Category Archives: Essays

The Star City

I created a collage of the things I love most about the eclectic valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains that I call home. The quirky, the sprawling city with a small town vibe, the artsy culture, the mountain views in every direction and the century old neighborhood where I live….I’m quite fond of my home town. It’s a pretty cool place, and my entry for this week’s Wednesday Photo Challenge, “Tour Guide”.

“Y’all come see us sometime!” I might be heard saying in my Chicago twanged clip (a hint of the Midwest where I was born and raised), which raises eyebrows with the locals who are quick to retort in their slow, smooth, southern drawl, “You’re not from around here are ya…” Be that as it may, I’m here to stay.

~kat


Twittering Tales #70 – 6 February 2018

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About the challenge: Each Tuesday I will provide a photo prompt. Your mission, if you choose to accept the challenge, is to tell a story in 280 characters or less. When you write your tale, be sure to let me know in the comments with a link to your tale.

A final note: if you need help tracking the number of characters in your story, there is a nifty online tool that will count for you at charactercountonline.com.

I will do a roundup each Tuesday, along with providing a new prompt. And if for some reason I missed your entry in the Roundup, as I have occasionally done, please let me know. I want to be sure to include your tale.

Finally, have fun!

And REMEMBER…you have 280 characters (spaces and punctuation included), to tell your tale…and a week to do it. I can’t wait to see what you create this week.


Twittering Tales #69 – Book Titles – The Roundup 

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NY Times Best Selling Books

Starting us off…
“Lean In”
The valley was still, softly draped in mist. Rayna leaned against an old tree, her thin frame wasted from disease, breath frail, fading.
It was just as she had planned.
“I’m ready,” she whispered her last, smiling, as mourning doves softly cooed nearby. And the mountain echoed.
(276 Characters)

From Reena at ReInventions:
The Fourth Wheel
The wimpy kid leans in on the 3rd wheel, seeing a painless Heaven. The 4th wheel refuses to budge, as the doctors say,
“There’s still hope.”
He wants happiness – not hope. Shades of grey gather. It’s the end of the inferno, and the mountains echoed.
Jesus Calling…. 4th wheel moves.
(279 characters)

From Martin at Martin Cororan:
He woke up and it was all a ludicrous dream that he later wrote up into a best-selling novel…
…For his crimes against humanity Dan Brown found himself on a blackened island at the centre of a sulphurous lake. Amidst noxious flames demons whispered that the pope was out to get him and that a sacred manuscript had been secreted somewhere deep inside his colon…

From Jane at Jane Dougherty Writes:
Gatsby Said…
Fifty shades of grey Jesus, calling for proofs of heaven, searching in the diary of a wimpy kid. Lean in, Gatsby said, the inferno beckons. And the mountains echoed—Happy, Happy, Happy! Oh, the places you go, Gatsby smiled from his seat at the end of the pier.

From Jannat at Be Happy:
Happy, happy, happy
It’s time for the sleep
Baby, baby, baby
You better go to sleep
A proud new mama turned her baby bliss into a sweet lullaby. This sweet night ritual with its slow rhythm promotes a state of drowsiness. She thinks her son is a sweetest little part of her destiny.

From Fandango at This, That, and the Other:
Booking It
I honestly can’t remember the last time a read a book. Well, a physical book, that is. A hard cover book or even a paperback book.
It’s not that I don’t read books. I read maybe a dozen or so a year. But I always download the books onto the Kindle app on my iPhone.
It’s what I do.
(279 characters)

From Hayley at The Story Files:
Proof of Heaven
I don’t know what started it. A feeling or thought, maybe? Then the dreams came followed by the visions and I knew it was real. The angels arrived next, blazing light and whispering. Why had I been chosen? I didn’t know but I knew I had to spread the messages.

From Di at Pensitivity101:
Mummy was cross and Emily didn’t understand.
She had found Mummy’s colouring book and was trying to find fifty shades of grey in it.
132 characters

From Jan at Strange Goings On in the Shed:
Hot and Bothered
Her past was Diary of a Wimpy Kid, yearning after romance
Her reality is Fifty Shades of Grey, a forbidden palette and gallons of espresso
Lean In she implored And the Mountains Echoed with their laughter
Surely this was Proof of Heaven? Getting hot and bothered
How the Inferno rages
(280 characters)

From Willow at WillowDot21:
Fifty Shades of Grey
Lean in, I willed him to look closer, to be astounded by my choice of reading.I wanted him to be impressed by my collection of prize-winning books. He’d never know that I had not read any of them. I was just like my bookcase all show. Fifty Shades of Grey no colour, no substance.
(280 characters)

From Anuragbakhshi at Jagah Dil Mein Honi Chahiye:
It’s Tough to Say Goodbye
I looked at the books on the shelf fondly. I would miss these the most.
But now, it was time to move on. My family was not safe here anymore.
The exterminators were on their way, and I’d heard the human mention on the phone that they specialized in cockroaches.
261 characters.

From Radhika at Radhika’s Reflection:
The Inferno
Initially a small flickering flame, the fire soon developed into a raging inferno, blazing with all its fury, sparing none in its path, hungry, fiery, intense, exploding, scorching, on a rampage, choking the air, bellowing dark smoke in fifty shades of grey!
Letter count : 256

From Lena at Soul Connection:
Happy Happy Happy”He Screamed,Pckd Bag n Ws Abt To Go
Rm Mate,”Whr R U Heading To?”
Angry He Ran 2wrds Rm Mte In Aggrsn
Rm Mte,”Sorry”
He Calmly Said,”I Found Proof Of Heaven
“What!”
“Jesus Calling”He Jst Rpld n Ws Gne.
“Mad Chap.One Day His Fifty Shades Of Grey Wl Kill Sm1 For Sure.”
From Life at 17:The Man
And the mountains echoed her voice, as she screamed,   
In front of her eyes was the man,  
The man who pushed her down the hills, 
The man she had loved, 
The man who stood there kissing another woman.
194 characters

From Isabel at Isabel Caves:
The Last Battlefield
She was happy, happy, happy. That’s what she told herself every day.
She refused to give in to sorrow. She refused when they razed her village to the ground. She refused when they killed her father and took her brother.
She had no bullets left to fire – her smile would have to do.
(280 characters)

From Peter at Peter’s Pondering:
Gatsby was feeling great!
Jesus was calling round and they were going to visit Dan Brown’s new nightclub, Inferno.
He was leaning towards going for a Wimpy burger first and rounding off the evening seeing Fifty Shades of Grey.
Oh, the places you’ll go to feel Happy, Happy, Happy!
(280 characters)

From Tena at Jottings and Writings:
Ohh how she wished she could write… Like that of the authors of her favorite books. In her mind were all sorts of stories and adventures. But as she sat down to write, pen in hand, those stories seemed to vanish into thin air. Disappearing into a sea of nothingness.
{271 characters}

Thanks to everyone who participated in our book title challenge! Be sure to visit your fellow tweeters. This week’s interesting photo comes to us from PIRO4D at pixabay.com. It appears to be a letter, but it doesn’t need to be. It could be a clue for a scavanger hunt, a list, the first or last page of a manuscript. You might even write a story that doesn’t have anything to do with that piece of paper, focusing instead on the bench or the rock or the ground below. Whatever you decide there are just a few rules… have fun! and use  280 characters or less to tell your tale. I hope to see you at net week’s Round-up!


Twittering Tale #70 – 6 February 2018

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Photo by PIRO4D at Pixabay.com

The Race

Jon and Sue were first to find the final clue: a riddle.

It has a mouth but never speaks, a bed but never sleeps…

“Think Sue,’ Jon pleaded. “the others are coming!”

“The river!” Sue exclaimed, “It’s the river!”

At river’s edge, they claimed their prize…freedom from the island.

~kat

279 Characters


Oblivescence – Friday’s Word of the Day

Today’s word of the day at dictionary.com is oblivescence which means: forgetting; state of being forgotten; the condition or fact of failing to remember or having failed to remember or of being absent-minded.

According to dictionary.com,
Oblivescence dates from the late 19th century and is a later spelling of obliviscence, which dates from the late 18th century. The spelling oblivescence arose by influence of the far more common suffix -escence. The English noun is a derivative of the Latin verb oblīviscī “to forget,” literally “to wipe away, smooth over.” The Latin verb is composed of the prefix ob- “away, against” and the same root as the adjective lēvis “smooth.”

There are a number of references to this word in psychology that deal with memory. Oblivescence is a theory described as a means of self-preservation in our propensity to forget the disagreeable things we have experienced while preserving the pleasurable aspects of the same event.

Until I learned this word I never thought much about it, but how true it is. Upon meeting their newborn baby, many mothers completely forget the pain of labor. Holidays and family gatherings in the past are remembered only as happy occasions and completely forgotten are family tensions and arguments that may have erupted at the very same event. Memories of a loved one, now passed away become more and more positive as the years go by and we slowly forget the things about them that drove us batty. Interestingly, this phenomenon seems to happen unconsciously. It is not the same thing as having selective memories of a person, place or thing.

As I often do, I found a fun reference to this word in modern times. There is a spell or charm in the Harry Potter series as explained in this reference index excerpt:

oblivescence

The process of forgetting.

obliviate

A memory charm or spell in the Harry Potter books that makes someone forget.

obliviator

The act of memory modification which can be used by any wizard, by using the spell, “Obliviate” as described in the fictional universe of the Harry Potter series as written by J.K. Rowling.

An Obliviator is the designation for a Ministry of Magic employee who has the task of modifying the memory of a Muggle after witnessing incidents belonging to the magic world.

A Muggle is a term, sometimes used in a pejorative manner, from the fictional Harry Potter series of books that refers to a human who is a member of the non-magical community.

Here’s a wiki-link for the various occasions when this spell was used.

I often wonder why I remember some things and not others (which I am only reminded of through the recollections of others). Now I have a word for it. It’s as if random years of my life have been erased like they never happened. I suppose that is why the memories I have retained are so precious.

barely a feeling
fading to oblivescence
days of loving you

~kat


Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 28 January 2018

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Why do I do it? Why do I wear my heart and soul on my sleeve, speak my truth, fight for justice and sanity, for compassion…for love? Does it even matter?

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that It does. It does matter. Truth matters. Justice matters. Sanity…well, sanity is kind of important. Compassion matters so so much. And Love. That’s a no-brainer. All those things matter because sometimes we forget.

Sometimes the darkness feels too dark; sometimes the obstacles too great. Sometimes I let fear get the better of me. Sometimes I feel broken and discouraged. Sometimes I just want to give up, crawl under a rock and sleep. That’s when I need the light of others. It matters.

We are like fireflies fluttering in the darkness. A flicker here…another there…and another.  Each glimmer lets us know we’re not alone. We’re definitely not alone.

Yeah…it matters.

Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 28 January 2018

and frankly…can I be frank?
a symphony of light
candle on the table flickered
fire and ice collide
healing would be possible
words professing peace and love
dark house echoing
up close
slogging for success
you are afraid
a fool who lingers
morning comes
but it is too soon

~kat

A ReVerse poem is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time. I use it as a review of the previous week.


Sisyphean – Friday’s Word of the Day

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Today’s word of the day on Dictionary.com is Sisyphean. It means, endless and unavailing, as labor or tasks; of or relating to Sisyphus. It  Entered the English language in the 17th Century.

So who was this Sisyphus fellow that the word is referring to?

Well, according to Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the founder and King of Ephyra (known today as Corinth). He was a vile, dishonest ruler with a very high opinion of himself. He took pleasure in killing travelers and guests to his kingdom as a way of exerting and maintaining his authority. This however, was a violation of xenia (“guest-friendship”) the ancient Greek concept of hospitality; the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home and/or associates of the person bestowing guest-friendship.). Sisyphus was not concerned with the rule of law and even considered himself much more clever than Zeus. For his hubris, Zeus punished King Sisyphus by forcing him to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill, only to have it fall back down the hill. He was condemned to repeat this futile exercise for eternity. And this is where we get our word of the day. Things that are never-ending yet pointless are said to be Sisyphean.

Wikipedia also offered a few other scholarly references to things Sisyphean. ‘According to the solar theory, King Sisyphus is the disk of the sun that rises every day in the east and then sinks into the west. Other scholars regard him as a personification of waves rising and falling, or of the treacherous sea. The 1st-century BC Epicurean philosopher Lucretius interprets the myth of Sisyphus as personifying politicians aspiring for political office who are constantly defeated, with the quest for power, in itself and “empty thing” being likened to rolling the boulder up the hill.

In Plato‘s Apology, Socrates looks forward to the after-life where he can meet figures such as Sisyphus, who think themselves wise, so that he can question them and find who is wise and who “thinks he is when he is not”.’

More recently, J. Nigro Sansonese, building on the work of Georges Dumézil, speculates that the origin of the name “Sisyphos” is onomatopoetic of the continual back-and-forth, susurrant sound (“siss phuss”) made by the breath in the nasal passages, situating the mythology of Sisyphus in a far larger context of archaic (see Proto-Indo-European religion) trance-inducing techniques related to breath control. The repetitive inhalation–exhalation cycle is described esoterically in the myth as an up–down motion of Sisyphus and his boulder on a hill.

In experiments that test how workers respond when the meaning of their task is diminished, the test condition is referred to as the Sisyphusian condition. The two main conclusions of the experiment are that people work harder when their work seems more meaningful, and that people underestimate the relationship between meaning and motivation.

Once again, Dictionary.com is having a bit of fun with us. There are certain leaders, who shall remain nameless, who seem to embody Sisyphus in our times. I’m not going there today. I can think of another application for this word, given that I am on lunch break from my 9-5 droning means of survival. But it is Friday. The weekend offers a bit of relief from the rat race. Have a good one.

slogging for success
is a Sisyphean rut
who you know matters

~kat