A perfectly imperfect rhyme
can give poets a difficult time.
To find the right phrase
may take hours or days, but
it always works out in due
course.
WordPress Writing 201, Assignment Four. Prompt: imperfect. Form: limerick. Device: enjambment.
caution when climbing don’t rise above the top rung you could lose your way
turn your back on me look away and ignore me I’ll admire your tail
I am literally challenged by this week’s Daily Press photo challenge. I am challenged by literalness.
I grow uncomfortable around ambiguous phrases or terms, like questions that begin with “How do you like…” As in “How do you like your job?”
What is the actual question here? Is it like the phrase “How do you take your coffee?” I like my coffee with cream and sugar. I like my job with very little supervision and an extremely high salary. I seem to drink a lot of black coffee. Guess we don’t always get how we like.
But maybe the question simply means “Do you like your job?” In which case, the answer might be “yes” or “no.” But when “how” is tacked on at the beginning of the question, single-syllabic answers seem no longer appropriate.
In a question format, “how” becomes an adverb (I think; don’t quote me on that), which suddenly makes it all complicated with the need for nouns and adjectives and such.
“How do you like your job?”
“Yes.”
It just doesn’t work that way.
The Daily Post’s photo challenge theme this week is Grid. “We often superimpose a mental grid over things we photograph to help with composition,” the post begins. “This week, let’s go literal.” Michelle the Daily Post person suggests, “This week, let’s take the humble grid out of the shadows, and make it the star.”
Go literal? Suddenly I am compulsively pulling up dictionary.com to look up the literal meaning of “grid.” And since a “grid” is defined as a “grating,” I have to look up “grating,” as well.
This whole thing is, indeed, grating. On my nerves. Guess I’ll have to just grid and bear it. (Ahhhh, she breaks under pressure…)
Definition of “grating” and hence, by inference, also the definition of “grid” ~
a framework of parallel or crossed bars, used as a partition, guard, cover, or the like.*
*Emphasis mine. Mostly because I’ve always wanted to say “Emphasis mine.” **
** And also because I like to use asterisks.
After all this grate research, I have determined that my photos this week are in fact literal depictions of “or the like.”
How do you like them?
Cat hair
everywhere
on the floor and in the air
***
Dog fur
in a blur
mostly on the furniture
***
White fluff
on my stuff
vacuum cleaner has it rough
***
Sometimes
makes me wish
I had opted for a fish
Weekly Photo Challenge: Monochromatic
stretch limo awaits you’ve barely left home before the front end arrives
For a few months now, I’ve been writing “morning pages,” a concept introduced by author Julia Cameron In her book, The Artist’s Way. Basically it involves filling three pages of a journal each day upon first awakening with “stream of consciousness” writing, moving your pen (or pencil or crayon) nonstop to record whatever pops into your mind.
Morning pages are intended to circumvent the “inner critic,” that voice inside your head that judges and picks apart whatever you think or do.
If you listen to your inner critic and believe all the negativity it tries to heap on you, eventually your creativity gets blocked, and you couldn’t write a decent sentence or draw a decent picture or perform a decent free form interpretive dance – or whatever your creative bent is – if your life depended on it.
Cameron recommends that you don’t go back and read what you’ve written in your journal so you won’t be tempted to edit or censor yourself.
You know how as soon as you’re told not to do something that’s exactly the thing you want to do? Okay, maybe that’s just me. And most five year olds. But of course I just had to reread my journal entries.
I’ve culled a few of my thoughts to share with you. If you are a psychiatrist who’s reading this, feel free to list your diagnoses of my mental state in the comments below. Or not.
Here’s a sampling of my journal entries:
It’s funny how old sayings get truncated and then end up making no sense. “Sweating like a pig.” “Happy as a clam.” Then you can’t remember how they’re supposed to go. Am I sweating like a pig at high tide, or am I happy as a clam in a butcher’s shop? Maybe I should just clam up and stop sweating it.
I’m still curious as to why birds don’t interbreed. You know, like a hawk and a rooster. You’d end up with a hawk-a-doodle.
I set a couple of goals for yesterday, maybe more, and at first I totally forgot about them. Then I remembered that I had set them, but couldn’t remember what they were.
If something is misspelled is there really such a thing as misspelling it worse?
Birds probably don’t dwell on rejection.
Who knew ampersands could be so interesting?
I had it figured out once, but then I got confused again. That happens a lot. Well, maybe not. Just sometimes. I don’t know… I’m so confused.
I sure have a lot of things to not worry about. That worries me.
I bet doggie heaven has lots of things to bark at. And smelly things to roll in. And it’s probably right next to kitty heaven so the dogs can sneak over there and eat cat poop. ‘Cuz they sure do love to do that!
Surprisingly, rereading my journal has not invoked that critical voice in my head. In fact, my inner critic seems to just be shaking its head, with that “I don’t even know where to begin” look of dismay.
For once, my inner critic is speechless. Maybe I’ll go do my interpretive dance now.
Susie Lindau was kind enough to run a post I wrote for her Wild Rider Fitness Challenge (#WRFChallenge) a couple of months ago, but since I promised a moratorium on dog posts, I held off on reblogging until today. Thanks, Susie!
I would like you to meet Maggie C from, What Rhymes with Stanza? She has taken the 90 day Wild Rider Fitness Challenge. Maggie has written a wonderful outdoor photo essay about the pet-ometer and how it keeps her going. I can see where it is an excellent motivator. I think you’ll really enjoy this. It may motivate you too.
Take it away Maggie C!
***
Thank you, Susie, for hosting the Wild Rider Fitness Challenge!
I’ve actually been taking daily walks for about a year now, but the Challenge is motivating me to “step up” my game. I have difficulty sticking with any kind of healthy endeavor, it seems, so having kept at it this long is pretty amazing (or perhaps I’m just easily amazed).
The secret to maintaining my exercise regimen this past year has been my Pet-ometer. He doesn’t measure how many steps I’ve taken in a day…
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coins tossed in fountains you can make your wish come true wish for wet pennies
Daily Prompt: Coins in the Fountain
What Rhymes with Stanza? 