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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.
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Prompt: What are your favorite summer memories?
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My favorite summer memories involve the members of my family and cousins, usually by the seaside or on a farm. Other than that, being not much of an extremist, I am not too crazy about the extreme seasons that play havoc with the heat and the cold. To me, summer means perspiration, heat, and other sticky, uncomfortable summery things. I prefer Spring and early autumn.
Prompt: What do you think about the fan memorabilia, and have you ever or would you, in the future, pay good money for such an item? Have any of your fictional characters been involved in some way with fan memorabilia?
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I think a fictional character becoming involved in fan memorabilia would be fun to write about. This would certainly add to the character’s quirks. Just imagine that through fan memorabilia the character ends up someone like Richard Bronson.
As for me, not only I wouldn’t pay for such stuff but also, I think such a practice is frivolous, but then, I am no Richard Bronson or someone who takes frolicsome steps unnecessarily that may prove to be lucky when all is said and done. Now, who's the loser?  
As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Prompt: This might apply to any country you are from. What are your feelings for the Memorial Day, and if you were made to serve in a branch of the military, which one would you choose?
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Memorial day is the day to remember the war dead and that’s why the flags fly at half-staff and Taps are played in services. It is, in fact, a very solemn day of reverence and gratitude and one to reminisce and think about treating our living veterans much better for theirs have been the ultimate service and sacrifice.
Memorial day was first known as a decoration day for the practice of decorating graves with flowers and flags, and it began as an appreciative response to the Civil War dead when women first put flowers on soldiers' graves from their sides. Then, people began to put flowers on both the Union and the Confederate soldiers.
If I were called to service, I would like to serve in any way I can, but if I were younger and could do well as a soldier, I would probably like to be in the Navy. Ever since I learned about John Paul Jones and the U.S. ship Bonhomme Richard of the Revolutionary War, U.S. Navy appealed to me; maybe, also because I love the open seas and the oceans and such.
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Prompt: Use these Rolling Stones song titles to create something.
As Tears Go Bye, Wild Horses, Can't You Hear Me Knocking, She's A Rainbow, Time Is On My Side, 19th Nervous Breakdown and Get Off My Cloud.
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To a Soprano
she lives for her 19th nervous breakdown,
translating silence into song
for she’s a rainbow
in a sentimental sky
and I can’t say, “get off my cloud!”
just maybe, time is on my side
then, as tears go by
like wild horses on the prairie
an existence I dismiss
when I hear her long meandering tunes
outdoing my stories
and, I bang my head on her invisible gate
to scream, “Can’t you hear me knocking?”
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Prompt: Write a story or poem about a broken promise.
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Guilt
hard to understand how primal my need
to get over this
this promise that sparkled in your eyes
and crossed an ocean to survive
in my blood, simmering slowly
as a glorious hope
yet the distances spoke and I broke it
with my own hands
into thousand pieces
and now each shard pierces through my skin,
sighing, whispering, prickling
like chimera inside my flesh
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Prompt: Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present. Write anything you want about this.
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Well, there is a plant with the name Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, which is a shrub or a small tree native to the Brazilian rainforests that blossoms late into the season. The plant has fragrant two-inch blossoms that change color with each day and each blossom lasts three days.
Just like this plant, time also changes its colors as we live through it. To me, it doesn’t mean that any of the three days or what they each represent is any better than the others. History is important because we can learn from it. We can learn from it what to do and what to avoid doing. Mystery is important, too, because a hope for the better is instilled in it. Today is a gift because it is where our action and focus must be; it is where we make history to go forward to mystery. It is important because in it we show if we have learned our lessons from the history so we can create a hopeful tomorrow.
Although most anyone would interpret this saying as yesterday and tomorrow are not important but today is, I believe all three are just as important. They are equally important because they show how well or poorly we manage our time, as time is a being in its own right, conceptual though it may be, just as the humans and plants are beings, too; but then, neither plants and humans nor time are permanent beings, letting this string of thought slide toward the utmost importance of what or who is the permanent one.
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Prompt: Have you ever won a contest and found out that the prize was something totally different than advertised? Write about your experience with real life contests.
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Sometimes in WdC, the contest prizes can change if the contest owner receives more donations than he or she has anticipated. Then, the prizes go up and/or extra prize categories are put in. Usually, outside of WdC, contest prizes stay stable. I haven’t experienced any negative of positive change in the prizes offered. Then, maybe this is because I am not into entering too many contests. I don’t even buy a lotto ticket.
Still, I think, contest owners should keep in mind a few ground rules for the integrity of their contests. If a contest-owner wants to change the prizes while the contest is running, she should immediately advertise the fact or notify the contestants and say why the rules are being changed, especially if any significant element of the promotion is being changed such a prize being eliminated, and if a necessary change wasn’t foreseeable or it isn’t under the control of the sponsor.
The owner should also explain if the prizes are being affected by the change or if the change will reduce the value of any of the prizes. It’s also good to remember that the contest-owner is responsible for his or her sponsors. One other thing to keep in mind is from which state or country or internet site the contest has originated and if the change can constitute a violation of the rules of that place or site.
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Prompt: Have your unexpected motives or your perspective (about anything) ever surprised you about yourself? If you don’t want to talk about yourself, then what about the sudden finding out about the motive or perspective of a person or persons you know? What were your feelings like?
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I surprised myself when someone who had harmed me in some way, whom I thought I’d never forgive, had an accident and was hurt badly. I forgot all my rancor immediately and was genuinely sorry for her pain. Then, I found out that I had forgiven her even though I hadn’t caught on to that fact. Seeing my interest in her welfare, I think she was surprised, too.
Sometimes, people do things they earlier thought they’d never do, and together with people who know them, they are surprised or shocked at their own behavior. I think our hearts and minds are at work non-stop, trying to heal us all the time, whether we are aware of their silent workings or not.
The human subconscious is, I think, more powerful than our consciousness. We think we know who we are, our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, and the ways we act, and we often think we are better or worse at something than we really are. In that, even the most introspective people may view themselves with distorted lens. Because we are absolutely convinced we are this way or that, when we act opposite to our views of ourselves, we are shaken or surprised by our own actions.
Then sometimes we do things without any motive evident to us. What we do impulsively or as an instantaneous reaction, I think, says a lot about us. That is why it is a good idea to try to figure out why we act in the way we act suddenly without thinking or as an immediate reaction.
Prompt: Do you find your work in real life, past or present, has affected your writing, positively or negatively, and do you use events from your work in your fiction or poetry?
I try to stay away from mentioning my real-life work in my writing, but only on the surface. Since my work has affected me, and to a degree, has caused my life vision and beliefs to change, it has also affected my writing, by proxy. Sometimes, something escapes from my earlier work, especially into poetry, but then, it is reflected mostly as impressions.
Yet, there are many fictional characters who are given real-life vocations the same as or similar to that of their writers. That is why there are many writer-characters in today’s novels. Then, Cronin who was a doctor made most of his characters into doctors or put them within the reach of the medical profession. Lawyers, too, write good courtroom, murder, or police-procedural mysteries.
Not just our professions or what we do as a vocation, but all areas of our lives have an effect on our writing, even showing up in the supernatural or fantasy genres as metaphors.
Prompt: It's been an interesting week in the news, what caught your attention the most?
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Santa Fe School shooting. Unfortunately.
While I am at it, I am going to rant about something related. I hate our political parties. Both of them.
One of them insists the only way is taking care of mental health and gun control, the other insists on policing. Why can’t we do all of those things at the same time? A problem this huge deserves attacking it from all sides.
You do not put only a Band-Aid on a cancer site. You try to take care of with surgery, medication, emotional support, and even radiation. This problem is no different than a cancerous growth. I think, however, our real cancer is not because of this mishap or that, but the failing of the political system, plus our personal failing of taking sides with those good-for-nothing parties.
I think every one us should register as independents and make those parties really work for us. Just my two cents.
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Prompt: Creation Saturday, let's have some fun with this words :
established, profession, star, donor, fashionable, productive, reality
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Torero
In his established profession,
the fashionable torero
is a star, a productive donor
of fresh blood from the goring
of his gold tunic.
In reality, he’s in it only for
the ringside girl who fears for his gut
with a horn in it, and
yet, with a detached laugh
and evasive logic, guards
his electrifying nights
with Sangria, and shouts,
“Ole!”
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Note: I have no idea where this came from. Definitely not from Meghan and Harry's wedding! Or did it? 
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Prompt: Write a poem about a tall mountain or a tall tree.
Let's take the tall tree or tall mountain and create a story with one or both of them as characters. I know you're creative, you live in Blog City. So, bring them alive.
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If it weren’t for the starling’s song, I wouldn’t tilt my head up and observe how tall the old oak was. I smiled as its branches jiggled when the bird flew off it with couple more of its kind following. Then, I took a deep breath of the sweet, fresh air and felt the caress of the breeze, so slight that I might have imagined it.
“As long as this oak lives, the spirits tied to it will look over us,” said my young companion, Chanise, her lips curved up. She was the daughter of the cook in the B&B we were staying.
I winced. “Spirits?”
Chanise caught my glance and bit her lower lip. “Yup, they are with the Father and they are with us at the same time. That’s what my Ma says.”
“Oh!” I said, feeling emptied of any answers. This was my first time visiting the Southern Appalachia and I didn’t know much about the local beliefs.
Chanise was in her early teens but almost as tall as me. She shook her tightly curled hair and smiled shyly, her eyes shining like black agates. I noticed the many colors reflected on her dusky brown skin as if a mirror would of its environs. How beautiful she is! I thought. She looked like an ancient princess with her loose-fitting dress falling straight off her shoulders to her ankles. She moved to the side of the tree, curving her arm around its trunk in a somewhat protective touch.
“How do you know this tree has spirits?” I asked.
“Look over there, yonder,” she said, pointing to the forest at the foot of the closest mountain. I squinted, taking in the sight of the range of the majestic Blue Mountains.
”See all those trees?” After I nodded, Chanise continued. “Those bunch together. This here tree is standing alone. You know why? It’s because of the people hanged on it.”
Suddenly startled, I exclaimed, “Oh, but that’s so terrible!”
“Ma says my great grandpa was hanged on it, too. For stealing a chicken, which he didn’t do.”
Seeing the shock on my face, she took a few steps near me. “No more,” she said. “Folks don’t do stuff like that no more.”
Of course! She was talking of the lynchings. I had read about those.
“Thank God!” I said, lifting my eyes up again to the oak, standing loftily like a statue dressed in a heavy coat of emerald leaves and casting feverish shadows from its painful past.
The Oak Says
Something in me, I never mention
as I hold my head up high,
yet with fear and frayed nerves,
and I lose myself in a mirror
far-away in centuries
under the haunting
of the moon.
For my green is tinged with red
against the faded marks of rope
circling around my ancient bark
while I grieve my fate and
lament the past
as if some invalid
begging for forgiveness
for this torn world.
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Prompt: Make a list of everything that inspires you-from books to websites, paintings, movies, and anything else you can think of.
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Just about everything inspires me. People, animals, nature, events, weather, cities, nations, any kind of information, etc. Yes, movies, too inspire me, but TV and movies don’t encourage my imagination much. I am basically a reader. I especially like books, and I can visualize anything in a book much better than a movie or TV can show it on screen.
This everything revolution, if you call it that, came about after I started writing free-flow every day. After a good many years off free-flowing, I find I can write about whatever is in front of me, good or bad, but the words come, especially if I am in a quiet place and no one is talking to me and there is no noise to distract me.
I really can’t make a list of things that inspire me because how do you make a list of everything? I can only pinpoint instances when an experience is so rewarding that I don’t take the time to think it is inspiring while I am in it. For example, when I am at the beach enjoying the waves or dinner with people I like or music, arts, and books; in addition, happiness when it is contagious from someone who’s happy about something in his or her life. Also, negative experiences when something leaves me sad or in a shock, which in those instances, my mind records the situation as a referral for later. What I mean is, I become the one (somewhat in an out-of-myself fashion) watching me and others experiencing that moment.
As I said, everything and anything can be an inspiration when I take the time and consider it.
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Prompt: Will you be watching the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan? You knew this was coming.
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No, not if I can help it. But then, hubby likes such stuff, and if he has the TV on, chances are there won’t much escape…unless I wear my earbuds and listen to Vivaldi instead. Nevertheless, I wish the couple many years of happiness and may they be able to handle some other royal pains efficiently.
Royal weddings fascinate most commoners. Royal or not, I am not into weddings. I didn’t even want mine. In fact, I tried to talk my husband into eloping, but he was too scared of my mother. I don’t blame him one bit, as I was too scared of my mother, also. Anyhow, that monstrosity is behind me for more than half a century now. Maybe this has to do with my own shortcomings. I never liked pomp or princes and those guys who acted as if they were princes.
Back to royal weddings, I liked William and Kate’s, only because I liked Kate’s dress, and I still didn’t watch the wedding, not really, except there was no escape. It was everywhere for many days. I remember Diana’s dress, too, and how they used to call her fairytale princess. She did look puffed up in that clown suit, and maybe because of those fluffy dresses on weddings, I am beginning to dislike the color white. I wonder if it is just a step-up from guys’ white tees, which I mostly consider underwear.
Now, Bhutan's king and queen's royal wedding of 2011 has been something else. They both wore all colors like lovebirds of Central America. I have to applaud them because, to me, anything but white would do. I’ll try to upload a photo of these two, if I can.
Then, the idea of the royal bride, uniquely beautiful, intelligent, graceful, and unwavering in her commitment to stuffiness doesn’t do much for me. For once, I’d love to see a royal bride wearing black and somersaulting to the altar with the royal groom wearing white and walking stiffly beside her. How’s that for getting back at tradition!
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Prompt: “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
Walt Whitman
Do you sometimes look in other people’s eyes and imagine who they may be and what they may have done with their lives? Also, do you think this is what most poets and writers do?
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Walt Whitman’s quote is from A Song of Myself from the Leaves of Grass. It is a long poem and talks of many things, but with all due respect to the poet, in real life I can’t see a thing except someone’s irises when I look into their eyes. The rest could be totally imagination on my part.
Has anyone ever looked into Osama Bin Laden’s eyes? They are pretty enough and they can belong to a regular person, but which one of us thinks he isn’t an evil tyrant?
Then, one of the most disturbed persons I knew had the most gorgeous green eyes (in my opinion) and when she smiled at you, you’d believe she was heaven-sent.
I think, most poets and writers, if they want to use a real person as one of their characters, take other things into consideration about the person as well as the eyes.
Most of the time, when people say they saw something or other in someone’s eyes, they don’t mean the eyes themselves but other things surrounding the eyes. For example, when people are sad or worried, they furrow their brow, which makes the eyes look smaller. Or when happy, raise their eyebrows when they’re happy, making the eyes look bigger and brighter.
Then, the pupil acts like the aperture on a camera, dilating or contracting to regulate the amount of light coming into the eye, the pupillary light response as it is called. Strong emotions also may have some effect on the size of the pupils but this is only noticeable probably by the eye doctors. Therefore, the poets and romantics may claim that the eyes may be the windows to the soul, but the pupils alone may show better what’s going on in the mind rather than the entire eye.
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Prompt: Imagine yourself in a war setting where everything becomes changed and magnified. What can a war destroy? How much can success, independence, love, art, or family weigh in one’s life when everything is falling apart?
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I was born during the World War II, in a country that was not attacked directly, but the idea of war and the subsequent threats of war have been enough to make me feel scared of being in one. For that reason alone, I have great respect for all the veterans of any country who willingly go (or have gone) to war to defend their people and the welfare of their country.
Most of my reading during the last few years have been war stories; therefore, as if by proxy, I have experienced a little bit of what might happen, and it is not pretty because most of all wars are psychological and cyclical. It is as if some leader or some group occasionally starts itching to declare or go to war.
I believe we all need to think about this and imagine a war, so we understand what the people caught inside a war in their country can be going through. Aside from the shortages and the fear, can you imagine how it would feel ten thousand thunderous noises above your head and the fear of being hit by a bomb of any kind, constantly? Then the maimed, dying, crying, population some of whom can be your family, relatives, neighbors, and friends? No, it is not pretty and it is not sweet, but it is something we need to think about without getting freaked out.
We need to think about this so we can feel empathy for those who are being caught in a war. We need to think about this, so we can do everything in our power to stop all wars. We need to think about this, so we can pinpoint and appreciate the true peace-makers when we choose our leaders. It isn’t easy, but peace, world peace has to happen if we want to keep this planet intact for future generations.
I certainly believe world peace is possible, maybe not in my lifetime, given the moodiness of mankind, but maybe in future. I sincerely hope that future comes immediately or at least, as soon as possible.
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Prompt: Let's talk about the women in your life: after all, it is Mother's Day weekend.
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Most memorable women who are related to me have passed on. Among them are my Grandmother and my aunts. The women who are living who are now in my life are my cousins, younger or older than me, mostly younger. I love and adore them all.
But then, there are and have been other women in my life who are not related to me or I have never met, dead or alive. Those are the women who had a great influence on who I am, today. One of them was my high-school Lit teacher who introduced me to serious literature. In fact, she took extra time to spend with me and encouraged my reading in different cultures.
Earlier, when I was in Junior High, the first woman who opened my eyes to the existence of who women really are, other than being there to live under the other gender, was Louisa May Alcott with her Little Women. Granted, her women still had to have men in their lives but they were their own persons. Then, I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, whose writing I admire to this day, and most anything by the Bronte sisters, since I commiserated with Jane Eyre, who out of necessity had to fight her own way in the world.
Later on, I met Madame Curie and Margaret Mead. I was so taken by Margaret Mead that I used to wish she were my mother. Funny, what teenage minds can come up with!
I am writing all this because it is difficult to write about the real women in my life who helped me with my everyday living. I have loved them with all my heart and my own mother, too, but when one is so close to people, it is impossible not to see the bad together with the good. That is why I can’t write about them in full. Sometimes, in my other work such as poetry and fiction, I take one of their assets and write about that, and that is fine by me.
In short, I think deep down, whether they are mothers or not, all women are strong but some don’t know it. As such, strong women always impress me, as long as they don’t flaunt their strength for flimsy reasons such as a wish for power or partisanship or for their own ends.
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Prompt: The mirror never lies. Or does it?
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Yes, it does. Have you ever looked at yourself on curved carnival mirrors in a country fair? Did you see your nose curving every which way and your mouth larger than your forehead? And your hair, where did it go?
Just like anything else, there are mirrors, and then, there are mirrors. There are mirrors that only reflect your outer shape, and there are mirrors inside people’s eyes who truly love you and they reflect your loveliness with a joyous spark.
After all, our humanness is our best reflection, not our outer shape. For this reason, why we covet outer shapes always passes me by.
There are, however, broken people who believe in what they see in their outer shape, and despair. To them, I would like to say, “If you believe what that mirror is telling you is true, break that mirror and see what happens.”
Most of the time, shards of a broken mirror show shattered images multiplied inside them, with as many images as there are mirror pieces, distorting, cutting, and multiplying shapes. That is what brokenness does.
Yet, I bet you won’t break any mirrors. Heaven forbid! Who wants seven years of bad luck? And if you believe in broken mirrors bringing bad luck, I have to surmise that when big bad wolves order their underlings to do away with millions of innocent people, those innocents must have broken a million truckloads of mirrors. But that has never been the case, has it?
And I have digressed again because my mind is like a spent blow poke when it exhales its last breath. And when it inhales again, a different kind of wind brings out different words.
Then since I am so good with digressing, do you know I have a tiny note on my mirror that says, “This mirror may not lie. Just be happy that it is not laughing at you out loud.” So, I end up laughing at the mirror out loud, instead. Just maybe, all mirrors are for laughing at.
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Prompt: What do you love about life?
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Everything. I love everything about life. Loving life is instinctive in the first place even if we are not aware of it. Some people who have been rescued from suicide attempts have said during the last few seconds they’ve had doubts. The thing that encourages those doubts is the instinct for living.
Aside from the instinct, what I love most about life is people, all kinds of people, my species, then, nature and other species. I love all living things. I love the ways how we all breathe and feel pain or the relief from the pain and all kinds of emotions and how we attach ourselves to different and similar belief systems. As far as living things go, I even love snakes and roaches and hate myself when I have to kill an insect.
I love the sunsets, the stars, and the moon in all its phases. I also love the clouds and how they capture light and sometimes color.
In addition, I love what we can produce as art. I also love what other species and forces of nature can produce like birdsongs, the wind through the trees, the mewing of kittens, the barking of dogs, the fragrance of flowers, cut grass, and bread baking in the oven. I love classical music, folk music, instrumental music as well as a beautiful voice singing a song. I even appreciate any voice trying to sing because it reflects something of the person singing it. I love the sound of rain, the waves on the ocean, the feel of sand under my feet at the beach, the pebbles polished by water and sea glass.
Of everything I do in life, I love to read the most. Through reading, I can experience life even more. I am not much for TV watching, but I can appreciate its existence, too, because I think it is a fantastic invention, all manmade. I love staying home and going out equally. I appreciate friends and neighbors and just about everyone I meet.
I love when things stay clean and I love the feel of water running through my fingers when I do the dishes. I am always so deeply impressed by things we take for granted in our homes, like the sturdiness of the house structures, the windows and sliding doors with glass panes, and screens, the constant running water, hot and cold, electricity, our cars and traffic systems, telephones, internet, being able to be in touch with people all over the world.
I am never the one looking for perfection but I try to do my best. I am never perfect and so are (or aren’t) the others, but I can see a beautiful perfection in all imperfections and what makes us be us.
Most of all, I love how we, each in his or her own way, deal with living our butterfly-length lives.
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Prompt: "What the mind can't remember, the heart doesn't forget." Write anything you want about this. This applies to Alzheimers Disease or anything else you have in mind.
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I didn’t know this quote applied to the Alzheimer’s Disease. The second I read it, I thought of PTSD sufferers who, even though they suppress the memories in their minds, end up reliving them in their dreams every night. It goes to show what we wish to forget, we don’t if our hearts remember it.
Sometimes I see a sweet smile on someone’s face and it immediately reminds me of someone else from my past, a friend or a relative, even though I wasn’t consciously thinking of them.
On the sore side, the more painful an experience the more our mind will work hard to make sure we don’t forget it, so we don’t make that mistake again. And if the painful experience wasn’t our mistake, then our heart will remember when spotting the same heartbreak someone else is experiencing. This makes me believe that our hearts are created to teach us empathy.
Then back to the Alzheimer’s, such a devastating disease, and yes, the person may not consciously remember a nice gesture or a visit from a loved one, but still such actions by others make them happy. My cousin took care of her mother suffering from Alzheimer’s for twenty years until my aunt’s death. My cousin, who I think is up for sainthood, says her mother, even during her later years, smiled and felt happy after my other cousins visited her. I think even though her mind stopped working, her heart felt the love offered to her. After all, in all our lives, not something material but a beautiful moment is what matters the most.
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Prompt: Is what people learn in schools enough for living this earthly life? Or what are some of the things you learned in life that the schools didn’t teach you? And what would be important to teach young people before they start on their own?
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I was very lucky with who my teachers were, especially during my teen years. I attended an accelerated school that hired retired college professors, most having had a good amount of life experiences under their belts, and they didn’t hide their experiences or advice from us. Most of them talked to us when we needed help and even when we didn’t. Especially our Home-Economics teacher Miss Lindsay (RIP) was an excellent teacher. She not only taught her subject well but also went above and beyond the course requirements. For example, one of her advises was how to get along with in-laws. These and her other tips weren’t large psychology tomes but little pointers that helped me greatly in my life. My higher education teachers weren’t like the ones I had in my junior high and high school years, but they were all good knowledgeable people in their own areas.
Still, as lucky as I have been with my schooling, life had many more areas that I had to learn on the job, and that learning never stops, as I assume, even to the last breath.
What would be important to teach young people? On top of morals, integrity, and a quest for wisdom, young people should be taught how to use money and manage their finances well. Even with subjects like Finance and Economics, students are not taught the fundamental day-to-day dealings with transactions. I also find, both in my own children and others, that young people rarely understand the value of good economics and the ruin impulsive spending may bring. Also, they need to understand that goodwill, generosity, letting go of biases, and smooth interpersonal relationships are more important in the long run than they might grasp during their young lives.
Prompt: If you have ever met a highly manipulative person, what are the characteristics, actions, or feelings of such a person? Or if you haven’t met one, can you imagine what they’d be like, and could you use such a character in your fiction? Can you make him or her the protagonist, antagonist, or a secondary character?
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Manipulation means exerting unwelcome or unexpected influence on others through mental or emotional exploitation, intending to control the other person or people.
In itself, manipulative behavior is toxic; however, many well-meaning people use those tactics on people they want the best for, namely parents and teachers. Their designs, according to them, work in the victim’s favor, but also theirs, too. Who as a parent or a teacher would want to be associated with a wild and misbehaving son, daughter, or student?
This supposedly positive manipulation can take the form of insincere flattery to appeal to the ego or vanity, promises of acceptance with a catch, fake closeness, and offering support, rewards, and rights and then, taking them away as punishment for noncompliance. Then, such people present to their victims a helplessness designed to exploit the offspring’s or any other person’s goodwill, sense of duty and obligation, or guilty conscience.
Other modes of manipulation can be finding excuses for themselves and blaming the other person and everything else, changing the truth and exaggerating it, giving mixed messages to unhinge the mental well-being of the other person.
Manipulation can also be administered through all kinds of abuse, bullying, intimidation, brainwashing, tantrums, and oppressive rules and restrictions. In fact, the more I think of this, the more I can come up as to the ways of manipulation.
Have I met a manipulative? Yes, and countless ones, in fact. First in my family, then in the wider world. They all left me not trusting them, feeling alienated, disappointed, betrayed, sabotaged, coerced, and mostly cheated. I also observed such people’s reputations damaged and their words not taken seriously. This loss of integrity adds on to their low self-esteem and still triggers their egocentrism, narcissism, and passive-aggression tendencies. Some manipulators may feel great stress for having to cover up and for to not be found out and exposed. In the long run, the manipulators themselves are the ones who end up having a difficult time because of their own shortcomings.
Having said all that, in creating fiction, manipulators are priceless to invigorate the plot of a story, and they don’t even need to be the villains. They can be allies to the protagonist or just secondary characters whose actions may act as catalysts to many twists and turns.
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Prompt: Happy Cinco De Mayo! It's all the Kentucky Derby! Let's put on our crazy hats and slug back a margarita before we answer in celebration.
Did you know it's been 4.2 years since Blog City opened its blogging forum? Time flies when you're having fun.
What's been happening in your world? What would you like to see happen in your world? What can we do to make blogging more interesting to you?
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I came into BC after it has been running for some time, possibly less than a year, on Cindy's insistence. Before that, I was keeping a blog on my own and focusing on writing as its central theme. When I first came in and faced the prompts, some of them shocked me because they were asking for personal data. I admit that I acted in a snarky manner in answering them, at the time, but of course, I soon realized asking someone how many love affairs they had in their lives could be answered from a fictional character’s POV, and not the actual writer’s. Now, I love answering prompts.
In addition, it is much better when different people give the prompts. For that reason, I have been missing Princess Megan Rose  ’s prompts for the last couple of weeks, even though Lyn's a Witchy Woman  is a very versatile prompt giver and I adore her prompts. Whether we have four or three prompters each week, writing every day--at least trying to write every day--is a great discipline for writers.
What’s been happening in my world? Lol, where do I begin? But you are asking about blogging, aren’t you! I like the status quo, especially in BC as here we write because we want to and not because to win something or prove ourselves to be better in some way. I always thought of writing, in its essence, to be a personal, non-competitive choice and not a race of some kind, even though the publishers, with their business frenzy, have made it a race and turned perfectly good writers into vendors. I think the self-publishing flood of today serves them right.
Not that there is anything wrong with a bit of competition. I know that every once in a while, a friendly contest motivates and fires up the will to write, but for something I am doing on an everyday basis, I like the non-competitiveness of BC. Maybe I am so old that I’ve become cemented in my ways.
In any case, Happy Cinco De Mayo, Dear Blog City, and I love horse races.
I’ll be rooting for a couple of numbers in the Kentucky Derby. I said numbers because I can’t keep the horses’ names in my mind. So, before the Derby starts, I pick two numbers and hubby picks two, and as we watch the race on TV, we egg on the horses carrying our numbers. What do you expect from an oldie who already has difficulty recalling people’s names? You certainly wouldn’t expect me to recall every horse and its pedigree, would you?
Prompt: Since Fivesixer likes facts on Fridays, let's give him 11 uses for a drinking straw except drinking that's too dang easy
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How about the straws’ uses and flaws, together? I can’t list the positives without facing the negatives, can I!
1. The UK is about to ban the plastic straws because they are the worst non-biodegradable product ever. McDonald's and a few other companies are also cutting down on their uses in deference to the problems of pollution in oceans and landfills.
2. Your face looks ugly when drinking from a straw.
3. Drinking from a straw with that sucking motion encourages a lot of creases to form around your lips and the upper and lower parts of the mouth area.
4. They may, however, have some kind of a use for disabled or sick people.
6. Straws can be made from bamboo and other bio-gradable products, but their production is difficult. They have been made from paper in the past, but paper doesn’t hold up every liquid drink as well as a plastic straw.
7. You can blow on a liquid, creating waves, ripples, and sprays and try to entertain babies and young children. I saw my mother do this with her grandchildren, which totally stunned my kids who argued with her that straws were not made for that use. This was forty years ago, more or less.
8. Straws are lightweight and easily replaceable, should they fall to the ground.
9. A straw is used by one per person and for one time only. This discourages the contagion of disease or anything close to it through the mouth.
10. Two people can drink from the same container by using their separate straws, although I would hate doing this. Too much togetherness, you know!
11. If you are drinking from a can of soda or even a cup of something in a movie theater or some such place when your mind is focused on elsewhere, using a straw prevents spills.
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Prompt: "Spring is like perhaps a hand / (which comes carefully / out of Nowhere)arranging / a window, into which people look," writes e. e. cummings, using the image of a hand and its actions to describe the nature of spring. His musings go on in the poem to make various imaginative leaps, but its twists and turns are held together by the shared exploration of a specific subject. Try writing a poem, short story or blog entry that begins with, "Spring is like..." and explore the season through similes.
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Spring Is a Slippery Trickster
(a haibun)
Spring is like the pollen it produces. When spring comes, pollen replaces the ice and the snow, but it is just as annoying if not more so. In addition, pollen is a two-faced cheat and a witch that casts spells in the name of spiritual alchemy, creating blooms that erupt in rainbows of dust mimicking sunshine.
From the ice and snow
to one bewildered beauty
some fools like to kiss
When spring booms with thunder to bring the sweetly singing rain, which cleans the air but acts as the instigator for plants that, due to the buoyancy of their drinking spree, produce blooms and more blooms, thus more flurries of adhesive pollen plummeting from the air into people like feathered arrows.
not only sneeze attacks
but synchronous asthma too
conniving murder
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