Humor

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.

What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

Daily writing prompt
What are three objects you couldn’t live without?
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What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

Oh this is so easy and so obvious. Every verb needs a subject and most verbs need an object. Can you imagine living a life in which no verb has an object? Indescribable. And how about an indirect object? Or a direct or indirect object pronoun? And now let us move on to the object of a preposition…

Wow! And now I must choose three out of those five? What are you trying to do to me? This is so cruel. It’s why I always fail IQ tests – there are so many answers that do not fit the desired paradigm of the programmers who set the questions and the appropriate answers. Are we all to be programmed then? And who shall program the programmers?

Or do you wish me to choose three inanimate things? If you did, you should say so in a clear and understandable fashion. An inkwell? A quill? A piece of paper? Salt or sand to scatter on wet ink? How many people out there remember post office pens, also called scratch pens, also called dip pens? There was a time when life without such objects was unthinkable.

And why stop at objects? What would life be without subjects?

Oscar Wilde once stated he could make a pun about any subject. A voice came out from the audience “Queen Victoria”. “The Queen, sir,” bellowed Oscar, “is not a subject.”

“Oh, Oscar,” I said to him, “I wish I had said that.” “You will, Roger,” he replied. “You will.”

And I just did.

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.

Hope Springs Eternal

Hope Springs Eternal

And it does, as you can see from today’s painting. Well, last night’s really. I left it drying overnight and this morning it was almost ready. Not even signed as yet. Oh dear. Still, I lay claim to it. And it’s definitely my style, with a few neat little changes. A change of palette, too. And manner of application.

“Paper your wall with rejections.” This is what Stephen King tells me to do. And I do just that. More rejections, and even more. Yet still I submit my poems and stories, and till they come back, rejected. Mainly form letters – but with an occasional helpful nudge like. “Nice writing. Not for me / us. Try somewhere else.” It used to get me down, but I am now so used to the negative that it is just water off a duck’s back. Splish, splash, and so what.

What really ruffles my feathers is the submissions that fall into the deep pit of silence. Not even a rejection slip with which to paper my walls. Not that I can do much with an e-rejection anyway. And I refuse to waste paper by printing them out and papering.

Still, who knows? One of these days, somebody may say “yes – we love it, and we’ll publish it.” As they say, “Hope springs eternal.” Maybe it does. But my time is beginning to run out.

Aliens

Aliens

We know they are out there – but do we realize that they already exist within our own heads? They float around inside our skulls, sending out alien signals and outlandish messages. Buy more, crave more, consume more, eat it all up, leave nothing on your plate, don’t give anything to anyone else, it’s yours all yours, don’t share, be greedy, mine, mine, mine. And we cry “Mine” until we undermine our own society and then the aliens have taken us over and they are in full control and wielding total power.

Search for yourself amidst the ruins of your consumer life and your life consumed. Dig deep into the troubled mine of your mind and rescue what remains. Perform an act of artificial respiration upon yourself and create yourself anew, in the image of what you want to be, not what the aliens want you to be. Be brave. Kick them out. Win back your own life. Resist them. Fight them on the beaches, in the bleachers, on the non-stop radio, on the endless subliminal messages cast out by the tv.

Reject the false notion, the siren song that calls out endlessly – ‘j’achete, donc je suis‘ – “I buy, therefore I am.” You are more, so much more, than the purchasing power of your dwindling dollars. Breathe deep. Walk out in the sun and the rain. Be yourself. Make friends with others of like mind. Fight those aliens, wherever you find them. Fight back. Renew yourself. And renew the world around you.

This message brought to you by
the anti-buy yourself happiness campaign.

Wed Th Fri

WTF

Wednesday, 31 January.
Thursday, 01 February.
Friday, 02 February.

Where has the first month of 2024 gone?
WTF – I always knew it meant Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Comment:

I never know what I am painting until I have painted it. I thought of calling this one Doggy in the Window. But there are so many other creatures swimming around in this little aquarium of mine. How many can you spot? What fun. A fishing expedition in search of the meaning of meaning and who knows how many little doggies you may pull out. There may even be an Axolotl in there. Who knows?

This painting is on sale for the remarkably small sum of $1,000,000. And if you beleive that, you will believe anything. You may even believe you can find the little doggy in there!

PS – I may start posting poetry again soon. I have nearly finished my next collection and all the unwanted extras can be placed here, on my blog.

Kipper Kapers

Kipper Kapers

Old Welsh Intelligence Test Question: “Does a kipper swim folded or flat?”

5-4-3-2-1 –
Time’s up, Ladies and Gentlemen.
So – what’s your answer?

Yes? No? Maybe? I don’t know?
It’s a trick question of course / wrth gwrs. And Kippers can play tricks on you too as they flipper and flapper, and flip and flop. Especially if you eat them late at night.

So this is a painting of a midnight Kipper Kaper Attack, when you want to sleep, but can’t, because you don’t know the answer to the kipper IQ test and all those little kippers are capering around and making fun of you and mocking you.

How do you avoid a Kipper Kaper Attack when the bad dreams start and the Kippers Kaper? Well, you answer this next Welsh IQ test question. “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me when down to the river to swim. Adam and Eve got drowned. Who do you think was saved?”

And if you answer “Pinch Me!” Then I will, and when I do, you’ll wake up, and you’ll be safe from another Kipper Kaper attack until the next time you eat them.

There – simple isn’t it?

“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!

Islands

Islands

Bewildered
by the rush hour
surge of traffic
we peer at street signs,
slide slowly round
roundabouts
sprung up overnight,
mushrooms
grown to confuse us.

Swept along by the main
street’s vibrant flow,
we fail to recognize
new shops standing
where we remember
old cracked paint
and the woman who sold
curiosities.

A face in the crowd
holds us for a moment.
Grey hair, unshaven,
clothes ragged,
a scarecrow on the street,
was that the man
who once ruled our world?

That old woman,
hunched, wrinkled,
her face a Hallowe’en mask,
her limp, her canes
and dragging feet:
is that the dancing queen
who ruled beside him?

Lights change.
Cars move on.
Another island
beckons
as we pull away
from the past
and drive
into the future.