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 |   Second blog -- answers to an ocean of prompts |
 "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. |
| Prompt: Do you think, in some restaurants, choosing what to eat from an intricate menu can resemble an odyssey? If you had such an experience, how did you handle it? ----- Once, about fifty years or so ago, I ended up looking at a menu with no prices on the items and everything in French. Though I can decipher French, I wasn’t familiar with the fancy names for the dishes, as the cook was a self-important snob, and possibly he made up some of the names for the dishes, and the restaurant, people were only allowed in as someone’s guest or by invitation. We were somebody’s guests. There were only four tables and about 8 -10 people at each table. As to what to make of the menu, we asked the person who took us there. After the meal, the cook visited each table and talked to the customers, trying to find out what they thought and became mad if you said, “okay” or “fine” or something simple like that. You had to talk gastronomically. I think I pulled it well enough, but hubby was totally stunned. He looked at the guy in fear and said, pointing to me, “Whatever she says goes for me, too.”  The man stared at him and made a gesture. At that point, the person who had taken us to that place came to our rescue, addressing the cook by name and making small talk. So, we were off the hook. I don’t think there are such places left in NYC, anymore, but then, I wouldn’t know for sure, as over the years, I learned to avoid most snobs. |
| Prompt: Tell us a flash fiction story about a boy in a striped hat. ------------- The five-year-old put his striped hat on. His favorite hat, the one Mommy bought for the beach. Those stripes stood for something but he didn’t know what. That didn’t matter, though. He liked it that they were white like the stripes of a zebra. Maybe he became a zebra when he put his hat on. He wanted to make a sound like a Zebra, but he didn’t know how a zebra sounded. Still, making a sound, any sound, had to be better than no sound, so he screamed. He screamed as loud as he could, his small round face growing red and blotchy, his temples throbbing, his eyes bulging. “Switch that off!” his dad yelled. “What a pest!’ The boy stopped, hunching forward. “Look at me!” his dad clasped his chin. “Are you out of your mind? What was that for?” The boy hunched again, his lips twitching. He looked away although he couldn’t move his head against his dad’s grip. “Talk! What was that for?” He whispered. “My hat has stripes. I was a Zebra.” His dad let go of his chin but yanked the hat off the boy's head, then pulled off its stripes. “Now, no more stripes. No more zebra!" He threw the hat on the table. "Don’t you know your mother is asleep? Can’t you understand she’s dying?” As his dad began sobbing uncontrollably, the boy backed off, curling against the wall. Finally, he knew what those stripes stood for. Those stripes now lying on the tiles. They were stripes of pain. |
| Prompt: Tell us about your writing process – do you like music or quiet, is there a special place you go to work, do you type from the beginning or write notes with a pen and paper first? ==== I have written so many entries on the very subject in this blog alone that when the question is asked about how, where, or when I write, I feel like gagging. Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I have to begin with this thought. To take writing seriously, I have to break or tweak most rules and pen, not what to lecture others or show them what I know, but only to learn a few things in the process of my writing. Other than that, any writing becomes a chore. How I write, where or when I write, pen, computer, or whatever never matters as that always changes, anyway. I’d rather explore a subject or my own insides and hope to find something new, something omitted, something that has escaped attention. To do this, most of the time I spend is with research or deep thought (somewhat). Never mind NaNo, as I take most of my NaNo work as practice, and even then, I find myself living the lives of several or all characters, which still needs research. For this reason, for this year’s NaNo, I am debating whether I should tackle a genre or a situation I am totally unfamiliar with. It may end up being crap, but at least I will have tried. |
| Prompt: Have you ever visited a farm? --- Yes, I lived on a small farm as a guest for a short time when I was in my teens. I remember well the he-goat, the tough guy of the area, who chased me around. The whole thing was really funny because I don’t run away from animals and I thought he was cute, but the owners always rushed to whisk me away since that goat had hurt several people and would probably do it again. The only people he didn’t chase was the husband and wife team of owners. The chickens were cute, and so were the sheep. What I liked most though was to sit under the fruit trees and read.  Prompt: "Life is too short to not have oysters and champagne." Chris Binkley What are your thoughts about this quote? Is that so? I mean champagne is okay, but I am not too keen on oysters. I’d rather have a cup of tomato soup and a grilled-cheese sandwich. Metaphorically speaking though, I agree that life is meant to be enjoyed to the best of our abilities, without hurting anyone and without creating unpleasantness. |
| Déjà vu: Do you believe it, and could you explain it if it were to happen to you? Have you heard or experienced any instances of it? ----- “Déjà vu” means “already seen” in French. People experiencing this feel an irresistible sense of familiarity with something, someone, or some situation that they have never encountered earlier. I am not sure if this is due to wishful thinking or bad memory or maybe it has some medical explanation. Some believe the person must have lived this in a past life or it is due to precognition, but I am not very sure about any of these explanations. To the best of my faulty memory, something like déjà vu happened to me twice. In my dinosaur time, in ninth grade, I used to really like a lit teacher. One of my aunts who herself was a Home-Ec teacher in a different school at a distant town took me to visit a friend of hers in another far-away town where I hadn’t been before. This woman we visited was also a Home-Ec teacher, and the minute we set foot inside her house, I felt I had been there before and I knew her from somewhere. What I didn’t know was/is how. During the conversation when she asked me which school I attended, we all found out that she was my lit teacher’s sister, but she didn’t resemble my teacher, at all. I must have sensed something for sure, and to this day, I can’t wrap my mind around it. The second one has to do with my daughter-in-law. The very first time I met her when my son brought her over, I felt I knew her and warmed up to her immediately. And I told her this and later to her mother, too. My son had other girlfriends earlier. I had felt nothing like that when I had met them. To this day, she feels as if she is my daughter. Once, my other son even accused me with stealing somebody else’s child. Lol! I don’t remember having any other déjà vu experiences like these two I mentioned above, but both of them can be explained in some logical way, I guess. I don't know for sure, though. There might be some way other than a past-life experience. Or just maybe? I wonder. |
| “In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much,” says Vladimir Nabokov in Speak Memory. What do you think he means and do you agree with him? ==== My question is how can a decent person enjoy life without feeling any responsibility, if not for the whole vista but for herself and those around her? Then, I might reverse myself and ask what’s wrong with enjoying life? In answer to both my questions, there is nothing wrong with enjoying life. In fact, life is made to be enjoyed. The trick is in the how of it. The problem here lies with a person who thinks he or she is enjoying life by going to the excesses like addictions or she thinks enjoying life means imitating people who think they are enjoying life. This is an important distinction, which I learned while raising my two sons. In my opinion, to enjoy life in this goal-obsessed society, we can pat ourselves on the back for our small wins and consider our losses as learning opportunities. After all, our feelings pass and no one can be deliriously happy all the time. When we choose well, invest in ourselves by being aware of the consequences of our actions, noting how we manage our time, minimizing mental clutter, noticing the stuff to be grateful about, exploring new avenues, keeping our minds active, and building positive relationships, we can’t avoid but be happy. What-the-enjoyment-of- life-is-not takes the form of naively imitating the life styles of others, doing things to excess like getting dead drunk to end up in a coma, and taking pride in hurting a person or anything alive. Then, in fairness to Vladimir Nabokov, granted that he has a pessimistic outlook due to his personal life experiences, I took this quote somewhat out of context. The way I understood it, he was talking about our short time on earth. I’m going to post here what he exactly said, be it a longish excerpt. “…first and last things often tend to have an adolescent note—unless, possibly, they are directed by some venerable and rigid religion. Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary vision in between. Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much. “I rebel against this state of affairs. I feel the urge to take my rebellion outside and picket nature. Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmer in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life.” |
| September 18,19, and 20 Prompt: What's a current frustration of yours? My current frustration is not having enough time or quiet to write. I used to do better, but nowadays, I have to do more things in real life and I get interrupted every five minutes or so by someone, something, or other, and there goes my writing out the window. Prompt: What was your favorite game when you were a kid? When I was a kid? That’s so long ago that I barely recall. We mostly made up our own games. One favorite pastime for me and my favorite cousin and bf was sitting nicely and quietly in the same room with the adults and attaching an off-color or bawdy meaning to any most used word in the language such as “thing” “people” “say.” When the adults used those words in totally innocent sentences, the meanings would end up being bizarre or hilarious, and we’d giggle. Another one was we’d take a schoolbook and a notebook or sheets of paper (to act as if we are doing schoolwork) and write down exactly the words the adults spoke. In later life, this helped me to do schoolwork and take dictation because I could write so fast. Even in old age with arthritis in my fingers, I can still write much faster than my husband. We’d also hide some item that is widely used like a guest’s overcoat or someone’s shoes or anything and watch the adults scramble for it. Come to think of it, we were terrible and delinquent somewhat, but we passed ourselves off--very professionally, I might add--as well-behaved, model children. The only one we couldn’t fool was my mother. I guess she knew what my internal organs were made up of. Prompt: "I'm a captive of my own ambitions." Patsy Kline What is your take on this quote? ------ When someone is too ambitious and works far too hard to make his dreams and goals become reality, they might lose sight of what may be truly important to them like family and relationships. Such a person, possibly to prove to himself how good he is, can start early and work late, pushing aside everyone and everything, including his physical and mental health. Some diseases like shingles and depression can happen because of the stress one puts on himself. It is something else if the person truly enjoys hard work. That may be beneficial, but if a person pushes himself to do hard work to reach his goals against his own welfare and best judgment, he may end up losing his freedom and happiness, as if he is in a prison held captive by his own ambitions. |
| Prompt: Tell us about your writing process – do you like music or quiet, is there a special place you go. ----- I have too many entries on my writing in this blog. Just search write and writing and they abound. Besides, each project has a life of its own, which means each one is a different process. I like soft, wordless music when I am reading, but I prefer absolute quiet when I am writing, which I can’t get. That shows why I haven’t written anything of importance for a long time. What bugs me lately is that NaNo is on the horizon, and as much as I love it, I am not sure I’ll be able to do it this year. Too much real life, lately. But who knows? As doubt crosses my mind, I realize that my writing has been left uninhabited, like a haunted house and it scares me. Feeling bewitched or ghosted, I can’t avert my attention from it, staring in disbelief at my fear and indecision, I am starting to notice the walls I erect around me. Maybe I’ll start the writing anyway or maybe I’ll finish the one unfinished novel from long ago. I so want to do this, but I worry that I’ll be conflicted whether I attempt it or not. I never had a NaNo project I didn’t finish by the end of November. What if I don’t finish it this time? So what? I might as well attempt it once more, now that I have wheedled and persuaded myself while writing this entry. As you see, here is the beginning of my writing process. The indecision, then persuasion. The rest? It depends.  |
| How have your friendships with other women inspired you, or helped you to become a better you? ----- First, the only person that can really make me better is me alone. Then, while raising one of my sons, having dealt with what bad friends could do to a person, I do understand and appreciate the value of this question and the value of truly fine and moral friends. I am careful with friendships, even though I am friendly with almost anyone, except the crooked people who act nice and call me on the phone as if they are from Medicare, which again happened a few minutes ago. You won’t believe how rude I am to such people. My rule number one: A good friend will never force you into anything you don’t want to do, even if he or she detects danger. Rule number two: A good friend will not encourage you if you are doing something wrong or hurtful to anyone else. That just about covers it, with a few amendments here and there. Having said all that, a good friendship has nothing to do with gender. It isn’t only the women who have made my life fuller. I have had and still have man friends who made much better friends than any she-friend I had. In short, I think a true friend accepts you as you are, understands your life and work and what you have done so far, and hopes the best for your future. |
| Prompt: "Your brain is always taking dictation. I'm just copying what's in my mind's eye." Maritza Moran Do you write like this? What are your thoughts? ------- I don’t know exactly how I write because I write whatever comes and I don’t like to revise a lot, either, because I don’t want to change that first impact too much. On the other hand, I agree that the brain is a compiler and not only it takes dictation, but with what it has stored, it dictates us. Just our jumbled dreams show what is in the soup up inside our heads. Then, I was surprised to read that those who investigate how-our-brains-work believe that the brain first notices race and gender before all else. Heck, I am not so sure of that. My brain even forgets the faces unless the person is important to me in some way. But then, we are bombarded with too much information from all around us, and if it weren’t for the brain’s taking dictation incessantly, with the too little time we have, how would we go about our lives? Coming back to writing, I am glad for the brain’s work, in any capacity. But being only an organ like any other, maybe the brain gets extra help from elsewhere, say the collective mind? |
| Prompt: 9-11. Write a poem or something about 9-11. ---- there will be no forgetting not just those four puny planes nineteen evil criminals with ill will toward our ways, our structures and their hatred still brewing but the valor of the brave with heroic acts of service, under tragic uncertainty, with kindness and sacrifice nurtured with affection with justice and tenderness for what we all stand for with their names etched on stone and in our hearts there will be no forgetting ---- On 9/11 It was the worst thing that could happen, the worst thing in my lifetime. My older son was working in some place downtown. They had offered him a job in Deutche Bank in one of the twin towers. He turned it down. We thought he was being foolish because it would have been a promotion. He said he just didn't have a good feeling about it. In hindsight, I guess it was his sixth sense or whatever. He lives on Long Island. On 9/11, when the first plane hit, he was just getting out of the train. My husband and I saw it on CNBC. Sue Herera was talking. She said something is happening in downtown, and they turned the cameras to the window behind her. Then we saw the first plane half in and half out of the building, I called my son's cell. He was trying to get to work, but people were going the wrong way. He said no one knew what was happening. I told him not to go to work and that there was some kind of a danger. So he walked with everyone uptown and ended in a cafe around Columbia University, in the meantime, periodically talking with us on his cell. He said that people were saying we are being attacked and maybe it would be the third World War. There were all kinds of stories going on, he said and no one really knew what was happening. We became his only news source. Toward the evening, the LIRR opened. We told him to take the train and go back home, and he did. After that, he was greatly traumatized. He left his job and tried to work in several other places part time. Then, for a long time, years in fact, he couldn't work. Only lately, he's picking himself up. He didn't go for help or anything, either. We helped him because he refused to take government money. But his is nothing compared to what happened to us the USA citizens that day. We lost our trust, our innocence, in other people. To this day, I can't erase from my mind what I saw on the TV screen. I can't ever forget. |
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I love that acts of kindness to others makes you smile. I forgot to include nature and acts of kindness but they are definitely things that make me smile too. 
But good job quickly redirecting back to the positive things.
