Nostalgia

"Nostalgia belongs to the idea of progress and change and the idea of accumulation, accretion, and storage."  - Mary Ruefle

How do memories affect writing?  Pull a scene from storage and revisit it.

Reminders of youth include scents, tastes, and songs. Move past melancholy onward. Let remnants of loss evolve into positive moments.

The word, nostalgia, itself sends sensations, quivers and quakes. Move them into waves of possibility.

Slip Away

The weather changes

    Socks lose their mates

          Flu and colds annoy

Tastes fade

   Friends lose interest

           Ideas slip away

We notice a

  slide

    a dwindle

         or a drain

Without looking

    backward

       or forward

One moment

    lingers

      for attention

   

Then buoyancy

    lifts us

      as we marvel

             at sunset

Discomforts

      slip away

             into the sea

Write about inconveniences and situations that provoke discomfort. 

Bring in Gratitude and write to notice how negativity slips away.

Bring in the Light

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.  The broke world waits in darkness for the light that is you.  - L. R. Knost

Today we face challenges that do not belong to us alone. We cannot control the media, government, or others' opinions.  

Personal intention matters. Once our eyes grow accustomed to the dark, details appear. Shapes and colors arise for consideration and choices. Breezes bring in scents not noticed before. Birdsong announces another view.

What we do next involves giving the best of love, respect, and devotion to making decisions beyond the darkness. 

Creativity moves us.

Gradually we gain ideas of what we can do to enhance life for ourselves to translate to others. 

Our enlightenment revels in thoughts put into actions.

Jump beyond any wallow in a wilderness of frustration. Make plans to greet the day with brightness and acknowledge others who walk with their heads down. Bring their eyes level with yours and turn their frowns upside down.  

It takes small steps. The flash of a bee at work will bring illumination into your world. 

When wandering in the dark, discover three ideas to arouse awe. Use your potential.

Manage from your inside out to bring in light necessary for renewal. Follow Rollo May's directive and develop the Courage to Create.

Astonishment of Words

Life with Books

My parents relished a variety of books that arrived from "The Book of the Month Club." When the brown package appeared in our mail box, I'd rip it open for a peek at the cover.  I fluttered the pages to absorb the scent, then launched into the words to discover adventures. Our library held the oldest, latest, and the best.

During childhood, my father read to me before bedtime each evening. He would ask me to close my eyes and imagine the sounds, scents and sights as he read. Of course I'd peek. The squiggles of words attracted me even more than the fairies, dragons and creatures illustrated in the childrens' books.

Now I collect my library in a Kindle. I miss the scents of books but the squiggles that bounce the lines still attract me the most.

Write about your childhood experiences with the magic of a book. Have you moved into the e-book age?

Life's Purpose

We violate probability, by our nature
The gift of life
Randomness united for a brief while
Then our borrowings dissipate back into the primordial soup.
The question is why
For what purpose?
The purpose that lives down deep, in our unconscious?
To express our uniqueness?
To manifest our interior beauty?
Or to catch electrons at the moment of their excitement
By solar photons?

                          - Rod MacIver

Consider the durability and tenacity of your ancestors. Many braved wars, plagues, famines, and accidents to assure your survival.

Recall relatives who had an impact. Search farther back in time for insights.

Discover a combination of ancestral traits that contributed to your unique identity.

Probe the history of your gift of life.

How do you promote Life's purpose ?

Saga of Sox

Everyone has a lost sock story. Where do they wander from the washing machine to the dryer? How do they lose their way from the dryer to the drawer?

Imagine a spy thriller.  Mated for years, one sock goes on the lam when it receives the call to investigate the pockets of jeans and t-shirts.

What if a white sock has always wanted to be green?  How will it sneak from the wash and hide until the next load of colors arrives?

Always put down and stepped on its entire life, one sock dreams of rising and becoming a pant leg or beyond.

Let the saga of the single sock stimulate words today.

Visual Art and Poetry

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction. - Paul Gauguin

For successful communication, poetry and visual art seek a difference in the nuances of abstraction and concrete imagery.

Poetry that focuses on concepts like love, joy and fear requires imagery to communicate the details. What do these emotions look, feel and sound like? Writers reveal ways scent and taste add to expression. The sound of sadness has color and texture. As a result, word sad does not need to appear in the writing.

When shown details, the reader will enter the poem with experience, make connections, and understand what the poet means.

In visual art, the break from the realism of nature nurtures the viewer's ability to create along with the artist and move the mind to new perspectives. Nature assists by revealing shapes that tickle the imagination. In the first photograph, a seal or whale's tail offer potential. Petals shape an elephant above.

Describe an emotion with imagery. Use abstraction in art. Draw or paint the emotion to express it in a visual way.  

Write about the experiences of creating concrete poetry and abstract art.

A Moly Experience

As Odysseus nears Circe's house in Homer's Odyssey, Hermes, Greek messenger of the Gods, gives him the flower, moly. This will protect Odysseus from the witch's magic.

Homer describes moly, "The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it moly, dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods. All lies within their power."

James Joyce wrote about this invisible influence as prayer, chance, agility, and presence of mind. Hermetic gifts are those fertile coincidences that lead to creation, not chaos. As a result of references to the magical moly, people began saying, "Holy Moly" to denote something extraordinary.  

Discover the extraordinary. Write a moly experience of creation.