Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category
Changing, Again
At the rate the transition from winter to spring has been playing out this year, this Words on Images post from April of 2013 resonates enough that I’ve decided to give it a fresh viewing. The prolonged cold and snow is getting mind numbing, but the change will eventually swing through to fruition. At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves.
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Words on Images
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How About
I’m taking a little evil pleasure in Cyndie’s report that she spotted a lot of fox tracks along the southern trail yesterday, because I know there are no longer any easy pickings to be had here.
Driving home past the neighbor’s farm, I took particular interest in how many of their chickens were wandering about in the thoroughly exposed wide open. I will be completely befuddled if the fox visiting us from the woods between our land and that neighbor’s has been ignoring their flock.
Hoping we get a chance to chat with them about it soon.
Meanwhile, I’ve been playing around with ideas on how we might proceed with our next twelve birds in light of the recent carnivorous outburst by the wild little member of the dog family. How about we domesticate the fox like we do dogs?
Allow me to stretch the boundaries of logic…
Here’s how it could go:
- We trap the fox and attach a shock collar. We still don’t know if it’s a male or female. Since pups are born needing total care from the momma, it’s the father that hunts for the kits when they are young. Our visitor could be either.
- We place customized high technology chips into each chicken, programmed to trigger the shock collar within 20 feet proximity.
- Then we sit back and watch the perfect solution play out.
If foxes are so intelligent, it shouldn’t take long at all for this one to learn that our chickens are now off the menu.
It could even become a money-maker for us. We could offer to “chip” our neighbor’s chickens, too, for a small handling fee.
Maybe, as long as we’re stretching reality here, we could also have the collar release a scent of moles, voles, and rabbits after the fox leaves the chickens alone, to entice it toward a more preferred hunting focus.
In a world where we are moving toward driverless cars, smart speakers that control home life, and robots with unknowable artificial intelligence potential, my simple chicken protection/fox control idea seems downright quaint.
How about that?
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Thereof
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I’m trying to think what it is
that’s eating at me
I’m sentimental
this much I know
but I think there’s more to it
than that
it’s a feeling
or something that is creating
a feeling
deep in the farthest reaches
of what constitutes
me
or it could be a lack
I know there is something missing
something I’ll never get back
just like every other time before
what is it about this instance
that makes it any different
I was lost when I got here
why should it feel any different now
other than the added loss of foundation
in all I hold dear
daily being victimized by a bumbling buffoon
who somehow hoodwinked enough people
to make off with a prize
thoroughly and completely
undeserved
as if just to make some point
at the expense of all that’s good and right
and now an invisible sooty stink
sticks to everything
while the best and brightest
stumble around trying to make sense
of a system that is collapsing beneath them
like sand castles against unrelenting gusts of wind
I no longer remember
where I set the things
that mattered to me most
and the grains are flowing fast
through that graceful narrow space
of my delicate hour-glass
yet my work seems hardly done
pushing so many stones
up all of these grassy knolls
with all the water rising
and glaciers sadly waning
none of the genies
will ever go back in their bottles
and maybe that is what’s eating at me
but I have my doubts
my mind is a fragile thing to trust
busy both directing and reacting to
the chemistry experiments
simmering and sublimating
within my flesh and bones
while the invisible forces
of heart-fields and magnetic solar waves
simultaneously push and pull at us all
blindly gliding through
their ephemeral energized confines
we’re all distracted by shiny things and squirrels
dashing for the proverbial carrots
dangling in our minds eyes
sentimental racing rats
too often forgetting to focus
on the ultimate binary truth
concisely boiled down to
love
or
the absence
thereof
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Prevail
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persevering
epidemic
illness
becoming
pandemic
bullying
racism
greedy
misogyny
immature
narcissist
sad
Russia
bots
manipulating
fear
reality
gender
fluidity
religious
pomposity
exclusivity
origin stories
many
fighting
viciously
same
difference
borders
wars
hunger
vengeance
terror
evil
weapons
children
schools
faces
books
hapless
impotent
politicians
money
media
hype
glaciers
melting
permafrost
methane
CO2
now mercury
too
flooding
hurricanes
typhoons
heat
fires
species
extinction
death
grief
unending
forest
bathing
breathing
deep
slowly
coping
hoping
humans
love
somehow
endures
caring
sharing
lifting
hands
planting
plants
feeding
trees
diversity
equanimity
heartfelt
wholeness
common
sense
truth
leadership
creativity
potential
belief
optimal
health
discovery
helping
each
soul
persevere
and ultimately
prevail
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Describe Feeling
The winter Olympic Games are underway again. Skaters and skiers, sledders, curlers, and boarders will be competing for that pinnacle moment when a broadcast journalist points a microphone at their face in search of the next version of what it feels like to win.
Before we even get to that, during last night’s US taped broadcast of the opening ceremony, NBC provided appetizers in the form of athletes trying to describe their feelings before stepping into the stadium for the parade of nations.
I love watching athletic competition. Seeing people struggle for words to describe how they feel isn’t as entertaining for me.
Sometimes I wonder more about the broadcast journalist who is popping the question. Think of the effort they put in to reach the subject of greatest interest, battling camera-yielding athletes in their own right who are jostling for position with all the other microphone-holding reporters eager to ask.
What must the journalists be feeling at the moment they try to concisely summarize what just happened for the athlete, setting up the big question? How did the journalist train for this? How long have they wanted to be the person to ask an athlete how it feels in the seconds after victory? What is the journalist feeling right after they hear the answer and offer a closing tidbit to send the broadcast back to the booth?
The NFL Super Bowl just happened in the Twin Cities, and of course, the de rigueur post game athlete interviews were right on schedule. With team sports, the journalists have multiple chances to mine for that elusive articulation of the winning feeling.
While that was happening, the fans in the stands were breaking the seats.
I want to hear the vandal-fans put their feelings into words.
“Your team just won the championship and you are destroying property. Describe how it feels to break things when you are this happy.”
Last night, I would have been happy to watch the struggle for feeling-descriptors from the person who was piloting the world-record 1,218 Shooting Star drones that were electronically added to the ceremony. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t able to do it live during the cold and windy opening event, the feelings were probably still awesome.
Amazing. Probably hard to put into words. Unbelievable.
The biggest question in life isn’t, “Will you marry me?” More important than that is, “How does it feel?”
Maybe there should be college courses where athletes can enhance their perception of what winning feels like and hone the art of assembling mere words to convey the ethereal essence of unspeakable emotions.
Competitions could be created where the interview to describe how winning feels is the event.
Imagine trying to describe what it would feel like to win that medal.
Enjoy the PyeongChang winter games and winning athlete interviews.
I will. It will be amazing.
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Relative Something 