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« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 » June 29, 2007June 28, 2007No bad words found . . .
Hence, my G-rating … I wonder what the baseline is?
June 27, 2007Thursday Thirteen # 19 - Latin Maxims for Beginners
Sententiae LatinaeImpress your friends and coworkers with your grasp of Latin with these 13 maxims. My goal: to use as many of these during my conversations with family at our upcoming Canada Day barbecue on July 1. 1. Ab ovo usque ad mala. 2. Amicus verus est rara avis. 3. Ars longa, vita brevis. 4. Audentes fortuna iuvat. 5. Aurora Musis amica. 6. Deus nobiscum, quis contra? 7. Dictum, factum. 8. Dum spiro, spero. 9. Ecce homo! 10. Fama volat. 11. Homo novus 12. In aere aedificare. 13. Licentia poetica.
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June 26, 2007On Memory
This scant reliability of our memories will be satisfactorily explained only when we know in what language, in what alphabet they are written, on what surface, and with what pen … - Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved
June 25, 2007Kurt Vonnegut: Eight Rules for Writing Fiction
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. 6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. — Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.
Tagged by Thomma Lyn . . . A Birthday MemeThe lovely and talented Thomma Lyn, tagged me for a birthday meme today. Here are the rules: You go to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and type in your birthday (only month & day). Then you write down 3 events, 2 births, 1 holiday, and then you tag 5 friends. My birthday is October 25. Three Events • 1415 - The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt. • 1945 - The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan’s surrender to the Allies. • 2001 - Windows XP is officially released. Two Births • 1881 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (d. 1973)
• 1912 - Minnie Pearl, American comedian and singer (d. 1996)
• Virgin Islands - Thanksgiving Day Five friends that I’m tagging to play along: • Red Garnier
On impulses, phantoms and the creative processIf you persist in throttling your impulses you end by becoming a clot of phlegm. You finally spit out a gob which completely drains you and which you only realize years later was not a gob of spit but your inmost self. If you lose that you will always race through dark streets like a madman pursued by phantoms. You will be able to say with perfect sincerity: “I don’t know what I want in life.” - Henry Miller, Sexus
June 24, 2007List # 19 - Unconscious Mutterings
I say and you think …
You too can play along with Luna.
June 21, 2007Words are things
Words are things; and a small drop of ink Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. ~ Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)
Happy Summer Solstice!
© Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos For more Beach Daze photos visit Slate.
June 20, 2007Thursday Thirteen # 18 - 13 pairs of contradictory proverbs
As humans, we tend to contradict ourselves on a regular basis. Case in point: the 13 pairs of proverbs below, researched by yours truly, for this week’s Thursday Thirteen. Enjoy! 1. Look before you leap 2. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again 3. Absence makes the heart grow fonder 4. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today 5. More haste less speed 7. A word to the wise is sufficient 8. It’s better to be safe than sorry 9. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth 10. Hitch your wagon to a star 11. Don’t judge a book by its cover 12. Birds of a feather flock together
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
Why I write
To understand what is; Imagine what could be, and Create what will be …
June 18, 2007Tagged by Red . . . Recycle A PostRed tagged me late last week and asked me to recycle a post from my blog. The post below was written on my European Adventure site as Dev and I were preparing for our trip to Greece and my beloved Mama was in the last stages of dementia. For you, gentle readers, I ask you to read this post first and then follow up with my first entry, here, written in January 2007. Mama, I extend my arms only to embrace darkness. More than anything, I love what I do not have and
My final meeting concerning Mama’s care took place yesterday morning on Great Thursday. While we’re away, Mama’s medical team will keep in touch with us via cell phone or e-mail. It is on this day that Greek households around the world dye their Easter eggs red. Only last year, Dev and I spent Great Thursday driving around the various Mediterranean delis in Victoria searching for the appropriate packets of dye so that we’d have red eggs for Pascha. On this day, there were no dyeing of eggs, only tears. Mama is now receiving “comfort care” as she is in the late stages of her dementia. While I met with the hospital administrator, Mama’s nurse came in and asked if she could take the chicken to visit with yia-yia. I followed soon after. Words fall wingless as she is able to only mimic what is said. I love you, Mama. I love you, Mama. Look at the chicken. Chicken. Mama, forgive me. Forgive … me. How could this happen? Is this what happens, Mama’s medical team reassures me that it is OK to travel - that we should travel, now, while there is time. And so today, on our Great Friday, the most holiest of days, Dev and I continue on with our plans. I pack in silence; Dev completes his errands.
June 16, 2007An invitation
Regular postings resume next week. Please forgive the interruption. Have a great weekend, everyone!
June 13, 2007Thursday Thirteen # 17 - Cool Writing Tips from Jack Kerouac
For this week’s Thursday Thirteen, I bring you 13 gems (of the 30 in total) from Jack Kerouac’s “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” I have no clue what many of these writing tips really mean but they certainly have had a liberating effect on my prose. Maybe that’s the point. Enjoy! 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 3. Be in love with yr life 4. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 5. The unspeakable visions of the individual 6. No time for poetry but exactly what is
7. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 8. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 9. Like Proust be an old teahead of time 10.Telling the true story of the world in interior monologue 11. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 12. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 13. Believe in the holy contour of life The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
June 12, 2007An eternal question . . .
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? Douglas Adams: Forty-two Aristotle: To actualize its potential. Salvador Dali: The Fish. Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference. Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it. Hemingway:To die. In the rain. David Hume: Out of custom and habit. John Lennon: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace. Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability. Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you. Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road. Thoreau: To live deliberately and suck all the marrow out of life. Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Self-portrait
For your own enchanted version visit the newly upgraded bless this chick factory. I’m off to work now.
June 11, 2007Do you know Doug?
Doug Savage is the creative genius of Savage Chickens daily cartoons drawn on sticky notes and posted online. I discovered his fabulous chickens late last week while doing research on my Thursday Thirteen post on phobias - and I’m hooked. His chickens have their own theme song and wallpaper - yes, they’re that popular! Who knew that chickens could inspire such a following? Or that they could be so astute about office life:
Need a Creativity Boost?
Founded in 2000 by Chris Dunmire, the Creativity Portal is the place to explore and nurture your creative self. The Imagination Prompt Generator is a fun way to break through any writer’s block. Interested in finding other writers, artists and musicians who map their creative journey online? Then look no further than the Creativity Portal’s web directory. The Creativity Portal is chock full of informative, inventive and entertaining articles. The website is updated frequently, no stale-dated information here. Always wanted to learn to draw a chicken? Chris has a wonderful how-to guide.
June 8, 2007A diversion for Friday: The rate my life quizMy regular blogging schedule is interrupted as I am away on course: learning about appreciative inquiry. For today’s diversion, I bring you:
June 6, 2007Thursday Thirteen # 16: There's a word for it
The English language has a host of words to describe our fears, some of them more familiar than others. For this week, I bring you 13 phobias that piqued my interest. 1. Oneirophobia: fear of dreams 2. Ornithophobia: fear of birds 3. Ouranophobia: fear of heaven 4. Octophobia: fear of the number 8
5. Oikophobia: fear of home surroundings 6. Onomatophobia: fear of hearing a certain word or of names 7. Ophidiophobia: fear of snakes 8. Opiophobia: fear of prescribing needed pain medications for patients 9. Ochlophobia: fear of crowds or mobs 10. Odontophobia: fear of teeth or dental surgery 11. Pagophobia: fear of ice or frost 12. Pantophobia: fear of everything 13. Paraskavedekatriaphobia: fear of Friday the 13th
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
June 5, 2007A Greek Icon: Melina Mercouri
Melina Mercouri (1925-1994) epitomized the modern Greek: a vital and intellectual woman full of joy and sensuality. She was an accomplished singer and actor; an exiled political activist (during the military junta) and finally in the late 1980s Minister of Culture, fighting, among other things, for the return of the Elgin (Parthenon) Marbles. Her role as Ilya, the exuberant prostitute, in Never on a Sunday, made her a household name. In 1960, Mercouri won the Best Actress Award at Cannes and the film won an Academy Award for its well-known theme song, written by Manos Hadjidakis.
Me Logia Ellinka
With Greek words, I fell in love with you, from your lips bewitched …
June 4, 2007Open the door
Open the door, -Omar Khayyam-
Channeling Myrna LoyFound this quiz on Miss Frou’s site and decided to play along. Seems I’m channeling Myrna Loy, what about you? Your Score: Myrna LoyYou scored 19% grit, 28% wit, 33% flair, and 30% class! You are class itself, the calm, confident “perfect woman.” Men turn and look at you admiringly as you walk down the street, and even your rivals have a grudging respect for you. You always know the right thing to say, do and, of course, wear. You can take charge of a situation when things get out of hand, and you’re a great help to your partner even if they don’t immediately see or know it. You are one classy dame. Your screen partners include William Powell and Cary Grant, you little simmerpot, you. Find out what kind of classic leading man you’d make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test.
June 3, 2007Poetry Train Monday # 3 - Introducing: Magda Part 2
For today’s entry, I bring you more of Magda’s story from my work in progress. Go here to read part one. Climb aboard Rhian’s Poetry Train. At home, I told myself that I was not lonely, though surely the oldest living virgin in Western Canada. But now, dancing with Georgios, dancing in front of these men, their admiration obvious, I could see myself more clearly than before. Running my fingers through my shoulder length black hair, I pretended I was Melina Mercouri arching my back, pushing my breasts forward, my full hips effortlessly following the syncopated drumming. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a size six. A strange sort of ecstasy began to mount in me, something I had never felt before. Excitement at first, it became a wild exuberance. I looked up and saw that the men were transfixed a silence settling upon them. I no longer felt like I would never marry, that a virginal future moved toward me, immovable. Give me a cigarette. Aman. My companions were getting drunk. They were pushing each other out of the way to sit next to me. Georgios was quieter than the others looking at me with a shy expression. He offered me his hand. I accepted his unspoken invitation leaving the bacchanal behind. In silence walked up to the small peak of this rocky town. There were large olive trees there, with branches that came down almost to the ground. We passed a few other couples embracing, hidden under the trees. We walked further, an eagerness between us. I should not be here. Aman. Finally, there was a place for us, under the watchful eyes of Saints. He sat down; a stones throw away from a long abandoned chapel, its doors firmly clamped by a rusted padlock. He gestured for me to join him. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. I found the courage to ask him something. Georgios, do you like living here? He looked over at me and raised his shoulders, a non-shrug. Then looked above me. His gaze settled on the Chapel. In his broken English he told me this small church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was centuries old. The icons had been removed in order to protect them from the invading infidels across the water. Some enterprising islanders decided that selling them to private art collectors on the black market was better than leaving them to be destroyed. His great grandfather managed to salvage a few and now they are family heirlooms. You like icons? Somehow, because he had to struggle so hard with his words, I trusted him. No talk anymore, he whispered, taking my hand and putting his finger to my lips. I felt anxious to be doing this so close to the house of God. I was looking over his head into the trees and he was unbuttoning my blouse. He stood up, pulled me against him and unfastened my bra. He took my hand and pressed it against him.
Playing along with Red . . .
Couldn’t resist playing along with Red this Sunday morning. Go stop by and say hello.
List # 18 - Unconscious Mutterings
I say and you think …
You too can play along with Luna.
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