This week’s theme: Things that are black or black and white.
Taking a prompt from the book, here’s what I wrote this morning.
Sunday Sundries
Tag: muses
Shake it up
My last snow-themed post of the week came from this coloring book and officially brings Christmas week to a close. Christmas itself hasn’t been stressful, which isn’t always the case. I managed to get everything done even though I left most of it until December. NOT Christmas things have been more stressful, but that’s just part of life. All the friends and family we communicated with in one format or another help keep things happy. We have so many and so much to be grateful for.
I hope this guy gives you a smile and serves as a reminder that shaking things up can sometimes be a good thing, and regardless, they settle down in time. I don’t know why his tree looks yellow. It’s green on the page.
ETA: I had a couple of fruit stickers I wanted to add to the page of fruit stickers in Wreck This Journal, and after I did that, I began flipping through the pages until I came to the one for “Rubbings.” It had a single entry on it (“Cowboy”), and I thought of my leather bracelet sitting just across the room on my bookshelf. So I did a rubbing of that, which seems right on this date.
You write it
From this coloring book, back in April and May of 2021, I colored this page (using a photo of a particular surfer for my color choices):
Blue Sky Boy recently suggested “seaside/surfing” as a theme, so here’s another page I just colored from that book.
I didn’t write any flash fiction about it. I did find a prompt in the Write The Poem book, if you’d like to write poetry or prose using the coloring page as your subject. You can share it in comments or keep it only for yourself. In addition to the words the book provided, I’m adding: sailboats, camera, rocky coast, beach plums, and inlets. Enjoy a burst of creativity!
Today’s offering
Off and on since early this morning, I’ve been putting together a post that was intended to be fun with photos and commentary. Then I read an article in which hate, once again, will be affirmed and rejoiced over by those who hate.
Everybody who tells me that NO, THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN, please stop. It’s been happening, is still happening, and will get worse. You can close your eyes and ears and mind, but you can never gaslight me into believing I don’t see and hear and recognize the cold, hard evidence presented every day.
So I don’t feel like being funny. I will take a moment to recognize that my forever Muse would be eighty were he still alive today. In his honor, I’ll go back to the world sprung from my imagination, where hate will never win.
Tiny Tuesday!
Barbie and friends do a reenactment of me preparing to find fashion, dress skeletons, and post photos to social media (i.e., my Instagram account), with Lord Cuttlebone and his nephew Ambrose supervising (i.e., chattering unsolicited advice into my ear). Since the theme is set: a spooky season homage to music, WILL I HAVE ENOUGH T-shirts or band memorabilia to do the entire month of October? The Shadow knows…
I’ve put my first seven days of photos behind the cut, if you want to see the artists I’ve featured.
Complete! and sort of Circular
As noted previously, during the Beryl power outage, I began rereading romantic suspense novels by Mary Stewart that I’ve been reading since the dawn of time when I was a teenager. After I finished the lot of them, I wondered how many I might be missing, so I looked up her complete list of works. There are the King Arthur books I’ve never read, and some children’s books, but turns out I actually own all of her romantic suspense novels. I shared photos of all the covers in previous posts, up to these two. Even though I’d reread both since 2020, I read them again.
They have two of my favorite male characters, and many of their qualities inspired male characters I’ve written (humor, sensitivity, kindness, strength, intelligence).
I did find in my search a novella and a short story that were published under the guidance of Mary Stewart’s niece, Jennifer Ogden. I’d read neither of these and ordered this edition immediately, which I’ve finished reading today (after an eye exam and a long nap so my eyes could return to their undilated state).
The Wind Off the Small Isles and “The Lost One.” In The Wind Off the Small Isles, Stewart included an Easter egg via a reference to a character in her novel This Rough Magic, an actor named Sir Julian Gale. There’s also an excerpt from that novel at the end of the collection.
This Rough Magic ranks in my top-favorite Stewart novels because it draws from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in its plot. Thanks to the play and Stewart’s novel, my interest was piqued by the 1982 film Tempest. Like Mary Stewart’s novel, the film borrows a lot from Shakespeare’s play. The film is unseen by most people I know–unless I’ve made them watch it with me. (Of course, I own the DVD–do you know me?) Tim and Jim still quote from it.
Tempest was directed by Paul Mazursky and stars the late John Cassavetes (who has long served as a physical model, along with a few of his qualities as a film director/producer of independent films, for one of my secondary characters in the Neverending Saga); Cassavetes’s wife Gena Rowlands; and introducing the young Sam Robards (son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall) and future brat-packer Molly Ringwald. This was also the film in which I was introduced to the brilliant actor Raul Julia.
My Muses and inspirations can be found among many people, novels, films, music, and art.
ETA: Beautiful Gena Rowlands died on August 14, age 94. I will think of her reunited with her husband, the two of them making beautifully crafted films together for always. Thank you, John and Gena, for being muses to me.
Tiny Tuesday!
When Tom and I took a walk through the neighborhood last week–on Day 6, when we talked to some actual utility workers in person–I found this dart without a point on the ground and picked it up. As far as Googled photos goes, I think this is a safety dart that’s part of a child’s toy set. I’ve tried in vain to develop a poem out of it, but the Muse is silent on the matter.
I even took out my 300 More Writing Prompts book in case it suggested something I could connect to the dart. No luck. However, I responded to the below prompt, a response I’ll keep private. Feel free to use your imagination as to how you’d answer this question for yourself:
You just won $100,000,000 in the lottery, what does your first day being a multi-millionaire look like?
Button Sunday
April 6 was National Tartan Day. Though I’ve s-l-o-w-l-y come to embrace my sister’s research that showed our lineage is Scottish, not Irish, which I was told all my life, information given to me by my college running buddy Kathy about Thomas Cochrane, tenth earl of Dundonald, whose burial place she saw at Westminster Abbey, helped pique my interest. You can see a little of the Cochrane tartan on that button.
And you can see how that interest in our Scottish side led me to this. I still keep these dolls in their kilts on display in the writing sanctuary every day. Muses.
I misdated this post so it published on Saturday instead of Sunday. I went back and put my actual Saturday post where it was supposed to be, corrected this one to April 7, and noted that National Tartan Day was April 6. Computers and me sometimes…
Song Challenge: Day 9
Today’s challenge, a song that makes me happy? Without fail, “Love Street” by The Doors. According to someone, who on these two cards calls himself “Stupid” and lives at 301 Lonely Lane, or “Lover,” living in Circle House in Jacksonville, FLA with an unknown zip code (because he was right across town from me in Jacksonville, ALA–if you remember when states didn’t have two code abbreviations, you may be old), anywhere I live is Love Street. He’s also put my birthday on the postmark, and it’s 1971. We were so young. He’s drawn himself on the “BIRTHDAY Stamp.” Apparently at that time, stamps were 6 cents (I checked–it jumped to 8 cents in May of that year).
Could not number the times Riley put on The Doors’ Waiting For The Sun album and dropped the needle on this song. Clearly, picking this month to take on a song challenge was inviting a flood of memories of the man who called me his muse from the time we were children. (We did not think of ourselves as children then, but now that I’m 135, I know we were.)
Saturday Night’s Alright for Writing
Apologies to Sir Elton John for misappropriating this title from the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.” To add insult to injury, I’m not listening to Elton John today. I’m listening to this.
Frank Sinatra’s four-CD collection The Best of the Columbia Years, 1943 to 1952
Frank has helped give me a productive writing day, but he may have gotten some assistance from a couple of father and daughter muses.
Funny story: This young lady has a little friend who loves Elton John and does not love horses at all.
I don’t ride but I like horses, and I also like dolls, Frank, and Elton. In fact, also from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a song I’ve used as a theme song for this kilted gent (who I originally wrote in 1971, and boy has his character gotten a lot more story since then) from the first time I heard it on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album (thanks, Debbie M!) after seeing Elton John on his 1974 North American Tour (oh, the story I could tell about that fun and crazy night, David K).
I can see by your eyes you must be lying
When you think I don’t have a clue
Baby, you’re crazy, if you think that you can fool me
Because I’ve seen that movie, too
The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying love’s just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, with the knives in their eyes
Well their actions become so absurd
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
It’s a habit I have, I don’t get pushed around
Stop twinkling the star like you do
I’m not the blueprint
For all of your B films
Because I’ve seen that movie, too
The one where the players are acting surprised
Saying love’s just a four letter word
Between forcing smiles, oh, with the knives in their eyes
Oh, their actions become so absurd
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
That I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
So keep your auditions for somebody
Who hasn’t got so much to lose
‘Cause you can tell by the lines I’m reciting
I’ve seen that movie, too
Songwriters: Elton John & Bernie Taupin