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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... |
| I'm like two different people on and off these drugs. What I'm not is sociable or able to defeat this nagging feeling I'm different and rarely finding footing or a place I fit in. It could be a life of experience that taught me how hard it was to read people, hang with them without figuring out some way to either offend them or making our co-existence uncomfortable either the harder I tried or the more I retreatedl. I am ADHD or ADD, depending on what my therapist says. What I don't understand is why she cannot buy into autism or something in that spectrum, because it is common in boys. It is life long. I know when I'm around people, if I don't get a handle on the situation quick, I look peculiar to this people who I can see don't know how to approach or take me. I try to do all the correct things socially, but overcompensate. I don't shut up when I should. No economy of words seems to save me from myself. The is this lifelong obsession with numbers, order and treating objects as living things. I could be absorbed for hours with the simplest of things. I discovered 3d images in woodwork and tile before it was a thing. I told awkward jokes and made fun of people because it was the type of humor I was raised with. I butted heads with friends, but I couldn't explain why I never kept one childhood friend or lasting relationship for the first 33 years of my life. I still have people teaching me the correct way to behave, or get the right read on situations. I don't think it's far-fetched to believe that the trauma I endured in childhood remains with me still because of this. I don't trust people, became cynical and defensive. I'm prone to overreact and become dramatic or emotional of situations that just requires me to take a beat, rather than let old fears seep back in. I tend to idle of the needless, rather than focus on things that could give back to me. Though, I am reordering priority based on results, it's never an easy thing. At least, it made me good at collecting money, which I like to count. My internet searches and the hours I have spent chasing one notion to other for what seems like forever has consumed me and a lot of my eyesight over the years. There's so much I should have known that I'm discovering, but I get too engrossed and lost in it all and lose precious hours a day. Sometimes, it benefits me when I write. So, there's that. So, everything works out for me, except I consider myself friendless since my teen years. I'm afraid to count on somehow, because of how traumatic losing a person, let alone getting to know them, can be. I'm trapped in this ideal of perfection and always wanting to say the right thing, sound smart, because I suffered a lot of humifaction from distractions that lead to ignorance. I'll keep working with my therapist. She hasn't got the full picture yet. This is more than you need to know about me. But, I write and I share so I can learn and get better. It took me 14 years to figure this place out, and still learning. 6.15.21 edit and/or add more later. |
| I prefer the first with no sound: Forever, (the original) Emma Peel: And, forever Cake! |
| If you piss off an empowered person, they will use their resources to crush you. (If they shun you, that means they noticed you are a perceived threat) And, if they employ the ignorant masses, it can get very lonely and/or contentious to assert oneself. As a lone voice in the fog, you can reach help, though you do not know what you will find. As a lone individual looking for others wandering, perhaps you will find the light together. If that empowered one was not able to utilize resources, the masses who educate themselves to respect the lost, maybe their is hope for all of us. 6.9.21 |
Reading one of the blogs by Kåre Enga in Udon Thani  reminded me of Ayn Rand and especially 'Atlas Shrugged', as we deal as Americans who are apathetic on political and social issues nowadays, or as Kåre says, not 'progressive' (enough).I think we tend to lose our focus. I was googling some of Rand's philosophies when I came across a twenty-year-old article that reminds we are goal-oriented, don't like to wait out due process. So, sports acts as a substitute for those who need gratification, as the real world grinds it out slow and won't provide closure... https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/culture-and-society/culture-and-society-more/the-... "Misunderstandings about me"  |
| "I sat there for like a month and a half, waiting on the phone to ring. I just put my faith in God, having conversations with myself, talking to God like, 'What's the plan? What's going to happen?'" Rivers said. "All the feedback I kept getting is, a lot of teams liked me but they didn't know what type of character I was and how I'd be in their locker room. My basketball ability was never questioned; it was who I was as a person. Which is actually even worse. "Truthfully, it broke my heart. Because I know who I am, and I've always had good relationships with people, but you can have one instance with mistakes and be labeled something." |
| I was making small edits to recent poems in blog when I had a thought. I started to write it out and felt the initial expression was good but I couldn't take it anywhere just yet. So, I transcribe it here for posterity and possible future use: Trimming the nose hairs of these poems I blog, you can't overdo it, as experience of overgrowth has taught, but you can poke yourself in the nose and bleed? You see? 5.27.21 |
Before I took a long nap that started in late October, 2020 until whatever time I stirred from that hypersleep, the hot locale for my poetry links was here (Now decommissioned. On to bigger and better things, let's hope):
Of course, all of those links will send you to the hottest bed for poetry at my port, affirmed by the 2020 Quill Award for Best Poetry Collection here (Thanks again, Elle - on hiatus  , as always):
 Maybe, my next project will be to build a shelf? No, hire a carpenter. Okay, I'll get my swelled head out of here before it breaks this blog post and the internet. |
| I think if anyone cared to know me, they'd learn I'm my own harshest critic. I've had people respond to my reviews like they were stung sometimes, and I think 'you have no idea,' because I'm way worse with myself. I'll reread my old works, some that I'd fallen in love with rather than viewing their merit. I'd shake my head; I'd cringe. Sometimes, I see what I'd do differently. Other times, the trash can is more deserving. Unfortunately, I hold on to everything. But, in my defense, seldom reread the stinkers. I look at my old poetry and see the merits and a person developing as a writer. I have greater insight and knowledge as the greatest authority of what I'm trying to do, convey. Though, even I sometimes stump myself. I leave notes now on what inspired works. It helps me and readers see what perspective or aim I'm coming from/trying to achieve. It still surprises when I've reviewed someone that I gave great feedback and they respond defensively, or not at all. No one is trying to crush anyone's spirits. I think the reviewers who flatter and hand out fives like high-fives miss the point of helping other writers. Without honesty, a writer can become smug, stagnant. Writers might mail it in like it's another day as Hemingway. I've been there. Fortunately, I saw through the deceit of false flattery. And isn't that the true aim? Just keep people writing, participating and letting their average to below work thrive over the efforts of hard-working, honest writers who might show their disdain in ways that they wish they hadn't, instead of seeking a higher road. I'm not saying many here do this, but some predominately review lesser works with flattery, ignore good works because they fear approach or don't want to embrace writing that might shadow the others. It's the nature of writing on the internet. Someone said it's just different personal tastes. Yes, I've enjoyed greeting card poetry, but no one is looking for greeting card writers here either. No one is looking at this site period to find the next great writer. Just accept we're in a wasteland playing some kind of social game of how much cryto currency you can spread around to appease another. I fear the raffles, auctions and other events that require crypto this or that takes precedence over real writing. I fear the crowd that accumulates here on dabbles in crafting a few ditties and jumping onto the review boards to earn other recognition. I immersed myself in reviewing last year and got a Quill nom for it. I quit in October. I think some people who could self-improve have other motives that actual writing here and I realized I was wasting my time trying to be some kind of mover and shaker who was going to inspire others. So, I shut it down. I write a thing or two. My meds basically shut me down last year and still do. My love of anything is essentially dulled in the name of sanity. I start out writing something enlightening about my process as a poet and it spirals out here. I could blame myself for my feelings. I'm just disappointed is all. 5.18.21 |
| Looked up vilify today after reading a bit about Joan of Arc and thinking back to my own martyrdom and this is what I got... https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/12-reasons-vilify-politics-election-gmp... I'm mostly concerned with how my offspring vilifies me, as if my beliefs and how I have raised my kids should have me convicted of some horrible thing. I scratch my head wondering how I turned the tables on how my dad parented, figuring I'd be lauded by my children. I had them until they became teens. My dad never had me, so I guess I made some progress in that regard. But the reason we vilify anyone who doesn't believe as we do, as if fundamentally wrong to be different than someone else, is sad. I just want to be able to communicate and still commune among folk, even if we don't see eye-to-eye. How can any of us get along, all the time? 4.30.21 |
| "Do you always have to tell him Everything on your mind? You know that too much Honesty can be so unkind. Everytime you throw him to the floor, Why are you surprised to see He's breakable? You always try to find What's holding him away from you. But do you ever see your anger Standing there right between you? And everytime you throw him to the wall, Why are you surprised to see He's breakable? Tell the world that he's breaking your heart. Go tell the world, Nothing's ever your fault. Go tell them all... And every time you throw him to the floor, Why are you surprised to see He's breakable? And every time you push him to the wall, Why are you surprised to see He's breakable? Breakable... breakable..." |
| The protagonist is the underdog and his humanizing soliloquy is overheard by her (the one) who perfectly reflects her restrained response in eyes and reflex to let the audience know that there is hope for true love, ironically scripted as serendipity. Unfortunately, we struggle through the seasons to get to love’s compromise, when the flailing story briefly hits the mark with a Cupid arrow...and the false story close when a true story would begin. Clutch your heart and hope not to die alone, more romantic fare to come from writers and actors who play semi-surreal real life sagas of their own, witnessed at newsstands and checkouts. 3.20.21 |
| Since the new meds... Poke, Poke, Poke... Nothing turns on. I just lie here in bed. I put on my music playlists, streaming Spotify through Roku on the Tv in the room, and a few words gush out, sometimes forming what I can construct into poetic formats. Can't say that it's a satisfying process. I don't look back at what I produce, unless it's to break lines, group words and select what seem like functional punctuation. I'm well. I wonder about interaction, reviewing, thinking I might try. No plans going forward, I close out the screen and stream old shows to binge, reliving Monk, Castle, Big Bang Theory, or keeping up with new shows like B Positive, The Unicorn and Zoey's...Playlist to name a few. I took a turn at the wall of social media platforms and kept on walking down to this flowing river to witness a oft-brilliant sun rising and setting without counting the departures, or subtracting minutes, hours and days from what's left of an already long and seemingly unfulfilled life that once held promise. I'm not substituting delusion for anything real at the moment, either. A deck of cards, ten games of solitaire in a row and plans to play cribbage on spring break soon striving. Like Papa Hemingway, much hard liquor to consume in Florida about to come. The sun also sets. 3.15.21 |
| Why would such an expression ever exist..."go over like a lead balloon." Are we accustomed to experimenting with failure? When we think our analogous thoughts are we so focused on defeat? What's the origin of the phrase 'Go down like a lead balloon'? Go down like a lead balloon 'Go over like a lead balloon' is the US version of this phrase. In the UK a complete failures 'go down like a lead balloon'. The phrase is American in origin and the first mention of a lead balloon with the meaning of something that fails comes from a Mom-N Pop cartoon that was syndicated in several US newspapers in June 1924. Actually, that coinage went over like a lead balloon itself and the phrase didn't appear again until after WWII; for example, this piece from The Atchison Daily Globe, May 1947: "But occasionally a column or comic strip will 'go over' like a V-1 rocket in one community and, for inexplicable reasons, a lead balloon in another." That's when the phrase can be said to have entered the language and there are many examples in print from US sources of ventures which went down like a lead balloon from that date onward. The most celebrated use of the term is the part played in the naming of the English heavy-metal band Led Zeppelin. The story goes that Jimmy Page had completed a Scandinavian tour with the New Yardbirds - an impromptu band that was formed from the popular rapidly disintegrating Yardbirds. Keith Moon is reputed to have said the new band would go down like a lead balloon - some reports say go over like a lead balloon (or zeppelin). Moon is said to have borrowed the term from John Entwistle, who had previously used it to describe bad gigs. Moon and Entwistle, both being English, would have been more likely to have used the English 'go down' version. The details of this are difficult to verify as the anecdotal comment wasn't recorded or put into print at the time and, as Moon and Entwistle are deceased, we can't ask them. Jimmy Page has confirmed the essence of the story in several subsequent interviews (although, as we all know, 'If you can remember the 1960s, you weren't really there.'). Led ZeppelinThe irony and the association with the heavy metal lead was too good to miss for an aspiring heavy metal band. They even made sure that people got the point that they were referring to the metal by changing the spelling to Led and avoiding any possible mispronunciation as lead - as in leader (reputedly at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant). The choice of Zeppelin in the band's name was surely influenced by the Hindenberg disaster of 1937. The newsreel of the event, complete with Herbert Morrison's famous "Oh, the humanity" line, was commonly seen footage in English cinemas during the 1950s and 60s and Page would certainly have been familiar with it. The band used an image of the crash for the cover of their first album. Moon's prediction could hardly have been more wrong. Led Zeppelin became one of the most popular, arguably the most popular, musical act of the first half of the 1970s and reputedly have sold more than 300 million albums. 'If you can remember the 1960s, you weren't really there.') 3.10.21 https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lead-balloon.html |
| took some trying but think i found the perfect song for my funeral... |
| December 22 2020 Got addicted to the quitting bug and become a minimalist of sorts. needed to atrophy. currently, new medication nips any compulsions to write. Best I can explain it metaphorically: instead of being thrown down a well, its like falling into a puddle that I can't get up from. Being on the surface doesn't cause fear or anxiety, just a general idleness until I have the desire to stand up. In actuality: moving from recliner to kitchen or bed, only to return to recliner for hours on end to staring at the tv. I could go into newsfeed with comments like this, draw attention to myself. What would the point be? If I cannot reciprocate? |
| 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. |
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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! 
