Blog @ Work

I was 15 when I had my first real boyfriend. He was a very handsome Indonesian-European boy, a so called Indo, who could play guitar, tennis, and draw cartoons. He was 18 at the time. He broke up after 1 ½ years or so stating I was a little bit cold (meaning I wouldn’t sleep with him, only kiss) and since I wasn’t prepared for it I was devastated. I cried the whole summer and wrote into my diary. But I got passed it and when I saw him again from time to time I was my old self and not interested in him any longer, which felt good. After 3 months into the breakup he showed up again wanting me back. He manipulated me into the new relationship by convincing me he would kill himself if I didn’t take him back. I believed him and we started over. I felt awful and very much responsible for his well being. Of course this didn’t work and in about two months I broke up with him.

A friend of mine had the same thing going with her relationship years later; also the threat to commit suicide if she was to leave him. I think it is one of the worst things you can threaten someone with. At that age I fell for it big time. Now I would say: if you want to kill yourself, go ahead, but don’t fuck with my mind. It is emotional blackmail of the worst kind.

October is the month that it’s suddenly colder. We’ve had a beautiful Indian summer. Yesterday I was with family at the port of Hook of Holland, were you can see our industry and a beautiful skyline of Rotterdam, our main port. It was a wonderful sunny day at the beach, very agreeable. I think the last sunny day since the weather forecast is predicting colder weather. But I like October with its crackling dead leaves under the trees and its beautiful colors.

At WdC October is all about "Letters of Life, Love & Hope"  [18+] so I "Breast Cancer Awareness - Contest & More"  [ASR]. See this beautiful butterfly at the top of this entry. I have to go on my annual checkup tomorrow so I am a bit anxious. But it’s better knowing so I will go, reluctantly.

Furthermore, October is all about Halloween in several parts of the world. In my country we can buy the pumpkins and witches attached to this day, but the trick r treating is not fashionable here so I don’t really celebrate Halloween except on WdC.

I am going to enter "Invalid Item"  to get in the proper writing mood for Halloween. And I probably enter several opportunities for "SCREAMS!!!"  [GC] around the subject of Halloween and try to enter "'SCREAMS!!!' HALLOWEEN CONTEST!"  [GC].

When I was in college I came across Zen meditation, where we practiced Zazen, sitting in Zen. A meditation form where you sit on a cushion, focus on a point ahead and focus on your breathing in and out, and counting. Every time you think something, you stop counting and start anew, still breathing in and out. It is an exercise to let all thoughts pass you by without going into the thoughts. So your mind is blank, you are one with your breathing. It is very difficult at first, but if you practice you notice you can shut out your thoughts in a way.

No, we don’t have a similar day like Columbus Day or Indigenous Day. We have however a very bitter national dispute going on over Sinterklaas, celebrated on December 5 as a child’s fun day with the old white bearded Sinterklaas and his black helpers, called Pete’s are gifting gifts through the chimney. A sort of a thin Santa Claus. The dispute is about his black helpers. Some say this is racist because it is a white Sinterklaas and always black Pete’s. It reminds people of the slavery period. I don’t agree on that one, I think it’s just a child’s game and very much folklore in our country. But if everyone wants colored Pete’s instead of black ones, that’s fine by me. The dispute has gotten very ugly for some reason, with a lot of hate mails to both camps and demonstrations with people being picked up by the police.

I’ve always wondered why I couldn’t get along with my late mother. I loved her very much, no doubt about that, but we never hit it off, we never became friends or intimate in our behavior. There always was a brick wall between us and I’ve hated her for that in my teens. Later, ofcorse, my relationship with her normalized but never was what it could have been. One day she told me the reason why, although we never spoke about it ever after that, and I am not sure till this day if she fully comprehended the impact of what she revealed to me at that particular time.

I am very enthusiastic about WdC, but that is a given! Furthermore I am enthusiastic when people behave like they care about things. I love commitment in people; it makes me happy they found something worthwhile. I am very enthusiastic about good poetry. I am an absolute beginner at writing poems in the English language and to fully grasp someone else their efforts to create great poetry is mind blowing to me. It makes me want to jump around and be creative myself. I love enthusiasm in others as well in myself. Without it Life is bland and gray, with it you feel alive and kicking. It is true magic and there should be more of it!

I have a friend who does that and I am not fully appreciative of that fact. Usually I am like: thank you so much but I haven’t got the time to read it anyway. Also she has a completely different taste as to what I like and want to read, so her choice is usually not mine. It is very difficult to explain taste in reading and writing to people who are not writers or poets themselves. Like I definitely don’t like those self-help books. I understand the significance and all and there are millions who read it but I am not one of them. I think it’s because I grew up being a scholar and a scientist and those self-help books are all about the rule of thumb in every day practice. Very helpful probably if you are in some sort of crisis, but not for me. My best friend loves those books. So we differ on that. As we differ on a great many things, but she is still my best friend and I am very fond of her.

I never ever read romance stories although I sometimes like to watch the stories of Daniella Steel that are on screen. In my teen years I read a lot of those romantic novels that you could trade in on markets here. I read a lot then but nothing has stuck so I honestly can’t answer this prompt very well. The best romance story I ever read would be probably Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I loved it that they were in love and had trouble because of it due to their families. Other than that I don’t like to read about it, don’t know exactly why not. I sometimes watch Romantic comedy on television, that’s a genre that I sometimes like. I watched Pretty Woman several times, a story I really loved. About this sympathetic hooker who meets a business man and spends the week with him. Great story come to think about it and the two actors Richard Gere and Julia Roberts were awesome!

We never have storms or hurricanes in The Netherlands so I would be at a loss here preparing for one. I have a flashlight in the house and that’s about it. If the electricity is down or I wouldn’t have any water what would I do? And I have a dog, how would I prepare for that if I can’t walk him several times a day? So I would evacuate immediately with my dog. Probably go to my stepmom’s house since she is the only one who can take guests, or go to a friend’s place in town. That’s about the best I can come up with. I am on the second floor in my building, so I would hope that is a safe place to be. I hope everybody in Florida (and Haiti for that matter) is going to be safe from hurricane Matthew. I know Dave has evacuated and Nixie is going to stay but prepared herself for the worst.

What a delightful prompt! I think falling in love is the best. It makes people happy. All the stuff that comes after it can make it difficult but the actual state of falling in love is great. So I would kiss as many as possible, spreading joy and happiness around the world. In this day and age I would say I attach a kiss to my mail, or maybe attach it to a trinket here at WdC . I think I would blow kisses to people, very gentle so they first won’t notice it.

Shakespeare knew. He said something similar in his play, Venus and Adonis. “Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

In the Bible, (Matthew XVI: 2-3,) Jesus said, “When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.”

Weather lore has been around since people needed to predict the weather and plan their activities. Sailors and farmers relied on it to navigate ships and plant crops. https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/weather-sailor.html

To apply this to my own life is more difficult. I love red skies no matter what time. I think looking at the skies for warning is not my thing. I am always in awe looking at the skies, since it is such a humbling experience, and it makes me feel small and part of a greater scheme of things. Skies can be so beautiful it will take your breath away: during the day with the clouds and the sun, during the night with the stars and the moon. It also fills me with wonder and prompts me into thinking about what we are doing here on earth, what our function in life is and if there is a greater being such as a God looking after us. The Universe is there through the skies.

In order not to invite or promote the visit of ghosts and vampires in my tower of writing I clip on a brooch with special powers, put strings of bitter garlic on the walls and start to evade the question of abrasive poets. We can’t be nice all the time to everyone, now can we?

My sister, who is a Buddhist, would say: Throw it into the Universe and the Universe will answer. Expectation generates things to happen that is for sure. It leads to a chain reaction that sometimes is what you’d expect. But Life can also be very surprising indeed. I find living or flying by the seat of my pants very appealing since that entails more surprises, but ignorance has its side effects too. You can become a toy in Life’s game and we won’t want that either.

Since the past ten years I live inside my comfort zone, partly because I like it and it is convenient, partly because I can protect myself that way. But stepping outside your comfort zone is sometimes necessary to give Life renewed energy and oomph. It can shake things up and cause new things to emerge. Taking on this new librarian job I had an interview for today will hopefully provide that for me. I am craving for something new in my life, so I am expecting a lot from it. Also at WdC I am experimenting with different genres to write which is outside my comfort zone and I am having a lot of fun.

Sarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt. It is therefore another form of humor. I have never written a sarcastic character since I think irony, humor and such are very difficult to master, in real life as well as in writing. If not mastered well it becomes all too soon nasty and not nice. Some people use it to conceal insults in a ‘funny’ way, usually not funny at all. Then the mood changes quickly from agreeable to downright uneasy and contemptuous. I usually stay away from sarcasm. However, when mastered it can be very funny.

I think that it is very astonishing that the human race usually tends to follow rules. If not it would be kind of a mess. And societies functions because people are compliant with the rules. Billions of people go to work every day, think about that, in itself that is astonishing. But the great things of the world are created because some individuals dare to do things different from the rules. Because they think outside the box they become audacious and new things see light. So I tend to say that both makes the human race interesting.

I can’t remember much before the age of eleven, I think I blocked out the lot, but what I do remember is that I always, like ALWAYS was reading.

So in a way I became all those other characters every day.

I read everything that was available to me, from the extensive library of my dad’s, the public library, the school’s library and beyond. I swallowed books. It started at the age where my father would tell stories, using a book, and me reading that story at a very early age when most kids couldn’t read, only to find out that if they put the book upside down I would read it too. I just had memorized the story . Reading became a refuge place for me, undisturbed in my own world. I loved reading!

I wouldn’t know really since there are not that many happy people in my life. Happy is too strong a word to describe their well being. In Europe we tend to express less happiness as in other parts of the world I sometimes think. As if we are gloomier than the rest of the world. I associate happiness with Americans for some reason. They seem to be happier than people in my immediate surroundings. Happiness has to do with feeling lucky and being in control of your life. Of having a place where you belong and you have set your boundaries to keep yourself happy. I inspire my own happiness when I am in the flow of writing and am losing all counts of time, than I am feeling happy. Happy creating something that didn’t exist prior.

When humanity has to leave earth to live on the moon, you panic. Nobody knows that you are a Moonbeam.
So when I should return to the Moon I would turn into a Moonbeam again and lose my human form. I wouldn’t want that so I opt in staying on Earth, I think there always will be people who don’t want or can’t leave because of special work (assisting the billions on their journey to the Moon for example) or circumstances. So I would try to find a job that can keep me on Earth for as long as possible. If I was forced to leave I would try to go to another planet instead, hijack the shuttle and settle on Kepler-452b, an exoplanet outside our solar system that is very similar to the Earth and has been recently discovered.

Years ago I was beaten up and harassed by a criminal family. I wrote a winning poem about it "PREVAIL"  [18+]. That was a time when I wished I had a double taking my place. In my teens there was a double in my town since a few friends would come up to me and said they had seen me there and then when I was absolutely sure it couldn’t have been me. I never met that other me.

Awesome that FiveSixer is joining Blog City next to 30-Day Blogging Challenge. His prompts are always good for a thought provoking entry.

One of those days in the life of WakeUpAndLive️~🚬🚭2024

In the middle of the night
spending a few minutes at my desk
before turning into the sack again
Dog took my place in the comfy bed
**shoving him aside**
In the early morning looking at
prompts on my computer screen
Interrupted by taking the dog out
My first meet with the outside world
**What’s the weather like?**
A quick breakfast, a cup of coffee
then back to the computer
All day, writing, reviewing
having fun. Pretty much
the same lately - I love WdC!
**The coffee machine is in overdrive**
Sometimes I take the bus
to work
Sometimes I do groceries
in the shop
Sometimes I eat
at a friend’s place or
go to a movie
But always I come home
to a computer screen
that invites me
to show my best.

The Ode Less Traveled, Unlocking The Poet Within, by Stephen Fry. I ordered this paperback after referral from Christopher Roy Denton to get me more acquainted with metre and rhyme in poetry. Because I am from abroad I seem to have another rhythm in speaking out loud poetry, therefore messing up the iambic pentametre a lot. Bob suggested reading this gem of a book in order to get it right.

I already read the Foreword and its three golden rules: Take your time (in reading poetry slowly); don’t be afraid (about meaning in poetry) and always have a notebook with you. It is a must-read for every poet I think, and I am looking forward to the rest of the book.

Prompt: What is your best recipe for a fall weekend outing?(BC)

I like Motivational Monday because of the quotes. I don’t like War Chest Wednesday much, since they come from a pool and sometimes they have been used recently. If I would change it I would change it to something about the writing process itself. Weary Writing Wednesday. A question or a comment on the writing process be it plot, setting, character development or anything that comes to mind. Or about the different genres of writing. How do you make a good romance story, or a good suspense story? I would love to read others about those subjects.

The first car I owned was together with my then boyfriend. I had trouble passing the exam, theory was always a hit but practice was a real disaster, I passed after the fourth time!! It had cost me a fortune I can tell you. My boyfriend and I had a green Skoda. We trade this in for a Ford Escort and later a Ford Taunus. After I split with him my very first car I owned at my own was a black Honda Civic with the possibility of an open roof. I loved that small car. I had a big yellow smile sticker (they were hot in the 70ties and 80ties) at the driver‘s door. A very outspoken sight. I can’t recall I gave the car a name. But it was definitely a ‘him’.

I am a bit ambivalent about this prompt. Good neighbors are a blessing, but I am not that fond about meddling neighbors so they have to be kept at a distance. I like to greet them, talk to them if there is time and help out if there is a need to. But other than that the best neighbor is the invisible neighbor. I don’t mind living sounds, I live in the city so noises are always there, but I hate it when they play loud music or quarrel a lot in public. My direct neighbors don’t do that but I had a young couple living across the street always fighting each other. Those girls were very bad for each other, the police visited very often because there was always something the matter. They moved eventually and now it’s quiet in the street again. I love quiet!

In my apartment block there are a total of six households. I am very lucky with my neighbors since they are all friendly and nice people. We greet each other, talk to one and other and help when necessary. My neighbor next door died a few weeks ago and I am a little bit anxious as to who is coming to live next door. In my (rough) neighborhood there can be very anti-social people who make a lot of noise and create mayhem. Since I am lucky with my neighbors for the past ten years I hope there will come a nice family or a couple. But I have to wait and see. Above me there is a Muslim family of seven. I never hear them, apart from normal living sounds, and they are all very nice. If something is the matter we can discuss things. It is all very harmonious and pleasant. I hope that will continue.

I should be somewhat worried after one month, the skill hasn’t shown yet. I think I should examine his or her surrounding and the people closest better. Are there no clues in family structure, friendships, behavior and routine? Is there no diary or calendar I can read into as to what this important skill is? There must be items in the house that give me a clue. If this person is the best in the world I should Google him or her and find out more. I should look at this person’s physic, his or her work and impact on other people. Or I just ask people what associations come up when this person’s name is mentioned.

I think it depends on where you live. In the Western world socio-economic differences are less than in earlier times. But in a country like India there is still this cast system where people of different casts don’t interact and don’t mingle. I imagine that is so in other countries as well. In my world socio-economic differences hardly play a role anymore, so they don’t mess up personal relationships any longer.

I think I know nothing much, but can find all the information I need. I think we got lazy with all that information at the tip of our fingers. Knowledge has to do with taking time to search, swallow and make memory tracks inside your mind. We never have the time to do this nowadays and rehearsing is not fashionable. Everything has to be quick, quicker, quickest. Sometimes I think we are at risk of having too much info, since not all the information is healthy for us or is something we need to know or can do something about. I used to be a news buff, before I joined WdC, now I am spending so much time at WdC I sometimes forget to watch the news. I know a few people who stay away from the news because it depresses them too much, but that is going too far for me: I like to know what is going on in the world. As a writer there is never enough knowledge or information to gather, since we can use almost anything. We as writers are omnivores!