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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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The Writing-Practice Journal
New Intention:
Now in 2017 and the following years, if any, I shall use this journal for whatever I please to write. 
Still, I reiterate: Read at your own risk!
Old Intentions:
Now, starting with June 2013, I will use this journal for the entries for "I Write in June-July-August "  . Afterward, I'll go back to the part I have down below in red. Still, read at your own risk. 
Now, starting at the end of 2010, I am going to write into this journal directly, without making any other copies. Freeflow, but from prompts. I may use prompts or simple sentences as prompts, which I'll put on the subject line. I'll probably use some of the prompts from the Writing.com app.
And yes, I do intend to make a fool of myself, because I miss writing on a good old fashioned typewriter with no other cares. Maybe some ancient and wise author like Dickens will watch me from Heaven, shake his head, and say, "You haven't made a dent." Not a dent, but making my own mud is my intention. So, if you read, read at your own risk.
Truth is, I had started this journal in 2002 for the different reason of writing down ideas on the craft of writing. Over the years, my personal blog took over what I wanted to do here. Afterwards I continued with writing exercises with no order or plan to the entries. And now, this.
Who says I can't let my hair down! Okay, I can't because my hair is short.  But I've got nerve.
  
October 27, 2017 at 11:33pm October 27, 2017 at 11:33pm
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Oct. 28: - CONTEST ROUND: Plot Background Story
Write a story that sets up your plot.
827 words
She gazed back out of the window. The sun was hitting the driveway at such an angle that the color on the red-tiles looked like blood.
“It’s all right, Eve,” Vicki said. “Things happen. It was an accident. You were going straight. The other guy hit you. He was drunk.” She reached for Eve’s arm and squeezed it. When she pulled her hand away a few seconds later, Eve imagined the blood Vicki couldn’t feel.
“No need to feel such guilt,” Vicki continued. “I am sorry Barbara’s hurt so badly, but you know, between us…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Barbara has made your life a living hell.”
Eve sighed. “Yes, but she raised me, nevertheless.”
“You told me that. Regardless of the relationship, what happened was an accident. An accident you didn’t cause.” Vicki shook her head, then pushed back her strawberry-blond curls.
“I didn’t?” Eve couldn’t help the distrust in voice. “Instead of paying attention to the road, I was thinking something else at the moment. I was thinking and feeling relief that finally, she was leaving and that in a few minutes I would be dropping her at the airport. Now, can you tell me I’m guiltless, scot-free?”
“Yes, I can. Show me one reason why we should be responsible for our feelings and whatever pops into our minds.”
“While driving a car, especially with a passenger sitting next to me, feelings or the mind’s wandering is inexcusable.”
“Half the world’s driving while texting, talking on the phone, even eating and drinking, and you’re feeling guilty for what pops up into your mind. It doesn’t make sense, Eve. And you don’t have the obligation to take care of this woman in your very home. Leave her in the hospital or put her in a hospice. Don’t do this to yourself.”
Eve felt Vicki meant well, but she just couldn’t do that. Barbara had been mean to her all her life. At least, that’s what it felt like ever since she had found out about the facts of her origin, that a birth mother existed. Yet, Eve had to do the right thing, even if it hurt every bone in her body and even if it chopped to pieces every dream she ever had.
“She is still my mother, Vicki. I truly appreciate your caring for me, but the facts stand. I was the driver. If I had seen the other crazy car speeding toward us from the side road, I might have veered to the other lane or something. The lane to the left of me was totally empty at that moment.”
“No matter what I say, you’re going to torture yourself, aren’t you!” Vicki seemed exasperated.
“You know what she did?” Eve choked. “She screamed when it happened. Then she looked at me, her eyes wide open. She smiled, Vicki. She smiled at me. Despite the pain, she had to be feeling. Then she passed out.”
“Oh, Eve! You’re only traumatized, Dear.”
“I thought she was dead. So, I prayed muttering that frightening part about the valley of the shadow of death. I only hope she didn’t hear me. I feel absolutely awful.”
“Don’t you worry! She told me she didn’t remember a thing. She said she was telling you something, and the next thing, she opened her eyes in the hospital.”
“At least that,” Eve said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “Lots of vehicles came then. I don’t even recall making the call to 911. If I didn’t, someone else might have, but they say I did. So many vehicles there were, you wouldn’t believe. Someone questioned me, I don’t know who, with the EMTs from the ambulances huddling over us. It was then I noticed that the airbags had popped open.”
“I heard nothing happened to the other driver.”
“He was out, too. I thought he died, had a heart attack or something, and that’s why he plowed into my car, but he was only drunk and had passed out. Both cars are totaled, but that’s the least of it.”
“I thank God for saving you. I know it is difficult to go through a thing like that, but you should think about doing something about your car situation.”
“I know. I didn’t even have the time to think about that, but Art rented a car for me and brought it over.”
“That is so nice! Art is a good guy.”
“I know. He always was, but we couldn’t make it together, possibly my fault. At least that’s what mom thinks.”
“Never mind that biotch! She’s always making you feel incompetent or guilty. “ Vicky stared at Eve, shaking her head “Why do you carry the whole world on your shoulders, my friend? Sometimes, things just don’t work out. If you ask me, I am better off without a man anytime.”
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October 21, 2017 at 3:25pm October 21, 2017 at 3:25pm
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Note: This entry is also in "Prep 2017"
October 21: contest
Setting Description:
865 words
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Hi, there!
I am Daphne Logan, Eve’s daughter. That is, Eve Pamela Freeman Logan. My mom asked me to write something about Rocky Road so here I am.
I have lived for a long time in Rocky Road, in fact, all of my fourteen years, and although I grasped most of what’s in it, sometimes I am confused about what makes this town tick. Like ice-cream. I love ice-cream, but I never think about what it is made of. Rocky Road, too, is an ice-cream flavor, isn’t it! And it has nuts, chocolate, and marshmallows in it, according to Mom. Mom knows a lot. She is a librarian, but now she sells books; this has something to do with Dad, but I digress.
If you ask me, the town of Rocky Road, too, has its mixed-up flavors amassed around a cross. Not an actual cross, but the main roads Orchard and Pearl, intersect in the middle of the town. I imagine that is why Leia in Parnassus says we all carry a cross. Leia is the cashier in the bookstore Parnassus where my mom works.
There is a fountain in the middle of the cross. What that fountain refers to I have no idea, but it is actually a sculptured fountain, in the shape of a mermaid holding a pineapple. From the pineapple, water spouts out. Possibly, our subtropical weather and its heat frying the sculptor's brain might have had something to do with it.
My friend Maddie’s grandpa says this mermaid is called the Lady Abundance. Some goody-goody, fuddy-duddy (Maddie’s grandpa’s adjectives, not mine) residents of Rocky Road keep complaining about this mermaid because her dress clings tightly to her body. Isn’t that what happens when water flows over someone constantly and she is drenched? Only our goofy Rocky Road residents can see immodesty in a bronze statue.
Maddie’s family lives in the nicer part of Rocky Road, on Magnolia drive, which draws an arc from the west together with the way the interstate folding around it. There is also a hoity-toity condo complex there. My dad moved there after the divorce. The “elite section” is what Magnolia Drive and small paths around it is sometimes called by the real-estate brokers; however, I think our neighborhood is nicer with larger homes and much bigger yards.
Mom and I live on where Michelle Lane meets Green Oak at the northwest corner of town, in a three-bedroom house with a huge yard around it. Mom bought this house before she married my dad with some of the money my grandfather left her. I never met my grandfather. He died before mom finished high school.
Our house is a ranch with white vinyl clapboard siding, but it is made up of cement-blocks. So, it is safe from the hurricanes if ever one of them decides to drop on us.
The real action in our town is around Pearl, which is more like a main street that the real main street at the south end, if you ask me. The original main street is narrower and less active even though it runs parallel to Pearl. Ashley also runs parallel to Pearl but it is at the north end. Walmart, Burger King, and Publix supermarket are on East Ashley and so is the Junior High School. Maddie and I love Carmela’s Pizzeria the best on East Pearl, next to the firehouse. The owner is Maddie’s neighbor. Maddie says she is a snob and she says the stories she knows about her, one day she’ll write them for the whole world to see.
Parnassus, the bookstore where my mom works, is at the corner of North Orchard and East Main street. Across from Parnassus, in the corner of North Orchard and West Main is my school, The Orangeville High. I don’t know why they called the school Orangeville High when we live in Rocky Road. I guess the name Rocky Road High might bring up a negative meaning into people’s minds.
My dad teaches Math and Calculus at Orangeville High. It is good and bad for me to have a parent as a teacher in my school, but more good than bad, so I guess I can live with it.
At the end of South Orchard is the woods. Some say those woods are haunted. I am not allowed to go into those woods alone. Maddie says the flower shop’s owner is weird, kind of like a white witch, and she goes in there all the time. Her flower shop is on South Orchard close to the woods.
I haven’t made up my mind about haunted places and witches, yet; so, for the time being, I’ll take the word of those who know better, just to be on the safe side.
I really don’t want to go away from Rocky Road, but mom says I’ll have to if I want to go to an ivy league college. Truth is, I’d rather go to Florida U. and be closer to home where I know the people and where anything is.
Rocky Road is home, once you warm up to it. |
October 14, 2017 at 12:37pm October 14, 2017 at 12:37pm
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This entry is also in "Prep 2017"
October 14
(Woman against herself…through no fault of her own. The antagonist within Eve is her misplaced belief that she isn’t wanted by her parents and her birth mother alike. )
Inside the hotel’s ballroom, the crowd jostled around the thirteen-year-old Eve, bumping her against the stools lined up at the counter. No one seemed to notice her in this sea of moving parts, and no one noticed the tiny camera in her hand. But isn’t it always the same, always this way? she thought. Nobody ever noticed her for herself.
People were singing together with the band, and their voices mixing with the bass drum thumped in her head. It was hot inside with the heat beating down on her.
As soon as she saw him, she clicked. If she couldn’t have her father back, she could at least have one photo of him, a photo of him away from her, away from their home. In the photo she just took, her father’s fingers would have grasped the wrists of a brunette. That was what she had seen when she clicked.
“Are you looking for someone?” She was startled. A waiter was talking to her. {i]Play along, she told herself.
“My parents,” she said. “They said they’d meet me here, but maybe it is next door in the café. I’ll check there, now.” She lunged forward toward the door for the long walk home.
By the time she reached home, it was already after midnight. Barbara was sitting in the armchair facing the entrance, but she had fallen asleep, her jaw slack, her lips parted in a delicate snore.
Eve tiptoed to her room, finding her way to her desk, and stuck the camera’s memory card into the slot on the side of her laptop. There it was the photo on the screen, her father Kenneth Freman holding on to that woman whose eyebrows were raised quizzically. If this weren’t her father, the photo would have been a funny shot. She snorted. Her mother had thrown her father away at this other woman who probably didn’t want him, either. The one to blame here had to have been her mother, Barbara Judith Freeman. She had thrown her father out of the house.
“Eve Pamela Freeman! Where have you been?” Barbara stood at the door of her room.
Eve closed the laptop and turned around. “Here, doing homework.”
“You were out late. You know the rules. You have to be home by 10:30. I called Ginger’s. Her mother said you had left around 7:30 or so. She said you refused her offer to drive you. Where have you been?”
“I came home.”
“No, you didn’t. I sat on that chair a little after ten o’clock.”
Eve sighed. “Okay, Mom. Sorry. The truth is…I went looking for Dad. I went to the hotel. The Fox Hollow. I called his office earlier. His secretary said he was in a meeting and after that, he would go to the hotel for another meeting and a concert.”
Barbara’s eyes opened in shock. “You did what?”
Here it comes. I tell her the truth; she freaks out. I lie; she freaks out.
So, now the lie. “I couldn’t find him.”
“I don’t know if you are telling the truth, but you are not to go seeking him, understood? You may end up in a dangerous place. God knows where he hangs out.”
“Sorry, Mom!”
“Sorry won’t cut it, young lady! You are grounded for the next two weeks.”
“But…Mom! What about the tryouts for the school play?”
“No, tryouts. You are grounded. Period.”
Eve sighed. No need to argue. Her mother Barbara was acting like a complete nutcase again.
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