because, thanks to my age, I am turning into one of them, sans the size. Dinosaurs have to do with ‘looking back’ as in my a-day-earlier entry, and looking back is not such a bad thing when I look all the way back to the time when I avoided these animals by being absent from their scene. 
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Florence Martus was the Unofficial Greeter of ships by Port Savannah, Georgia that came sailing into port or on the ocean. She did this every day from 1887 to 1931. She was known as "The Waving Girl." Was she waiting on a sailor she loved to return or was she just friendly? A statue of her and her dog is located at Morrell Park, the river front of Savannah. If a statue was made of you, what would you be famous for or remembered as?
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I know the town of Savannah and the statue. Florence wasn’t waiting for a sailor; she just lived by the ocean and was friends with the lighthouse keeper. Eventually she made friends with all sailors. She was a nice, kind human being and was friendly with everyone. Being the imaginative romantics that we are, we must have surmised, made up, and added the romantic story of a sailor who never returned.
The question of the prompt is not the one I can answer, and neither do I want to, but it may probably be answered by those who have known me well. What I think I have been or at least tried to become, however, is being independent and not asking for help from anyone unless absolutely inevitable.
Frankly, I don’t ever want any statue made of me. A statue is an effigy, in fact a dummy figure, which a human being is not. It is especially dangerous when a statue becomes an idol and inspires idolatry in the people who begin to worship it, and then, as in the case of the waving girl of Savannah, attribute unreal stories to it.
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