Month: February 2020

as name

I like having my friend, Puss in Boots with me when I’m out in public doing writing group things. He’s a calm fellow, Puss, never gets rowdy, he’s just there, colourful, but not loud with it.

The images of me aren’t so colourful, I tend to have more subdued ‘Autumn’ colours, while Puss is always dressed in his lovely bright colours. He has no voice, so I suppose the bright colours speak for him, to some extent.

In this photo, Puss in Boots was taking part in one of the Adelaide Plains Poets Festival of Words events. It is a visit to a particular art gallery, then a train trip to Adelaide and back. Attendees are encouraged to write creatively about art works that took their notice. It’s always a fun event, and yes, new poetry does get written, for sure!

This is one of the artworks that attracted my attention at the last Festival, and the poem I wrote on the train about the painting. I was thrilled to hear from the artist recently to tell me how much she enjoyed my poem, and that she’d been able to sell the painting.

Art and words go together well, I’ve always thought that, well I have for quite a while anyway. When I first heard of the Japanese Haiga, which is haiku displayed with an image, I fell in love with it. The image and words each add to the other, bringing much more thoughts into it all, for the viewer/reader … One day, I would like to publish a book of Haiga, but the cost of coloured images in books makes it expensive …

Something to put on my bucket list perhaps, or I could forget about an actual book, and do something online instead, where no expensive print photo needs to be printed, simply displayed on the screen with the words instead, as on this blog post, for my poem and the image from the Festival … Thoughts and ideas happening now, for sure …

Open and Shut’ is today’s writing prompt.

Shut your eyes, and listen …
What can you hear, smell, feel? It is said that if you lose a sense, it can help to make your other senses work better. I don’t know if that is true, but doing this eye shutting thing, certainly makes it easier to hear, I think.

Write down what it was that your other senses could pick up, bird song, traffic, the winds? Was it cool, warm, hot? Could you smell machinery odours, kitchen ones, something from the garden? Write it all down.

Now open your eyes. Look around and write down five random things you can see. Give yourself ten minutes, and put those five things,  together with your awakened senses pieces, in a piece of creative writing. Then look at what you wrote. Are you happy with the results? Try to use as many of the senses pieces in there as you can.

I have a lot of faith in this five random words idea. I’ve been doing it for quite a few years now, and have seen/heard some amazing responses, as well as enjoying writing in this way myself.

Adding in the senses part is a new thing, and using both parts? It should be good, I hope and expect it will work!

So, this is an open and shut of senses working over time! Are you ready? Go!

Are you surprised at where you went with those five things? The randomness seems to get the brain going in unusual directions at times, and that can be a fine thing.

Ants are thought on as being industrious creatures, but sometimes I wonder … I’ve been watching these ant nests a little in the last few days, and to my untutored eye, their meanderings look random.

Random isn’t necessarily though, I suppose, sometimes, anyway. They emerge from the ant nest, head off, connect briefly with other ants, head in a different direction, connect again, disappear from the screen, do a u turn, and so on …

Would watching short snaps, over and over again lead to new ideas, do you think? That’s what I was thinking about, anyway, and finally I’ve gone outside with my phone, and fine some filming. Just a short piece, and I don’t know if this will even work, but let’s just see …

I think there are ants in that photo, but you can’t see them. And there isn’t anything moving there, because WordPress won’t let me do that. So if you want to, imagine lots of biggish ants, busily getting around their business, while I watch quite close by, phone/camera in hand, filming them … the filming was done, but I can’t load it to this blog …

The imagination is a wonderful thing though!

Today’s writing prompt is LIES.
Some people might say they never tell lies, but I think that’s not true … It’s a lie. Surely all of us have fibbed at least some time in our lives? Whether it’s a lie told to yourself, a loved one, workmate, friend, employer, whoever, we all lie in some way at some times in our lives, don’t we?

I lie to myself when I say to myself, ‘Yes, I’ll do that tomorrow’. Sure enough, tomorrow comes along and that ‘thing’ doesn’t happen. Again … And of course fibbing to stay ‘nice’ is something needed at times in our lives, in the interests of keeping the peace in a variety of different ways. ‘Yes it looks good on you, well worth the price …’ told to a friend who possibly shouldn’t have spent the money on an item of clothing, but it’s too late now, and they needed cheering up.

This kind of ‘social smoothing’ keeps society rolling along well, most of the time. Sometimes things hit a snag, but mostly it’s OK, and we all keep on keeping on, lies, fibs, over/under statements, and all …

A brief poem of mine, about lies:

Of Course

Of course I’ll love you to the end

it doesn’t matter how much you spend

I can afford it, worth every cent

the joy you bring is Heaven sent …

I’ll pay you back, before next week

I didn’t know, I never peek

If you didn’t want me to know

should’ve hidden it, where it don’t show!

Of course you’ll get the money back

you’ll manage anyway, you’ve got a stack

What d’ya mean, I still owe you money?

What’s yours is mine, isn’t t honey?

And the other way around, yeah of course

but I need the money to back a horse

it’s a dead set winner, no way it can lose

of course I can stop gambling, if I chose!

So this writing prompt for today, mixed in with a lot of media coverage recently, and my own thoughts about life, my own and that of others, lead me to this little poem, which came along easily enough. It may  require some editing, but I’m content with it right now. Writing about things that are in the media, where there can be many different viewpoints is always great for getting the material, to write about lies.

Even if you are a totally honest person, you can be sure there are many other people speaking and writing, who almost tell lies for a living … And most of us want to ‘cover our own arse’ in times of potential trouble, and sometimes lies, fibs, and those nuanced interpretations come into things again.

So think about all of these things. take a look at your own ideas about it all, and get writing about lies. it will be enlightening and fun! Would I lie to you?

haha!