Tuesday Morning – 4:28

I hate mornings –
For it means the night is through,
And I’ve woken next to you,
Naked. Alone.

July 4, 2011

Spark

My pen is empty.
This story’s spark has died.
It made our passion
Seem bright yet tragic –
Truths hidden are truths denied.

My stars are heavy –
Fixed inside my eyes.
Where no one else can see.
And yet, on dreaming,
They shine bright within my skies.

My heart is empty
Strapped inside my skin
It has been gutted,
But new perspectives
Might see it beat again.

This poem needs a fourth stanza at the very least… any thoughts on theme extensions? To see a draft of this work, click here Spark (draft).

July 4, 2011

Surface Tension (I)

Are you living a fairy tale

while real life passes you by?

I was speaking to a woman yesterday about the historic nature and metaphoric meaning of nursery rhymes. The conversation originated with an immediate need to distinguish between fairy tales and nursery rhymes – how we as children don’t know the horrific story behind “Ring Around the Rosie,” or the folly behind the catchy, “The Grand Old Duke of York.” Most nursery rhymes, like fairy tales before Walt Disney, have horrific origins far removed from their current interpretations.
Nursery rhymes, like the media that washes around us in a pervasive flood today, concentrate memorable events down to interpreted imaginings, memorable soundbites that spin events, and interpret meanings for you. For some good, brief examples, have a look at:

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/

Here is something I like to try from time to time, that nursey rhymes reminds me of.

Take a formative memory – a moment of success or failure, love or loss. Try to recreate the origins surrounding the memory, see it from an opposite perspective, through a friend’s imagined eyes, through your parent’s p.o.v. Attempt to recapture what has been ignored, lost, or filtered out (or just unknown). I like to look beyond memorable moments to complete conversations, beyond (first) impressions to complexities. I know today that the mind filters stories and information down for us, compresses fears and joys and stress into alternate views of reality that we readily take as our own history, ignoring the rest.
I wouldn’t term myself as revisionist – just thoughtful, questioning of the interconnectedness of the human experience, and open to the revelation beneath the surface.
I’ll get back to the fairy tales later…

Food for the writing soul – British court rolls from 1670

I may be a fervent medievalist, but don’t let that curtail my love of history in general. Only yesterday I was musing on the patterns of many social commentaries on medievalism, that are derived from court proceedings. These are valuable because they, like wills and marriage banns, often remain as the (only) archival records of a life in the distant past. This site is interesting in that stories, histories, and lives, can be imagined from the records and information provided.  This is a seed for the imagination, rife with conflict, points of view, and resolutions, fair or otherwise, as ruled by the Court.  I look forward to investigating the details, and turning them into literture. Not quite medieval, but interesting all the same…

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

Bliss

In an expectant life,
You can only remember
One side of the story.
The rest is fantasy
Tinged with hope,
And passionate,
Comforting
Denial.

withoutmedia – connection addiction

http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com/

I am sure many of you have heard by now about the University of Maryland study on 200 teen and college students experiencing true feelings of addiction and withdrawal when faced with being asked to unplug for a “mere” 24 hours. Above is the WordPress blog about their experiences, which I am beginning to explore. Despite the fact that the study asked students to abandon media as a whole (including newspapers, books, Internet, texts, etc.) I expect to find that the withdrawal centers around the communication aspects of instant messages/gratification of FB, texting, and connectivity at your fingertips.
Do educators need to give up the battle on banning mobile devices from classrooms? The publishing company that offers textbook purchases to students that are mobile phone friendly are will be sitting on a gold mine, but no major player is really in the lead on this issue…
Maybe an answer lies in creating audio copies of reliable texts, so students who barely unplug and feel alienated by book reading, can engage with the text through an auditory interface – the audiobook market and podcast markets are both thriving. At the moment, however, the only students to gain access to alternative versions of texts are those with special needs. Should this change in light of the ICMPA study? We certainly aren’t winning the smartphone battle, yet we are working as fast as we can to engage minds. That battle, too, is uphill.

I think my biggest concern is not how we consume mainstream information, but how we interact with it, and communicate about it. Do you know of a good website or study that examines how readers “read” online materials? Please let me know. Hyperlinks and Google search allow you to jump to information without the glossary, TOC, or that highly vaunted skill of skim and scan, and the sense it imparted about main points, importance, and an author’s argument.  As a test, I do here what I decry, as I have yet to research the details at withoutmedia.wordpress.com, to read the study and all the related media articles it has generated.  Is this how we go research (today) – gather a few targeted snippets of information, and compose an opinion based upon scraps? I await your thoughts.
In terms of communication, what is lost from a conversation when it is conducted in 3-sentence-at-a-time texts, or FB msgs? The anticipation generated by the vibrating medium or the singing cellphone is often more exciting than the reply itself – and I lament the rarity of that feeling of excitement generated by in-depth conversation itself.  I look forward to your comments.

pm

oneword.com

 

I like this site. It is so simple. At your bidding a single word comes up on the screen, and beneath it is a box for your immediate response to that word.
Don’t think. Just write.
This reminds me of writing class; As a daily warm up we received a single word. The aim was to compose one sentence, one great idea from that word. The secret I found, was to let an emotional response fly untamed from your mind, and to cast mould that response with your pen in a brief timed writing exercise of just a few minutes. As a teacher of creative writing I would sometimes offer up choices, but more often the best moment was the sharing of several A++ sentences the next class. When I am steeped in imagery and imagination yet feel free to just express, that is a good place to write from. Later, it is the review, sometimes the shared reflection, that let’s writing flow. We all write for an audience – even if an audience of one.
As an idea can grow from a spark of inspiration, good writing must grow from words: expressed, pondered, and reviewed.

Give it a try free at:
http://oneword.com

untitled

Don’t you –

Don’t you just love

The way the clouds lumber

across the sky?

Late for a thunderstorm

on your distant horizon?

The trees sway and chuckle,

Leaning together;

Alive –  with a quizzical nod.

Telling me whispering answers  –

To questions you won’t allow yourself

To pose.

Hymn I

When

In the midst of night

We hold fast to misconceptions,

We forget to let go,

And embrace the old wisdom –

That only with the darkness,

And slow awakening from dreams

Comes fresh renewal.

The world is stuffed with angst,

In full moon and new day.

Pain breaks us into pieces

Of pale amber longing

                And sky blue indecision

We become scattered

stained glass souls

Sought by green-eyed Isis

To be united anew.

Hello world!

Welcome to the mind of poeticmuse.  This is a place for me to explore writing and poetry, share my photography, and get your feedback.