Friday Writings #228: A Dead Tree

 

Oops!  

Different time zones can be tricky to navigate. To get the post published at the midnight between Thursday and Friday, I have to set it to go live at 2pm my time. (This time of year, that is; it varies with the different times of Daylight Savings between here – Australia – and the USA, what with opposite seasons and all.)  But to do that, I have to (at this time of year) make the time 14 o'clock in the settings. This week, I forgot and pressed 2. Which means the post appeared many hours early, as our Magaly has just notified me, and for you in the Northern Hemisphere it's a day early! Never mind; if you saw it – Helen certainly did! –  please consider it an extra bonus just this once. Well, we hope it's just this once.

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I used to drive past a particular dead tree on my way into and out of this town from my small suburb. I always thought it beautiful in its starkness and shape, its slender grace. I always looked out for it, cherishing the quick glimpse.

‘I must photograph it one day,’ I told myself often. But, on that stretch of road, it’s really hard to find a park. Years went by, of appreciating it and not recording it – until one day I had a very strong feeling that I really must do it at last. 

I had to wait until I was coming back out of town; no parking at all the other side, and anyway I’d have had to cross the road in that case, in a spot with fast passing traffic and no provision for pedestrians. As it was, I had to drive some distance past the tree, pull onto a narrow nature strip, then walk back.

I was pleased with the shots I got, particularly this one (© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2019):

Next time I drove into town, the tree was gone! WHAT??? Going back home, I slowed to pass the paddock where it used to be, and saw what looked like a pile of neatly felled logs. How could someone cut it down? I asked myself. But perhaps the owner of the land had some other use for it.

Nothing happened; months went by. Finally I slowed one day to take a longer look and saw that the pile of wood was not really so neat. I realised that the tree must have been felled by one of the big storms we’d had shortly before I saw that it was gone. Mystery solved – and beauty still lost! I am SO glad I had such a strong urge to finally stop and take my photos.

This week, for your (optional) prompt, I invite you to be inspired by this dead tree, or any other dead tree you’ve seen or imagined. Or by the idea of beauty in death, or last-minute actions that turn out to be important. Or anything else my story and/or picture suggests to you. Or, you may simply ignore the prompt and write anything at all.

Guidelines: Poetry or prose, old or new, on prompt or not, 369 words maximum (excluding title and notes), one post per person and link to that post below. Please link to us here at your post, please read what the rest of us submit (not forgetting to check back for those who arrive at the end of the week) and leave us some encouraging comments. You are of course welcome to make comments or ask questions here too.

Next week: We will invite you to find inspiration in the idea of letting go of something that used to be wonderful, which no longer fits in your life.  

Friday Writings #227: As You Wish

 

Hello, Word Artists and Admirers! Many of you probably have one (or a few) movies that you could easily identify just by hearing a quote from it. For me, Princess Bride is one of those movies. The thing about that movie is there are so many quotable lines!

So for this week's optional prompt I'm asking you to draw some inspiration from one of these four (or any) quotes:

1. “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” 

2. “Mostly dead is slightly alive.” 

3. “We are men of action, lies do not become us.” 

4. “True love is the greatest thing in the world... except for a nice MLT—mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.” 

I'll accept poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction. Just be sure to keep your pieces to 369 words or fewer, and one entry per person please.

Next week, we'll ask you to be inspired by a dead tree—whether it's one you've seen, seen pictured, or imagined.

Friday Writings #226: Inappropriate Laughter

Greetings, my dear poets and storytellers! 

How is life treating you in your bit of the universe? I hope things are as wonderful as they are for me in some ways (my immune system isn’t trying to kill me at the moment), and not even close to as horrible as they’ve been in other ways (I need more surgeries than prognosticated). It’s all about balance, right? And, if we’re lucky, also about a wee bit of decorum. I haven’t been all that fortunate in the decorum part. 

My latest bit of indignity involved puking all over a surgeon and then bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Which, of course, brought to mind today’s optional prompt: I invite you to write poetry or prose inspired by a moment of inappropriate laughter. Need an example? Here are 3: Raucous laughter at a funeral, giggling during a root canal, explosive cackles when a priest uses the phrase “friendly intercourse with your classmates might help”. 

via

Please add the direct link to your response to Mister Linky. One post per participant. 369 words maximum (excluding title). Let your poetry or prose be old or new, inspired by the prompt or by a topic of your choosing. Visit other contributors. Read their writings… and comment. 

next week, we’ll invite you to be inspired by one of the following quotes (or any quote) from The Princess Bride: 1. “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” 2. “Mostly dead is slightly alive.” 3. “We are men of action, lies do not become us.” 4. “True love is the greatest thing in the world... except for a nice MLT—mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe.” 

Friday Writings #225: If These Bookshelves Could Talk (or Write)

I love bookshelves, book piles, books leaning (interestingly) against unexpected places. I have 5 bookshelves in the room where I spend most of my time. I also have books on top of dressers, on windowsills, on plant stands, and pretty much everywhere I can get away with. I love looking at my books, dusting them, rearranging them, playing with them, pulling them out to smile at a particularly loved passage… 📚🥰 📚

So, my dear poets and storytellers, since I know I’m not the only one who LOVES spending time with a favorite bookshelf (or 13), for today’s optional prompt, I invite you to find inspiration on your bookshelves. Interpret this any way you like (take a picture, explore the titles, the arrangement of the books... and write on).

Add the direct link to your response to Mister Linky. One post per participant, please. 369 words maximum. Share old or new poetry or prose, write to the prompt or to a topic of your choosing. Visit other writers. Share your thoughts on their words. 

next week, we shall invite you to write poetry or prose inspired by a moment of inappropriate laughter. Need an example? Here are 3: Raucous laughter at a funeral, giggling during a root canal, explosive cackles when a priest uses the phrase “friendly intercourse with your classmates might help”.

Friday Writing #224: Just Desserts

Hello, Word Artists and Admirers! Dessert has been on my mind a lot lately. I have a lot of friends and family members with April birthdays (including myself). Between that and the seasonal joy of sakura everything, and I've been living the sweet life for the last few weeks.

So for this week's optional prompt, I'd like you to write about a dessert, desserts in general, or just use the word dessert in your piece. The floor is open to both fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose. Just be sure to keep your entries to 369 words or fewer and one entry per person, please.

Next week, We shall invite you to find inspiration on your bookshelf. Interpret this any way you like (take a picture, explore the titles, the arrangement of the books... and write on).  

Friday Writings #223: Why Bother?

   

Hello again, dear Word Weavers.  

I may have mentioned that I'm a devoted subscriber to The Red Hand Files, in which musician Nick Cave answers questions from his public – any questions. I like his music a lot, though not enough to be besotted nor even to know it well, and I forget how I came across The Red Hand Files, but I love these pieces of writing for their honesty, thoughtfulness, kindness and genuine humility. Also I guess I just like his mind, as revealed in them. There's an innate, albeit intangible Australianness which I naturally respond to, but he is of course an individual as we all are, and I like his individual quirkiness too.

Anyway, see for yourselves! Please have a read, right now, of this recent post. Go on! It's not long, and much of what he says applies to poets as well as singer-songwriters. Besides, you need to, to fully understand this week's prompt.

This week's (optional) prompt: Having read the piece, please tell us, how would YOU answer ‘this most dark and demoralised question: “This world has no meaning. Why fucking bother?”’? (Yes, it's OK to agree with Mr Cave's own thinking on the matter.)

Guidelines: Poetry or prose, old or new, on prompt or not, 369 words maximum (excluding title and notes), one post per person and link to that post below. Please link to us here at your post, please read what the rest of us submit (not forgetting to check back for those who arrive at the end of the week) and leave us some encouraging comments. You are of course welcome to make comments or ask questions here too.

 

And here's something pertinent by another brilliant Aussie, the late and beloved Michael Leunig, who was both cartoonist and poet:

Next week: We shall ask you to write about dessert(s)! 

 

Friday Writings #222: Legacies

 

Hello, word artists and admirers! As many of you know, I've been a student of Japanese tea ceremony for over a decade. In that time, I've gotten to meet other nice, tea-obsessed folks. Terry was one of them. She was endlessly enthusiastic about tea, and life in general. She also was the first person to encourage me to do a public tea demonstration. Sadly, last year Terry passed away. In her last few weeks she made it a point to share tea and some of her well loved tea-treasures with other members of the tea school. I was very honored to receive a special bag, made from one of her obi, that I could use at events to hold my tea things. 

Every time I use it, I will think of her encouraging voice.

So in honor of Terry, and her legacy of encouragement and hospitality, this week's optional prompt will be about legacies, either one legacy in specific or the idea of legacies in general. I'll accept fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry. Just be sure to keep your pieces to 369 words or fewer and one entry per person please.

Next week, we shall ask you to answer the question, 'The world feels completely meaningless. Why f**king bother?' 

Friday Writings #221: April Quotes

 

Hello, word artists and admirers! We've made it to April. In my part of the world, that means the warmer days start to outnumber the cold ones and there's a little more light when I get Jelly Bean out for her evening walk. What does April look like in your part of the world?

This is pretty close to what April often looks like in eastern Pennsylvania, 

but I also have plenty of cherry blossom trees showering petals down on me too.

The month of April seems to have lots of different imagery associated with it, as can be seen in these quotes.

1. “Although I was born in April, I’m quite certain I was not fully awake until October.” ~ Peggy Toney Horton 

2. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~ George Orwell 

3. “April is the kindest month. April gets you out of your head and out working in the garden.” ~ Marty Rubin 

4. “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

5. “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull root with spring rain.” ~ T. S. Eliot 

Your optional prompt for this week is to pick one (or more) of these quotes and use them as inspiration for your pieces. I'll be taking poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. Just be sure to keep your pieces to 369 words or fewer and one entry per person, please.

Next week, we shall ask you to contemplate legacies, either one in specific or the idea of a legacy in general. 

Friday Writings #220: Feeling Deeply

 

Dear Fellow Word Weavers,

(As I've already mentioned recently) at age 86, with approximately 20 years since publication of my last full volume of poetry (as distinct from chapbooks and collaborations) – Secret Leopard: New & Selected Poems 1974–2005, which is now only available as an ebook – I thought it was time to look through my blogged poems from 2006 onwards, to assemble either a new great big book or several chapbooks on different themes.  
 

I’ve started labelling the poems by themes, as well as marking them with a tick, cross or question mark.

I began with the earliest, written in 2006 (on my old blog, 'The Passionate Crone') – and was soon blown away by their stunning mediocrity! What’s worse than writing a really bad poem? Writing a mediocre one. (Of course mediocre is a form of ‘bad,’ but a form that is not even interestingly atrocious.) I do hope I’ll see some improvement in my later writings, but at this stage I can’t be sure.

Perhaps it is partly to do with writing to prompts and/or churning things out daily for particular projects such as the April poetry month, plus not going back to revise – or not back far enough, anyway. (Revising too soon can mean I still miss things, not having gained sufficient objectivity yet.)

It all made me remember a Poets Union event in Melbourne years ago, when a panel of poets onstage discussed a question, the exact wording of which I've long forgotten, but it was along the lines of, ‘What’s the essential ingredient for good poetry?’ They were all pontificating solemnly and boringly, and arriving at no conclusion, then Adelaide poet Jenny Boult (later known as MLL Bliss) put up her hand from the audience, and yelled out in her characteristically smoky voice, ‘Deeply felt, for God’s sake – deeply felt!’  She brought the discussion to a sudden halt, as we all instantly recognised the truth of what she said.

Sure enough, my few pieces so far that seem worth putting into a book were written from deep feeling.

Another recollection is of my late friend Ridge, who was not a poet but a clairvoyant, getting a message for me from his guides (or maybe from mine): ‘Let the poems come to you; don’t you chase the poems.’ I didn’t altogether follow this advice, of course, which is one reason for now thinking belatedly that maybe writing to prompts was not my best idea.

Ah but, we all need to practise the craft, don’t we, and what better time than when we’re between our great inspirations? And sometimes  – bonus! – what was intended as a mere exercise turns out to be a poem worth sharing with the world. So I’m not going to repine at this late stage. 

I also have to take responsibility for the fact that I have often quite deliberately cultivated a low-key, conversational tone – which, I see now, can perhaps slip too readily into the mundane. Which is not a matter of feeling so much as style.  

However, to write from deep feeling seems to take care of style.

Your optional prompt this week, then, is to write on something about which you feel deeply.

Reminder: Remember, you are always free to ignore or even subvert the prompt. Or you might choose to write about deep feelings instead of – or as well as – with them.

Guidelines: One post per person, 369 words max (excluding title and any notes), on prompt or off, old or new, verse or prose. Please enjoy reading and commenting on what others share; and chat to us in the comments below if you wish or need. (Also, take a quick glance at those comments below; some may be meant for you personally, not only for the admin team.)

Next week: We will invite you to find inspiration in one of the following quotes: 

1. “Although I was born in April, I’m quite certain I was not fully awake until October.” ~ Peggy Toney Horton 

2. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~ George Orwell 

3. “April is the kindest month. April gets you out of your head and out working in the garden.” ~ Marty Rubin 

4. “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

5. “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull root with spring rain.” ~ T. S. Eliot 

Friday Writings #219: Looking Back

 

Hello, Word Artists and Admirers! I've recently been going over all of the old posts in my blog. It's definitely been an interesting experience, seeing how my writing and the themes I've focused on have changed through the years. It's also been fascinating seeing how much I've changed in other ways. For instance, one of the funniest is seeing the shift in books I love, especially when it comes to my current favorite series.

Harry who? LOLOLOL

Artwork by ALemonLeafArt, available on Etsy

So for this week's optional prompt, I would like to you take inspiration from the idea of "looking back". 

Feel free to interpret it in any way you wish, through either fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose. Just please remember that it's one post per person, and keep your submissions to 369 words or fewer.

One of my favorite songs on the playlist Matt Dinniman 

created for Dungeon Crawler Carl. Honestly the whole

playlist he put together is amazing.

Next week, we shall ask you to write on something about which you feel deeply.

Friday Writings #218: The World Is Burning, But…

I am cranky, my dear poets and storytellers. Constant throbbing pain has that effect on me. Sometimes, my crankiness tries to get the better of me, nudges me to glare and bare my teeth at random people. Then I remind myself of the good things: My insurance pays for all these surgeries, my body and mind can withstand the physical trauma and mental stress, my spouse adores me, spring will be here soon (and I’ll get to garden!), I have excellent friends, I’m not alone… 

Those thoughts brewed today’s optional prompt: please, share poetry or prose which includes the following phrase: “the world is burning, but…” 

“Phoenix Pine Cones Rise from the Ashes of Forest Fire” 
via

Add the direct link to your response to Mister Linky. One post per participant. 369 words maximum. Share old or new pieces. Write to the prompt or to a topic of your choosing. Visit other writers. Comment on the wonders they ink into the world. 

next week, we’ll invite you to find inspiration in the phrase, “looking back”.