Use Your Playfulness

 

Where’s your child’s playfulness today? Do you have a fun relationship with words? 

Do you recall your childhood association with words? Did you create names for animals and plants? Did you tell stories?

Frederick Smock, a teacher of creative writing, learns daily from his students to think with a child's mind. One student astonished him with her words when she wrote from the point of view of a coconut. “I never have to go on vacation because I carry the waves inside of me,” she wrote.

Today, delight yourself with possibilities and let your words scurry around corners and under bushes. Look into the sky to capture connections. Consider all your areas of knowledge: animals, insects, gardening, travel, economics, and relationships. 

How will you communicate the awareness that makes your days and nights glitter? 

Let your words flee and flourish. Delight in metaphors to tell your stories. Return to your child's playfulness.

I have played daily with Words and Wonder since 2009. Over 5000 posts have arrived here.  

From now on I will focus on Words and Photos on my Blog that features photography.

Please join me: feathersandfigments.blogspot.com 

Sunset Delight

 

While the sun does his dance into the sea, 

benefit from the final moments of each day. 

Find a place to watch for an evening 

                                                     to enjoy the sun's play.

When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu

Visualize the color in all its depth, intensity, and discover a metaphor.

Notice how the sun wriggles to set in tangerine dreams.

Discover creatures who play and chase the sun as he rolls down the sky.

Feel grateful for each moment.

Ease the Mind

There's no way to cure worry. But we can learn to get better at recognizing it,

 and gently guide ourselves back to what matters.

- Elisha Goldstein

The brain often tricks us by amplifying the woe and minimizing the joy. Worry exists in the human condition even though it has no utility. 

We worry to anticipate and avoid potential situations and to keep us safe. Worrying ramps up our nervous system. Yet we go into an imbalance that leads to more frustration.

Feelings of fear arouse anxiety when we worry. We need to acknowledge the fear and call it out. If we resist, it persists. We need to let it be as it is. Allow it.

Ask questions of worry.

What does this feeling require right now?  Is it an animal that needs care and safety? How will it discover a sense of security?

Deepen awareness. Think of love or a kindness to shift the feeling. This lessens negative thinking.

Take a break from jousting with worry. Rather than change the way you think, change your relationship to your thoughts. 

Learn to watch your thoughts, rather than engage with them.

When a negative thought distracts, stop the runaway train. Notice sights, sounds, scents, a taste of air. Engage with a feeling.

Stay with what’s going on in the moment. Find words of admiration to discover the rightness of things. 

Observe nature with all your senses.

Create your own metaphor for struggle. Consider your greatest accomplishment and how you achieved it. Recall it in detail.

Avoid always thinking in fix-it mode.

Sing La La La and launch into a favorite melody.

Keep a journal for positive ideas and gratitude comments and write in it just before bed.

Use humor to design a defense.

Feel less reactive to the worried mind. Turn the volume down. Feel spacious, with ease and joy.

 

Get Lost in Socks

Do you even wonder about single shoes? Some sit alone on the sidewalk. Others arrive in the gutter on a busy street.  How did they escape their mates? Who left them lonely on the highway?

What about socks lost in the laundry?  Some hide scrunched in towels. 
Others wrap around underwear for comfort. Should we wear mismatched socks to attract the soxes errant?

We develop comfort zones in our writing. Once in a while, we need to delve and take risks to push boundaries. Writing grows when everyone experiments.

Play. Play. Play. If you find your internal editor invading your playground, write yourself out of the judgment.

Nurture your freedom to risk and choose one of the above for a fun write.You can always write about those escaped shoes and socks.

Get lost in socks.

Body Over Mind

I begin the day with a yoga class to move past tightness and breathe beyond difficulties. By twists and turns, I ease my mind and limbs into the poses. Stretching right side, then left extends boundaries. How grateful I feel that I do not possess the appendages of an octopus today.

Remaining in each moment soothes all tightness. Strength enlivens my body and mind. The process itself unravels frustration and opens possibilities like my writing does.

After class I watch clouds clumping into animal shapes.  The wind lifts my hair in a face tickle. Spring seeps into my cells and brings thoughts of renewal with flashes of color that erupt from the earth.

I feel refreshed and returned to my true nature.

Alain de Botton writes, "We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure can anything grow." 

Consider what you find difficult today. How will you bring successes from the past to your present moments of discomfort? 

Laugh and breathe to discover and move beyond today's difficulties.

Dessert in Words

 

Add spice and imagery to your writing by avoiding worn out modifiers and phrases.When you write an overused image like blue sky, consider what else you could use in sound, scent, taste or texture to pique the reader's curiosity and gain attention. 

Notice the difference in imagery:

a broken tool          half a pair of scissors


a rusted car              Cadillac dappled with rust

beautiful woman     woman with a piano player's fingers

quiet day                  even the birds overslept

good friend              tasty as triple chocolate cake


Create descriptions:  summer day, hot morning, wet dress, cheeping bird, frustration, anger, anxiety. 

Fountain Pen Ponies

For me, a fountain pen provides pleasure more than fingers tapping on the keys. The scent and flow of a pen pony across the page creates rhythm and energy that equals meditation. Use of colored ink also enthuses my writer's mind.

I keep a full stable of fountain pens filled with green, turquoise, yellow and magenta inks. I also have red rose-scented ink. Some barrels feel feisty to my touch like Thoroughbreds. Others create the syncopated ride of a Missouri Fox Trotter. 

I have quarter horses and a Morgan or two that move my words with a pleasing gait. My Arabians kick up their heels on cold mornings. The scent of ink on a variety of papers stimulates my imagination.

Writing letters to friends and other writers encourages an action similar to free flow with a friendly recipient. 

If you have a favorite fountain pen pony, write a letter today and feel the energy.

Duty of Happiness

Robert Louis Stephenson wrote, "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. Happiness does not need to become the goal. We need a variety of experiences and moods to write about." 

In the 1980’s  Martin E.P. Seligman adopted the term, “positive psychology.” After years of studying the “learned helplessness” that characterized depression he began to study how individuals could learn optimism. Seligman felt a search for “authentic happiness” made more sense than  relying on psychology’s one-sided focus on illness and disorders. 

Study optimism, courage and perseverance rooted in social and civil well-being.

Consider how to gather simple pleasures. The process itself will attract feelings of exultation.

Awaken to positivity that explodes in blossoms and blue sky. Take a pleasure interlude to revel in the marvelous nature shares.

Stay awake to joy and appreciation for growing creatures, birds, plants and trees.

Discover Where Writing Leads

All your yesterdays are buried deep. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud formidable from a distance.  The cloud clears as you enter smooth as silence; rough as glass.
                                 - from West with the Night by Beryl Markam.

Life involves a push and pull of forces. It becomes a strain for something; often against a resistance.  

We grow to appreciate the little things. When life wears us down, we learn problem solving, creative choices and acceptance. Writing about the stresses and strains clears our vision.  It permits possibities to appear. 

Creative action:

Create two columns where you list five favorite and five disappointing yesterdays.

Include those that have become "buried deep." Add achievements,  celebrations, and friendships on one side.  On the other side post fragile times of loss, failure and frustration. 

Pair one from each column and write to the pair for fifteen minutes.

Consider what the joys, stresses and strains create when interwoven.  To distance yourself, write in third person.  

Notice where the writing leads.

Hir a Thoddaid - Write a Welsh Poem

The Thoddaid (TOE-thy'd) is a Welsh poetry form. It includes a combination of end rhymes and internal rhyming.

Rules:

- Six lines
- Lines one through four and six have nine syllables and share the same end rhyme.
- Fifth Line has 10 syllables.
- There is a "B" rhyme somewhere near the end of the fifth line and beginning the sixth line.


Beyond the breakers there forms a glow
where a pause in the waves looks like snow
as a sunbeam marks shadows for show
along its stream feathers move below
then flapping soars an osprey way up high
captures sky wonder for a wild blue show.

Write a nature Thoddaid. Mention a flower or bird. Or use them in a title and do not mention them in the poem.

Find the Flow

 

"It is better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun." 

- Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver also wrote, "Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you want to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

Identify where energy needs release for creativity.

Enhance the flow.


Relax the tweaks, unravel snarls.

Cut through the nets where the art of wonder tangles. 

Flap into fantasies with diligence, zeal, and purpose. 

It takes effort to progress past the quagmire of life's onslaughts.

Find and follow the flow with a suggestion from Lao Tzu  to enjoy your greatest treasures: simplicity, patience and compassion.

Discover a Doorway into Thanks

 

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak

                  - Mary Oliver

Discover the simple today. Take a wander around the area. 

Notice what summer brings. Turn a stone over and find creatures that wriggle.

Listen to birdsong and neighborhood sounds. Which scents arrive on the breeze? Become aware of silence.

Turn a corner.

Do you find a "silence in which another voice may speak." Find the doorway into thanks.

Discover Possibilities

 

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." 

                             —Eleanor Roosevelt

What does it take for self-mastery?  Life provides opportunities for self-discoveries through errors made. Insights move into moments of enlightenment. Miles Davis says, "Do not fear mistakes. There aren't any. Only lessons."  

If we pay attention to our choices, we can make different mistakes and learn new skills. Life can be compared to a pencil with a point and an eraser. We're meant to use the eraser but not to let it erase so far down we forget to use the point.

It takes a lifetime to learn about ourselves as we commit experience.  We use and discard mental patterns and habits. Often we intercept choices before they turn into misfortunes. We learn to solve problems.

To evolve with self-mastery, we need to let go of what does not serve us and discover possibilities.

Tickle for a Laughter-noon

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. 

Such a thing is an impossibility. 

Inside of the dullest exterior 

there is a drama , a comedy, and a tragedy.” - Mark Twain 

Life's too short to write its drama and tragedy. Write your life as a comedy. During the day, alter events to evoke laughter and silliness. 

Go for the fun. Write words that spell lightness, playfulness and joy. Smile until your cheeks ache. 

Write about the mysteries that delight. 

Feel chuckles tickle your knuckles for a laughter-noon.

 

Who Remembers Baby Boomer Time?

 

Launched after World War ll, we became the first wave of baby boomers.

Born to win and teased by change, we searched for identities, questioned authority, and marched for freedom.

We expected the Best in our American dream and share a mosaic of memories.

Here are a few:

"I remember Mama . . . and the day when Dagmar put her elbows on the table," the television program began.

Lucky Strike meant fine tobacco. A boy dressed in a red coat and a box hat called for Phillip Moraaaace.

Gloreous George glorified wrestling, loved by grandmothers.

Russians sent Sputnik into the skies.

We went into orbit with Alan Shepherd and John Glenn.

A father knew Best. Ozzie and Harriet defined values and behavior for American families.

With the key from around our necks, we unfastened our metal skates and nailed them to a long board, with one set of wheels at each end.

At school sirens tested our air raid skills forcing us under desks until the all clear. Parents wearing gas masks marched in front of the schools to protest the arrivial of "smog" created by automobiles.

We sang, "Brusha Brusha Brusha with Bucky Beaver.

Paying $3 per car at the drive in movies, we paired or double dated, fogging the car windows.

Car hops rushed on roller skates at drive-ins for food, delivering burgers and double thick chocolate malts. 

We wriggled on seats at corner soda fountains sipping cherry cokes.

Nehis and hog dogs, Pez candy, and Bosco added to our diets.

Doris Day and Rock Husdon romanced from twin beds.

The Mouseketeers amused with Annette.

We sang the Monster Mash with the Purple People Eater and danced the mashed potato, the twist, and the swim.

Ed Sullivan celebrated Elvis and the Beatles.

See you later alligator.  In a while crocodile.

Joan Baez strummed in coffee houses and sparked our souls to peace.

Beatniks arose. Then we had hippies.

Madras and tie-dye.  Lava lamps.
       Sonny and Sher made the beat go on.

Nehru jackets, bell bottoms and huge daisies sprouted.  VW buses went on the road to Woodstock and free love.

We glorified flower power wearing love beads of mellow yellow and jolly green.
Then rushed to "feel he warm" with McKuen and read, The Profit by Gibran. 

Aretha. Mic and the Stones.

Hendrix sent us into a purple haze as our world flashed in strobe, black light nd psychedelia.

Lucy in the Sky and Along Comes Mary sent cryptic messages.

Ban the bomb.

Feelin' groovy or burning bras.

Some protested war fought in a far jungle. Others left for Canada or Mexico.

Too many heroes died. So many returned in pain.
        Too many heroes came home to rejrection.
               Hello darkness my old friend.

Simon and Garfunkle promised a bridge over troubled waters.

Watts erupted ro remind us of our differences. Kent State fueled our angst.

Gas sold for 25 cents a gallon.

We watched the moon landing with victory leaps for humanity.

We mourned the loss of JFK, Bobby, and Martin.

Beyond our confusion, we created true freedom, discovered the Best within ourselves.

We became the Best and our Best goes on.

What do you recall?