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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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August 30, 2016 at 5:56pm August 30, 2016 at 5:56pm
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Prompt: Can writing aspire to be a form of activism? Do you think authors and poets have a duty to address political, economic, and social issues?
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Writing can aspire to be whatever the writer wants it to be. As far as activism goes, definitely many an author in the past and present have taken activist stances. Off the top of my head, I can think of James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou. During the Ancient Roman and Greek eras, quite a few authors were activists for their specific causes. Plutarch, for example, was a priest of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi and was concerned about ethics, religion, and politics of his day. Earlier than Plutarch, Aristophanes poked fun at the leaders, politics, and way of life or the Greek citizens. All these authors are or have been writers first and activists second.
Sometimes, a writer who doesn’t want to mess with activism can be pushed into activism either by the calling of his conscience or through the influence of his countrymen. Writers automatically address the issues of their times, with or without intending to; however, I don’t think any writer has to do so and doesn’t have a duty to do so. Each writer has the freedom of personal choice, and even if the activists of his day would want to influence him, he doesn’t have to do what they want him to do if that doesn’t suit his wishes.
Having said all that, the reason the Nobel Prize is--in my opinion—lower than other literary prizes is because it seems to award the activist-authors worldwide, turning itself into a political machine. The authors chosen to receive this prize are good authors, and I don’t mean to belittle any one of them, but the primary consideration of the Nobel Prize committee has been distorted toward activists and political ideas, especially during the latest couple of decades. I believe, any award for writers and poets should be based on the author’s art, in its totality.
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August 29, 2016 at 12:39pm August 29, 2016 at 12:39pm
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Prompt: How would you create a passive-aggressive character in your stories? What, in your opinion, makes people passive-aggressive?
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To create such a character, I would show something in his or her background or backstory that made him extremely angry. I would make it an anger that he or she couldn’t properly express because he or she lacked power and control. This may be a dominant, aggressive person in her background and history who hurt him or her. Especially in formative years, social weaknesses and disadvantages or low self-esteem and societal restrictions might have played a part in his/her way of treating others later. Or it may be a learned behavior possibly from a parent who used passive-aggressiveness on the character, thus teaching him this way of living in the world.
In his or her present behavior, contrary to popular belief, he or she is not really a shy person but an aggressive one in his or her own way. A passive-aggressive character would create negative gossip. The methods of such a person can include veiled hostile joking, unnecessary and repetitive teasing, and always being critical of others’ conditions, ways, ideas, solutions, or expectations.
Some of those people can give their victims the silent treatment, backstab, send mixed messages, or push their buttons deliberately. Sometimes they act as if their victim is not in the room and they try to socially exclude him or her by giving them the invisible treatment. Then if they can’t see their desired result in the victims, they try to get at the victims by badmouthing or hurting someone or something of importance to them. These types are very good in engineering negative or awkward surprises for their intended victims also. They are also very good in punishing others, deserved or not, by hurting themselves in some way. On top of it all, to elicit sympathy, they may show themselves as the victim, dependent and weak.
In work situations, they stall, forget, procrastinate, or obstruct and suppress resources and information. They also break agreements, show rigidity, and mess up the tasks at hand. They are very good at professionally excluding their victims.
Although in the short term, passive aggressiveness may bring so-called benefits to such a character, it can cause serious personal and professional harm eventually. For curing this behavior in the character, the writer can create a reason for him or her to exercise serious self-awareness.
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August 27, 2016 at 11:44am August 27, 2016 at 11:44am
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Prompt: "The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg and the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs." What is your take on this beautiful reflection?
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Everything in the world arises and grows from a potential, like the tree in a seed. Yet, for that potential to take shape, we have to recognize it. We have to recognize that it is the potential from which something huge, beautiful, and useful can grow.
Dreams can be potentials, too. Yet, for that dream to become reality, an effort is needed. Every effort does not give the imagined result. Yet, we usually do not know what will come out of our dreams when we feed them with our efforts. Maybe it will be something small, maybe something much better than we expected. One may say, “Yes, I have a dream, a vision, but my circumstances do not permit me to reach it”; however, if that person really perceives the vision and its potential and strives to make it a reality, no matter what the circumstances, something good will come out of it.
A dream is a vision. A dream, if left without an effort, will stay just the way it is, as a make-believe image or an idle wish, but if we nourish that dream with effort, the result may be something stunning.
By the way, such coincidence! This quote is from a very old book, titled As a Man Thinketh, written by James Allen, a British writer-journalist-philosopher, in the beginning of the 20th century. One of my high school teachers used to carry it with her all the time.
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August 25, 2016 at 12:28pm August 25, 2016 at 12:28pm
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Prompt: "Day 900. Can you believe it? What are your favorite things to blog about? Is it more fun to blog about real life or make up things from prompts? Is Blogging a habit or a big part of your life? If you stopped blogging, would you miss it? Let's make it to a 1000. We can do it."
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Happy 900, Blog City! Surely we can make it to 1000 and beyond. I don’t doubt that.
Some good exists to blogging or rather writing every day on different or similar subjects or from prompts. It helps the fluidity of one's expression, and it makes the ideas to become more orderly, although I still have to experience this. In addition, it helps a person to get to know more about herself. It also shows that clarification and simple words matter most, to those of us who are trained in academic mumbo-jumbo.
I like blogging because it keeps me writing every day, and I like to write just about anything as long as it doesn’t stir up a controversy either among the other bloggers or anyone else and it doesn’t cause a disturbance inside me.
Blogging is not a big part of my life, but it keeps me doing something every day that relates to writing. especially on the days that I don’t write other things. The reason I only write for Blog City and not for the other blogging sites or groups is because I like to keep my entries long enough, possibly around 300-500 words or more if the subject needs it, and concentrate only on one topic or prompt.
During GOT, I didn’t write in my blog at all, but we were writing five long things a week as well the tons of reviews. That was enough writing.
I am not as big a blogger as most of the bloggers in WdC are, whether they write with Blog City or not. I am a pretty regular blogger, though. I like the relaxed atmosphere we have in Blog City as my blogging is a lot more leisurely venture. I feel at ease with my writing here, which is usually free flow, and most of my blog entries do not take more than ten to fifteen minutes of my time. It is, therefore, not a burden on my daily schedule or on the other things I do.
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August 24, 2016 at 1:33pm August 24, 2016 at 1:33pm
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Prompt: "The Young and the Restless" has just celebrated it's 11,000th episode. With that in mind, what are some of your favorite episodes of your life? You can talk about your bad ones as well. I look forward to reading your entry.
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I have never watched The Young and the Restless, not even one episode. The only American soap I watched was The Days of Our Lives for about three months in 1969 when my first-born was suffering from colic and wanted to be held constantly. So I held him and watched TV for lack of better things to watch. This was before cable TV or VHS was invented and all we had was a few channels numbered from two to thirteen.
Since my life has little to do with the soap episodes, I’ll instead talk about the soaps in my life, which are the Spanish telenovelas. I liked them better because an average telenovela came to its conclusion in about four months. Rarely it continued over six months, unlike the American soaps that go on and on till Kingdom Come.
I started to watch the telenovelas on Univision for the sake of language about twenty or more years ago. We didn’t have Telemundo at that time nor did we have all the other six or seven Spanish channels we now get. Telenovelas were made in different South American countries. To me, it was interesting to hear the different accents. Also, there was—maybe still is--an online site called Phorum where one went in to ask questions about the different customs and idioms belonging to each country, discuss the latest episodes, and just interact with the other telenovela watchers.
Although I haven’t regularly watched a telenovela during the last several years, I appreciate the varying understanding, religious, political, social, and moralistic stances of each country that they show. My favorite telenovelas came from Peru and some from Colombia, but I could relate better to those made in Mexico, as far as the immediate grasp of the language was concerned. I think I watched a couple of good ones from Argentina, too.
If I have to pick any telenovela as a favorite I have to opt for Girasoles para Lucia (Sunflowers for Lucia) from Peru. The main character Lucia (Gianella Neyra) was a funny character who could also turn highly dramatic. The telenovela was captivating because of the funny mishaps and mix-ups, but underneath it all, there was a serious love story.
During the last year or so of my watching telenovelas, some of the stories began to take shape in Miami as the Mexican actors and actresses began to establish homes there because of the kidnappings in Mexico and whatnot. The stories that happened in Miami didn’t interest me all that much. I preferred to see and learn about the local attitudes in each country.
Later on, I got too busy with life and couldn’t find the time to sit in the middle of the day to watch any TV, let alone a continuing telenovela. I still don’t have the time, but I miss it, and I especially miss the give-and-take with the friends I made on the Phorum who were Hispanic, American, or anyone else who understood Spanish and liked the telenovelas.
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August 23, 2016 at 1:15pm August 23, 2016 at 1:15pm
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Prompt: Do you think being grateful for what we have and accepting things as they are can be in conflict with ambition and working toward making things better?
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I don’t think accepting things as they are and being grateful for what we have has to be in conflict with ambition. One can be happy with the status quo and can still work toward success. What is wrong here can be when people are pushed by others or by themselves internally. Our education system is partially responsible for such a conflict if there is any.
School counselors, coaches, and other staff always tell the kids, “You have great potential.” I think, while this may help the children to try harder toward success, it also may make them feel guilty and bad about themselves later in life when they don’t become first-rate something.
This presence of great potential is what my kids were told and I was told. None of us fulfilled that supposition. None of us became a world-wide famous anything. Worse yet, one of my kids just stopped trying at one time. It took a lot of work on everyone’s part to get him going again. I think the negative behavior we see in a world-class athlete or a highly successful expert in any area is the result of this pushing by internal or external high expectations. At some point when the athlete or the student does something really negative, this behavior seems to me to be a rebellion of sorts against such expectations whether success happened or not.
Maybe all that hard-driving of our kids should be replaced with their self-acceptance, our acceptance of them, and everyone’s just being happy with the status quo while encouraging all students to finish the tasks at hand.
It is a given that most anyone wants to succeed and to make things better, no matter the current situation. It is just human nature, but also, we have to be content with who we are and what we have accomplished so far and accept that there are some things and situations in life that cannot be changed. Things happen to people that may prevent them from living up to their own and everyone else’s expectations, no matter what their potential can be. After all, happiness does not depend on the ranking of success but on our ability to deal with its absence or presence.
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August 22, 2016 at 3:05pm August 22, 2016 at 3:05pm
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Prompt: Do you find science fiction stories to be thought experiments since they seem to ask questions on the probabilities and complications about the ethics of any science or philosophy?
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Yes, I do, and history proves that.
Science fiction, as well as being fiction, sometimes makes a significant contribution to or predicts scientific and technological discoveries. Those of us who were awed by Spiderman shouldn’t be that surprised to watch the climber who climbed the Trump Tower in NYC just within the recent weeks. The suction cups the climber was using reminded me of the way Spiderman went up anything. Then, anyone remember Captain Nemo of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? It has now become a fact. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles has the humankind colonizing Mars. Such a project is in the making now. Also, in Matrix, virtual reality and real life are indistinguishable as it is becoming so in our time.
In addition, there are actual items that were first mentioned in science fiction that we are now using, as this web page shows:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kasiagalazka/science-fiction-things-that-actually-exist...
Unfortunately for my memory, I can’t recall the titles of recent Sci-Fi related books I have read, but what I can remember is that the ethics of science and morality are strictly adhered to or questioned or changed a bit in comparison to those in our times, such as: do unto others; no one should steal another’s invention; greed can be deadly; love has its own rewards…
There are also other science fiction works whose ideas haven’t reached fruition only because the writer gave it a time frame, for example, George Orwell’s 1984. It doesn’t mean that what the book depicts will not come true, but it just didn’t come true in 1984.
Science Fiction has a direct impact in our lives, if not for anything but for impressing the young and steering them toward the study of science and related areas. For example, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Steve Wozniak, and Jack Cover (inventor of Taser) credit the 1920s and 1930sTom Swift series for inspiring them.
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction. We humans have to speculate or dream of something first to bring it into reality later. Possibly for this reason or for making an adjustment to it, science fiction texts may be set in the future, in space, a different world, universe, or dimension. Even so, they take off from their writers’ information about the world we live in. If not for anything but that, they are extremely relevant to our lives.
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August 21, 2016 at 2:53pm August 21, 2016 at 2:53pm
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I can zap and carp today since it is Sunday and it is raining outside. 
Why we (wrongly) omit the article the :
This is a mistake that I always make, so I thought admitting to it could be a cure. I don’t do this alone either. Newspapers do it as well as just about most anyone, especially before a proper name.
For example:
The doctor sent me to a specialist in University of Maryland Medical Center.
The article ‘the’ is missing here after the word in. Yet, the sentence makes sense and some people do make the same mistake.
The cure: Think of the proper name in generic terms, and you cannot say or write it, then, without the article.
The doctor sent me to a specialist in the center.
The only places where we can get away with not using the article the is when the proper noun is a plural one such as Everly Brothers made beautiful music or in the headlines where the reference is to a group rather than a single entity. Cosmic Cult is to blame for the vandalism with toilet tissues.
My guess for this grammatical booboo is that, at least in my case, it probably sprung from writing poetry.
Criticism and Critique:
Not one of my booboos but rather one of my pet peeves because I have seen these two words mixed with each other, misused, and abused right here in the sacred site of WdC. 
Critique: a detailed and thoughtful analysis or review. It could be positive or negative. A critique always has a line of reasoning to it, be it positive or negative.
Criticism: finding fault with negative intent
Alternate words for criticism can be:
attack
condemnation
stricture
recrimination
denunciation
disapproval
disparagement
opprobrium
censure
scorn
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August 19, 2016 at 3:30pm August 19, 2016 at 3:30pm
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Prompt: You take a wrong turn when driving through a foreign country. What happens next?
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In real life, in a foreign country, I avoid driving like the plague. The only place I drove just a little bit was Canada. Luckily, we had friends in most of the other lands that we visited who took us around. In the other places without friends, my husband took on the driving.
You know what can happen when you take a wrong turn even in your own country. On 28 June, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver, Leopold Loyka, made a wrong turn, and a hundred million people died as its result. As Taylor Smith says, “Flashing lights and we, took a wrong turn and we. Fell down the rabbit hole.”
But, just to go along with the prompt, I’ll make up an imaginary story.
Wrong Turn
Panic stricken, I realized I had taken the wrong turn after the acceleration slammed me cruelly to the metal floor. Something broke inside my mouth, possible a tooth, and wet stuff ran from my mouth to my chin. I wiped it off with the back of my hand and stood up to take the driver’s seat again.
The controls indicated that I was steering the spaceship inside the anti-matter. I regretted my life now, if only for a split second. I regretted not becoming a romance-novel-reading, stay-at-home mother who went bowling with her team in a league, instead of trying to maneuver this clumsy vehicle for the cockamamie job of space exploration.
It was total darkness, outside. There were no swarms of any kind and no population density. Everything was crude, even I and the crew with our conditionings, idiosyncrasies, and biases. Were we to become emigrants inside the anti-matter? I wished I could find my way back, but I knew that once you’re inside the anti-matter, you become anti-matter.
It was easy to fly into a rage and I did just that. Then I wondered how I could do so if I had become anti-matter. How could that be possible? Maybe becoming anti-matter took its time; after all, ours was a specially-built ship, which we could drive on land, sail both on and under liquids, or fly through most anything.
How awful that I suddenly realized a fact. The fact that becoming anti-matter really took its sweet time. On the intercom, I called my crew in the next compartment. No answer.
Some things never changed. Wrong leaders always brought disaster. Driving inside a space under the wrong captain brought the end to things. Wrong captain like me. Sure enough, I couldn’t feel the blood or the broken tooth inside my mouth. This was the last thing I learned then--that death and anti-matter are the same thing, and they signal the end of all pain.
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August 18, 2016 at 12:52am August 18, 2016 at 12:52am
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Prompt: "Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places." - Roald Dahl
Do you agree with this statement?
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Absolutely. This quote first directs its message to Arts and then to life or rather the art of living in general
True art is a skill that one never ever stops learning and refining. Almost any art is extremely humbling and inspiring, and the humility in the artist makes him or her to search for what is secretly beautiful in every object or subject, alive or not living.
In our case, the urge to write, the subjects we write about, and the wonderful quality of our writers should be watched “with glittering eyes” because very often I come across really good work right here in Writing.com, which should make top publishing houses envious. No, I am not buttering up anybody, although I might be just a tad biased toward WdC's writers.
Sometimes I read an e-book or a printed book from the library or a bookstore, and that book falls short of the quality of some of the work our members here produce. Especially when I think that so many people who work toward that publication aside from the writer, I truly appreciate our gems in the raw. And Writing.com is a site that is a mixture of novice and advanced talent, which some people may consider as the scratch pad of all the wannabes of the world. I admit we have that, but we also have really excellent writers here, even if not all their work may not be up to par, but then nobody’s is, famous or not. In any case, a writer’s talent is best judged by his or her top quality work.
Other than writing, when we look around we see that most anything is secretly beautiful, even those everyday things we take for granted. Take a good look at a rock, at a weed, at the dumps, and you’ll see the hidden beauty for design, for history, for memory, for narrative, for emotion, for humor. The process of choosing what can be cherished can amaze a person because what we love always keeps changing, like a child’s most beloved toy that is now broken and thrown in the garbage bin.
If we look carefully and find the secrets hidden in anything, we can fall in love with it. It could be a flower, a tree, a cloud, the lisp or the limp of a challenged person, the wrinkles in an old man’s face, the eyes of a large bird, or the forked tongue of a serpent. This may be because when we look carefully and see the secret or the real beauty in anything, we can connect with it and appreciate it and be thankful that it exists in our world.
Then, all in all, we can see the secret in living and fall in love with life itself. How could we not fall in love if we have learned to look and find the essence and the beauty in everything!
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August 17, 2016 at 11:42am August 17, 2016 at 11:42am
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Prompt: What is your guilty pleasure website to visit?
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WdC takes the cake, of course, but it feels like home and it is a pleasure, but I never feel guilty while I am in it.
So, other than that, I like to fool around in YouTube. Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to fool around.
On the YouTube, besides all kinds of music and musical shows from any country, I can listen to authors and other people from different specialties. I also like to watch pieces of soaps and telenovelas from all over the world, and because I am a linguist, all languages are music to me whether I understand them or not. There’s also a lot of material to learn from like how to care for orchids or how to cook one thing or another. There are lots of how-tos, but unfortunately, I’m only given this one life and time is getting shorter and shorter. I only wish we had such opportunities when I was much younger.
Making up for the prompts I didn’t answer in July
Prompt on Day 864 July 20, 2016, by Megan:
Plan your work. Work your plan. Does this sound like a plan to you? Write about it.
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Doing the work effectively, especially in a business or any other working situation, may mean the difference between getting that promotion or not, losing your job or not, or enjoying what you do or not.
The most important aspect of this plan is in knowing or shooting for the result of the plan or the end game. If in a team, this vision would need to be communicated to one’s team so they’ll know where they are headed. The second aspect here is knowing who your key players are, what their specific roles can be, and if they are capable of achieving their portion in the plan.
The third aspect can be the timeline of doable phases. This is the most difficult and the most changeable aspect, and we need to work the plan when it comes to this one. Anything urgent and unexpected can pop up at any minute, so to fit it into the plan can take some clever moving around of things.
Having said all that, I am a pantser with most anything I do, which fits my personality. However, if I am working with a team or for someone else or for any other person or business, you can be sure I’ll have a plan and work it.
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August 16, 2016 at 6:38pm August 16, 2016 at 6:38pm
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Prompt: If you haven't said or done anything intentionally to hurt someone, are you responsible when they feel hurt by what you said or did? And what do you think about the people who act hurt when there is nothing for them to feel hurt about?
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Why should anyone apologize when they haven’t done anything wrong? Even in the case of being wronged, I don’t like people apologizing to me, anyway. That they decide not to do the wrong thing again is enough apology. But I do apologize to people if I have done something wrong and hurt them in some way, but only if. I am not going to apologize to drama queens under no circumstances.
Moreover, some people keep apologizing for everything to make themselves feel better, and not because they realize they have done something wrong. I know some people (women, mostly) who keep arguing a wrong point after saying, “I am sorry if I am doing this or that, but…” 
Maybe this is not such an unusual position when a person is competitive or overly ambitious. It just goes to show that, in such people’s minds, doing wrong or hurting someone else can easily be chalked off to guaranteed intentional damage, which should automatically be disregarded and immediately absolved.
Yet, if you happen to cross those people who don’t care whether they hurt others or not, then, may heaven help you. They turn into doubly crowned drama queens. Those people shouldn't forget that such melodramatic queen bees can lose their hives very quickly.
Most of the time, I try to stay away from all drama queens; however, how can anyone stay away from family members or people one works with? The best thing to do is to take Dale Carnegie’s advice: "Do the very best you can, and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck." The reason is, we cannot escape from or prevent those drama queens’ hysteria the same as we cannot avoid the rain.
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August 15, 2016 at 6:33pm August 15, 2016 at 6:33pm
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Prompt: “Always be a poet, even in prose’” Charles Baudelaire
Are you getting Baudelaire’s drift? Does your prose turn poetic always, at times, or rarely?
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Prose poems I consider poetry, so I am not going to address them here, for poetry is poetry. As to the other types of prose that turn into poetry, I guess I could call some pieces of prose a poem, mine or belonging to others, from time to me.
For example, in my unedited, unrevised 2015 NaNo novel, the following excerpt focuses on leaves: “My greatest adoration and astonishment lies in the greens of the earth that billow and sway at will, on plains and hills, to vocal winds, rising storms, confident rains that leave tiny drops on leaves and grass. Then from all that greenery burst multicolored beauties, flowers like dreams, not knowing death yet, but daring to live between the storms and the sun.”
The above excerpt might qualify for a poem, but I think I was only experimenting with lyricism with this entire novel, and if I wanted to do anything at all with this work, I might edit a lot of it out, because I think, ‘the story’s the thing’ and stylistic anything may run the risk of looking like a blotch of blood on the plot. How about my accidental assonance and dissonance on the last part of the last sentence!
As for the quote in the prompt, Baudelaire is one of my favorite poets, but he wasn’t the only one to think in poetry. Flaubert was among those authors who first made fictional prose inflexibly style-conscious. Vladimir Nabokov said, “Gogol called his Dead Souls a prose poem; Flaubert’s novel [Madame Bovary] is also a poem but one that is composed better, with a closer, finer texture.”
I think this is because the romantic writer was stronger than the realist one in Flaubert’s psyche. After him, for a long time, everyone became a stylist one way or the other, into our time. By the way, Nabokov also takes after Flaubert.
In today’s novels and stories, I come across beautiful passages of poetry. These are just fine if they have some relevance to the rest of the novel or to a story’s elements. On the other hand, turning a piece of prose into poetry, especially when too strong a plot exists, inserts some painterly brushing and masking to the text, thus threatening the work to become irrelevant.
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August 13, 2016 at 12:18pm August 13, 2016 at 12:18pm
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Prompt: What are your plans for the weekend? Do you do more writing on weekends or weekdays?
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My plans for this weekend are not set in stone because they never are. In a little while, I’ll go to the library. That much I know. What I don’t exactly know depends on other people and the weather, which not knowing exactly what to do throws me off anytime, but this is the norm during any weekend.
My weekends are usually busy with social stuff, if you can call it that. I try to write as much as I can on any day, which isn’t much, at least not as much as I’d like. On the whole, I do better both with writing or reading during the weekdays.
Making up for the prompts I didn’t answer in July
Day 846 July 2, 2016
Prompt by Lyn: Let's play with that random word generator again.
sprites, cannibals, parasitic, sun, appalling and cranberry.
I can't wait to see where your clever minds take you!
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On My Pillow
Each night in parasitic dreams
as the protagonist of my personal story
I return to the familiar
sprites facing the cranberry bush
summon the sun and accuse the cannibals
for devouring the fruit....
or something similar to it.
Appalling how,
with each toss and turn,
the mind contorts
my life into symbols
on the page of a pillow!
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August 12, 2016 at 6:07pm August 12, 2016 at 6:07pm
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Prompt: Tell me about a road trip you've taken? Would you do it again?
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My husband and I took many road trips together and plus a few with our children. I always loved road trips. We usually shared the driving between the two of us. Once I drove alone from NY to Florida. I was so proud of myself as if I conquered deep space single-handedly.
My favorite thing was stopping at unplanned locations. It felt like finding free candy in a county fair. Most of the folks were very friendly and showed us their wares and wanted us to stay a few days in their towns.
There was only one nasty experience. We had stopped at a motel, which we didn’t know had been through a fire scare. The rug on the floor was soaking wet. When we complained, someone came with a vac which sucked most of the water but the rug was still damp. We could have gone to another motel, which we could see one from the distance, but we felt bad for the owners. So we stayed there for the night and slept with the windows open. Luckily, it was summer.
We took so many road trips that I can’t even begin to choose any single one of them as a favorite. Among my favorites are the trips on East and West coasts, such as from San Diego to San Francisco, from Florida to Chattanooga to West Virginia all the way to Ohio and back, from NY to Maine, from NY to Montreal, from NY to Toronto, from NY to PA and once to the Poconos, a round trip from Long Island to all around Northern NY and back, from Long Island to Massachusetts, From NY to other New England states, lots of trips from NY to FL and back, then a whole bunch of trips inside Florida since FL is about 600 miles long from its northern tip to Key West. Then there was one memorable trip we took with our children I don’t recall how we mapped it, but on this same trip, we visited NY Montreal, Cape Cod, Hyannis Port, Boston, Thousand Islands, New Hampshire, and back to Long Island. I am sure I have this trip in one of my trip journals (a notebook stashed somewhere).
Would I do all that again? Sure, why not, but only if someone would give me back my younger body.
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August 11, 2016 at 4:26pm August 11, 2016 at 4:26pm
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Prompt: What Olympic Event would you like to have a Gold Medal in?
Do they give medals for reading? I guess not as it is not an Olympic Event but rather a solitary one.
I like watching the swimming and the running, but I wouldn’t want to participate in either one, unless of course, they might count the performances in years instead of seconds.
On the other hand, we just had a few Olympic events here in WdC, with GOT--courtesy of you know who, (I don’t want to tag her here,)--and I am still recovering from it, although it was a great run for all of us and I am so proud of my team Florent.
Making up for the prompts I didn’t answer in July
Day 850 July 6, 2016
Megan’s Prompt: Arts Earth Spirit Education Use these words any way you want in today's entry.
Taj Mahal
No point in this trip, I thought,
who would really want to see
a huge dome, royally surrounded
by four others, in the name of
Arts and Education?
A grave after all, and I detest cemeteries
their wide spaces in between mounds
with green grass covering the earth,
akin to this grassy stretch leading to the tomb
of a lifeless empress who once humbled
others of the harem to bear fourteen children
for her emperor, in splendor.
But, imagine being like her
or even someone of the lowest caste,
a worker, a beggar, a woman, yet only a spirit
still loved by one special man
and entombed for eternity in a heart…
Now, that, I’d really like to see.
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August 10, 2016 at 1:21pm August 10, 2016 at 1:21pm
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Prompt: Ice truckers. I like this show. Semi trucks travel across frozen lakes in Alaska and Canada. Trucks jack knife and slide on the water and if they break through the ice, it won't end well. Would you like to drive a truck across the dangerous ice lakes or be a passenger on one? What are your thoughts on this?
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Truth is, I am not into ice all that much, and I have never watched this show, and from the looks of most prompts, I haven’t watched much TV either since my kids overcame their colic and needed to be held.
The last time I skidded on the ice while driving was on Long Island Expressway more than 25 years ago. That was enough of skidding-on-ice experience for me. For that reason, I am not setting foot in Alaska or Northern Canada, let alone the poles, which do keep breaking up anyhow.
As to semis that carry stuff for people, my hat’s off to them. I understand the job pays well, but the risks are just as high if not higher. May they forever be without any accidents or mishaps. As for me, I’ll pass up on that experience in any shape or form.
Now, a make-up answer to a prompt by Megan I missed in July.
Day 851 July 7, 2016
Prompt: "We may run, walk, stumble, drive or fly but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way." Gloria Gaither What is your take on this?
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This quote brought to my mind another quote in the same vein. “Stop and smell the roses.”
Rainbows or roses, it doesn’t matter what. In the journey of life, we sometimes lose sight of the beautiful things on our way. This is because we get caught up in what we’re doing and miss the positives along the road. They are out there for us all the time if we would just look and feel their beauty.
This is because we usually fix our sights on the ending. How it all figures out at the end, how much we have traversed, and what we will get at the finish line. This isn’t to say that the endings aren’t important because they are important, and if we don’t aim at something, we’ll get nowhere. A planned ending may work very well, but there is also a good amount of wealth to be gathered along the way.
No two journeys are ever identical and neither are the beautiful things one passes by as one walks or races toward his goal. If we stop and enjoy those things, who knows, our lives may turn out better than we could have hoped.
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August 9, 2016 at 11:46am August 9, 2016 at 11:46am
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Prompt: What is inspiration to you? Aside from writing from prompts, is inspiration something you run into while reading or living your day-to-day life, or do you have a mystical attitude about it as if it comes from dreams or during a trance-like state?
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Inspiration to me is something idea-like that suddenly pops up. Sometimes, it is more than an idea; it is an emotion. It is, at times, a referral to my past or something or someone who had a huge impression on me. Inspiration comes with a feeling of being alive, with that ahha! moment. Inspiration, usually, requires some harvest from the inspired. Without its crops, inspiration is only a fleeting moment.
I get inspiration from a variety of sources, mainly from nature such as the ocean, animals, sunsets, trees, clouds, etc. Most often, however, I am inspired by what I read. Usually, it is not the whole story, poem, or book, but a phrase or a sentence. During the GOT, while reviewing, I was inspired by many a WdC writer’s phrases. For example, “Past my passed past” in Fivesixer’s "Here, there and everywhere else..."  kept repeating in my head. I don’t even know why, but I stopped everything GOT and wrote something. The same thing happens with books, articles, newspapers, etc. I don’t always follow through, though. Usually, I note it down to come back to it later, but mostly, when I get back to it, I find out that the same phrase or sentence has lost its impact.
I am also inspired, to a lesser degree, by the people I meet, the conversations I overhear, classical music, a picture, etc. Sometimes what inspires me ends up becoming something huge like a novel or something tiny like a haiku. I usually have no inkling about what kind of an output will happen as the result of an inspiration.
While writing this, a question occurred to me as Can there be a negative inspiration? and then, a follow-up question, How could it be negative if it were an inspiration?
The only answer I can think of would be some idea that would make me stop writing altogether. Stopping writing would mean cutting off my very own lifeline, and that would be really negative. So, I take my inspiration from wherever I find it. Once in a rare while, it works. Even when it doesn’t, I feel connected and happy regardless of the lack of success in my writing.
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Prompt: What do you think about this feeling of “I should have done better!” in any area? Can it be a positive or negative motivator in some way?
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First, I think we are all doing the best we can with the level of our understanding, education, psychological make-up, and time and life constraints, even if we are not aware of how those levels are affecting our performances.
Some of us, however, beat up on ourselves after the event with the whip of “I should have done better!” Beating up on oneself like that is a negative motivator for sure.
We might have done better, possibly, but our imagined or real failure may not be because of our performance but due to our yet-uncultivated strengths such as patience, self-discipline, courage, and know-how. So rather than judging ourselves as slackers maybe it is a better effort to develop our strengths more.
This doesn’t mean that I am condoning actions that do harm to others or to oneself or the laziness that prevents people from making a full-hearted effort both in enriching themselves or in helping others with what is available for them. Even if such behavior is present, it still shows that some area of the personality isn’t fully developed...YET!
“I should have done better!” used to haunt me a lot because of my upbringing with people who were never satisfied with whatever I accomplished but expected more from me all the time, no matter what I accomplished. For example, if I won the first place in something, my parent would say, “This is nothing. You haven’t won it ten times in a row. So don’t get a big head. Besides, you are still lacking in such and such and such areas…”
It took me half a lifetime to overcome or rather appease the “I should have done better!” syndrome. Now, I have adapted it to, “If the same situation should occur again, how will I do it better? Which part of me would need improvement for that?” This way, the same feeling is an improved one and has turned into a positive motivator.
I think it is a good idea to judge our performances with objectivity with an eye for improvement in the future, but without blaming and putting down ourselves unnecessarily.
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Prompt: The Olympics began August 5th. Did you watch the pageantry and the presentation of the athletes? What did you think? Which country caught your attention the most? What sport do you enjoy most? Which do you like better the Summer or the Winter events?
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Summer of winter Olympics both have their good and bad points, and I liked them both, as long as I don't see someone get hurt.
As to 2016 Olympics in Brazil, I watched the presentation on and off because my husband was watching, and he is always gung-ho about it, having been a long-distance runner in dinosaur time. The TV reception, however, was awful. Thank you, Comcast or NBC, once more, for rotten viewing! The reception kept getting frozen and we couldn’t even change the channel. Come to think of it, they should let at least three or all TV companies to give the Olympics. If this was frustrating for me, just imagine what it did to my husband.
The presentation was all right. What impresses me more is not the artistry but the human endeavor of each athlete. So all those light shows and stuff probably interested graphic artists and programmers more than they did people like me.
Watching the entrance of the athletes last night, I guess all countries were fine, but I liked that they had a special non-country refugee athletes group. It was a good idea to find a niche for the displaced athletes.
As to sports and me, not anymore. My favorite sport now is walking as prescribed by the doctor. I was, however, much more active in my younger years. In school, I played volleyball and was a forward in the basketball team. Then, in my later years, I played tennis in the club and was constantly in a bowling league. I liked sports when it was friendly and not when played with the us-against-them idea. I have always liked doing my best in everything and I am always racing with myself, not others. For that reason, bowling was probably my favorite, but leave it to people to turn anything to a battle or war idea.
Then, when it came to my kids’ games, I umpired little league and was an assistant soccer coach. Now, while most of the parents were wonderful people, some went nuts over little boys’ games. After a baseball game for seven-year-olds when I was the home plate umpire, once, I thought a parent would beat me up, blow up my car, or burn my house or something, and the boy I had called out after three strikes was my own son. I saw it first-hand then that people can get stark raving crazy over dumb games, at times.
Right now, my husband is watching the swimming eliminations. Since I am always in the same room with him, I take a peek every now and then. He, however, swims together with every athlete, all excited and energized. I think I’ll bake a banana cake to soothe his nerves just as soon as I post this entry. 
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