#SoCS: Peril of Purloined Patience

Contradictory Abstract Nouns (Photography Challenge)

Today I’m looking at finding the impatience in patience and the patience in impatience. While thinking about what I wanted to say about patience and impatience I thought “It takes time to have patience,” so I thought of my cog-clock filter. It wasn’t raining, so I hurried outside to play with my outdoor light set-up.

Wow, it was bitey cold out there! That’ll make someone impatient, but it takes patience to find the shot that represents these contradictory abstractions. I think purple LEDs represent the agitation of impatience well. And I liked how the net lights brought a patient order to the ticking of time.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS)

Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “your favorite word.” Linda invites us to choose our favorite word and use it however we would like. But how to choose?

Purloined is not my favorite word; it just seems to go very well with peril. For today’s peril poem, I did some word collecting and came up with around two hundred words having to do with peril. A lot of them are great words like exposure, gash, slipperiness, and one of my favorites wonder. But what to choose for my favorite word?

I just opened The Art of Voice: Poetic Principles and Practice by Tony Hoagland and read:

“A poem strong in the dimension of voice is an animate thing of shifting balances, tones, and temperature, by turns intimate, confiding, vulgar, distant, or cunning—but, above all, alive. In its vital connectivity, it is capable of including both the manifold world and the rich slipperiness of human nature.”

Tony Hoagland 2019

How often do you read the word slipperiness twice in one morning? It’s a great word. And I love that phrase, “the rich slipperiness of human nature.” So great. But slipperiness is still not my favorite word.

In April 2021 in response to a NaPoWriMo prompt, I made a Personal Universal Deck. It’s a deck of cards with words you like on them. I kept it, so I pulled it out this morning, shuffled it and picked a card. Each card has two word on it: one at the top, and one upside down at the bottom. The card I picked had the word “silence” at the top. I read it out loud to the cat twice, then said “That’s wonderful,” so I’ll go with “silence” as my favorite word today.

I adore this time of year for its silence. The boats of summer pulled and gone, the whooping boaters and their horrible choices of blaring tunes forced on everyone so they can hear barely an impression of them over the boat engine as they wake-board or wake-surf, or whatever the latest new fad is for pulling a body behind a boat. Now is the time when the vacation homes are vacant and the full-timers return to indoor lives. The revving of chainsaws, howling of leaf-blowers, and high-pitched squealing of power-tools lay dormant as glistening raindrops fill the air. And there is no sound, except the occasional haunting train whistle in the distance, even the planes and helicopters seem sparse today. So do I sit silently and soak in this silence? No. I put on a movie I’ve seen a million times, to silence my inner-critic, drown-out my mind-voice, and distract, so these words will flow. It appears I love silence, so I can choose what to fill it with when I can’t stand it anymore.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Today’s prompt is to write a peril poem.

Exposure to the Risk of Being (Destroyed)

Prickly sweet almond smoke
Obtuse spikes hazard taste buds
Exposing misconceptions of danger
Trouble steeped in gasoline fumes
Rough and hard and suddenly too close
Yells yield to yawns needing more air

Injury can be seen and unseen
Menacing snarls alarm the senses
Pitfalls surround the doubtful
Exhibitions of horrible imaginations
Remembered after nightmares
Indecision leaves one vulnerable
Looming risks a nuisance or threat
Soaked in sweaty incertitude

Stabbing in the pitch-black night at
Intimidation, an evil laugh’s shadow
Lording over, bigger than you
Endangerment, anxiety’s wager
Nerves afire go for broke
Chance brings quicksand’s change
Expressed as an exposé of panic

NaNoWriMo

I woke up thinking about my novel! I’m excited to report that my draft is coming along very well. Though I have yet to have a day that I get to my novel before noon, it appears to be working for me, because I’m already over 17,000 words. I think this is my best start ever. And since I barely managed any planning, I believe the success so far is due to 4theWords.

This weekend I would like to organize what I’ve written so far into my Scrivener file, and into a chiastic outline; take some time to plan out my major plot points. But as long as the words are flowing, I’m going to keep having fun.