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 |   All that remains: here in my afterlife as a 'mainstream' blogger, with what little I know. |
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The Idiotic Ideate?? Formerly: New Zenith To Hell…(all started with arc as writer here from the trials of Rising Stars to Preferred Author to WDC Quills Best Poetry Collection to the falling action I feel now that settles in a white case.) Got to hustle to preserve the best of me before fully fading on that virtual horizon glowing more brilliant with each passing day to permanent nuclear winter. if people don’t get it, I don’t need to explain it. We kill all that’s beautiful before we question it’s purpose. So many people find it easier to think in the black and the white. God forbid you get lost straying in the gray. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it…he does not become a monster.” I’ve been to the abyss and back. Not so bad. The loneliest happy person you'd ever meet, when not the saddest person who needs to be alone. In an ever-changing world, we need to handle topics at the ready. If you roll over and give in to the narrative without lending a voice of your own, you might as well hand over your civil liberties. We have voices that should connect to true conscience and spirit for honest and open discourse. Why feel so redacted? Unify on issues and put drama aside. Open minds require complete objectivity. If none need apply, question the unbendable sources for answer. If you knee-jerk react to every issue lurking out there that clutches your neck, you fall victim to your own ignorance born from a life of apathy (no doubt) in pathetic cries of injustice. Just writing what I feel without the narrative-altering mind f---ing with my head. [MY Chorus] In your house, I long to be Room by room, patiently I'll wait for you there, like a stone I'll wait for you there, alone "It amazed me how truth was often suffocated in minutes, but lies were given sufficient air to breathe indefinitely." "You are all better than you think you are, you are just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself." ![Merit Badge in Second Time Around Contest
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Congratulations on winning the Grand Overall Prize in [Link To Item #2164876] with your beautiful poem, [Link to Book Entry #933358]. This poem really moved me. Great writing!
Rachel *^*Heartv*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Second_Time_Around_Contest-2164963_14.gif)    "...lasting art is never anything more than a mathematical expression of the relations that exist between the internal and the external, the self [le moi] and the world." -Jean Metzinger I'm in love with carefully chosen words, arranged just so, audible, edible, to inhale. I attempt to post new poems and epiphanies daily with some links to what inspires. I am legally blind with a rare, genetic form of glaucoma. I'm described as "end stage" after two successful surgeries, still subject to further vision loss. Cataracts complicating matters. Writing Can get strenuous but seldom deters what yearns to emerge, despite a documented history of depression and recently diagnosed ADHD and undefinable social disorders and/or PTSD. My recent poetry:
Sometimes epiphanies about my insights on writing and life and what goes on... Making sense of life is maddening. Why do I need to know, when truth may not actually exist? Learning to accept would be a better pursuit? Flailing about in my own mediocrity, hoping to bust out. I am visible. You can put a face with a name. I would like to see other writers, too. Fiction is what you write, not who you are. Reinventing myself. I couldn't continue on the path I was on and needed a fresh start. This time around I want to put the focus on writing and the world outside of this community as it affects my life. I realize now that I have been baring my chest a bit more, as when young. fake me much more boring and unliberated than the real me. A world arriving as silent as that blossom in your garden that I told you about... |
| Here's another type of reviewing style I notice. Instead of taking the time to read and react to something an author shares, a person starts out with one line about the item and then goes on about personal experiences, memories or nostalgia indirectly related. And then, the reviewer comes back around to wrap up with some sort of good job or compliment and tada! You got enough characters for a legit, long enough review. I could write a myriad of responses about my own experiences until the cows come home (they don't come home here - no barn). How can anyone feel they are doing writers a service by trying to meet some review quota by type-garbling a bunch of disjointed memories that do not serve the author in a review? I couldn't conceive of doing this. I know I will ramble within a review at times, but pull it together after a few lines. I know reviewing is hard, intimidating for some. Sometimes, we're afraid to say the wrong thing (because these are people's word babies), but it's easier to idly go on about something we know as feedback? You just have to read and notice how it makes you feel, if you can connect to your gut feelings. Start typing those word bubbles for thoughts in the dialogue box. Look again at the item you've read, scan through, focus on a few favorite parts. You'll find more thoughts bubble up. And, the more you pay attention and review, the more phrases you can turn in those reviews. Have you read any good reviewers lately? There are writers with good comments that are universal knowledge that you can tap into for whatever you like to review. Just think of it from the other end. How are these writers going to see that review (how are they supposed to react? with your recollections of your summer abroad or the 1984 trip to Grandma's house in Kentucky? I think this is a fair criticism. I'm not trying to put anyone down. It's common decency to writers who take pride in their effort. |
| I have to save this review for posterity. I felt pretty good about the effort, though I'm sure this review will be largely ignored. It's quite possible, it will no exist in the future. So, copy and past here: Review of "Betrayal"  "I read "Betrayal" through twice and I could see potential with what you offer here. If I can make a few suggestions that I think would help you with this poignant, short statement of a free verse-style poem. There isn't need for punctuation like the ellipses, which is the dot, dot, dot at the end of a line. This is not intended to be used as a pause or break, but the omission of something. I think you intended to pause, which happens naturally when we get to the end of that short line, have a break, as eyes move down to the next line, and pick up where it's left off. I don't know that a dramatic pause would be needed, either. I think it's natural to have no punctuation there at all. The semi-colon in line two also was unnecessary. In a sentence that again breaks, you start the third line with a preposition which also does not require punctuation before, usually. You are good to roll through from line one to line three without any stops, as line breaks in poems can serve as natural pauses. Now, because I suggested no punctuation was necessary before that last line, you can get away with no punctuation altogether until the four lines stop at a period. I wasn't always the best with punctuation but have learned a lot since being here. One way to look at the third line is to either put commas before and after it, or none at all. That's what's great. The poet is the master of their own sentence here. I mean, that's what it is. You wrote a sentence and broken into four lines. Each line is separate, because each part needs to be reflected upon -- with how each fragment lends to the statement that is poem. As to the poem itself, I see a portrayal of a moment. It's quite possibly in aftermath that the narrator is delivering that final line about how something can be deceiving. What is it? We don't know. We don't have to know. It's like sage wisdom about experience. Everything sets up for that final line, which could be stated a bit better and more cleanly in my mind. I'm just the reader. Here's what I think: Lose the uppercase letters on lines two through four, or all, if you want to suggest this inability to control that situation. lowercase is supposed to imply feeling small or weak or helpless, per se. Uppercase is just stronger, bolder. I'll throw in something else that's fun to try, so: my innocence welcomed everyone with a smile without knowing betrayal (could be, would be, was) in disguise. To me those are the three choices that would make that last line land a little better. My favorite might be 'would be'. *Smile* The indent on line three acts like a pivotal moment, it acts like someone thrown off by what is about to happen. Just my two cents, if you're interested in using that. Ultimately, a reader will get a wonderment after reading: what kind of a smile was that? For an actor, they have a direction for every type of smile. In my head, I'm going through several I've witnessed in situations where an innocent is seeing something unfold that is informing that smile to curve or change a certain way. The way you have described here has done that for me, not with an adjective, but with a situation. Put this all together; with the scene, the retrospect, the innocent lamb about to be betrayed, there is a lot for a person to draw on from such precision and brevity. It's a very worthy effort and one I laud you for. Might want to make just a few edits, offer it up to those who you regard having an understanding of poetry, and hopefully they'll be as pleased as me." I've been working on line breaks and punctuation for many years and am still learning. This poem and review helped me crystallize some visions about this process to producing a poem with focus on punctuation. |
| Had no idea how grumpy and angry I get when I stop exercising. Just 45 minutes in fresh air with a basketball followed by some brisk raking and feel it leaving me like the sweat purged from my body. Why I don't do things in moderation and get so consumed with things that I can't think clearly, I'll never fully know. This is my new therapy. Back to basics. |
| Not that I'm rooting for this, but it's intriguing (It's long and tedious. Plan to skip some parts.): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-donald-trump-could-win-the-presidenc... I decided to take the truck for a run up and down the streets around our neighborhood and count the Biden vs Trump signs to see how many were supporting which candidate. Not many out there. And most signs posted were up near homes instead of on the street. Might be a reason why I saw fewer signs? But, Biden was leading as I made one more swipe up and around two more blocks on my route home. By the time I got to our little cul-de-sac, Biden was ahead 8-4. What happened on the ride up and and down our 25-house block had me rolling in laughter. It had everything: A voting block like an electoral college for Trump, a tie, and perhaps, what I could call election fraud. On the roundabout, there was a Trump sign on the island and one at the house across the street. They could have voted twice. It was 11-11 when I got home. I rode around 20-some blocks to get 12 signs, with 10 more on my street. There was only three signs a week ago. Interesting, I can break down the demographics mostly: the pot head, former skaterz across the street with problem kids were Biden, as were the two neighbors down the road who identify as lesbian (we chat, that's how we know). I think it was the retired dentist with the other Biden post. So, Trumpers included the retired constructor company owner across the street, a cop up the road, the widowed woman next door, and several older neighbors down toward, and in, the cul-de-sac -- the upper middle class. No sign at my house. With all the talk of weird outcomes in an odd year, it's compelling. I don't think a tie would be a divisive thing. It would actually force Congress to finally do their jobs. Whether or not they're capable will be another thing to watch. |
| I really have to share this again, which was once posted in my notebook (maybe, your newsfeed)... This is the most enlightening video for me. It has freed me from what has shackled me for so many years. If we could just inform ourselves and acknowledge what represses, it's like drawing air into lungs for the first time. It's brief but pleasurable to know we can get a handle on the manipulators and why they abuse us, and moreover, how we can and/or do not have to respond. How I know I'm not one...narcissist. Put me in a room with one and let us debate. I will feel like I've lost or just emotionally worn out every time. Plus, I go toe-to-toe with one nearly every day of my life. In fact, I have three of them. I don't even approach anymore, assuming there's no use convincing them to see things my way. I'm practically invisible and voiceless to them. |
| “We need more bassists, not less. But for real, stop trying to play goddamned bass chords under a guitar solo.” R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen iconic rock guitarist inspiring listeners and wannabes like me "I been to the edge And there I stood and looked down You know I lost a lot of friends there baby I got no time to mess around" Rock on solo, my friend. I'm crying 'cause his music meant so much to my life. |
| Totally unrelated and yet complimentary... The Flying Lizards cover of the Beatles song might be unknown, unless it got heavy rotation by a disc jockey at your local radio station during those formative, musical years. Ben Folds Five felt like another rare discovery for me before they landed a song in the Top 40, which disappointed me because I wanted them to fly under the radar so I can say I was of the rare few aware of their odd musical genius. |
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In the Falkland Islands, internet is very limited and very expensive. The place I'm currently staying only lets me use it in the middle of the night, so when I have to get up at 3 am to check my texts (no cell service to the US here unless I'm on the internet) or WdC, I don't do nearly as much as I used to. 
I currently have 2 very long emails I still need to get to from several days ago. Anyway, I miss everyone, but I also miss sleep, so there's that. 
Have you spoken to the doctor about your vision problems lately? I know there are special glasses for it because I have to wear them to read much ever since the brain injury. It's part of why I now only listen to audiobooks instead of reading regular books. It took 8 years for anyone to diagnose it because I have a brain injury and while one might think it would be obvious to me that I see double, it wasn't. Partly, my brain does a fair job of compensating. But also, partly, you use your brain to realize and understand that the 2 images you constantly see are double vision and something you should mention to your eye doctor. Since my brain was damaged, even basic things like that can escape me. 
I never once thought to mention it, even with annual eye exams in the Army and an exam every 2 years at the VA. Though, in my defense, since it happens in something like 41% of people with a brain injury, it should have been discovered by an eye doctor much sooner. 
I know doing that activity is a CRAP TON of work. But you made a difference in lives, not just his, but for all the people he's reviewed since. 
Well done! 
