Luck is a tricky thing. It can reverse like the flip of a coin. It’s no surprise that people attempt to control it, to wield it through imbuing it into objects. Lucky charms hanging on a chain to kiss, or pocketed to squeeze and rub give one a sense of control when the world throws the unexpected and unwanted.
For today’s images I grabbed a handful of pennies and a macro lens, went outside and tried my luck.
A Closer Look at Luck by Maria L. Berg 2022
The Prompts
NaPoWriMo
Today’s prompt is to write a poem of the opening scene from the movie of your life.
Bare feet cross the grass and walk the planks waves lap at the rocks seagulls scream the air the splash announces lucks return, cool and invigorating grace of home The lens sweeps upon the mountain pans out expecting my head to crack the still surface after the rings have rippled and resolved searching breath but I pull on and on into the darkness lungs beginning to beg and ache with need the camera cannot see A swallow becomes the star of the show diving and skimming back and forth so careless worry is forgotten until a lucky break in the clouds releases bright rays shining the path to the surface which I follow breaching like a humpback creating a rainbow with sprays of water from my hair
The Luckiest by Maria L. Berg 2022
Come back tomorrow for a very special guest post on motivation from Jacob M. Appel!
For today’s images, I wanted to build on yesterday’s fun discovery. The eye photo from yesterday makes me think of an oracle. Then I thought of a magic 8 ball. I used to have one and really liked it.I found an online 8 Ball, but it just wasn’t the same. The physical holding and shaking of the ball, watching the words rise to the surface, how could I capture the feeling and experience? I thought of the joy of Erica Baum’s photographs of clever found text in the world. I have a triangle bokeh filter.
Then I looked at the theme for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday which is “cam.” When asked to think of a word with cam in it, of course I think of camera, then camera, then camera, so I put cam in a search and got “campfire.” I haven’t had a fire yet this yea,r and I had a small dry log and some kindling in the fireplace from a photoshoot I did in October, so I decided to light that up as my background. Not exactly a campfire, but though it is not supposed to rain again until tonight, the world outside is way too wet, so the fact that I have one small dry log is in fact “lucky.”
With fire as my backdrop for my oracle, I needed to figure out how I wanted to gather my questions and my answers. How would my oracle answer yes or no questions? I wanted to find the text on things around me, but how to get the words in my triangle, in front of the fire?
The classic 8 ball had 20 answers: 10 affirmative, 5 maybe, and 5 no. I started taking pictures of text I thought would make good answers. Then I saw my word jars on the mantel and thought, what could be more found-text oracle than randomly pulling nouns from a jar to represent yes, no, or maybe? So I pulled out 20 nouns and got to work.
I must be the luckiest person: I went to the oracle and the oracle said Only Yes or No questions so I asked: Will I meet my soulmate? They answered: nest Which is exactly what I needed to hear It makes sense that I should make a home, a comfortable place, for love to be drawn to Then I asked: Have I found my purpose? They answered: smoke which confirms that life is fleeting and I need to follow my heart, so I asked the question burning inside: Will I be remembered? They said: flavor And I knew I would leave good taste in the world.
I must be the unluckiest person: I went to the oracle who said ask only Yes or No questions so I asked: Will I ever find love? and they answered: sneeze which only confirms that I sneeze funny and it puts people off I asked: Do I have a purpose? They said: poison Which is what I’ve been dreading; I’ll have to quit my job before that go-getter poisons them against me. He probably has already, so I asked: Will anyone notice if I am gone? They answered: key Exactly as I expected. No one will miss me unless I don’t turn in my keys.
Yes or No Answers by Maria L. Berg
NaNoWriMo
Last night I did 20 minute word sprints with my ML (municipal liaison) and the part of my story that had me a little stuck opened up in a new direction. It really is amazing to me how just knowing that someone else is out there doing timed writings “with” you does actually make a difference. Strange human mental gymnastics, but whatever works. I’ll be trying the zoom write-in today and see if that works as well.
Fire Oracle by Maria L. Berg 2021
November Daily Prompts by Maria L. Berg 2021 Please leave your links in the comments. I hope you will join me.
This year’s Writer’s Games are over. I’m happy to say that one of my stories placed third in its event, so it will be published in the anthology. My first publication this year. Woohoo! This is the first Saturday I’m not working on a story, and am excited to have a Stream of Consciousness Saturday. The theme for today is Luck. Here’s a sample of my stream of consciousness writing on luck in my journal this morning:
“I’m still in disbelief of how unlucky, and lucky, I was yesterday. A simple act of gravity could have been a complete tragedy, but turned out fine. Talk about drama: hot water pouring over a frozen banana in the sink, I step out to get mint, and not wanting bugs to get in, close the sliding door behind me, but the house and gravity conspired, and the hinged bar fell. The door wouldn’t budge. At least I know that little bar does its job keeping people out, but I lock all my doors and windows at all times, so I was screwed. But luck was on my side. I still can’t believe how lucky I felt when the shop door opened. Maybe I wasn’t sure kitty wanted to stay in, so I didn’t lock it after I watered, or if he opened it telepathically, but somehow his recent choice to spend these hot, smoky days in the shop saved me, and the house. It was such a bit of luck, it felt spiritual, supernatural. Luck favors the prepared, but I was not prepared. Once I was back in the house, and had taken many deep breaths, I made the connection that it was Friday the 13th. It had never been a date I paid much attention to before. I wonder if I will take notice and act differently the next time.”
Maria L. Berg
Looking through my WordPress Reader, I lucked into a cluster of Flower of the Day posts: Zombie Flamingos’ black and white response to Cee’s Flower a Day challenge, inspired me to go out and try a black and white flower photo. I love it! And lalalaMonique has a flower a day challenge in which she draws a flower each day. I think I’ll combine all three (though I ignored Cee’s dahlia prompt).
Stumbling upon Cee’s flower-a-day was also lucky because the site has lists of all sorts of challenges. Because I want to focus on recording music on the weekends, I took a look at her list of Music Challenges. I like the blogging challenge idea at wRightingMyLife because it combines writing, photography, and music which is something I want to do. The theme this month is “Pathways.” Luck and pathways go together well.
My overgrown path almost plum-ripe
Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie has something called Lucky Dip which today is a poetry prompt to write a Nonet which is a nine line diminishing syllables poem.
Fickle Luck
When all is shiny and bright as gold the path ahead clearly unfolds a gentle ease fills the day no blockades in the way birdsong fills the air not a blister or ache. We call it luck
When all is dark, and hope has run out everything tried fails, leaving doubt dare not ask what could go wrong dread makes the day too long chainsaws scream a dirge the next turn will be worse. We call it luck
And talk about lucky! I made the last of my quinoa, not sure what to eat with it, and just before I threw out the bag, I noticed a recipe on the back for Blueberry and Feta Quinoa Salad. And I had all the ingredients (except for cucumber). Delicious!
Experience Writing 