Category Archives: Bits of Wisdom

Wise Habit (Lai)

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Wise Habit

Try this exercise
to see through disguise.
Take note:
To locate the lies,
examine the eyes.
I quote:
Life’s ultimate prize
is to become wise
by rote.

This is a strange poetic form know as Lai which looks to be a very simple form composed of a five syllabled couplets followed by a two syllable lines. The number of lines in each stanza is fixed at nine and the couplets must rhyme with each other, as the two syllable lines must also rhyme. In English this line is probably the most difficult part of the poem.

The Lai is a very old French form and tradition states that the short line must not be indented, it must be left dressed to the poem. This is known as Arbre Fourchu (Forked Tree); there is a pattern meant to be set up as a tree.

The number of lines in each stanza is fixed at nine. The number of stanzas is not fixed and each stanza has its own rhyme pattern. The stanza’s rhyme
pattern is… a. a. b. a. a. b. a. a. b.

 

Relocation Dreams

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Relocation Dreams

I’ve so many things that there’s no place to stack them in.
No drawers to hold them, no cupboards to pack them in.
So many things stowed away from detection.
My fireplace houses its own art collection.

My wardrobe suffers from costumes aplenty.
I’ve boxes of sizes from nine up to twenty.
My jewelry box is stuffed to the gills,
my medicine drawer is spilling out pills.

When I try to cull them, they all want to stay.
The only solution’s to just move away
to find a small island with palm trees and sky
where there is simply nothing to buy!

I’ll live in a hut with floors of swept dirt.
One pair of flip flops, a simple grass skirt.
I won’t feel that shopping should be my main duty.
I’ll look out the window if I require beauty.

No buying new paintings whenever I please.
No little nicknacks and no DVD’s.
No drawers of makeup or tea towels or spoons.
No tarot cards, horoscopes, Ouija boards, runes.

I will not need things to determine my fate,
that day I walk out, simply locking my gate,
taking one suitcase, computer and cables,
and scanner and backup drives, printers and tables,

an internet router and energy backup—
just these few items to locate and pack up.
Then I’m off to a life that’s simpler by far
if these bare necessities fit in my car.

 

The prompt today was relocate.

Mute Assistance

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Mute Assistance

Trapped in a lake under the kelp,
I’m gonna need a little help.
While climbing ladders, as I stand there
I could use a steadying hand there.
A sous chef’s nice when cooking meals,
a strong arm needed when I wear heels;
but when I tell a funny story,
or one that’s scary, tense or gory,
as towards the denouement I’m wending,
don’t help by blurting out the ending!

 

 

The prompt today was HELP!

How to Write a Blog with Bite!

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How to Write a Blog with Bite!

Have you ever had a hot dog without mustard, onions, relish?
What is a hot dog, after all, but something to embellish?
The same is true of blogging. It has to have some spice––
an interesting title is my opening advice.
Remember your first sentence should invite us in.
An opening poorly stated? The worst blogging sin.
Don’t start you blog apologizing you have naught to say.
If you have nothing for us?  Just don’t write today.
Make your first line snappy, original and clear.
Don’t show your indecision, for you’re the expert here!!!
Nobody else can possibly know where you’re going to go
if you write about a topic where you are in the know.
Hook them with your opening–confident or funny.
Your readers are the buzzing flies. Give them a little honey!
Start right in with your topic with no wandering around.
We shouldn’t have to search for where the real message is found.
A blog is like a fine-tooled belt that you have carved from leather––
not just a pile of sentences that you have heaped together.
Do not use tired comparisons that you have heard before.
Each sentence that you write should be like opening a door
and finding yourself in a world that’s fresh and new and bright.
And then you’ll have a hot dog blog that we will want to bite!!!


Here are some links to just a few of the exceptional blogs that never give short shrift.  Read them every day and their excellence will pull you along with them. Set your standards high and you will soon have a readership that will make you want to excel,  just to keep them happy!! (photo is a stock photo from shutterstock.)

https://redswrap.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/the-old-days-of-big-wine/

https://alotfromlydia.wordpress.com/

http://teepee12.com/

https://momshieb.wordpress.com/

okcforgottenman.wordpress.com

https://ourrumblingocean.wordpress.com/

https://yournibblednews.wordpress.com

https://helenmeikle.wordpress.com/

http://thegadabouttown.com/

 

 The Prompt: What’s the key advice you would give to new bloggers:?

Composing Myself

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Composing Myself

The Prompt: A Brand New You, Effective Tomorrow––Tomorrow you get to become anyone in the world that you wish. Who are you? You can choose to be anyone alive today, or someone gone long ago. If you decide to stay “you” share your rationale.

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How could I choose to become another when I’m still trying to become myself?  Start all over?  I don’t think so.  Every person is a puzzle bent on solving itself.  Perhaps for some the puzzle comes fully assembled, but if so, they are people I’ve never met.  Why would I want to begin a new puzzle before the one I’ve started is completed?  Finish the job, I say.

Perhaps in another life the chance to construct a new life will be provided, but in this life, we are given only one life to solve.  No one knows the reason why this life is not perfect from the offset. That puzzle is one for philosophers to solve.  In the meantime, I  am busy enough figuring out what goes where today and in my own life. I’ll leave the assembling and breakdown and reassembly of the world at large to others.

 At Fourteen

There is a whole world out there and you’ll see it soon enough.
It is the world inside of you you’ll find especially rough.
Try to write about it, and try to tell the truth
about the things that happen that you find uncouth.

Write about what hurts you, and hurts that you have done–
all those shadows in you brought into the sun.
Ask those around you why they act in ways that might seem cruel
and try to live your own life by the golden rule.

Take chances and do not be cowed when you achieve less
than what you might have hoped for, and when you’re wrong, confess.
Don’t just do what your friends do. Don’t act before you think.
However strange the ones around you, try to find a link.

The world has enough meanness. Try not to add to it.
Try harder in environments where you seem not to fit.
People who are petty will cut you like a knife,
but the chances that you take will be what will make your life.

Other people’s rules pinch like a too-small shoe,
so don’t let other people dictate what you do.
Do not fear to step aside and go out on your own.
The fields that yield the sweetest crop are those that you have sown.

Post this advice up on your wall and read it now and then.
Use it as a means to reassess where you have been.
Then when you are older, and your life grows thin,
do what I am doing now. Consider it again.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “From You to You.” Write a letter to your 14-year-old self. Tomorrow, write a letter to yourself in 20 years.

Love Times Three

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                                                                  Love Is

Letting go when you’d like to hold on because you know it would be better for them.
Overlooking hurt because you can see motives through their eyes as well as your own.
Validating their goals, desires, morals, taste, choices even if they are ones you don’t share.
Enabling their progress through the life they choose.

Learning who you need to be to further your relationship.
Opening your heart even when it frightens you.
Venting your anger in a way that will not destroy them or your love for each other.
Enduring the hard times your relationship will inevitably go through.

Letting it be sometimes.
Omitting parts of the truth that will hurt more than they will help.
Veering off the straight forward path of yourselves to create a mutal path somewhere between.
Earning their love by being that best person both of you want you to be.

                                                                    Love is Not:

Letting go of essential & important parts of yourself just to please them.
Overlooking harm they might bring to you or others.
Validating unacceptable behavior because you fear they will not love you if you tell the truth.
Eating the rest of the chocolate–including their share!!!
Looking away to avoid seeing the truth.
Existing in a world apart from your true self just to be with them.
Scheming to keep their love no matter what.
Setting a goal in life and expecting them to follow unresistingly because they love you.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/i-want-to-know-what-love-is/

The Prompt: I Want to know What Love Is–We each have many types of love relationships–parents, children, spouses, friends.  And they’re not always with people; you may love an animal, or a place. Is there a single idea or definition that runs through all the varieties of “love”?

 

Revelation, Writer’s Block and Tweet, Twitter, Ping!!!!

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I had a revelation the other day that I actually enjoy writing about life more than living it! I used to dream about achieving this state, but now it rather bothers me.

okay, a further thought: My (unfortunately deceased) husband was a poet who promptly stopped writing as soon as we married. A few years later, I asked him why. He answered, “I think it is because I can only write when I’m unhappy.” There was not much I could say to protest his writer’s block after that, but I did start worrying when he started writing again.

These are two comments I wrote in Listentothebabe‘s blog.  A friend told me they were tweet-worthy, but I think they are too long and no one reads my tweets anyway, so forgive me for tweeting my own song here.  (Babe, if you’re having to read these over again, sorry. Next time I’ll just ping you.)

Damn, now there is something else I just have to say:

Twenty years ago, would any of us have dreamed that one day we’d be using the words “tweet, twitter and ping” so frequently?

Okay.  Over and out.  Promise.  I’ll go watch an episode of something sent to me by a kind benefactor. —Judy