Experience Writing

#Writober Day 26: Containing the Autumn Moon

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Moon. For today’s images I thought about making a transformer filter for the phases of the moon which led me to the idea of using a small brad and turning the moon. For this filter, I used a tiny, black brad (shaped like a button) to hold a circle of paper over a round hole. I attached clear plastic under the hole to create my moon’s texture. I love this simple new technique, I’m excited to use all the tiny brads I bought a long time ago when I was making fancy gift tags one Christmas. They have moved from box, to drawer, to drawer for a long time, and now have found their true purpose.

OctPoWriMo

No prompt for today, so I thought I’d focus on finding the evil in good and the good in evil for my contradictory abstract noun study. There can be an “evil” in trying to be and do good. Wanting to help people means that you believe they need help. Unless one is responding to a call for assistance that one is skilled and able to give, one is not accepting others the way they are, making a judgement that the other needs to change, and that they can be “helped” to be more like the helper.

Can there also be a similar good in evil? I guess one can say that without evil there is no good, so is that a good in evil? Or when one recognizes evil, one is reminded of what is good and how to be good. I keep thinking of developers, destroying nature for profit, putting tinder-boxes so close together they may as well be adjoining cages, and yet, people may find their best friends in their neighbors, and find a sense of community at a block party. So there may be good in that evil.

Driving by the New Development

Row by row of identical boxes line
serpentine streets straight up the hill
until recently covered with trees my whole life,
holding the earth in place, graciously receiving
our carbon dioxide and gifting us oxygen,
hiding so many lives among their branches and leaves,
but these empty boxes—small windows,
vacant eyes void of life, so close together
two neighbors could reach out and touch—
can’t hide the one fake family in the model home
A mother, a father, an older sister, a younger brother
I imagine the cattle call for a job to play a family,
being paid to impersonate genetic connection
Why were these bland norms chosen?
Who thought those thin smiles would
entice the “right” buyers?
The new street light that had us stopped
at the new cross-street straight up the hill
turns green. “That’s really creepy,” you say
as you slowly drive past the people pretending
to live, pretending they are neighbors
we want to go into debt for the rest of our lives
to live next to, and interact with every day.
How strange it must be to wake up in the house
across from them one morning and realize they
are not there, they never were.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s image, “Containment Zone” is part of a 3-D rendering package. I have no idea what one would want with a 3-D rendering package, but I like these monsters/aliens.

A tiny scream escaped my pursed lips. I stayed standing by the door that had just closed behind me and stared at the four monsters behind the observation glass. The containment area was a large room, but all four pressed their lanky bodies against the glass toward us. One even pressed his long, three toed foot against the glass.
Unlike me, Dr. Kaza screamed, and kept screaming, full, guttural, primitive screams, but he walked right up to the glass. So close he looked like a little kid at an aquarium, his large nose pressed flat against the alien foot. “Look at this,” he yelled. “You have to come look at this.”
I crept forward, but my legs felt weighted like they had filled with heavy metals, or perhaps grown roots that penetrated the feet feet of concrete.
“I’m serious, Katya, you have to see this. The foot, it doesn’t have ridges, or calluses, it has tiny moving dots. Maybe they have symbiotes.” He pulled his nose away, and looked at me. “What are you doing? Get over here. I told you I don’t want to see this by myself. You have to perceive everything I perceive so we have a combined reality to present to the world.” His nose went back to the glass.
Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 26 2022

#Writober Day 25: Creatures to Represent Our Fears

Dreamsucker in the Closet by Maria L. Berg 2022

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “Creature.” For today’s images I attempted to create a creature to represent the sudden fear I felt while letting the cat out in the middle of the night. That split second horror of what if someone or something is there, waiting on the other side of the glass.

The Creature at the Window by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

For today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam provided a list of words, and challenged us to choose any four to use in a poem. I had some fun with it.

Just Looking

The bodies parted and my gaze
fell upon an avatar ablaze
all her bangles dangling,
clanking and clanging
against the crystal punch bowl
a jungle juggernaut
wafting jasmine shampoo
when she floated away
into the moonlight
on the verandah
all I could do was mutely admire
I would have gladly thrown myself
to be crushed beneath her
jaguar sleek black hair shining blue
but my girlfriend had had enough
what a hullabaloo.

Writober Flash Fiction

Since today’s theme is creature, I chose “Mimic Dress” by Leonardo Wyrnist as the inspirational image. The illustrator noted that he loves mimics, so I looked up what that might mean and found that a mimic is a monster in Dungeons & Dragons that can shape shift into inanimate objects (especially chests).

Sorpresa looked at her finger and saw a jagged cut. “Ow,” she said, “something bit me.”
Madame Rochie giggled. A very girlish sound for the haggard crone.
Sorpresa’s mom ran to her and inspected her finger. “Looks like you found a stray pin, sweetie. You really shouldn’t be touching the dresses before their finished.” Mom looked up at Madame Rochie whose belly still jiggled with laughter.
“Oh that dress is finished,” said Madame Rockie. “It has been waiting for just the right wearer for a very long time. Would you like to try it on, little destructioness?”
Sorpresa didn’t mind the old lady’s taunting names. She didn’t know that her dresses were torn in battle. She couldn’t know how brave and mighty Sorpresa was. “I would like to try it, sorceress of stitching,” she said, trying to match the old woman’s tone.
Sorpresa, having gone through fittings with Madame Rochie many times, no longer felt any shyness and let her old dress fall to the floor. Madame Rochie carefully removed the new dress from her tailor’s dummy and slipped it over Sorpresa’s up-stretched arms.
It wasn’t confining like her previous party dresses, and it wasn’t loose either. She thought of Goldilocks finding the thing that is just right. Oddly the bodice seemed to breathe with her. She thought she heard it breathing, and smelled a faint wood smell, like a cedar chest, or bark chips every time she breathed.
“Oh Sorpresa, you look so beautiful. It’s as if that dress was made just for you. You’ll be prettier than the birthday girl. Madame Rochie, be honest, you made it for Sorpresa. You knew we’d be back soon and made it just for her.”
Madame Rochie didn’t say anything. She grinned a knowing grin, and somehow her eyes sparkled behind her thick, thick glasses.

#Writober Day 24: Use the Things That Haunt You

This Week’s Contradictory Abstract Nouns

To finish out October, I’ll be looking at finding the evil in good and the good in evil until Wednesday, and then finding the weakness in strength and the strength in weakness through Saturday with my images on Sunday.

When I was thinking about drinks for the Halloween Challenge the other day, I watched an animated version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll believed that good and evil were qualities that could be separated into their purest forms with the intention to remove evil completely. His experiment failed, but he did manage to find the evil in good and the good in evil.

NaNoWriMo Prep

Yesterday I started my free trial of 4theWords. I wanted to give myself some time to get used to it before November, with the hope that it will be a fun motivational tool to use to write my novel draft. The sign-up was straight-forward and they did not ask for any personal information other than an email. I watched the walk-through video, then tried my first monster battle which consisted of writing 250 words within 30 minutes. I decided to work on my Writober flash fiction story, and quickly defeated three monsters, and had 750 words of a draft. What I wrote was downloaded as a word doc with the click of a couple buttons. So, so far, so good.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “haunted.” Since I already did some images with a new ghost filter, so I wanted to find something about “haunted” that wasn’t specifically ghostly. So I opened my dictionary and found:

haunt v 1. a. to visit often: FREQUENT b. to continually seek the company of 2. a. to have a disquieting or harmful effect on: TROUBLE b. to recur constantly and spontaneously to c. to reappear continually in 3. to visit or inhabit as a ghost.

I found it interesting that the idea of ghosts didn’t come into the definition until the last. So how do I create this image of frequent trouble? I thought of an image I painted after I was robbed, of long fingers reaching for my guitar. I decided to try creating these ghostly fingers.

OctPoWriMo

I didn’t see a prompt for today, so I thought I would create a poem to look at the good in evil and the evil in good.

Sudden Losses

Cold dinners in dying candlelight, wax dripped over handmade tablecloths swept smooth over milk-crate tables, worried waiting extinguishing imagined intimacy, the cruelty of equations with passion over time unequal in each lover’s mind.
The second time, there were no instruments to take, only sentimental value and fear remained, and the new alarm that startled them to leave the pillow case containing the disappointments of violating rummaging.
Another argument on the way home, after feeling the ecstasy of camaraderie,
beauty and elegance of shared glamor, the delusional comfort of acceptance when told “you can ask me anything,” prying a bit too far, picking a scab never healed, crashing painfully into the barrier.
The replacements never lived up to what was taken, not that the original possessions were of better quality or held more value. They were of then, of there. He said it was good they were gone. They would lose their hold. But he was wrong.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is “Racing” by Valera Lutfullina. The image shows three giant greyhound-ish dogs, racing, teeth bared in the dark, along a highway where a truck with blood smeared along one side of its front looks much like a “bunny” on a track at a dog-track. Upon close inspection, there is a red light in a black rectangle in the windshield, and no apparent driver, which makes me think the truck is autonomous.

I followed the ceiling trail of blood and bits to the far end of the lab and found where the dogs, or at least a dog, had broken through the wall into the storage area where we kept the pellets and food. From the shape of the destruction I now imagined a greyhound larger than a bus, ripping and tearing through the building. Pellets were all over the shelves and floor. The rack of smaller test animals had been knocked over. They were all gone. There was barely any blood as if they had been gulped whole.
I continued to follow the path of destruction through the offices, feeling ice in my veins and hot rocks in my gut. My mind was like a chilled void trying to avoid any thoughts of guilt by focusing on finding the dogs. I know I wasn’t thinking clearly, because if I had found the dogs in the building, what did I think I would do? I would have been ripped apart like Dr. Shift.
Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 23 2022

#Writober Day 23: Anticipating the Trees in the Forest

Through the Forest by Maria L. Berg 2022

Contradictory Abstract Nouns

So this week I looked at two sets of abstract nouns:

Find confidence in fear and fear in confidence This week I tied this in with the perfectly imperfect and it could be represented by my tainted Halloween treats: It takes confidence to ring doorbells and demand candy, but there is precedence for fearing what one might get. But I don’t think I captured this contradiction earlier this week. Today’s prompt for the Halloween challenge is Forest. The saying “Can’t see the forest for the trees,” is used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole. Fear can be like that, and so can confidence. If one is completely confident in a detail, she may be surprised by the big picture, and if someone is confident in the big picture, they may be struck in the face by a detail.

Forest Through the Tree by Maria L. Berg 2022

Find death in life and life in death. For this image, I really liked using decomposing leaves as filters. It shows the circles of life through the seasons, but also the image brings a new life to the dead leaf. I pick the mounted deer head decor image as a close second.

Head of Each Household by Maria L. Berg 2022

NaNoWriMo Prep

This year for National Novel Writing Month, I think it will be fun to bring my study of contradictory abstract nouns to writing a novel. My idea is to turn the Big 5 into my main characters and have them experience a mystery. Using the wonderful worksheets from Writing & Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron, I’ll be personifying abstractions as sleuths, victims, villains, side-kicks, mentors, red-herrings, enemies, and friends.

Because I want to approach this draft completely through my characters, I’m exploring the character creation parts of the acting classes on Masterclass. I’m already finding useful ideas to explore the physicality of my characters. I like the idea of thinking about how my character exercises and doing that exercise to become that character. Maybe one of my characters is into meditation and yoga, on days when I’m focused on that character, I can start my day with a yoga video. I’m also thinking of creating personas with costume, wigs, make-up to really get outside myself. I don’t want to take time away from writing, so I’ll keep it simple, but I think it could be a fun way to get out of myself, and into my characters’ physicality.

I’ve also been thinking about gamification. I still haven’t tried 4theWords. I looked at it last year, but didn’t like the idea of typing my novel into the game. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I’ll give it another look. My other idea is to create a game board for myself based on clue. Once I figure out my settings, characters, possible deaths, etc. I can create a game that not only encourages word count, but hopefully generates ideas. I can create figures representing my characters to move around the board and when they meet, write their interactions.

I’m also organizing my office into stations, so when I lose steam at the computer, I can type on the typewriter, then move to a notebook and colorful pen, then put post-its on butcher paper, or draw with a crayon, anything to keep the juices flowing, then circle back to the computer.

I’m going to print out my favorite contradictory abstraction images and cover the wall behind my desk for inspiration and start collecting everything that sparks thoughts about contradictory abstractions and their mysteries in a “compost journal.”

I want the words to flow this year, and to have a lot of fun. I hope you’ll join me. I’ll be posting more prep ideas this week.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “forest.” I had fun creating a scary tree then using light to grow a forest.

In the Ghost Forest by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

I didn’t see a new prompt today, so I went over to Poetic Bloomings and found today’s prompt is to write an “anticipation poem.” Since I’m starting to anticipate NaNoWriMo that feels like an appropriate prompt for today’s poem.

Letting Go to Know Them

I want to be consumed
invaded, presumed secondary
present for clarity, for dictation
I prepare in anticipation
of possession by personified
abstraction and interactions
of contradictory unknowns
I desire a mystery
a murder of the cruel
inner-critic whose misrule
finally comes to an ecstatic
end through synthesis
of passion and practice
and psychological slight
of hand making hours disappear
turned to scenes to grip a seer
transforming words into feelings
and actions, and dreams
The anticipation tastes sublime
sweet and sour, dripping thyme
fresh and tingling like the open
window during rain, cleansing
readying an open vessel
for consumption.

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is a “horror concept” illustration by Tithi Luadthong.

I run as hard as I can, but the bus pulls out while I am still a block away. Stupid cute dog tied to a fire hydrant. It’s not like I had a choice. I had to stop and pet it and talk to it and look for its owners and scowl at them. It’s the last bus. That’s why I threw off my right shoe when its heel broke as I ran. And now it starts to rain. At least the cold droplets will cool my cheeks and wash off some of the sweat.
I find the crumpled plastic bag left over from lunch in my backpack, and tie it around my stocking. Hobbling the rest of the way to the covered bench of the bus stop, I notice someone across the street, standing under a large, black umbrella. At first I think it’s a young woman about my age, having a similar situation, so I lift my hand in a solidarity wave, but she doesn’t move. I try to see her face, floating over a sea of red scarf, and in the odd slant of the solitary street light shadowed by her umbrella, her eyes look like they glow red. I figure she’s wearing rose-tinted lenses, but at night?
Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 23 2022

#Writober Day 22: #SoCS A Graven Bowl to Hold What’s Passed

Halloween Graveyard by Maria L. Berg 2022

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Today’s prompt for some stream of consciousness writing is “bowl.”

A bowl is both a hemispheric vessel, and the substance that it does or does not hold. A bowl can be a ball that’s rolled, its act of rolling and its action on a thing. An intense feeling, being bowled over, and being a bowl, an unstable empty vessel tilting like a pendulum, sloshing liquids like waves, ebbing and flowing. Being bowled, rolled toward, spinning, turning, speeding along a lane, or being bowled, struck, toppled, tilting, tumbling, losing stability, knocking others over while falling, ricocheting off the walls before losing momentum, either way a force acting upon another, changing its position and direction; a form of surrender.

Am I like the pin or the ball, each limited until acted upon. Is it self-limiting to stay still, to not knock into things? Or am I the full or empty vessel, limited by size and rim?

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is Grave.

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is “Surrender Self-Limitation.” Today’s suggested poem form is the Catena Rondo. It has similarities to the Roundabout which I tried on Thursday: The repeat of the first and last line of each stanza, the rhyme scheme, the circling back to A in the last stanza. However, the Catena Rondo, unlike the Roundabout, does not focus on meter.

This Year, Break the Cycle

How will I quit my judge-critic?
Sit in the dark and listen
Write faster than thought second-guessing
How will I quit my judge-critic?

Sit in the dark and listen
Drop spoons into bowls, clang of metal
to grasp edges of dreams not yet settled
sit in the dark and listen

Drop spoons into bowls, clang of metal
How will I quit my judge-critic,
and push past my fear-based limits?
Drop spoons into bowls, clang of metal

How will I quit my judge-critic?
Sit in the dark and listen
Push into the frightening frisson
How will I quit my judge-critic?

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspiration is a still from this video clip: Coronavirus VS Murder Hornet by bleepe_crap. Set up like a Kaiju battle between a giant humanoid virus-head and a gargantuan hornet.

In any other city, a story about a gigantic humanoid virus doing city-destroying battle with an enormous murder hornet would be the story of the century for a reporter. But here, it is only a slightly unique combination of monsters fighting it out on a Tuesday.
This city is destroyed and rebuilt, so often, no one even notices a skyscraper-sized radioactive lizard setting downtown on fire, while a humongous moth blocks out the sun. Construction only pauses long enough for a multi-dimensional kaiju, to battle a fifty-story robot back out to sea.
Its a testament to how adaptable humans are, that we can go on working, eating, making love, while the land shakes under the stomping of monsters, but as a journalist it’s getting hard to come up with an interesting headline. I guess that’s why, when our helicopter flew over today’s monsters, my calloused heart missed a beat. I saw that oddly spherical head with all its triangular protrusions, approaching the spindly-legged insect attempting to threaten with its stinger curled under its body, and thought, Finally, something new, or at least something people might want to read about.

#Writober Day 21: Finding Sanctuary Under a Canopy of Dead Leaves

The Beauty of Decay by Maria L. Berg 2022

Study of Contradictory Abstract Nouns

Finding the life in death and death in life. The moment of birth is the first step toward death, every breath oxidizes and ages, moving life toward its end. Every death is teaming with life. When the spark of life extinguishes, a thriving ecosystem gets to work: bacteria, microbes, fungus, ants, worms, seagulls, vultures, coyotes, all work together to recycle the lifeless. Though many humans dream of a life eternal, fearing the unknown of finality, they also show a fear of the unnatural possibility of eternal life as demonstrated through stories of vampires, jinn, ghosts, zombies and other undead or undying monsters.

This morning I began thinking of poisonous mushrooms as a symbol of the life in death and death in life, though any of the lives in my list above could make interesting images. I’ve got a couple more days to think about it.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is leaves. For today’s images I used a leaf I found last season that had decomposed to only its veins. It feels almost like cloth. I picked a couple aging leaves from the cherry-plum tree too.

I enjoyed this morning’s photos so much. I want to thank Tourmaline for the inspiration I get from this Halloween challenge.

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is about Sanctuary.

Finding a Safe Place to Hide

I had a choice of rooms
but only one offered sanctuary
small, confined, two windows filled
with leaves, branches and vines
sunrise-side towhees shuffle along my eye-line
until I close the thick blackout curtains
then yellow
yellow curtains, yellow walls, yellow carpet
like daffodil fields edged by a wood
faux wood closet doors, veneers on
built-in cupboards and drawers
and in the center a private island
with a quilt, wavy sea-green
cozy in warm blankets
supported by pillows
supporting a laptop, typing
but there’s more than this
comfort and solitude
a property only present here
like a bubble of silence
impenetrable by doorbell or phone
or voices, or boats, or chainsaws or mowers
or ghosts,
like a bomb shelter or lead-lined box
like a force-field, a sound-shield, a safe
sanctuary of calm

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is “The Wide Carnivorous Sky” by Ian Hinley.

I noticed something was odd right away. Nothing that looked like furniture came off that truck, only wooden crate after wooden crate, all rectangular, uniform. I thought of an IKEA warehouse, or a mausoleum. I imagined an aggressive A-personality with intense Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I went back inside and scrounged around for something to eat.
That night a small bat swooped back and forth along the porch where I sat petting the cat. I hadn’t seen a bat since the giant fir tree fell during the storm. I felt so sorry for that little bat circling and circling my deck then flying back and forth in front of the windows before circling again. I was sure it wasn’t the same bat, and yet I felt that same sad longing watching it, as if it had lost its home.
The next morning, before the sun came up, while I was just settling into work in my home office, I was surprised by the doorbell. I froze, felt a pain in my chest, and tingles in my arm. The only people that came uninvited were either trying to sell me landscaping or pest removal. I crept toward the door and looked through the peephole. An extremely tall man in a green and black checked flannel shirt, straight black hair flowing down his back trudged back down my driveway toward the street with his hands in his pockets. I continued watching, excited to see if he entered the house directly across the street, the only one I could see from here, but then he turned, suddenly as if he knew I was watching.
Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 21 2022

#Writober Day 20: Dangerous Drinks in the Shadows

My Tea Smells Funny by Maria L. Berg 2022

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “drink.” This made me think of transformative drinks, like potions, or mad-science, like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Those drinks usually bubble and smoke, and taste foul. Or, of course, there are the terrible things that are put into drinks: poisons, pills, or powders. I think I’m feeling darker this year than I was last year when my drinks were failed cocktails of fruit-juice ice-skulls, vodka, and candy-corn pumpkins.

Stop Drinking That, Dr. Jekyll by Maria L. Berg 2022

Today’s Poem

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is Shadow Jumping, moving through our “shadow aspects” by examining our triggers.

dVerse Poets Pub

For today’s Meet the Bar, Laura Bloomsbury challenges us to write a poem in The Roundabout form, a twenty line iambic poem of specific feet and rhyme.

Jump Shadow Jump Shadow Jump

And when I jump from shadow low
to next dark trigger find
a void like night
from blocking light
to next dark trigger find

where painful mem’ries fill my mind
in glaring neon bright
to overcome
vibrations hum
in glaring neon bright

the slant of time that lengthens sight
and pulse a pounding drum
deep waters flow
but change is slow
and pulse a pounding drum

and jumping lifts my dark mood some
as growth no shadow knows
recall refined
is less unkind
as growth no shadow knows

Writober Flash Fiction

I couldn’t find any information about today’s image of two women with pale arms in black ballgowns floating over water’s edge with their heads completely consumed in flames. I tried Artist Ninja (reverse image search), but got nowhere. If anyone has information on the artist and title, please share in the comments. Here’s the beginning of today’s story:

I had planned to rent this one-room cabin for a month, believing a focused retreat without distraction was all I needed to finish my screenplay. My concept was a supernatural mystery, so the isolated boggy setting with no electricity really appealed to me. The first night of writing by candlelight changed my romantic notions right away. I barely wrote half a page before I gave up and started a small fire outside at the water’s edge, and stared at the star-filled sky.
I believed I was the only person for miles, but that night I saw lights flickering along the bank to my right and thought I heard music and laughing. The bugs were thick and irritating even with bug spray. I tired of swatting at the buzzing around my face and ears, so I threw dirt on my fire and tried to sleep. But the night noises startled me, I kept waking to screeches and what sounded like women or children screaming. When I did finally drift off, I awoke in a cold sweat and thought I saw eyes peering in the only window, but I told myself it must have been moonlight reflecting off the water.
Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 20 2022

#Writober Day 19: The Haunting Decor of Mal-Nourished Souls

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “decor.” For today’s images I scoured some old home decor magazines I found in the cupboard, looking for decor I found creepy. I cut them out and turned them into filters.

Decorative Fox Cleaver by Maria L. Berg 2022

Creepy Grecian Bust by Maria L. Berg 2022

OctPoWriMo

Today’s theme is “Nourish the Soul.” I nourish my soul in so many ways: morning cuddles with kitty, reading, writing, learning, creating my images every day, music, fabric art, and sharing my work with you here at Experience Writing.

Speaking of nourishing the soul, what better way than a meal inspired by poetry? This week is week 7 of ModPo, and I’m starting my close-reading essay on the poem, “Having a Coke with You,” a love poem by Frank O’Hara. While doing a little research, I stumbled upon this PBS episode of Art Cooking which I found really fun.

Art Cooking “Having a Coke with Frank O’Hara”

An Artist Always Starving, Never Sated

After voraciously tasting a breakfast of New York poets
always walking, she’s still hungry
After second-breakfast consuming synchronicity
found in the cupboards of curiosity, she’s still hungry
After a bike ride, drinking in new definitions of efficiency, she still thirsts
After devouring a lunch bursting with color and form, she’s still hungry
After circling back for an afternoon snack combining new flavors
in enticing experimentation, she’s still hungry
After a light, fresh dinner, licking dressing from flat, round plates,
she contemplates confidence, yet she’s still hungry
and when the sweet final course comes, she admires it
longingly, even swipes some icing with her finger
but pushes it aside, not that she isn’t hungry

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s inspirational image is “Mind Twist (Invocation)” from a Magic: the Gathering card from the Amonkhet Invocations Set. I like the desert sand setting and the idea of being attacked by one’s own shadow—what a betrayal.

“. . . and as I watched, though the cruel sun was overhead, his shadow stretched out behind him like tar pouring over the sand. Then like a thick, toxic smoke, it lifted behind him, and hovered for a moment. He didn’t turn. He stayed on his knees in the burning desert sand, holding his head. The shadow appeared to find form. I saw white eyes in a black almond-shaped face, and long, spindly fingers reached from over the man into his bald scalp which began to writhe and twist. It was horrifying to observe, but I couldn’t look away.” ~Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 19

#Writober Day 18: Deadly Desserts Under the Perfectly-Imperfect Moon

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “desserts.” Last year I had fun thinking of desserts literally and creating Halloween chocolates. This year, I want to think of desserts more figuratively. Using the definition of dessert as the sweet last course of a meal, I started thinking about the finality of dessert—a sweet ending, a final enticement—like a Jinn’s cursed wish or a deal with the devil. I thought of one of those huge rainbow suckers, but with a poison symbol on it, or the poisoned apple covered in caramel. I set up the floating studio since this may be the last warm sunny day in a while, and I may be taking my final lake swim of 2022.

Rainbow Radiation Suckers by Maria L. Berg 2022

Deadly Candy Apple by Maria L. Berg 2022

New Poem

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is Perfectly Imperfect and talks about the concept/philosophy of Wabi-sabi: a Japanese aesthetic concept that finds beauty and serenity in objects, landscapes, designs, etc., that are simple, imperfect, and impermanent (dictionary.com).

I was discussing the problems of perfectionism with my parents just yesterday. It’s hard to say if its nature or nurture—genetic, psychological programming,or both—but I got it from both of my parents.

This idea of the perfectly imperfect ties in nicely with finding the confidence in fear and the fear in confidence. The fears of the Halloween season are fears of the unknown: fear of the dark, fear of monsters, fear of nightmares, fear of death, the undead, spooks, frights, and surprises. Confidence comes through knowing what to expect, through experience, learning, shining light into the dark, being prepared. But a perfectionist wants, even needs the impossible. No matter how prepared, the perfectionist will find imperfection, and thus finds the fear in confidence, and is confident of her fear.

dVerse Poets Pub

Today’s Poetics prompt is about names for the October full moon. Sarah gave us a list of what this moon is called around the world to inspire our poem.

I once wrote a song called “I Want to Swim to the Moon.” It talks about the full moon in June. Hard to believe that this year, I could have been singing about the full moon in October—doesn’t have the same ring to it. 😃

Ways We See The Same Moon

Thick fall vines flow from the blackberry moon.
Berries shriveled and long gone, its thorns pierce
searching, hungry flesh, drawing blood
staining its round, white, blemished face.
The blood moon haunts the horizon
flushed with pride of its scarred visage.
The horrors it has evoked in the crazed haze,
planting seeds of discord, the seed fall moon
spreads, lighting the way for the wind
to scatter and spray dreams through the dark.
The harvest moon collects the aging and decaying,
perfect in their grace of time’s ravages, ripe
and sweet in their browning blemishes, fueling
an ice moon’s warm glow.

Writober Flash Fiction

I couldn’t find any information about today’s inspirational image of a young woman being held in a chair by scary arms. Here’s the opening of my story “The Candy Behind the Curtain:”

Taffy loved spending time in Mr. Kaffrey’s old-timey Candy Shoppe. If rainbows had a smell, they would smell like opening the Candy Shoppe door. And they would sound like the bell over the door. Every wall was floor to ceiling shelves with beautiful glass jars containing candies of every color, shape, and size. Mr. Kaffrey had his candy’s coordinated by country. He imported confections from every country in the world. Taffy had to beg her parents for a new globe because she learned some of the countries in the store weren’t on her dad’s old globe, and the computer wasn’t as fun as spinning the world around and stopping it with her finger. It was because of the Candy Shoppe she was fascinated with regime change and borders.
But there was one border that fascinated her the most, and it was within Mr. Kaffrey’s Candy Shoppe itself. In one corner there was a thick velvet curtain hanging from a golden rod. She never saw anyone come out from behind it, but when she subtly lurked by it, pretending to be fascinated by the strange black salt licorice shapes from Sweden that smelled and looked like tar on a hot summer roof, she heard sounds behind the curtain, happy sounds, like laughing and clapping. She imagined kids tasting new candies, the best candies. She salivated imagining a giant chocolate tiger roaming around, or the biggest gummy worm giving kids rides. She wanted to see back there so badly it became an aching need. It was all she could think about.

#Writober Day 17: Fear the Pontianak

Female Ghost Vampire by Maria L. Berg 2022

This Week’s Contradictory Abstract Nouns

So we made it through “the big 5:” beauty, happiness, wisdom, love, and truth. I have to admit, combining those big contradictions with all these other October challenges was hard, but I like the honeycomb and mask symbols that came from the work. Since there are only two week left until Halloween, I thought we would look at some appropriately spooky abstract nouns.

I looked over an abstract noun list and came up with four categories that I thought fit as Halloween themes: fear, death, evil, and weakness. I decided to split each week in half to look at two each week. So this week from Monday through Wednesday, I’ll be exploring the fear in confidence and the confidence in fear. Then Thursday through Saturday I’ll look at the life in death and the death in life. Sunday, I’ll review my findings and share my images.

The weather is supposed to change drastically by the end of the week, so hopefully this is the week to really get into the Halloween spirit.

Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “vampire.” I’ve never been a big fan of vampire stories. I have a physical pain reaction to seeing blood, so as you can imagine, vampires do not equal fun for me. So for today’s prompt, I turned to Monstrum for some inspiration. I found an interesting video about the Pontianak, a Southeast Asian female vampire ghost.

OctPoWriMo

Today is Quadrille Monday at dVerse Poets Pub, and the prompt for a poem of exactly 44 words is “bell.”

Violently Denied Her Motherhood

The Pontianak alarms like a cracked bell
ringing echo of betrayal’s grievance
sharp and unhinged vengeance
transformed to unfocused blood thirst
like a wind lifting dry leaves
she is swooping overhead
to perch and prey
on those whose final
vision will be her scars

Writober Flash Fiction

Today’s image is by Nan Fe. I like this imagery of haunting music. And the lines on the face of the spirit make me think of the Pontianak’s scars (though she is said to wear white robes).

Misha glared at her violin. She hated it.
Every day since she was five, her mother forced her to practice for four hours. When she started to rebel, her mother put a lock on the music room door, standing outside with a bag of cookies and a rock. For each mistake, a cookie was ground to dust. Misha hated cookies as much as her violin.
When her mother unlocked the door, and she emerged fingers bleeding and cheeks wet with tears. Her mother would grab her shoulders, stare into her eyes and say, “Someday, little one, you will thank me for saving your babies from the Pontianak.”
“I’m never going to have any babies,” Misha would yell.
Then her mother would poor all the cookie dust on the floor and tell her to clean it up. “Then you will be sad and alone, and spend eternity as a Pontianak yourself. When you’re done cleaning your mess, do your homework and go to bed.”
Maria L. Berg #Writober7 Day 17 2022

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This Week’s Contradictory Abstract Nouns

NaNoWriMo Prep

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Contradictory Abstract Nouns

NaNoWriMo Prep

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Study of Contradictory Abstract Nouns

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Today’s Poem

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New Poem

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This Week’s Contradictory Abstract Nouns

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