A pingbaiku:
alas pingback fail
post has gone missing today
trying now again
Here’s the link to my real post in case you’d like a continuation of A Dark Tunnel from a couple days ago. I hope this one works.
Month: April 2017
A Dark Tunnel (continued)
As the last strains of the Bolero fade from my ears, my thoughts begin to — unRavel 😉 and I’m pleased to take on a new challenge…just kidding…here’s the real post…
A Dark Tunnel continued…
The gentle strength in her grip on my ankle is at once concerning and reassuring. I fear for her safety more than my own, but have learned more than once since our first meeting that she is no damsel in distress. Her resourcefulness and resolve belie the delicate beauty of her soft facial features, and have kept us a half step ahead of danger repeatedly.
The darkness forces my thoughts inward, nothing else to concentrate on as our slog through the damp endlessness of the tunnel goes on. My thoughts return to that fateful evening. “Pleased to meet you,” she had said with an accent that reached deep into a primal part of me, summoning me inside her mind. “Enchanté,” I returned in my dreadful Texas drawl, cringing inside but hoping it didn’t show on the outside. She had passed by my outstretched hand to touch my shoulder, leaning forward to lightly kiss each cheek in turn, me trying to mirror the moves, not having grown up with this delightful custom. As we pulled back and smiled into each other’s eyes, I remember the phrase “follow you to the ends of the Earth” passing through my jumbled mind, thoughts raveling and unraveling as the moment persisted. Laughing now to myself. I didn’t think that would include literally traveling under the Earth together.
The wine had flowed along with the conversation as we sat outside Les Deux Magots café, sharing the warm Paris evening with our mutual friend Alex who had arranged our meeting. All was going well until she looked beyond my shoulder, eyes widening in alarm. “Come with me. Now” adding “Please” as an afterthought, hand clutching my wrist not unlike the way she now holds my ankle in the darkness. We stand and dart down the street, with her in the lead, leaving Alex at the table, confusion crossing his features…
To be continued when more prompts arrive….
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Can Conformity Be Creative?
I wanted to share one of my creativity research posts from Psychology Today, a great place to learn about topics in Psychology. This post is about how copying ideas that challenge your assumptions can increase your creativity. Click the abstract picture to read it if you’d like to know more. It opens in a new tab or window.
A Dark Tunnel
I love word combinations. One of the great things about combinations is that they reveal the near-infinite complexity, the wide range of nuances, hiding within the individual words. Take blindly. It most often has a figurative sense of doing things mindlessly, without thinking, understanding or judgment. You might follow others or fall for a person blindly, etc. But it also has a direct, literal sense of not physically seeing things around you. To help pull out those subtleties I sometimes randomly generate pairings, in this case verbs with the adverb blindly.
One verb that came up was creep and it birthed this fragment:
“We creep blindly through the engulfing darkness of the tunnel, not daring even a whisper, communicating only with subtle shifts in the pressure of fingers encircling the ankle of the one in front, slight angling of that bony joint in response. The heat is punishing, pressing on us, seeming to constrict our narrow passage even more. The sweat has long since drenched our clothing, making it adhere to the clay as we inch along crablike. How long have we been moving? I realize I have no idea. The unrelenting darkness has shut down not just vision but also the connections to most other gauges of experience. The only heightened sense is hearing as we listen for the slightest of shufflings from behind that would signal pursuit. How long until we reach the end, hopefully undiscovered so that we may rise and sprint to speed our escape? …”
I don’t know yet who might be pursuing them, where they might be headed or if they escape, but the combination “creep blindly” set a whole train of thought in motion, different than other random combinations that came up, such as inject blindly, stab blindly, rule blindly, prepare blindly, honor blindly and so on.
I’ll say more about the program I use in a different post, but this one is already getting too long.
Cheers
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
A Tenacious Haiku
Trying (tenaciously) to fit all last week’s words (and no others) into a single haiku.
pause, cusp denial
heal tenacious champion
prudent outlier
Hoping some will reply with different versions. 🙂
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
How Are We to Heal?
Haiku (of sorts)
how are we to heal
bleeding planet gashed by hate
one heart at a time
how are we to heal
weeping planet asking love
one heart at a time
how are we to heal
reaching now to different ones
one heart at a time
Explanation, skip if too boring: I typically don’t explain what I write. The words will either stand or fall on their own, but I wanted to give a bit of background on this. First, I thought about the old parable about the grandfather telling his grandson that there are two wolves always at war inside each of us, one representing hatred and fear, the other representing love and bravery. When the grandson asks which one wins, the grandfather answers “the one you feed.” Let us feed our loving wolves. Second “one heart at a time” is an adaptation of the story from which the title of Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, derives. She describes how her brother was daunted by needing to complete a long report on birds, and her father kindly advised “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” None of us can accomplish the seemingly daunting task of healing the world alone. But we can each take it heart by heart, one heart at a time. Finally, I’ve never tried haiku before but the phrase “how are we to heal” would not leave me alone, so its five syllables was a start.
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Outlier Than Thou?
In H. G. Wells’ World War I novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Hugh Britling writes home to his father, grousing about British military officers, “…they do not think hard, and they do not understand that doing a job properly means doing it as directly and thought-outly as you possibly can.”
What can we say about the officers’ limited approaches? If they weren’t doing their jobs as thought-outly as possible, then we are forced to conclude that they should have been doing things, in a word (or two), thought-outlier.
Outlier: (out—lee—ur), adj. the quality of being more outly or possessing more outliness. 😉
To extend this outlier construct, things that are more extraordinary or wonderful in some way must be far-outlier. And so on…
And one more stretch, now that outly is an adjective, we should all strive to be as outly as we can be…
Ok…so this post was a cop-out, but perhaps not too cop-outlier than some others. 😉
PS – Kudos (or partial blame) to Orange-Haired Woman for the question about pronunciation that led me to think of outlier as an adjective, and thinkinkadia for proposing the new personality trait of out-liar that provided more inspiration.
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Security for Both
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Rationalization, Not Denial
Dialogue from The Big Chill
Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
Rationalization, Not Denial
“You interrupted me tonight. A lot.” She tossed the accusation into the chill space between us in the car on the way home. “Everybody noticed. Did you see the way they all looked at me?” Her favorite means of leverage in an argument. Everyone on her side, no one on mine. “Well, if you would take a breath between words, maybe someone else could speak without talking over you,” I sulked as we pulled into the driveway. “We’ve been through this before. You talk too slow.” “Slowly,” I mentally corrected her, rolling my eyes as I walked to the front door without turning.
As she crossed the threshold, I turned and spoke deliberately, “It’s not my fault. You just never let me get a word in edgewise.” Snorting, “You pause between every word. It’s like you have to think about each one before you say it.” I closed my eyes, then softly “Precision is important to me. Sometimes the exact right word …takes time to find.” Not buying my tired excuse, “You’re in denial. You talk slow. It’s just that simple” A deep inhale before the words flowed out from me in one long gust, “First of all, I’m rationalizing, not denying. Look it up. If you’re going to play armchair psychologist, at least get it right. And for God’s sake, learn some grammar. It’s slowly. Not slow.” She hated it when I pulled the grammar card. So did I. My words had finally flowed smoothly but hurtfully. I was tired and frustrated, another rationalization. We had been down this path many times before.
I knew it was coming. “You…talk…slow…ly,” smirking. “You should join the Slow….Talkers…of…America…………Society,” pausing an extra second before the last word. Tired of the battle, tired of this particular taunt, I muttered, “I did. I’m even running for president.” I had caught her off guard, the first traces of a smile creasing her lips, head tilting in question, “How’s that going for you?” Suppressing my own grin, “It’ll be a while.” “They’re doing a roll call vote.”
Her smile broadened, warming and dissolving the chill. We hugged, grateful for the closing of the distance between us. A soft kiss on the neck. Then the lips. And another, lingering. Then longer, slower, warmer. Our eyes locked onto one another’s. Rationalization could wait. This was too important….
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Free Form Thoughts About Champion
Champion?
Musing
Perusing musings
Winnings
Losings
Choosings
Don’tings, Do-zings
Floozing?
Boozing
Doping, Coping, Hoping
Goals. Tolls, Roles
Training, Gaining
Refraining
More musing
Off and on
Snoozing
Thrice achoozing
Pollen’s amusing
Many thoughts
Ink Blot
Champion
Copyright © Thomas Ward 2017
Creativity for You 