Tag Archives: second chances

My Consciousness Streams on Day 2: #OctPoWriMo #Writober #SoSC

Though today is Day 2 of OctPoWriMo and Writober, it’s also Stream of Consciousness Saturday, so I thought I would start the day with some thoughts on “inspire/aspire/expire.”

Unedited Stream of Consciousness

At first I thought of the note I made yesterday about surrender: hope/disappointment/death and it fits. After looking up the words and finding the connection to breath, I wanted to move around, inhale, raise, fly, hold, exhale. My original interpretations of each word were far from breath. Inspire as a challenge, guiding to new thoughts, new ideas, excitement. Aspire as something or someone to look up to, something one strives for and wants to be, qualities one wishes to acquire, skills one practices to master. Expire, I thought of death, but like the death card it can be any ending which really means a turn or change. It doesn’t need to be the last breath, but the beginning of the next. breathe/desire/breathe again.

~Maria L. Berg

OctPoWriMo

The prompt from 2018 Day 2 was “Poems and notes to you.” The image is a still from a 1941 Looney Tunes Porky Pig cartoon called Notes To You. I don’t think I made the connection to, or watched the cartoon back then. There are a lot of odd references, and a great ghostly twist at the end.

I’m going to keep “Surrender” as a theme for every day this month. Specifically, sonic surrender. Continuing my stream of consciousness and keeping the prompt in mind, here’s today’s poem:

breathe / desire / breathe again

inspire to acquire
to acquire breath
breath and excitement
breathe delightment
delight in inquiry,
synergy, serendipity,
connections with recollections
memory in emergency
emerging to aspire
arise and pine
in fire’s desire
thirst to soar
so struggle in
ambition’s direction
toward more and more
the apex point
pointing against the sky
eye-popping, intoxicating
impassioned urgency
to fly high not to
expire until ready to
breathe again

Writober

Yesterday’s fun combination of an image and a memory led me to lots of questions and ideas. So today I thought I’d do some research and brainstorming.

Research – First, I wanted to know more about the image if possible, so I looked up the artist and I’m glad I did. On Alex Timmermans’s website he has videos about his liquid plate process, and beautiful photographs in his portfolio. The group of photos that includes one with the boar, is called “Storytelling.” Knowing that he uses taxidermied animals took some of the magic out of the image, but I’ll get over it.

I didn’t find anything specific about Alex Timmermans’s inspiration for the image, so my next area of research turned to the mythology of boars. I found some interesting stuff at Trees for Life. Even a story about Merlin hanging out with a wolf and a wild boar when he gained his powers of prophesy. This site said that boars are guardians of the forest in Princess Mononoke which I have never seen. This idea sounds promising for my story, so I know what I’ll be watching this evening as I brainstorm story ideas.

I finished off my research by taking a look at Dream Meaning. It says dreams with boars are positive dreams that speak to an ability to face challenges to your happiness. It also says that the wild boar symbolizes people who are instinctual, and act on instinct to protect their interests and family. It represents the effort and will to solve your problems. It also means to stay strong.

A couple of the specific boar dreams listed might apply to the image:

  1. “If you hunted a boar and you caught it” : the man with the boar in the image will be lucky and get everything he desires which will make him truly happy.
  2. “When a boar attacked and persecuted you”: This might apply to my wheelbarrow and shovel man. It indicates that someone he cares about will be his enemy. He won’t believe it’s happening, but it’s true. That could be an interesting twist in my story. Something to think about.

How are your stories coming? Have any spooky ideas yet?

#OctPoWriMo & #Writober Day 1: Surrender

I like the idea of surrender as giving in to each of these little butterflies

Welcome to the first day of October!

OctPoWriMo

I woke up excited to get started on my first poem of October’s yearly poem-a-day challenge, and headed straight to the OctPoWriMo site. Though the heading on the Home page says “OctPoWriMo 2021”, the prompt is still the Day 31 prompt from last year. So, I had decisions to make.

I have been slowly working my way through In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit. It’s a great generative workshop in a book that includes revision in the process. I highly recommend it to everyone working on their poetry craft. I thought I could bring some of those prompt ideas into #OctPoWriMo, maybe put a spooky spin on them, but that didn’t feel right.

It’s week four of ModPo. ModPo is a free, interactive Modern & Contemporary American Poetry course/discussion offered online by the University of Pennsylvania through Coursera. The course focuses on close-reading and discussion of poems. There’s a live webcast every Wednesday. This week was mostly focused on Gertrude Stein. ModPo can be a large time commitment, and it would be nice to use the poets and poems studied and discussed as inspiration for generative work. I could do a Dadaist cut-up a la Tristan Tzara.

I’m also enjoying How Writers Write Poetry 2015, a free MOOC offered by the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Session 2: Content and Form, focuses on sound and goes well with ModPo week four, so I may find myself making a lot of repetition and playing with sound.

However, all of those things are things I was already doing, and not #OctPoWriMo to me, so what to do?

Back in 2018, before the world of pandemic and sequestering and such, I was playing reunion shows with my band, The Rubber Maids, in New Orleans. I tried to do OctPoWriMo in my down time, but didn’t get very far. Since the focus of Experience Writing is revision this year, I thought I would revisit the OctPoWriMo prompts of 2018.

The Day 1 prompt in 2018 was Surrender. That feels like a good way to face this OctPoWriMo. Morgan was talking about surrendering to love and all its messiness, so I will surrender to my love of words, and poetry, and creating in all its ups and downs and mess; to the pleasure of the sounds, and rhythms I create, letting go of my obsessive need for meaning and understanding, if only for one poem a day.

Suggested form: free verse

In 2018 on day one, I wrote a poem called Callistemon. I like the lines at the end, so in the spirit of revision, I will start finding my sounds there, and yield to whatever comes.

To Whatever Comes

I yield, I will yield, yielding
to bliss, a kiss of mist
peeled feelings come to being
fizz blitz, bubble, tumbles, bumbles
then fizzles, puzzling the quickness
am I fickle? My sickle swings
back to beginnings with abandon
coming undone
craving raving, not saving
unbuttoned, loose
sluice then juice
slather and lather longer
I yield, I will yield, yielding
to blissful song longer
ignoring boring inklings of wrong
gone the gong, the hook,
the harm and alarm, I
entrust this thrust of
crispy crust to crumble
to dust in my lust
to wield all the words
this word sword salad
whirls now in the world
swirled, swirling
I do not resist, but go
under, give in, give up
succumb, submit, surrender

Feel free to link to your OctPoWriMo poems in the comments. I look forward to hearing how you’re approaching the challenge this year.

Writober

As I mentioned in my post, Thinking About #Writober, I’m doing things a little differently this year. I looked back through all my years of #Writober and the image and microstory that resonated with me today is from October 22, 2020. The image is “Lost” by Alex Timmermans and this was my microstory:

The stranger arrived with the fall, leading a wild boar by a sheer scarf. They approached silently from the thick wood to the east, as if they did not possess enough weight to crunch a dry leaf. Yet everywhere they walked, trouble became too heavy to bear.

~Maria L. Berg

The image and story reminded me of a time I was taking a walk in the woods and a man passed me going the opposite direction with a shovel in a wheelbarrow. Today, I thought, what if the strange man with the wheelbarrow passed the man with the wild boar?

I think there are the makings of an interesting, spooky story there, so my tentative plan is to do some research and brainstorming tomorrow, develop the characters on Sunday, come up with an outline on Monday and draft the rest of the week.

This is the first time I’ve tried Writober this way, so the main point is to have fun and be flexible.

I hope you’ll join me in writing some spooky stories for Writober and tell me about them in the comments.

Happy Reading and Writing!