I am enjoying how my photography is progressing. Like October’s daily photos, November’s daily photos built on each other, creating all sorts of happy accidents and new ideas. So I’ve created another calendar of daily one word prompts for December, starting with Lights, of course, because I’m excited to go play with some purple in my palette.
As usual, my daily prompts led to a surprise. My camera does not see purple LEDs the way my eyes do. I was planning to combine the purple with other lights, but the challenge of trying to get my camera to see purple kept me busy. I tried every white balance setting, and every paint effect and the camera kept seeing blue.
New Poems
Though the Chapbook Challenge is over, I plan to continue my daily poetry habit. On days without a dVerse poets pub prompts, I will work through In the Palm of Your Hand: A Poet’s Portable Workshop(associate link) by Steve Kowit and The Creative Writing Coursebook(associate link) by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs.
Yesterday’s poetics prompt at dVerse was to use a line from the ABBA hit Dancing Queen. I chose “Watch that scene.”
In Perspective
Watch that scene unfold
through the teary, bleary
eyes of a cold, and menthol haze
created glazed-butterscotch dream
catch that sheen on everything
watch that scene unfold
the one near the end
when everything goes wrong
while sipping reheated soup
and Throat Coat tea
and it is still formulaic
still contrived that everyone
will turn their back at once
that takes time, too much
time for this scene
and the reversal doesn’t
happen, people fade away
But as I watch this scene
and the warmth flows
down my throat, my tea tells me
“the Earth laughs in flowers”
and I smell them in the steam
flowing up my sore nose
and I might understand
why the formula, so
obvious, is used so often,
because there will be an end
to this suffering, these
germs will eventually leave.
I see past the teary haze,
and burn my tongue.
by Maria L. Berg 2021
November PAD Chapbook Challenge
The next step of last month’s poetry challenge is to select and revise the poems and arrange the collection into a Chapbook manuscript. Like I did with my poetry revision demonstration, I will use this experience to create and revise my process for creating a collection.
Step 1: Organize – Today I copied each of the poems from November’s posts into a Scrivener file. My template has three sections which I can use to move the poems into themes, or styles, or however I choose to organize them. Today, however, I’m not reading through them; I’m only copying them into the project file. That will give them all another day of rest, so I can see them with fresh eyes tomorrow.
If you’ve enjoyed the photographs I’ve been taking, I’ve added some to my RedBubble store and I’m excited about the new products. The abstract bokeh really lends itself to product design. So fun.
The Changing Focus Blogging Challenge
December’s theme is Rest, Sleep, and Hibernation. To meet this challenge, I will attempt to document a concerted effort to achieve better sleep. My main issue is that ever since hurricane Katrina, I sleep with my laptop on with some show I’ve already watched a million times playing. I know it’s bad for my sleep, but at first that was the point, it helped stop the nightmares by waking me up throughout the night. I recently had some horrible nightmares with the computer going, so it’s not working and it’s just a bad habit.
I have accumulated many tools, read books, and tried to sleep without the computer, but I keep going back. So for this month’s Changing Focus, I am going to use this month-long project to conquer my sleep issue. Though it will be hard, I think I’ll have to go cold turkey and just not allow the laptop in my bedroom. But I will want something to listen to to fall asleep, so I think I’ll start by listening to an audio book or meditation track and see if that works.
But how do I turn this journey into a multi-media project? That is not clear yet. I’ll do some brainstorming today and hopefully come up with some ideas.
Experience Writing 
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‘glazed-butterscotch dream’ – this sounds so beguiling, but your poem tells a different story…
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Well thank you for giving this challenge some serious thought and consideration. Truly, giving yourself the gift of a good night’s sleep — or better yet, improving your sleep habits to achieve a good night’s rest on a regular basis would be awesome! Please do give a listen to the yoga nidra I’ve posted on the challenge. You may be pleasantly surprised for how well rested and calm you will feel. And it certainly would be a benefit to exchange that blue light laptop with the relaxing sleep music I also offered. It’s a start with baby steps but then you know what they say about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. I wish you much success and look forward to seeing your response to this challenge! Warm wishes to you 🙂
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