Carpe Diem

You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

Daily writing prompt
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
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You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

The End.

Why did I write that? Because I like reading T. S. Eliot – Four Quartets – “In my beginning is my end.” If that statement be true, then, ipso facto, The End must be my first sentence, because that’s my beginning. Eliot converted to Catholicism – and, according to the Jesuits, “The end justifies the means” – so, when we start with the end we are justifying the writing (the means) of all that led us there.

You don’t like my logic, you say? Why not? It is as straight as the corkscrew I hold in my hand when I am threatening to add the contents of a bottle of wine to my autobiography. Is a bottle’s end in it’s beginning? Of course it is. If you don’t open the bottle, you can’t finish it. If you don’t start it, you cannot end it, so in the beginning lies the end.

Oh the mysteries of mysticism, those truths that know no logic and follow no known paths from their beginning (via purgativa), through their middle (via iluminativa), to their end (via unitiva). Or is life and truth a circle that has no end? In which case wherever I begin the circle of my autobiography, there too is my end.

In my end is my beginning and in my beginning is my end.

Mors omnia solvit.
The End.

Who are your favorite people to be around?

Daily writing prompt
Who are your favorite people to be around?
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Who are your favorite people to be around?

Creatives – because creative people need support in their creativity and need to believe in themselves and in their creations. I wrote two days ago about Rejections and Silence – while both are needed by creatives – rejections to help perfect and polish – and silence in which to create – too many rejections and too much silence can result in alienation, depression, and the suppression of creative acts.

“We few, we happy few, we band of siblings!” Not quite what Harry said before the Battle of Agincourt, yet can we, the readers, be absolutely certain that what Shakespeare said he said was actually what he said? But we share the spirit of creativity with creators big and small, famous, infamous, and struggling. That is why we need to band together, to support each other, and to ensure that creativity isn’t killed by the straitjacket of a nine to five job, or longer, or the multi-employment that has become so necessary just to survive in our diminished and diminishing world.

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” wrote W. H. Davies, one of the great Welsh poets. And he concluded this poem with a parallel couplet: “A sad life this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

I hope you like the painting that heads this prompt that is turning into a joyous rant. It is by one of my creative friends, the poet-painter Moo. He calls it Spotted Coppers and he painted it last night after watching the Midsomer Murders episode that dealt with the theft of valuable Spotted Copper Butterflies. Intertextuality – one text leads to another, and the butterfly becomes a TV episode becomes a painting by a friend becomes a rant prompted by my computer and written by me.

That is the circle of creativity and it blends into the circle of friendships, and creative artists are both competitors and friends, for “whether creativity survives or no, I’m sure is only touch and go.” Another line that another great Welsh poet, this time Dylan Thomas of Swansea, might almost have said.

So, who are my favorite people to be around? Creative people, of course, with all their passions, energy, warts, flaws, and their constant need of encouragement and support.

Happy Giving Birth Day!

Happy Giving Birth day!

It was our daughter’s birthday today. I have lost count how many, and luckily, so has she. She lives 1500 kms away and was unable to come home for a celebration. We celebrated on the telephone. So much better than nothing.

I wanted to have a proper celebration, and so did my beloved, her mother. We bought special foods, special wines, sat at the table … in spite of the sparkle and the candles, something was missing. And it wasn’t just our daughter.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s make this a very special day. It’s just you and me. Let’s make it your Happy Giving Birth Day. After all, there were two of you involved and I think you deserve some credit.”

So here we are – as of now February 4 is Happy Giving Birth Day. It is open to all mothers. And each of you can celebrate it on the day you gave birth to your babies. Some of them do not wish to acknowledge how old they are … [don’t ask!].

But you, the unacknowledged for so long party, you can finally stand up, centre stage, and say “YES, this is also my day! It is my Happy Giving Birth Day!”

It doesn’t have to be on February 4, as my beloved’s is. It is on the day it happened, when it happened, and you know exactly when that is.

I don’t know you, but permit me to embrace you, and allow me to welcome you to the Happy Giving Birth Day Club. May you enjoy your achievement(s) for ever.

“Who? Me?”

“Who? Me?”
The above is a self-portrait done at 3:00 am on the morning of my birthday. The full title is – “Another birthday? Who? Me?”

This is so much easier than writing a whole dog’s body tale of who I am, how old I am, and what I am / was feeling at the time.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have just saved four pages of paper at 250 words a page, double-spaced. that’s the equivalent of a branch from a small tree.

As I tell my young friends and acquaintances – “Don’t grow old. But if you have to, never lose your sense of humor.”

Of course, sooner or later you may lose an awful lot of your senses – but keep that one, if you can!

Ice Flow

Ice Flow

Free fall, then scree on the road
to Wolastoq. with the fresh air
speaking to the rock face
in a long-forgotten tongue,
broken words metamorphosing
into fragmented scree at rock-foot.

Just for a moment we glimpse
the ancient water in the stone,
catch the flow of winter words.

The January sun, low in our eyes,
heavenly glory glancing off rock
to give earthly joy, golden beams
highlight damp, glistening slate.

Afternoon frost, water and rock,
polished into ice-maiden tears
that dance their sparkling way
and are held for a moment
in a vision that will last forever.

Comment:
Such beauty in silent things, ice, rock, sky. But learn to listen and perhaps you will hear them talking, one to the other. One day, you too may share their words of wisdom.

Choices

Choices

Winter-low sun in my eyes,
I sit at the breakfast table
blinking back rainbows.

Light quivers into fragments.
Too much light and my world
turns dark. I can no longer see
the computer screen, nor am I
able to write in the old-fashioned
way with pen, ink, and paper.

To continue working, I must lower
the blinds or move to the other room
away from the sunlight.

Another option:
to forget deadlines and schedules
to lay down my pen, to close my eyes,
to bask in early morning pleasures,
purring like an ageing cat
enjoying the sun.

Comment:
A Golden Oldie that suddenly surfaced from “among my souvenirs”, as Connie Francis once sang. Or was it twice? Sunshine is certainly a magic balm for old bones. Only now am I starting to understand the wisdom of animals, that old dog, lying in the sun, the ageing cat curled up in a sunny window, the ancient donkey, seeking warmth, away from the shade. Such joy in the small things that make life so much better.

You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
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You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

After an outpouring of poetry, during the recent three day – 72 hours – power loss, I have run out of words. Having had nothing to do but write, I now have everything to do, except write. So, I did some painting instead. This one is called Emotions in Motion. It is a picture of the inside of my head.

The inside of my head (pictured above) is the perfect space for both reading and writing. It is an especially good place when illuminated by candlelight as the flickering flames help the emotions to get into motion, if you see what I mean. And you probably don’t, because you have never entered a perfect writing, reading, and painting place, like mine.

Anyone can have a desk, with a window, looking out onto a garden. There may even be wonderful landscapes with fantastic sunrises and surprising weather events. But no space is perfect, save for that one perfect space (as depicted above). I can just imagine my friend Vincent (Van Gogh) doing aerial cartwheels with his paintbrush in his hand as he perambulates around his Starry Night, another perfect space in which to paint and read and write.

I painted Emotions in Motion during the aftermath of the three day power out[r]age when all sorts of thoughts and licorice all-sorts were floating around in there. You can probably taste a couple of the flavo[u]rs when you look at the picture. Never mind. Words will return – or not – in which case I’ll let the blobs of paint speak for me. And you can read my fortune in Vincent’s stars – or not, as the case may – or may not – be.

Tell us about your first day at something — school

Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.
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Tell us about your first day at something — school

My father held my hand all the way to the convent. I wiggled, squirmed, dug in my heels, but it did me no good. Too firm, his grip, too determined his grim, muscled chin. When we arrived, he dragged me up the gravel path leading to the stark, red-brick building, and jangled the bell that hung from an iron clasp. He kept a tight hold of my hand as the bell’s echoes faded away into the interior corridors. A tapping of feet, and the wooden door opened just enough to let a small, four-year old boy in. My father pushed me through that gap. I turned to wave good-bye, only to see his back as he walked rapidly down the drive.
            “Come along, child, we’ve been expecting you,” a figure in flowing black robes with a white wimple framing her face emerged from the shadows.     The nun closed the door and banished the sunlight. “Welcome,” she said. “Wipe your feet.”
            “It’s not raining. My shoes are clean.”
            “When you enter this convent, you do as you are told. Wipe your feet. Blow your nose and dry your eyes. You should be ashamed: crying at your age.”
            A rough brown coconut mat lay by the door. I stood on it and moved my feet backwards and forwards, sniveling as I did so.
            “Now follow me.”
            The nun walked down the shadowy corridor, her leather sandals flip-flapping against the polished wood floor. The scent from the highly waxed boards rose up and flooded my nostrils. I looked down to see my face distorted by the floor’s polished woodgrains.
            We approached a classroom from which a babble of young voices echoed down the corridor. The nun opened the door and all chatter stopped. She led me to an empty seat on a wooden bench and there I sat. The nun went to the teacher’s desk in front of the class.
            “Class: you will all stand. I ordered you to be silent in my absence. You were talking when I opened the door. Who started the talking?”
            My new classmates stared silently at their feet.
            “I heard voices, many voices. Who started talking? Was it you? You? You?” She stabbed her finger at the class. Nobody said a word and nobody moved. “Will someone tell me who was the first to disobey my orders?”
            Silence.
            “Then I shall punish you all. You will kneel on the floor. You will raise your arms to shoulder height. Like this.” The nun imitated the arms of Christ as he hung from the Cross. “You will recite ten Hail Mary’s,” she turned to me. “Your new classmate will count them. His name will now be Joseph, a good Catholic name that will help him establish his convent identity. Joseph: you may stand, not kneel. Class, begin.”
            The piping of shrill voices chorusing a prayer filled the room.

I looked at the girls as they knelt there, arms out, all dressed alike, and I realized that I was the only boy in this particular class.

What could you do less of?

Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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What could you do less of?
I shall deliberately misinterpret that prompt / question and answer it my way. I could do less of listening to stupid adverts, repeated ad nauseam, sometimes with gimmicky tunes – one to two lines maximum – again and again, all day, every day. Surf the channels to escape an ad, and what do you get? A synchronized set up where almost every channel is blasting out the same, or similar, ads at the same time. Have you noticed that when you leave the TV room, and retreat to the kitchen to get some limited peace, the ads follow you because the volume is turned up at ad time so you just can’t escape.

I remember my grandfather, back in the sixties, with the advent of ITV in Wales – the Independent TV channel that used ads – sitting before the TV set, his foot up before the screen and his fingers in his ears so he would not be able to see or hear those ads. Alas, once heard, seldom forgotten, and I can still sing most of those meaningless jingles heard back in my childhood. How it I hate when I go shopping in the supermarket and shoppers tunelessly whistle a TV ad as they shuffle along behind their carts. Alas, ad free programming, all too often, is either expensive or non-existent.

And what about those telephone calls when they put you on hold until the next agent is free to attend to you? I won’t mention names, because I don’t want to get sued, but I guess we have all had the same experience. I had a ninety minute online wait one day, with horrible music, an exhortation to stay on the line so I wouldn’t lose my place in the queue aka line-up, and a 90 second ad that glorified the joys of the company’s product, repeated once every five minutes. I suffered through that ad 18 times on that one call alone. Another local firm gave me the similar treatment, except that it was a one minute ad, repeated once every ninety seconds. I suffered through 10 repetitions in a wait of 15 minutes, got fed up, and hung up the phone.

Look at the peaceful scene above. That’s the view from my bedroom window in Island View. Even the crows are absent, and the early morning silence, like the sun, is golden. Two birds with one stone – a morning person or an evening person? A morning person with dawns like this, but an evening person when a sunset like this one miraculously occurs.