Words for Wednesday

Words for Wednesday will be here for the Month of April. All the way from Newfoundland, Canada, which has its own time zone - 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada. Thanks as always to Elephant's Child for keeping this feast going. 

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. 

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Here are the words for this week, In two batches with an image in the middle, use some or all of the prompts. Thank you so much for the opportunity to host W4W - I have enjoyed it immensely! I had fun with this week's prompts. The painting is "Back from Market" by Chardin. The prompts are from the poem that Eavan Boland wrote about it.

Good luck!

Congregate

Impulse

Market

Peasant

 Wine

Surging

Light

Hazard

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Here's mine, I used all of the prompts:

Claustrophobia was what she had to live with since she was twelve. It rendered her a recluse - for being in a confined space was impossible. Like now. Yeah, she had all the therapy, thank you very much. But even Dr. Herzel's large office was torture. Being told to stay with her feelings, let them wash over her, blah and blah cubed. Her impulse to run away and out onto the street always won.

Here in the small church where The Disciples congregated every Sunday at 9, was torture too, hemmed between her parents like a child. She was twenty one for God's sake. Home for the weekend from college.

The sounds of the Sunday Farmer's Market surged through the open church windows on the golden light from the morning sun. It was calling her name and this time she obeyed. The minister was pounding the pulpit in rhythm to her heart as she broke free, pulling her arm from her father's restraint, not caring about the hazard to his failing heart that he guilted her with every time she came home, "You'll be the death of me, child," clutching his chest over her latest innocent exploit, like drinking a glass of wine.

She flew outside the church door, mingling with the heady mix of peasants and the well-to-dos who stayed at a manageable distance from her, as they crowded the stalls of vegetables, fruits and meats.

She breathed in the intoxicating smell of freedom as she moved around.

It was high time indeed to deal with the undeserved punishment of her father locking her for five hours in the cellar's dark cold room for innocently kissing Albert in the school playground all those years ago.

The Welcome Mat

 I live in an apartment building that is only two storeys but extends expansively across a few acres of land, with a great view of lakes and hills and a slice of ocean.

Many of the tenants, including me, enhance our entrance ways with art work, floral arrangements and plants. and statuary. seasonal wreathes and vases. Some of the art work extends into the walls of halls, which look like art galleries. All very inspiring and quite beautiful and remarked on frequently by guests.

A new tenant, who replaced our dear belated Betty who was moved off into a care home due to dementia, has made this stark statement outside her door. I just had to take a photo. There is no other ornamentation outside her doorway.

It gets me to thinking about the insides of this new tenant - I haven't met her and really, I think we would have nothing in common. Perhaps a compulsive housekeeper? I'm one of those who's never had shoe-rules of any kind. You can throw your shodded feet around my floors any time you like. I would never make such demands on a welcome guest who would visit me for my company and not for my shoddy house-keeping. 

What do you think of such a "welcome" mat? And the person behind it?

Good Exhaustion/Bad Exhaustion

 Why did it take me all my life to sort this one out?

If I'm performing creative/interesting/inspiring work I can be tired but happy.

If I'm doing basic maintenance of self and surroundings, I can be tired but cranky and irritable.

It all takes the same amount of energy (the spoons) but the end result is far, far different.

Dishes can knock me out, standing, even meditating (thanks Kate), slopping around in the water, does me in. A cheery heart while doing mundane tasks does not come easy to me. Gratitude for being able to stand at all evaporates.

What I resent most about bad exhaustion is that is zaps me from any other activities. I'm not a methodical person by nature and I've tried everything - a reward of, say, a phone call, after the dishes are done doesn't work for me. I am too tired.

Whereas working on crafting (currently that sofa blanker is now heading into the stratosphere of 2 feet, thank you very much after so many fails), can see me making the call and knitting at the same time in complete bliss.

Finding a balance is difficult for me at the best of times. I do plot out my days, I do have an agenda with all the necessary tasks listed, nothing ambitious or even moderately over extending myself, but the overwhelm is present just about all the time. Call it Irish Catholic Guilt, engrained since birth. Today I feel up for the weekly family Zoom.

I attended an online retreat this morning, I wrote two cards to friends, made my lunch, took my gallon of pills, started on the Words for Wednesday post, read a couple of chapters of my latest book, played 14 games of Lexulous (stretching the old brain, a daily event for like, 15 years now).  Meditated some. Worked on a memoir and a poem for a competition.

And yes I got dressed, braided my stupid long, long hair, and am now writing this post. I will march shuffle the 10 miles of halls to drop the cards in the mailbox in the main lobby later on tonight and see if I can stick my name on the weekly Covid laundry schedule and then fingers crossed, I am actually not too exhausted to fulfil that obligation.

So on it goes, a peak into my day.

And the dishes sigh on in the sink. But I am good exhausted.

Words For Wednesday

 

Words for Wednesday will be here for the Month of April. All the way from Newfoundland, Canada, which has its own time zone - 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada. Thanks as always to Elephant's Child for keeping this feast going. 

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. 

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Here are the words for this week, In two batches with an image in the middle, use some or all of the prompts.

Good luck!

From "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway. Photo from front cover of book. (an annual read for me)

Colourless*

Slaughter*

Moustache*

Jockey*

Eliminate*

Whiskey*

Thermometer*

Wickedness*

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Here's mine, using all the prompts and the picture.

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Roseanne pulled the curtain aside and looked down at the colourless shell-shocked road four floors below. The war seemed like yesterday, she still couldn't get used to the silence. Normal life had not returned even though the armistice was a few months ago now.

She sighed and glanced back at the bed where Antoine was lightly snoring, his grown-up moustache still strange on his face. He had changed in uncountable ways. He had witnessed and participated in acts she could barely comprehend, slaughter and wickedness which would never be eliminated from his fun loving spirit, now gone forever.

Her deep love for him was now jockeying with feelings of pity and revulsion for what he had seen and done. The unknowable within him.

Last night at the café where they had met with his comrades in arms the whiskey had run freely and the ribaldry and war stories had pushed the atmospheric thermometer to an unsustainable pitch.

She had wanted to walk out the door. Antoine, her gentle artistic fiancé, had vanished forever.

But a few old strands were still not unravelled, holding her there with thin threads of hope.

Update

Sometimes we feel stress in different ways, don't we? Not quite aware we are in stress but the evidence of our own compromised presence in our lives becomes evident.

Example:

I nearly went mad from this knitting pattern I had designed. The first time I ripped it out, I had a chuckle. I had forgotten to take into account increases for the Aran part so I wound up with the beginnings of a bedspread rather than a throw (sofa blanket or afghan).  So rip down and start again. Great. I'm on top of things now. 6"inches in, the thing is decreasing in size. With no known cause. 

Closer examination shows no dropped stitches. I was close to weeping. I've been knitting non-stop just about since I was seven so I thought: give up now, as I tossed it in a basket, dementia has set it. Give up, stop knitting. And there it sat. 

I finally picked it up during the week and ripped it all down again and restarted, counting the stitches on every row and the thing was haunted, it was shrinking yet again. I read my pattern aloud a few times and realized I had consistently forgotten a vital increase to compensate for a double decrease in the pattern. Small beans I know to a non=knitter, but I have been knitting for seventy years. Yeah, seventy years and know my knits, cables, purls and lace.

In chatting with friends and family and sharing this, others offered stories of their own realities. Such as awkward stuttering when engaging in conversations, losing really, really obvious nouns when on the telephone, misplacing every day things and sleeping a lot - or the opposite side of that coin, waking a lot. And inappropriate hysterical laughter. I'm sure there are many more.

This pandemic has taken its toll in all sorts of ways, some of which we are not even aware.

Have you any odd or funny or alarming pandemic behaviour responses?

 

Words for Wednesday

 

Words for Wednesday will be here for the Month of April. All the way from Newfoundland, Canada, which has its own time zone - 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada. Thanks as always to Elephant's Child for keeping this feast going. 

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. 

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Here are the words for this week, In two batches with an image in the middle, use some or all of the prompts.

From "The Book of Longing" by Leonard Cohen. Art by Leonard Cohen.

Canopy*

Thorn*

Machine*

Charity*

Limp*

Aisle*

Nothing*

Sneak*

He'd been a thorn in her side for so long, she'd lost track of the times he'd teased and belittled her. And now here he was, all grown up, she sneaked a look, the slight limp from the long ago motorcycle accident giving him a roguish slant. Their childhood battles all but forgotten, falling away into nothing.

He'd come back into her life installing a machine - the new printing press for her company that ran the children's charity.

And incredibly, here she was, walking down the aisle, moving under the white canopy, leaning on her father's arm, smiling up at Luke her childhood enemy, as he held out his hands and grasped both of hers, smiling, solid, as if he'd always been standing there. Waiting.

Words For Wednesday

Words for Wednesday will be here for the Month of April. All the way from Newfoundland, Canada, which has its own time zone - 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada. Thanks as always to Elephant's Child for keeping this feast going. 

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Computer issues led her to bow out for a while.  The meme was too much fun to let go, and now Words for Wednesday is provided by a number of people and has become a movable feast. 

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts, and mixing and matching is encouraged.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme, which includes cheering on the other participants.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

Here are the words for this week, In two batches with an image in the middle, use some or all of the prompts.

Wardrobe

Silhouette

Sergeant

Dispensation

Placebo

Displeasure

Sympathy

Discretion

Good luck all!

Update (my take on the words)

Normally, Cat would never emerge from the wardrobe during daylight but the noises outside had forced him to abandon his discretion.  Through the window and murky fog, he could dimly perceive The Sergeant's silhouette making his noon rounds. He was filled with sympathy for the broken man allowing him a dispensation from normal human behavior.

The loss of Mrs. Sergeant had disrupted the entire household. Even Old Dog had gone off his feed and had ceased his only remaining hobby of making fun of Cat. It was a sad household. They offered each other placebos of pats and licks when their paths crossed, but their displeasure in each other's company in this time of interminable grief was evident.

Everyone just wanted to be alone. The Sergeant marching around outside, Old Dog moping in his basket by the fire and Cat hiding away in the wardrobe.

But today was different. The Sergeant had finally broken outside. He was weeping openly. Cat looked at Old Dog and flipped his tail. They slowly walked to the door.

The Sergeant came in, leaning his back against the closed door and then, bending down, enfolded Cat and Old Dog in his arms.