It’s Sunday, and time to lift a thought or two from each post of this past week. What an interesting week it was!
Several photo fiction challenges took rather dark turns. Overcast settings, abandoned places. Something in the air…or maybe the water? The word prompts were slightly more upbeat, but I was already on a downward spiral, so it’s understandable that my own dark side reared its head, taking out a few unsuspecting ice crystals along the way. So sorry you had to witness that! 😜
Unsolved cases, happy rescues, wrongs righted, criminals thwarted… thingifications (not to be confused with thingamajigs or thingamabobs) – hey, it’s a word. Someone on the internet said so! And remembering to breath while the moon keeps secrets to herself amidst big foot sightings. I do hope you’re breathing right now…I am feeling a bit breathless after all that!
It does seem a bit strange looking back this week. I feel a tad bit like Alice (of wonderland fame). But all is well. And it’s all good. For someone who loves words and writing them, it was a very good week indeed!
On an administrative note, I decided to tweak this series’ title to “Sunday’s Week in Re-Verse” …a combination of two words “review/repeat” and “verse”. This weekly series has been and continues to be a work in progress after all.
So there you have it. And here it is, my look back, line by line, at the week that was.
Sunday’s Week in Re-Verse ~ 17 January 2016
He never played hide and seek again.
Fire and ice collide at dawn.
Hope springs eternal
if not for the rain.
mystified wide-eyed dreamers you hope for admiration…
Old moon growing dark
Between once upon
“Yeah yeah, well here’s what ya’ came for.”
Welcome to my world!
“Are you okay ma’am?”
is a utopian myth
imagining him human
A reckless notion
‘oft uttered by “tools”
in a world filled with suffering, how tragic.
He was old school.~ kat
If you’re new to this blog, a bit of background to explain the verse above. It is a line from each poem or prose from the previous week. Lifted and placed in the order written. A snapshot review of the week. It helps me to prepare for the upcoming week with a clean slate.
“Ticks and tocks of essential time, sink the spirits lower than wine…”
What did it mean? It was the only thing of substance recovered from the crime scene. This and the bloody remnants of a violent scuffle…but no body. From the width and span of the blood trail that ended at the curb, Sean figured it was a large, heavy person, likely moved from the scene in a vehicle…a van, with easy access to the edge of the sidewalk.
Sean had seen this before. A post-it note and a trail of blood. Attempts were made to identify the victims based on missing persons’ reports and DNA tests, but no matches had been found.
Back at the precinct Sean added the note to the evidence board in his office. He was old school. The younger detectives used computer programs to solve their cases, but Sean liked to see it on the wall, full size.
This was the third victim in as many weeks. Three cryptic messages. Three trails of blood. The crime scenes were all west of the River, but the locations seemed random.
Sean scanned the messages again.
“Bridges take you here to there…water takes you everywhere.” The first note was found behind the textile warehouse at the edge of town; no bridges or water nearby.
The second message read, “Musical notes melodic and sweet…quench the thirst of savage beasts…” Again the crime scene didn’t have any link to music or…
“Wait! Of course! I can’t believe I didn’t see it before now!” The second scene was located at the dock, a block from the old stone bridge. And this last crime scene was in the alley behind the strip club on Broad Street.
Sean repeated the third message, “ticks and tocks of essential time…ticks and tocks…essential time…clocks, something to do with clocks.” There was a clock tower in the square and another huge clock at the First National Bank. But the second part…sink the spirits lower than wine…a bar? There were no bars near either clock. “Think Sean…sinks the spirits…lower than wine…ticks and tocks…essential time…sinks…spirits…lower…” Sean’s eyes widened, “The clock tower at Shady Grove Cemetery! If this guy tries again, this has to be where he’ll strike!”
Sean enlisted a team of officers to monitor the cemetery. Three nights passed. Nothing.
On the fourth night, a grey van pulled into the entrance. When it stopped 100 feet from the clock tower, Sean and his team wasted no time moving in. As the driver opened the side door of the van, a woman with hands bound and head covered by a dark pillow case tumbled out. He shoved her toward the clock tower alcove.
Within seconds the officers had overtaken the killer, disarming him just as he raised a knife to deliver the first blow.
Sean didn’t need a computer to help solve this or any other case. He was old school.
kat ~ 15 January 2016
(498 Words)
A short story for RonovanWrites Friday Fiction Challenge. This week’s challenge: Write a story using the line, “Ticks and tocks of essential time, sink the spirits lower than wine…” somewhere in the story. 500 words or less. If you would like to read other stories or write your own, click HERE for the link.
Created using a free editable photo from PICSART.
Hidden away in an attic
’twas a potion believed to be magic
with the power to heal
it remained there concealed
in a world filled with suffering, how tragic!
kat ~15 January 2016
A limerick in response to Mind and Life Matters weekly Limerick Challenge. This week’s prompt word: Magic. Read others or enter your own limerick HERE.
Happy Friday! Today’s Dictionary.com Word of the Day is quite conceptual in nature, while also being rather concrete in meaning. In addition to its general definition, as reflected in the graphic above, it has been applied in reference to Marxism (Click here to read more on that from Wikipedia. ) or regarded as a fallacy of ambiguity according to this wiki source:
“Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. [1][2] In other words, it is the error of treating something which is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: “the map is not the territory”.
Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (just like metonymy for instance), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy.”
OY!…is your brain hurting yet? Perhaps I should rethink exploring these “words of the day” as a morning practice! I promise, I am not a masochist! To preserve my sanity and brain cells I do sometimes need to let these challenges simmer a bit while my brain acclimates to the shock of being set into high gear.
Today was one of those days! Not to worry…I came up with a handful of haiku. I will leave you with this last thought…an excerpt from LogosJournal’s exploration of the history of the word:
As a synonym of ‘thingification,’ the inverse of personification, reification metaphorically refers to the transformation of human properties, relations, processes, actions, concepts, etc. into res, into things that act as pseudo-persons, endowed with a life of their own. Depending on the grammatical subject of reification – who reifies what: is it the analyst who reifies the concepts or is it society that alienates the subjects? – the transformation of human properties, social relations, abstract concepts, etc. into things, types and numbers can operate both on an epistemological and on a social level.
I rather like reification’s synonyms…”thingification” or “to thingify” as in reify… now this, I get! I have provided the synonym for you if you haven’t had your coffee yet. Now I think it’s time for a nap! 🙂
Reify in Haiku
The past reified (thingified)
is a utopian myth
doomed to a repeat?
some reify (thingify) god
imagining him human
reveals lack of faith.
A reckless notion
is corporate personhood
reification (thingification)?
to say “piece of meat”
is crude reification (thingification)
‘oft uttered by “tools”.
kat ~ 15 January 2016
like mercury colliding... 