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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
Previous ... - 1- 2 ... Next
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Prompt: "A little impatience will spoil great plans." ~~ Chinese Proverb
"Crossing over to a path that suits your passions and your dreams are possible if you live your life on purpose."~~
Glenda Hatchett
What are your thoughts?
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I don’t think a little of anything is all that harmful, unless you’re talking about snake venom or saran gas. A little impatience is a push to action. A little impatience occurs when people have a goal. It pushes us to reduce the costs of reaching our goal, or to switch goals. In addition, people may feel a bit impatient if or when they have other options, which can be better picks to work with instead of waiting.
A big impatience, on the other hand, may mean rash decisions and disaster, and too much patience leads to sloth or waiting for something to happen that will never happen.
Can a little impatience spoil great plans? Possibly although rarely, but a true blue impatience probably would.
As to Glenda Hatchett’s quote, if a person knows what his passions and dreams are, that person would be happier if he or she followed through and found a suitable path. Knowing one’s passions and dreams is knowing one’s purpose in life as well as getting a hint of what that person’s strengths are.
When we work from our strengths, we are bound to become successful, if not externally then internally. Our time on earth is precious and limited. We need to make the most of it for ourselves and for the world that sustains us.
Prompt: Robin Williams said: "Spring is nature's way of saying: "Let's Party!" What are your thoughts on this?
Party? I rather think nature is saying, “Get to work.” All that blood rushing to young heads and making them jittery, from people to birds, beasts, and plants. Yes, the flowers are fun, especially the first eager beaver crocuses, lilies, and tulips. Their appearances signal the coloring of the bare ground and bring the crestfallen grass of winter to green excitement.
Then, of course, those of us who are impeccable housekeepers get into the flow of spring cleaning. Does spring cleaning remind you of partying? Not me, it doesn’t. If anything, as much as I dare praise those do-gooders who are attached to their brooms and mops, I don’t think they are partying. On the contrary, their zest and enthusiasm makes me sick to my stomach.
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Prompt: What is charisma to you and can too much charisma be harmful?
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Charisma is something like a talent or a charm that one can have or acquire. Such a person inspires dedication and admiration from those surrounding him or her. Charismatic people are at their best when their attentions are focused on others rather than their own actions and positive sides. That is when they can fully influence, attract, and charm others.
As to too much charisma, since charisma comes equipped with a high degree of self-confidence, such people may, at times, can be seen as braggarts, even if they may be open to new ideas and can establish new methods for stronger successes.
Even for a charismatic person, it isn’t always possible to capture everyone’s attention and get them to share a vision. Then, a highly charismatic person who is exploring a new idea may not be able to follow up on it because he or she may be attracted by another idea or strategy since most extremely charismatic people are drawn toward new and exciting venues. With that in the works, who in their right mind would want to follow such a person even if that person is very charismatic!
Charisma can also be harmful in the way that highly charismatic people can be suspected of being fake, and not having a genuine goodwill in their relationships.
Granted that some amount of charisma is needed for accomplishments, but too much of it may prove to be too much of a good thing.
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Prompt: “Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.” John Banville
What are your thoughts on this quote?
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I have difficulty with this quote; that is why I asked about it to other friends. The word amoral means, “lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.”
As far as the word amoral is concerned, I can accept that. One can write a fiction piece about a stage in an immoral person’s life or one can write about the doomsday for the planet. This doesn’t mean the writer accepts immorality or wishes the worst possible outcome on the people and the planet.
Still, the “cold at heart” phrase throws me off. I believe good writing should evoke some emotion in the reader; although this can be done by showing the worst things to elicit fear or empathy, it can also be done by elevating the good. But then, this is where I have a problem with my writing. I need to like my main characters. Then, because I like them, I tend to take it easy on them. In the same vein, I just finished reading a suspense story, Framed by James Scott Bell, where the author took no pity on his protagonist, until the end of the novel. One can learn so much from other writers and the ways they treat their characters, but I digress.
Fact is, how can one not take sides? I find a slant in just about every work I read, even if that slant is not openly mentioned or shown. Take any prize-winning work; Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See just came to mind, which won the Pulitzer. Such a novel can show the atrocities or the negatives realistically, but it is still on the side of the positive. So, where’s the cold heart in that? I have to believe the finest fiction has to have the warmest heart, although that heart may be concealed expertly.
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March 24, 2018 at 11:41pm March 24, 2018 at 11:41pm
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PROMPT: At what point do we concede the generation coming after us may be right where we were not?
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The next generation may be right in many areas but that, only time will tell. I think, this is because what we do today has its repercussions tomorrow and those repercussions will be highly influenced by the circumstances of that time.
My hope for the human family is that each generation betters what comes before it so we see progress in our species. On the other hand, it seems our race takes one step forward while taking two or more back and rarely, when we get lucky, vice versa. There is no smooth way of evaluating the events of today and figuring out where we are wrong, since even the idea of right or wrong changes with time and with generations.
Taking into account the way the kids of today want gun control and better management from those who have the say in those things, kids’ point of view feels right to me, but also, we have the second amendment and there are people who defend the opposite and show good reasons for their beliefs. Who is really right I can’t say for sure, and neither can I tell if the kids are mature enough for some of the serious decisions. All I can see is that they are hurting and rightfully so, and we have to respect that and their views.
Then, when I was young, that is several decades ago, my generation, too, thought they could change the world for the better. In fact, at that time, we were very sure of that. Today, I am not sure we were 100% successful, if at all.
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March 23, 2018 at 11:57pm March 23, 2018 at 11:57pm
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Prompt: "We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead."~ Beyonce --- Do you agree or disagree with Beyonce? What are good examples in your opinion of women taking the lead? Bad examples?
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I agree with the first sentence. The idea in the second sentence we shouldn’t force, not before we’re perfectly qualified and not looking for an easy way in, just to take the lead.
The first sentence, “We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves,” is absolutely correct. In my dinosaur time, no man ever held me back. It was the other older women who were acting more for their kings than the kings themselves, which was during the late fifties and sixties. This stance applied not only to the women around me but to the majority of them. “Of course, my dear, the home should be the woman’s first concern and being a good wife, you wouldn’t neglect your home, hour husband…blah, blah, blah!” Luckily, we had the seventies and the women’s undertaking for equality.
Nowadays, most women are stepping up, but are they taking the lead? I think yes, but only sometimes, and not always.
Then, at other times some women rise in the ranks without due qualification, and for superficial reasons. Think Hollywood! Think Harvey Weinstein!
This bothers me a lot. Women, as well as men, should be able to take the lead only when they deserve it and for the right reasons.
Prompt: Use these words to weave us a freaky Friday tale.
account date paper blackmail hit soul seed boat
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The Gift
He had received a boat as a gift from her on a Friday, a freaky Friday, after he had accused her of blackmail, making a mess of their accounts, and forging the date on their bank statement.
He had shoved the documents to her face. “Look, how the paper is scraped and there’s a white glob on the side! Your handiwork, ain't it!”
She could have hit him right there and then. Instead, she had shrugged it off, but the seeds of her disappointment had to sprout somehow. So, she had bared her soul, among other things, to the bouncer at the bar, who had said, “He shouldn’t talk like that to a woman like you. I’ll piss on him for you.” And the rest was history.
As she swirled around the pole to the applause of the customers, she thought about him now, in his water-logged boat with barnacles stuck on its sides and the algae dancing over him at the bottom of the ocean.
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March 22, 2018 at 12:07am March 22, 2018 at 12:07am
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Prompt: "There is something delicious about writing the first few words of a story. You never quite know where they will take you." What are your thoughts on this quote?
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I think this is a pantser speaking.
I am of two minds on this. I love just to write anything and take it from there, but I consider such stories or other writing as free-flow, which I am guilty of doing quite often in a physical notebook. Free-flowing, in other words pantsing, is the ultimate, oxytocin-producing delight for me. When I am into this kind of off-the-cuff-production, it leads into the propagation of side stories, subplots, far-out ideas, and I have no way of figuring out the end or the length of the story. Still, unlike some writers, I have never worried about the so-many-pages-to-fill dilemma.
Yet, seeing the botched-up results of such delightful experiences, I learned to write with an outline especially when venturing into longer works. Still, in the case of the from-an-outline story, the first few words and the first paragraph usually become torturous because I begin mulling over the entire novel and try to foreshadow the conflict without giving it away.
I think the best way might be, if writing from an outline, to put down the beginning without thinking too much, then coming back and fixing it once I get into the story and the characters lead me into their ways. This is due to the fact that, even with a detailed outline, I find that things change mostly because characters speak up and push their own agendas into the story, even to the point of altering the setting or adding to it.
This characters’ taking-over-action happens when we are good with characterization. That is when our characters gain individuality, a way of life, a bit of humor and a strong sense of drama with a knowledge and the acceptance or sometimes the rejection of other characters’ idiosyncrasies, motives, passions, and hooplas.
With pantsing, the fun is discovering our story along the way, but without any thought or even at least a premise, one can get lost so easily. On the other hand, if you wait until you are really familiar with every aspect of the story and you have completely figured out what you’ll write, you’ll never be able to start. I know some writers who plan for years to write one short novella. I even suspect some never start putting down the first word.
After all, writing itself is a catch-22 situation, isn’t it!
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Happy First Day of Spring!
Prompt: Baby animals are born in the spring. You can pick any baby animal for a pet. Which one would you choose and why?
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I am kind of partial to kittens and puppies because I know a little bit about them. They also stay tame when they grow up. I don’t think it is moral to get any baby animal--just because you think they are cute--and when they grow up you discard them.
If I knew I could send them to a place where they would be getting a good care when they are older, I could go for other feline babies like tiger or lion cubs. I think most baby animals are lovable, anyway. Also, I love all birds who deserve to be wild and free, and baby chicks and ducklings can be delightful to watch, but they should belong with their families in the chicken coop or wherever the farmers keep the duck families.
On the internet, I have been watching from a webcam a bald-headed eagle nest for a few years now, and their eaglets are adorable, but wild animals do belong in the wild and we have no right to try to tame them or keep them as our captives.
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Prompt: If you travel a lot, how does traveling affect your writing, and even if you don’t, in what ways do you think traveling experiences might help your writing?
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I am not traveling like crazy anymore, but I used to.
Traveling and gathering new experiences and insights surely has a positive effect on writing. Plus, as writers, all we need is paper and pen and it is available everywhere we can go.
On the other hand, it is a fact that, at times, I couldn’t go anywhere without my netbook or a laptop because I like using the keyboard and seeing what I write on the screen in front of me. Yet, in the far distant past, I used to borrow or rent typewriters where I went just to copy and send what I had put down on paper with a pen, but those days are prehistoric for people who are born after the eighties. Still, paper and pen can be enough to jot down what we see and feel.
When we are on the road or when we visit a place for the first time, we find so much to learn from the tastes, smells, sounds of a place to the people or nations who are hosting us. In most situations, we easily recognize the strangeness or the familiarity of mundane things and our own shortcomings, too, when we are face to face with a different culture.
Even in the internet age, the better authors make it their business to visit the settings of their stories because seeing a video of a site isn’t enough. A writer needs to breathe the air, understand the positives and negatives, sense the depth and riches of the local nature, and feel the pulse of the residents of a place, so he or she can reflect all those things inside her words to instill a certain truth to his or her work.
Being a visitor or a tourist makes a person ready to notice things. This noticing habit, or astonishment, can later be adapted to everything and everywhere else, including our own hometown and street. It may even let us notice the peculiarities inside ourselves and our everyday life.
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Prompt: The Polish poet Adam Zagajewski said that in his country, “poetry killed communism.” Do you think poets can be the forerunners of social change, and if so, how are they managing to bring such revolutions about?
Here's an Adam Zagajewski poem:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/11970/auto/0/NEW-HOTEL
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Poets certainly can and do initiate social and political changes by appealing to the emotions of the people and by pointing out what is missing from their lives or the way they are governed or by pointing to a disturbing status quo. Here are a few lines by Gregory Corso
“The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways…”
In its essence, poetry can be the perfect setting for social change no matter what the specific subject may be, and whether the feeling is nostalgia or hope, poetry projects confidence in the power and wisdom of a society. This stance isn’t only in our present day but in history, too, for example Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 39 and 40th stanzas of Song to the Men of England
“What is Freedom?—ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well—
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
’Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants’ use to dwell…”
And in his Chicago Poems, Carl Sandburg talks about the power of the people to not forget wrongs while learning how to correct them and be better in the future.
“Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers,
mothers lifting their children--these all I
touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.
And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions
of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than
crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the
darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations.”
Poets can also make the people aware of certain ideas that may be alien to them such as awareness of the animal species decreasing or the weather creating havoc in everyone’s lives.
Here is an excerpt from Robin Becker’s
Elegy for the Northern Flying Squirrel
“Once the cambered airfoil
of furry tail
struck an Olympic landing on a trunk.
We did not witness
or admire the aerobatic, nocturnal feats,
visible only to other
canopy dwellers and the field biologist….
The fast decline of the Northern
Flying Squirrel:
symptom of larger malaise”
Then, they can point to injustices and human right violations as in the poem of Sarita Callender, which talks about human trafficking in her poem Fus Ro Dah.
“The pain, the fear, the unknowing.
The starvation, separation and threats.
The rapes, the bleeding, hope lost.
They took my children away from me.”
And in Maya Angelou’s On the Pulse of Morning
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.
Better yet, evoking hope for the betterment of social and international structures can drip from a poet’s pen.
From I Am Waiting By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder”
From To Hope by John Keats
“Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!”
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Prompt: Something's got to give...but what/who/when/where/why?
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“Something's got to give” ? Ahha! It is a Marilyn Monroe movie, which when I was young my mother banned any Marilyn Monroe movie until she saw it first and deemed it proper for my viewing.
But something did give…I read weird(!) books hiding under the tables and beds and, later on, watched all the improper (!) movies with my friends. This was in the dinosaur times of the 1950s and 1960s when most women were protected{!} first by mommies, much later by husbands. Why? I can’t tell. Must be due to some kind of a brain fog, although I don’t think this one was the result of the ingestion of mercury-laden fish, as in those days, beef and potatoes were the norm together with sudden heart attacks. Of course, something had to give. You see, I am not all that crazy about the “good old days.”
But then, this is an idiom, too, isn’t it? Thus, it can be applied to many situations. If I wrote all about those situations, I’d have to write volumes on mostly iffy hypothetical circumstances like the environment, like the lack of world peace, like anything political…so on and so forth.
‘Something’s gotta give’ can very well apply to my life right now, too. I never thought I’d be this busy in retirement, and not because of having fun with other retirees, either. It is because I find myself doing much more work in every area possible than the time when I was in my thirties and forties, and with a weaker body yet. Not to mention the constantly-coffee-needing mind and whatever else. Still, as of today, something’s-got-to-give didn’t happen. Thank God! And Thank God that I am loving every minute of my life, no matter how difficult or busy it gets.
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Prompt: Let a little bit of leprechaun mischief or magic slip into your blog today. Have fun...
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Never Cross a Leprechaun
Now, do not smirk and do not yawn!
You must not cross a leprechaun,
short, green, and tricky,
he’ll be gross, icky
with cheap tipple, yet unseen brawn.
Sophic vision, if you've amassed,
won’t amount to digestive gas
or your drunken dream
of surging upstream
holding on to a blade of grass.
Then, keep off from his fairy rings
and don’t touch the imps’ flimsy wings,
daring though this is,
you are not a wiz
you’ll feel the blahs and raging stings.
A leprechaun is magical,
he can dance, prance, but is fickle,
and while snores and sleeps,
he casts spells in heaps.
Then, zap! You’ll be in a pickle.
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March 16, 2018 at 12:07am March 16, 2018 at 12:07am
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Prompt: Have fun with these words--
assume, disposition, last, bond, minimize, applaud, spirit
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To a Food Thief
How odd to applaud
my disposition,
assuming it has changed
over time to bond
with your distraught spirit
down on its luck!
I guess I can’t expect you
to read me perfectly
but do not welcome me
to your underworld
just because
I’ve minimized
your insufferable spectacle
of predatory brilliance
when you pilfered
my last éclair.
Prompt: Imagine Spring Fever was a real person. What would he or she look like? What would he or she do to make it a good spring?
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Spring fever entered the courtyard wearing trousers folded up to her knees. She was barefoot. Raising one leg than the other she splotched in the rain. Then she cocked her head this way and that and crooned at the birds on the branches.
The minute she smiled, sunbeams broke through the branches overhead and the buds on the trees began to come alive and open into light green leaflets. People had warned me that she was bipolar, but I didn’t know she could change so quickly from one minute to the next. Still, her beauty was flawless and the more she smiled, the warmer the weather became.
She moved forward like a song and touched me and my companion. We both felt her mantras echoing inside us, but as beauty is a liability, we didn’t feel she had a brain. Not a good one anyhow! Yet, in her native superiority, she threw her fiery glance about, together with the thorns that grew on the roses and the thorns inside me, thorns of doubt that what she encouraged us to feel she could not change with her touch and we would be made to remain inside her intense tune. Was I wrong? I would find out, come summer.
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Prompt: "Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it." Emily Dickinson Do you agree? Write anything you want about this.
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The purpose of life’s spell must be to magnify or add to the positive energy. Yet, who can understand and appreciate it? We are born with blank brains that are filled in with stuff from our environments. Then, according to our circumstances, we curse or applaud life or fate itself. Still, some of us try to decipher that spell and take apart its components. This trying to figure out life can be the very thing that makes it other than what it is, bitter than what it is. If we just accepted life as is, maybe we could just dwell in it without breaking its spell.
Anyhow, this is what I think Emily Dickinson might have meant, although no one can really tell what any poet means by any line of his or her words. In addition, I don’t agree with the idea that “everything conspires to break it,” which is a gloomy view of that “everything.”
Prompt: Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
What do you think are the pros and cons of trying to get to know someone better of whom we have a negative first impression?
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People don’t always hit it off right away. In order to create better understanding and appreciate our differences, we need to give another chance to people who rubbed us the wrong way in the beginning.
The initial dislike between people can happen anywhere, but it is especially harmful in a workplace. Let’s face it, we have to work together so whatever it is we are working toward—a project, a company, workers unity, a competition, a team, etc.—can be successful. For that, we need to identify the differences, accept, and even use them for the greater purpose.
Then, more often than not, first impressions can be at fault. We might have seen in the other person something we don’t like in another, due to his or her simple likeness in an area, say the hairstyle, since the mind has its own way of reading data and converting it to ideas. Even if for this reason only, we must give the other person the benefit of the doubt and try to get to know them much better. After all, what have we got to lose?
Prompt: “Gardening, like life, requires courage. We must be brave enough to cut back the old and sit with fewer branches, awaiting new growth. And we must trust that it will come.” From Waking up in Winter by Cheryl Richardson
Can you think of any specific areas of living where this cutting back and waiting for new growth idea would apply?
Growth and change in life is a natural phenomenon. While we like growing a spirit of freedom, nurturing and exciting friendships, and positive pastimes, when daily demands keep us busy and focused on only certain areas and we think life is satisfying and rewarding, we may not notice the surplus and superfluous aspects of living crowding our attention. When this happens and we notice it, we need to dig up the weeds, prune excesses and unrewarding activities, and not let the choking addictions take over us like the stubborn poison ivy.
Should weeds, excesses, or addictions of any kind appear we must be able to get rid of them and wait for the new growth, which will need hard work, patience, and courage. With a determined mindset, this will happen and we must trust the process with patience that it has to happen, as our freedom, internal and external, lies in our brave actions.
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March 10, 2018 at 11:49pm March 10, 2018 at 11:49pm
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PROMPT: What's your favorite way of responding to someone who considers their competence to be at least on some level knowledgeable in a category they've visibly proven they're less than capable of living up to? Where's the line when it comes to calling people out on their self-perceived superiority?
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First, truly knowledgeable people do not act superior to others. When it comes to calling people out on their self-perceived superiority, I myself have to be really knowledgeable in that area, and I would only call anyone out if their self-perceived competence is misleading other people or causing any problems for someone else.
Then another scenario could be, provided that I have more knowledge than such a person and if I find such people open to suggestions, I would try to recommend them some reading material or some courses they could attend to.
Otherwise, it is not my business to beat up on people who are incompetent and headstrong unless they are hurting someone or something.
Acting superior in an area when one is not capable may mean that person has a superiority complex, as that's the exact name Alfred Adler called it. Superiority Complex is a defense mechanism, and it is the result of feeling inadequate. If I suspect that a person's superiority show is the result of such a complex, I might try to ease his burden by showing the truly positive things in his life, but doing more than that still is not my business. That person has to see a therapist. |
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Prompt: Do you ever have days when you know if you say what's really on your mind, you'll scare people away? Here's your opportunity to vent without consequence What's really on your mind?
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Keeping thoughts to myself doesn’t mean I am keeping them a secret, but there are boundaries where people are concerned and no one should cross them. Aside from those boundaries, I don’t keep secrets about myself because secrets point to fear, and I fear nobody.
What I fear, if I fear, is hurting someone else’s self-confidence or belief system. Most people are fiery about their political views and religious beliefs or non-beliefs. Even though it is everyone’s legal right to express them without insulting the other person, some people are so militaristic that another person’s opinion, however politely expressed, they take as an affront. So, I won’t talk about religion or politics, period, but I don’t fear about scaring anyone away. I fear they’ll hurt themselves because they can’t stand someone else’s truth. Then, why should I talk about something that’s on my mind, something that bugs me, especially in a blog where the whole world can have access to?
Telling things without wanting to is succumbing to pressure. I don't take pressure well, and I am not afraid of scaring anyone away. Those who have decided to stay away from me are already staying away, I’m sure.
In addition, I don’t need to vent about anyone, but if I wanted to vent, I would vent about myself, about things like, why is it that, after I got older, I have less stamina or why am I forgetting stuff more and why am I, once in a while, using the wrong word instead of the intended one?
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Prompt: Nine random words to be used as a blog entry, poem or story on this ninth day of March. Have fun.
equip, rumor, marble, challenge, expansion, food, brave, burial, register
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Keeping Secrets
worries marble
like clouds challenging
with bravado,
in overtures
and expansion,
spreading rumors
of destruction
but you are equipped
with food for thought
similar to prayers, and
a brave gatekeeper
that you are,
after registering the dead,
you lower your pains
stiff and sharp,
into their burial crypts.
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Prompt: "Saying nothing sometimes says the most." Emily Dickinson
Do you agree?
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Yes, I agree but only partially. On a personal one-to-one basis, not saying anything or not answering a question that passes the limits of acceptability does say the most.
On the other hand, there are situations where you have to say something if you are a self-respecting individual and a good citizen of the world, for example when you see great injustice being done to a great number of people and other beings.
Prompt: You see green, blue and red flashing lights in your bathroom at night. What is happening and do you dare enter?
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First, I’d be worried that the flashing lights are being caused by my eyesight, specifically the retina separating. I would turn my head in all directions to figure out if the lights are coming from only one direction. If the flashing lights are from every direction, I’d call my ophthalmologist.
If only from the bathroom, I’d go open the door carefully, hoping to find a smart Martian in there who could help me with Windows 10 that suddenly goes into sleep mode on its own while I am in the middle of writing something, but no luck there. As an aside, as much as my writing may put the darn system to sleep, Windows 10 is not supposed to do that to me.
Fact is, I’d probably see some electrical lights or appliances attached to the wall, like electric toothbrushes, shorting themselves out.
Prompt: “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Are you always aware of the reasons for your opinions and the way you think? And what do you make of Nietzche’s quote?
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No, unless I sit down and really think about every single opinion, I’m not always aware of the reasons for my opinions 100%, as some of our reasoning is based on our upbringing, the way the societies we are in have molded us, our beliefs past and present like the ten commandments, and our personal experiences.
If Nietzche has remembered every single reason for every single opinion he held, my hat’s off to him; however, I don’t think such a feat is possible to us people who are in human form.
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Prompt: Is there any way to spot a liar? Do you have a special trick for it or what makes you suspicious that someone is lying?
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Most of the prompts I come up with have to do with writing. This one is no exception as it has to do with character actions.
Is there any way to spot a liar? Not really, since everyone acts and reacts differently to a stimulus or what they want to get out of a conversation. As for me, no I have no tricks. Something about the person, though, makes me suspicious when that person is lying; however, I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. It is a gut feeling or sixth sense.
So, I checked the Emotion Thesaurus for writers. It has no entry for how liars act. An FBI agent, however, has some tricks to get the truth from the person he interrogates, although these are not tricks for spotting a liar for a regular person.
https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/an-fbi-agent-s-8-ways-to-spot-a-liar.html
Then, I found a page in La Times where it lists “dead giveaways” to spot a liar.
“Liars often:
1. Avoid eye contact.
2. Look down when speaking.
3. Angle their body away from the person they're speaking too.
4. Omit critical information.
5. Get fidgety or agitated when pressed for details.
6. Touch their faces, especially their nose.
7. Less apparent to the eye: Their heartbeat skyrockets and their pulse quickens.”
My answers to those:
1. Most Middle-Eastern women (sometimes men, too) are brought up not to look directly into someone’s eye or face.
2. Some people are shy or have an inferiority complex which makes them look down.
3. A person may angle his/her body away for many other reasons, a cramp in the leg for example, but I think this is a good sign if you know the person well and he or she suddenly changes his/her posture.
4. Not everyone wants to tell about some things. They may be private things they won’t tell anyone no matter what. Not all evasions have to do with lying.
5. Press me on something private I don’t want to talk about and I’ll get fidgety, too. We all have the right to keep what’s private to ourselves.
6. This may be, but it is still iffy. What if their nose itches? What if they have the mania of putting their hands on their faces?
7. How can one figure this one out if he or she doesn’t have a stethoscope! This pointer may have a use, however, when we writers go into a character’s head and write about the way he feels when he lies.
To wrap it up, in real life, there’s no exact way to spot a liar, but the pointers we may use in our stories. 
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PROMPT: Charles Caleb Colton once said: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." What, in your opinion, makes for a good imitation?
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Humans learn by the monkey-see-monkey-do method from birth on, but not all imitation is perfect. Looking at it from the aspirant’s angle, imitation can be the first step in learning anything, but it can also stifle creativity and take away from the definition of one’s own product. In fact, most anything imitated is mediocre at best.
Yet, it can be flattery to the real thing as only the top products or the envied ones are imitated by the lesser ones. If a person imitates another in whichever thing, it means he or she admires him. This, however, can irritate the copied one. When I was in my teens, my mother’s best friend’s daughter who was about two years younger than me kept imitating me and comparing herself to me all the time. How annoying it was, I cannot even begin to tell. Frankly, I wasn’t flattered at all.
Then, what if someone copies a woman’s style of dressing or copies every fashion trend she picks up when the first woman wants to be the only one wearing something distinctive in a gathering? What if someone steals another’s ideas and presents them as his own before the original idea-owner can present it? Isn’t this stealing instead of flattery? What if someone likes your partner enough to snatch her or him away from you, only because he or she admires your taste?
Although we can’t have copyrights on partners, most things have to abide by the copyright laws. If imitation was at all sincere and well-meaning and there was something good about it, would we need copyright laws at all?
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prompt: A strange noise is coming from inside the closet. Should you open and explore?
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True Story: My son and daughter-in-law gave me one of those helium-filled Happy-Birthday balloons. Since the balloon had a clip at its end, I clipped it at the back of the chair I usually sit in. The balloon was moving as I moved, but I didn’t know that since it was in the back of me. Coco, my kids’ dog, saw it from a distance and thought the balloon was attacking me and she went berserk. As soon as we figured out what bothered Coco, I took the balloon into my closet, feeling like a million bucks because the dog stood up for me. Then, we went our merry way the rest of the day, and I forgot about the balloon.
That night, after a while of going to bed, I heard a bizarre noise coming from the closet. That closet is a walk-in closet and it has one door and no windows. “What’s that?” I asked. ”Must be a raccoon outside,” answered my husband. “No, it’s coming from the inside,” I said, “I think it is in the closet.” “Go back to sleep!” said my easy-going hubby in his usual stoical tone.
Heck, no! I couldn’t because the noise continued and in the still of the night, its tone became even harsher.
Was there an animal in there? A snake? One of those Florida creatures? A ghost? Heaven forbid if it were a few Palmetto Bugs having a party! I could handle a ghost, snake, or any other animal, but if it were Palmetto Bugs, I’d have to call the police, the armed forces, state troopers, and God to rescue…
So, armed with the bug spray, I opened the closet door and saw the heart-shaped helium balloon swaying from side to side and kissing my purses that were on the shelf over my shirts.
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