2016.01.24 — Today I Wrote a Short Poem Tanka Style — Resonance

Well, to honour my effort at reviving my blog, what better way to hinder that, not much less than not posting at all, but to post a short poem. A poem I wrote today for Week 296 of Poetry Stuffage in the WSS in Goodreads. And if you could follow that sentence you get my highest praise and respect, because could I have written a more convoluted and horrible one?

The topic of the week is The Space Between. (If you read these before Jan 31 2016, write a poem and enter it just for fun!)

Anyway, here is a some words in the shape of poem styled in the English version of Japanese Tanka:

Resonance

There are no more words.
The silence has stony weight
So precarious
That what had been seen as sound
No longer has resonance.

2013.09.02 — Scratch the Uncertainty Witch Haiku fushigi

Well, this is now getting just too silly, but M.L. von Franz's book Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales cannot seem to stop generating small and odd fushigis.

Yesterday, after I had finished posting the blog late at night, I picked up my current book read to read a few pages before going to sleep. So I resumed reading Animus and Anima and no sooner had I begun to read than I read the following:

The Baba Yaga has a very long nose with which she scratches around in the stove. Witches often have a certain phallic aspect, a huge thumb or toe or nose, as here. That is why the Baba Yaga is dangerous — she is everything, father and mother, male and female, symbols of totality and thus of the Self. But they represent a preconscious totality, the Uroborous, from which the male has to break free in order to live his authentic life (p99).

This is amusing because I wrote a Tanka-like poem for the WSS Haiku thread, in response to one written by M in which he included the name Sabrina, which brought to mind the teenage witch.

So I wrote:

an itch for witch scotch

From scratch he drank scotch
To scratch his itch for more scratch.
Till he met Old Scratch
he found peace watching his watch
wishing Sabrina was there.

I didn't think this worthy of blogging until I read a few pages later (p102) about uncertainty and Wolfgang Pauli because of course, I had 15 minutes earlier finished blogging a post within which I include Pauli and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Here's what I read:

Spinning [referring to Baba Yaga's house that constantly spins on legs] certainly has to do with the movement of the unconscious psyche in general, and with the autonomous activities of the complexes in particular. We always try to interpret a dream as a compensation of the conscious situation. But besides this, it seems as if the unconscious is a living system which can move by itself. This is very difficult to prove, because one can always say that such and such has been called forth by the conscious ego. But we know from mythology that we must always reckon with arbitrary, autonomous events.

There is a parallel situation in modern physics, where we know now that there is a spontaneous, arbitrary movement in matter, movement which does not obey the law of causality and which cannot always be predicted. For example, you cannot predict when a particular uranium atom will fall apart. We do know the exact, definite number of years for uranium to become lead — that is, its 'half-life,' … But we still cannot answer the question, 'How does each atom know when it is its turn?' Physicists can't predict just which atom will disintegrate (fn) (p102).

fn: "The physical phenomenon of radioactivity consists in the transition of the atomic nucleus of the active substance from an unstable

early state to its final state (in one or several steps), in the course of which the radioactivity finally stops. Similarly, synchronistic phenomenon, on an archetypal foundation, accompanies the transition from an unstable state of consciousness into a new stable position …. The moments in time when the individual atoms disintegrate are in no way determined by the laws of nature." (Letter 37, Pauli to Jung, in Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung, Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958, p.41

And since Animus and Anima seems to be a fushigi magnet, here is an old one I'd noted last year but didn't blog at the time. It began with a muscorn post in the WSS I wrote and posted on 2012.10.15:

PANDORA: I wasn't busy, when I was in the trade, like I am now that I am in a place of meditation and prayer.
GUY: [Laughs] That must mean you weren't popular when you were hooking!
PANDORA: [Laughs] Funny, I never thought of that. No, oddly enough, it seems to me that, ultimately, attractiveness isn't as important to men as women think it is [fushigi addendum see CW below].
GUY: That doesn't make sense!
PANDORA: Really? When men buy 'girlie' magazines, how much time do you think they look at the woman's eyes or face?
GUY: [Pauses, face a little red] But that is just plain sad! And now I'm embarrassed to be a member of that sex!
PANDORA: [Laughs] Well, don't be. It would seem that what men generally find the most attractive is a ratio of waist to hips which just happens to be associated with the highest rates of fertility. Men's 'desire' is linked to a ratio regardless of actual weight or shape, and the face and eyes are not the dominant factor.
GUY: But then you are saying that we are just reacting to biological imperatives! I don't believe that, especially coming from you, here!
PANDORA: [Smiles] To deny the physical roots of your existence is to deny who you are. Impulse and action are not the same. Nothing stops the conscious mind from embracing urge and desire as both natural and necessary. But in the end, both are only a possible expression out of the 10,000 acts available to the conscious mind.
GUY: But you make that sound simple! That's not fair!
PANDORA: Fair? Fair is simply the colour of hair, and as ephemeral. [Laughs. Pandora's exercise to not laugh having yet again gone astray. And as she laughed, she wondered: is my laughter instinctual? And laughed even louder.]

Well, on the 17th I read the following:

...
In our story the mountain opens like a cup and the girl is caught in it, showing that the feminine aspect is trapped in matter. But the mountain is of glass, and it is not dark. … In the glass prison one can look out, one has a complete view, but one is still cut off. Glass is also an insulating material, so here the glass mountain alludes to being cut off from the emotional, feeling life. Glassy people are stiff — you can make contact intellectually, but there is no heart in them, no feeling contact.

Thus the king [in imprisoning his daughter] is trying to cut off the feeling contact between the princess and her suitor. He wants to stop life, so that there will be no future king to replace him. Every ruling system has the tendency to resist and petrify the flow of new life.

The many instinctive patterns which higher animals have get into conflict [with the instincts]. Man is the only being on this planet who can rule his instincts. That is what consciousness was given to him for. Think of the lemmings in Norway who migrate in huge numbers, probably so that by changing places they will not destroy the land completely and will continue to have food. But if they are headed towards the sea, they cannot change their route but continue until they are drowned in following the driving instinct. This is a destructive aspect of instinctive nature, and only consciousness can achieve control over such a mechanism (16-7).

[CW fushigi Addendum - 2013.09.05]
I have been editing and finishing this blog, and yes, it was supposed to be short. Well, the fushigis keep on happening. This morning I talked with a co-worker. She told me that while staying at a hotel, she went to the car to get water. And she was asked by a man in his fifties 'How much do you charge?' She explained to me that she was wearing sweats, had been driving for three days, hair was a mess, and wasn't wearing make-up. I didn't see the association this morning, but only as I was re-reading this before posting it. Here's how she amusingly chatted it in FB:

…
CW: Anyway, his question. He got so red in the face. First off this guy looked like he was someone like [Jimmy Stewart], quiet and inward, doesn't like socializing.
etc
lol
He asked me how much I charged.
ME: LOL! No way?!
CW: WTH is it with me attracting old weird men.
I'm serious!
ME: So, did you ask him how much he would pay?!
At least he was the right sex! [I was referring to a man trying to pick me up a few weeks ago.]
CW: headdesk
ME: And you were scared of the truckers! LOL!
So, what did you say?
CW: I told him to fuck off of course.
ME: :-(
CW: What? What would you have me do?
ME: Thank him, but that he couldn't afford you.
CW: I did tell him he couldn't afford me.
Then told him to fuck off.
ME: YES!
LOL!

2013.09.03
Well, I began this blog post on Sept 2nd. I returned to work on the 3rd, and smiled when, at about 6:10am, while driving to work, I heard the following lyric:

…
Come Northern nights from Norway
Come sunrise from the East
Come Wicked Witches in the West, we're South-bound with the beat
And all the lions, prides and preachers come down into the street

It turned out the song is called Brighter than Gold by The Cat Empire.

LOL! I was getting reading to shut down my ramble by finding the cover for the album for Brighter than Gold from The Cat Empire web-page when I came across an interestingly titled song:

Protons, Neutrons, Electrons.
Here's the lyrics, which also align with the theme of this fushigi:

I've done too much of some things
And not enough of others
Just like all life lovers
I've changed and changed,
And changed and changed
From one thing to another.
I've had complicated dealings
With complicated feelings
And I've cut and bruised and torn.
I made blinds on the windows of my mind
with the time that my back once wore.
I'm a single person in this universe,
And I am here to say to you:
On the day that I die
I'll just give a smile
And fly into the blue!

Cause we're all just-
Protons, Neutrons, Electrons
That rest on a Sunday
Work on a Monday and someday soon
We'll be singing the old tunes
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, Zip-a-dee-doo
I'll be sitting on the porch with you
Then I'll die and I'll
Fly off into the blue!

Some night I see the world with its winds and its whirls,
And I feel undefeated
But every day I see the girl with the strawberry curl,
And I'm too shy to meet her.
Some nights I go to bed,
There's a ghost in the air above my head,
And I tremble.
Sometimes I eat KFC
Other times I give up meat
And I just eat lentils.
I'm a singe soul on this big blue ball,
And I am here to sing a song
About the day that I was born
Till the day that I'll be gone
And the song won't last for long,
Cause we're all just

[CHORUS]

And enemy is a remedy to a malady in your melody
If you're strong not brittle.
And a friend is a friend
Is a friend to the end and it's AH so simple
A man is a man and a woman is a woman
But the times we are living in demand
That a man can change from a man to a woman
And a woman can demand to be a man.
We're just flesh with socks and locks and frocks,
And I am here to say to you!
On the day that I die I'll just give a smile and fly into the blue...

Cause we're all just

[CHORUS]

Well, that's it. An odd fushigi blog.

Or at least I hope that it is done! Sheesh!

Addendum 2013.09.5 10pm
Sigh. It will never end. I forgot that last night, before going to bed, I picked up a recent book. No real plan to read it, but was curious, so thought I'd take a look. The book is The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil. Here is what I read in the intro:

The method — or, rather, habit — of reducing the unfamiliar to the well-known is an old, old way to intellectual frustration. Sterilizing dogmatism is the result, tightly enwrapped in a mental self-satisfaction, a secure conviction of superiority. Whenever we refuse to be knocked off our feet (either violently or gently) by some telling new conception precipitated from the depths of our imagination by the impact of an ageless symbol, we are cheating ourselves of the fruit of an encounter with the wisdom of the millenniums. …

It is because they are alive, potent to revive themselves, and capable of an ever-renewed, unpredictable yet self-consistent effectiveness in the range of human destiny, that the images of folklore and myth defy every attempt we make at systematization. They are not corpselike, but imp like. With a sudden laugh and quick shift o place they mock the specialist who imagines he has got them [and life, Newton-like,] pinned to his chart. What they demand of us is not the monologue of a coroner's report, but the dialogue of a living conversation. And just as the hero of the key story of the following series … is brought to a heightened consciousness of himself through his humiliating exchange of words and rescued from a disgraceful, completely odious death, so too may we be instructed, rescued perhaps, and even spiritually transformed, if we will be humble ourselves enough to converse on equal terms with the apparently moribund divinities and folf-figures that are hanging, multitudinous, from the prodigious tree of the past (pp3-4).

Now is that it?

NOTE: Baba Yaga Image is the creation of Scott Brundage. Please visit his blog to see more of his illustrations: Scott Brundage Illustration.

2013.08.04 — Plumbing a 5-7-5 set that Tanka-ed and a *Fushigi re-started

So, two posts two days in a row! [Snoopy Dance! as a co-worker is want to say.]

I wrote some poetry humour today in the less then reputable 5-7-5 format. I'd call it Haiku, but that would be wrong. I'd call it Senryū, but would be wrong too. But the post will truly bottom out when it tankas. So, if you have been able to brave that onslaught, here is some 5-7-5 / 5-7-5-77 that plumbs the depths of how low verse can go. Note: I've extracted these from a continuation set that takes its inspiration from the previous entries. To see these in context, please go to Belly Petersen's brilliant post, good with the pipe in the Haiku thread in the Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company.

pizza by the peace pipe

'Where is the towel?'
I wipe tomato and grime
into my work shirt

from under the sink
I pull the once white towel
and give it to her

but she demurs for
a quick rub on her own shirt
takes from me a slice.

And, to continue the theme:

romancing the pipes

She sits down with me
to survey the sink's bottom.
She touches the new pipes.
'You are a man, after all,'
she says before I can belch.

And, yesterday I posted a small fushigi involving a company by the name of BA Blacktop. In it I stated that I'd not seen the BA Blacktop truck on my street since the day of the initial fushigi. Well, this morning, coming back from the morning's grocery shopping chores, and a few hours after posting that blog, I saw that same truck parked beside my parking garage's entrance. And I smiled.

2013.08.03 — So Little, So Late; Reached 40k, Some Haiku, a Fushigi* and some (a)Musecorn.

Hello. I am shocked that it has been seven months since I got my blogging fix. I could say that my life has gotten busier in that time, and in a way it has. But the reality is that my writing time has been consumed with other writing, stories, poetry and something called (Interactive) Musecorn.

Musecorn is a variation of the play-like writing that has come to be called Popcorn that was initiated by Al, head moderator of the Goodreads writing group, Weekly Short Story Contests and Company. (And Al is a very fine writer. Please check out her poetry and prose in the WSS or on her blog Pens and Erasers.)

Popcorn is a way for authors to interact with his or her characters, by giving them a voice though which they can express their personality directly with their author. This has been running since January 2010. For a short and interesting and not atypical example of popcorn go to From Seagulls to Mice, Exhumed Babies to Diarrhoea.)

Musecorn is a slight refinement, in which the interacting personalities in the play-snippets are not characters created by the writer, but the writers' muse or muses. Some of the popcorn is more specifically musecorn. It sounds odd, I know, but it is a great deal of fun, challenging to write, and liberates the imagination.

A few months ago, and one of the reasons I've not been blogging as I used to, Al and I began to create Interactive Musecorn while talking via a chatterbox window. We had no idea how this would work, but to my surprise and immense pleasure, it has become as alive as anything I can imagine writing. I have, here, published an early exchange. I expect to turn some of it into a play for fringe festivals.

Interactive Musecorn
Note: In this extract, Guy's muses are the Professor (Prof), Neve, and Pandora, and coloured as shown.
Al's muse is Frank and coloured as shown.

Prof: [Speaking to no one in particular.] Al's rabbit-coitus dream has been puzzling me.
Frank: Me too. VERY puzzling.
Prof: [He pauses.] Freud would have a simple answer, I think.
Frank: Quite creepy, too. I don't like having to share her with some bunny man.
Prof: But it is about hidden wish fulfillments. At least that's Freud.
Frank: And everyone knows how much I loathe that fruity man. Oh dear Lord. And now I'm making typos! How embarrassing.
Prof: [Laughs.] What's that got to do with anything?! She gets you a lot, so you aren't a hidden wish fulfillment.
Frank: [He raises his eyebrow.] And now you're on the same list as Freud....
Al: Frank. Be nice.
Neve: Did Al have sex with a rabbit? OMG, that's gross!
Al: Not a rabbit, a man wearing a rabbit suit.
Neve: [Mutters under her breath.] How big was the rabbit?
Frank: And here I thought I was your only bunny.
Al: He was massive.
Neve: Oh! [Pauses.] But really, isn't that even, sort of, more gross?
Frank: [He wanders off.] Is Pandora here?
Neve: Well, you never know. Why?
Frank: Oh, no reason.
Al: He wants to have a "chat" with her.
Prof: That is just displacement, Frank.
Frank: Who asked you, fruitcake?
Prof: You think that if you can touch greatness, you will become a better man.
Al: Fruitcake? [Bursts into laughter]
Frank: You, clearly, have no idea what being a "better man" is all about.
Al: Frank...
Prof: [Laughs.]
Frank: [He rolls his eyes.]
Prof: Frank, you have all the behaviour of small man syndrome. And I don't mean your height, if you get my meaning.
Al: Remember your promise, darling. Don't do anything stupid....
Frank: [Ignoring her.] You insolent little man! If I wasn't being elbowed by Al, I'd strangle you!
…
[Continued on separate page, for those interested. Go to: Musecorn.]

End of that 'phase' of this blog.

Sigh! So much to write. Even now I have a choice between writing a story, quickly to meet today's deadline — I have a creative idea for this week's topic in the WSS Awkward — or put up this blog post so as to stop feeling guilty about my not doing it for so long. It would seem I have decided to blog and feel a little guilty about not writing a story for now. (Might get to it tonight.)


So, first ego-blog post:
My long absence from blogging, and no my doing it, is overwhelming my fingers. I want this to be a complete ego blog, to put in a bit of everything. Then, of course, no one will read it. But, I will, anyway, by cheering at my blogs having gone past 40,000 page views. This happened a little over a month ago, and I actually started toblog that astounding success, but just kept doing other writing instead.

Second ego-blog post
I also wanted to post some of my writing. I have been writing poetry and short stories. Lots of Haiku — well, more often than not Senryū, target="_blank">Tanka, or 575 or 57577 forms, in particular. I may have written a couple of good pieces in the lot. So here is some short form poetry-like verbiage. (Note, these are extracted from an interactive Haiku game thread, and these will read better within the context of the other fine works that inspired my efforts. I've attached the links to the titles. Enjoy, if you can:

the moon, he doth wax with eloquence

He waxed his belly
Until it was mistaken
For the waxing moon
On a starless cat-less night
With white wine, a dark future.


back in the tank

Drunk and far from home
Ziggy spent time in the tank
going star crazy.


to be or not to be dancing

His ghost danced lightly
with a quick and gentle step.
He kept perfect time.
When the rains came he stayed dry
and sang 'Fly Me to the Moon.'


the wind up boy

She bade susurrus,
With a siren's soft whisper,
To dance in his ear,
Bid him strip inhibitions,
Seek her umbrella.

There has been a lot more than that, but that is more than enough to give you a taste.

I was tempted to throw in a short story, but have managed to resist that.


*fushigis:
Here are two small, somewhat recent fushigis.

On Friday, July 19th, my co-worker NR asked me to read and critique/edit a letter he was going to send to a project manager of BA Blacktop. They are doing the road re-arrangement and overpass for the Vancouver Ports. NR's letter was an apology on behalf of the logistics people in our office who had failed to get the work done on time for the project, despite NR having completed his design on time and having given the logistics people instructions on what needed to be done. Nothing special about that circumstance, anymore, as that is more-or-less the norm for the department as it suffers under the poison of severe MBA mismanagement and bureaucratic dysfunction as my employer continues its drive to eliminate its labour to an outsourced engineering department.

The following morning, @ 9:50 am, I was exiting my condo's parking garage in order to begin my Saturday morning chores. Parked across from my egress was a van with a BA Blacktop red and black logo. I have, since then, looked every day, every weekend for that van. And nothing.

Well, before I left to do my chores on that Saturday, from the TV that my wife was watching, I heard the word/phrase Doppelgänger.

She was watching the movie Doppelgänger Paul, and asked me what 'Doppelgänger' meant. I defined it for her. When I got to Safeways about thirty minutes later, I heard a young woman standing in line talking about having to keep clear of doppelgängers. I can say that I have heard that word used by people other than me perhaps less than twice in the last 15 years. It is, however, a favourite of mine.

Fushigi Addenum:
After writing the above, I went back to the top of this post to find a good extract of Musecorn to post. While looking for it, I came across a recent chatter post (google hangout), and smiled to read the following, which I'd forgotten I'd written:

Does that count as a part of the fushigi too?

Fushigi Addenum II:
Stuart McLean, on his radio show Vinyl Cafe, read the letter of an amazing fushig. So amazing, I'll blog it here. To add to the fushigi nature of the story, today was the first time I've listened to McLean in months. Zahida Murtaza, from Pakistan originally, relayed how at the age of 12 she fell in love with the writing of Stephen Leacock. I was desperate to read more stories written by this author, but I had no way of doing that. Instead, I read the story so many times that I memorized it. She had no idea of where Canada was, or even if Leacock had written anything else than the short story she read from the English Literature Anthology her class was studying. On a random drive, she and her husband, some 40 years later in Canada, stop at random at a small town in Ontario, visit the church and its graveyard, and discover the grave stone of Leacock. The short letter is a delight to read. You can read it here.