Adrienne rich on love loss happiness creativity

Constrain that tap

100 word story  challenge.

I tried writing a small story of an incident that the photo prompt of bed sheets reminded me of. It was launching into a bio while what i wanted to capture was how gifts aid in categorizing memories. I managed to kill the project and realise that it s hard to write in 100 words.

A bedsheet fading. Maroon in color with thread work from Rajasthan. From a best friend in college. Before I left to USA for higher education. But I havent been to her hometown in college. No, its from the time we were roommates for about a year and less. Week days only. Weekends were when I put the Encyclopedia of Great Literature from the office library to work. 

But the format is a good exercise to make your journaling and memoiring spiffy.

How the world came to be

The world is a sphere

Did it begin as the splice with

the biggest radius

And then

a faux garden well

The igloo with no door

closing in

The upturned basket

now ready to bear

The rest of the world

Based on the Mitch Fry's process of wooden spheres.

Making your cardboard tree

I have been into too much Family art lately with family away - soon to reunite. I wonder if I should spend time with family or go for that How to write for a special occasion of a family member workshop. And then Tempe center of arts offers:

Family Art Workshop with Mitch Fry

Cardboard Trees

TCA exhibiting artist Mitch Fry will bring recycled pieces of wood and cardboard for children and adults to create small tree sculptures reminiscent of his own work. Fry began a career as a designer and manufacturer of custom residential, commercial and retail furnishings which has spanned more than 33 years. Today he works on large and small scale sculptures and commissions and especially enjoys working with wood and found materials.

Mitch fry

On the left is my tree having blown in the wind. On the right is my sister's interpretation of tree. When I entered the gallery, I could see all the material for the workshop on a table and then works on the walls by various artists. When Tempe rubber dams burst, they didnt know they would be becoming placeholders for artists. Julie Anand's Long print with white background matching the wall lent the found objects a 3D quality. If you are a walker, hoarder of things you find on those walks, then you will relate to her work. I have a stone, a seed, a five rupee note (now that put the meaning right back to 'Early to rise, early to bed  makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise.). Some other works broke out of their medium by installing a partly burnt wood from the recent largest fire, here in AZ. Local artists rose to the Green revolution challenge.

The piece that looks curly headed is my sun/clouds all in one. Today is Shivaratri. In Rudra, Lord shiva is said to be sun. My sister wanted blue for the water. And 'Purple' sheet was added to the materials for sunset. Lord Shiva is depicted purple/blue.

While reading Julie Anand's Q&A about 'What do you learn from students', I was reminded of the meaning that I had just read of shanti mantra om sahana vavatu that we recited everyday at school.

What they say

On writing
Some more on writing
Novelists-ebooks challenge fiction rules - Wow. No chapter book. GPS aware books reminds of Chandramukhi Tamil movie with its 'ra ra' Telugu song. When adapted into other regional language, the foreignness of the song was maintained wrt to the language of the whole movie.
There is a joke in Telugu about an object bought in foreign where it only turns out to be 'made in India' brought from a foreign country. Or how about that broken time translation I do to the 'what time is it now in India'. I get the numbers right but not the am/pm.

A persian saying - Dont misjudge pepper by its size.

Writing is like cooking
Writing tips
How to write
Liberating the essay
To spark creativity
Seven rules for managing creative people
Author website tips
Writing tips
blogging tips for authors

Find the total area

A Survey officer,
a maths problem continued:
found an irregular land
He had split the place
into parts with axial
and spines each forming
a shape whose area
could be easily calculated
by the basic formulas
Then you add them up.

Dictionary

I like tea. More tea, more like. There was some left in the kettle. I waited for my cup to finish. And then there was none. All evaporated by the heat the kettle was on

Boustrophedon.

The Indian plough
rectangular a has
wooden base
on sit to
kids and tired
it on squat teenagers
while the ox
on carry

A colour for a thing

Why are the barks green
or sky blue
Rainbow eucalyptus
would make them all alike
and  that we would not
like

But there are
rainbow trees
in places you havent been
labs of the nature

Gone

My dad knew that the
money was in the
downtown
At one of the buildings
he just ducked into it
It wasnt a door or a
window
Not a welcome hole

(Dream)

On dream and writing

Doing your thing

There are books about how people make it big.
1. Skip College. They are just one in a billion. And so are billionnaires.
2. Street smarts(Jim Rogers), Playing to win, Digital Disruptors.

I was thinking on these lines of a person who thinks about making the currency. What about a character who does the opposite. One who investigates all the ways of taking money out of others. Like a tax collector. I am thinking of Pale King.

Glad to wake up

It was raining.
I'm in the town I grew up.
I wanted to tell some people
who I was
To see if they could recognize me
I hadnt changed, still a child

A miscreant next to us
My husband snatched his phone
and another device and dropped
it into a well.
We dropped him too.
some fellows were helping us
One of them turned against us

I am on the run and hiding
in a hospital
in the rooms of doctors
a helpful acquaintance

alas, I have to leave
I reach the edge of a building
contemplating falling
and then I glide down

All around the building trained women
are looking for me

Then little dogs catch my scent
I enter into a farm house
and they fall into the dung



PS: Essay staiger odyssey. For times when you itch to write a long essay.

In the dictionary

are the answers.
Metastasize has now entered the non medical lexicon.
Greeks knew the word centuries ago
But only after the English knew cancer

While questions take time to form.
Jeopardy.

Which tree?

No leaves on trees
Tiny black pellets 
seeds of a tree 
nature has its way of 
getting into into your living room 
without knocking the door

Spirituality

A friend recently said that she fast for 6 months of which the first 4 months stint is called Chaturmasya. She said it helped with her spirituality. In NAMTA Journal Vol 27, Number 3 of Summer 2002 titled Montessori Spiritual: God, Evolution and the Natural world, I saw the definition of Spirituality by Csikszentmihayli - "when a person invests energy in trying to connect and go beyond the self, that is what we usually call spiritual". (Recognise the 'flow' guy)

AmritaBindu Upanishad. When/how does desire start? 

Things you can take for granted

A while ago, my roommate recommended this book. The book sat on the shelf for some years now. Into it, I related to the author's confusion of age during his college years. 

When the old dying asks the author to breathe and count to show his decreasing abilities, I was reminded of Randy Pausch demonstrating his fitness before his imminent death.

Another writer with ALS

When you punish someone, what/who are you punishing - the soul? Where is the permanent world?

Related books:

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PS: Things you can take for granted