Thought for Tuesday • Life’s a Struggle — or is it?

I got very irritated on Monday when I went to the pool and after paying and changing was turned away because the session was toddler splash! Usually that means the toddlers occupy the shallow end and there’s a deep end swim — I often go on a Wednesday and usually there’s not a toddler in sight! Not on MONDAYS they said. On MONDAYS it’s toddlers and parents ONLY — it doesn’t say that on the schedule!

So — WHO is in the deep end? I got no answer to that. Half the pool empty but I am not allowed to swim!

I sounded off to the girl at the desk — and what do they think I am going to do to their DNA squirts? I only wanted a bloody SWIM! They couldn’t organise a — well a swim in a swimming pool for starters!

So I did the opposite of the healthy thing I was going to do. I came home and made a bacon butty.

Oh well. So much for my healthy start to the week!

A moment’s calm

On Sunday I went to put some rubbish in the bin and there on the gate, firmly stuck by one foot in a slat, a female blackbird struggled to get free. My neighbour, who was wearing gardening gloves, came and released her but she didn’t fly away. She dropped down by the bins to recover (or to die) and I left her in peace. I didn’t empty my rubbish. I didn’t want to cause her more distress. I hope she eventually flew away as the evidence suggests — no corpse — no feathers by the bins

The bluebells are out now and they are my favourite spring flower. The native species is threatened now by cultivars from Spain but there is still a small deciduous wood near us of indigenous bluebells. I should go and see them soon when they come out fully.

I sleep and wake up in a comfy bed, plenty of food — too much in fact. I have good neighbours and kind friends and people who love me. I am well. I do things I want to do. I work with poetry. I live in peace.

Life is good!

in general…if you’re zen about it

Have a nice week and I recommend a bacon butty!

Thought for Tuesday • BOLDLY BEAMING

Slept like a Sargoovian Snooze-beast last night. Must have been all that flying about fighting baddies or maybe it was just the after effects of 3D and Surround Sound. I am not much given to noise and fast movement as my friends will attest! On the other hand it may just have been that Star Trek Into Darkness hits the spot for old trekkies like me and so I felt soothed and satisfied. I’d had my ‘fix’.

True the technology is way in advance of the Kirk era and therefore inconsistent.

True it seems incongruous that Uhura and Spock are an item.

True there are action scenes where the action demands you “leave reality at home” as they say and suspend all disbelief .

But the trouble with tribbles is — they make me smile. And Cumberbach as Khan was as evil as ever Montalban was — if not so handsome. And there are several very nice ‘tributes’ to Wrath of Khan in this film, appreciated by us Trekkies of old and other references there are that make us feel like we belong here too — not just just the ‘new audience’ at whom all things must of course be aimed.

But what really makes this Star Trek and why I would watch the next film and the next is the same reason I watched the original series. Good story telling never misses a beat and above all, the relationships between the characters. I believe Pine is Kirk, Quinto is Spock and Urban is definitley Bones! (They under-used the magnificent Mr Urban in this particular film — I hope the address that in the next one.) In fact if this cast is boldly going anywhere in the future, I will boldly follow them. This is the best casting that could have been done and if the franchise can give us that, they can keep me Trekking.

All in all, something for everyone. We both enjoyed it! Keep on Trekking!

Thought for Tuedsday • Poetry, Power and Potatoes in a NEW ULSTER

It is a fact that I’m from Ballymena and though I have not lived there since 1978, still I feel it is fitting that some of my poems should go back home and that is why I am so pleased always to be between the covers of A New Ulster.  And I like to include at least one poem that hails from my upbringing. In this issue that poem is “A Far Cry”.

The title reflects that I am a far cry frae home. In fact I may even be considered a far cry from being an Ulsterwoman any more, having lived in Wales and England now so many years — and I seldom go back. It’s not that I don’t like the place — it’s beautiful — go and find out for yourself — the Glens of Antrim — the Causeway Coast – Carnlough — Portrush –  all stunning. I lived in Portrush as a student and I met my husband there. But I have had the privilege of seeing a great deal of the British Isles and I have found beauty wherever I went — because these green isles are exceptional despite the awful weather! Ulster however is the greenest place on Earth!

What makes this an Ulster poem is the language and the cooking. It’s all about potatoes and home cooking and love, from the first line to the Willow Patterned plate. My mother used words like deaved — which I do know the meaning of — it is an old fashioned way of saying deafened. Scunnered means sick. I think that gets used elsewhere in Britain too. Doiled? Not a clue where that one comes from but I always took it to mean overwrought. I’d be interested if anyone else know that word.

Potatoes were always the staple and I have written about that before — scroll down after following the link to CHAMP in THE LINNET’S WINGS SPRING 2008, ISSN 2009-2369, Druim Cala, Dromod, Co. Leitrim 00353 71 96 58858

One of the other poems this month is very much the topic here in Northumberland — there are Say NO signs about wind farms all over the place. “Revolution maybe — On the wind” is about the opposition to wind farms in areas of outstanding natural beauty.  People here think that the planning is insensitive — as long as they can’t be seen from London eh? Wind power is a tremendous thing but I agree — the planning is insenstive as is the design of these monstrosities.

Buy Issue 8 of A NEW ULSTER

It won’t save the planet but it’ll help the magazine to keep going. And if you’re feeling flush this month why not make a DONATION to Every Day Poets too? The world needs Poetry, Power and Potatoes!

Thought for Tuesday • The Liebster Blog Award

Amos Greig from A New Ulster handed me this one and I thought the questions were fun so here goes.

(1). If you could be any type of animal, what would you be and why?

I would like to be an elegant creature like a flamingo, a heron, a giraffe – poised and leisurely with fine feathers or interesting spots. Or I might be a mermaid like this mural I once painted on my bathroom wall in our old house. I loved that bathroom! My bathroom now is tiny and boring

(2). Is there anything you collect? If so, what?

Ghosts. I have lots of ghosts all over the house – candles, curtains, toys, ceramics — I even have a light-pull called Looey who hangs about in the bathroom, glows in the dark and scares the shit out of you (my sister’s joke).

(3). What is the overall goal of your blog?

I promote my stories and poems and those of friends and put up pictures so that far flung family and friends can drop by and see that I haven’t croaked yet and become a ghost myself!

(4). How do you feel in big crowds of people?

Hate crowds. They don’t have to be big either! I panic. I avoid social encounters mostly. When I went to Minneapolis I didn’t go anywhere near the Mall of America and I never take part in rallies. I went to Wembley once to hear Pink Floyd and I went to Manchester for Leonard Cohen but to get me out in a crowd it has to be something special!

(5). Mobile phones (cell phones) – what’s your opinion of them?

Handy in an emergency. I only use mine as an alarm clock and torch. I have few people to phone.

(6). If you could decorate your home in any style, what would that be?

I would love walls painted with light. Lighting to me is key. And I like kinetic light. I would like a post-modern space with lots of glass that could be darkened on command and curved inner walls, white that could be lit or rain bowed. There’s a Chinese Restaurant in Toronto that used linetic lighting.  It’s called FICKLE. Take a look at those walls! I loved that! Mind you if someone offered me Bag End I wouldn’t say no either.

(7). Do you believe in Extraterrestrials?

There’s bound to be or have been or will be some beings somewhere other than here. I think that the believing is the operative term. We probably can never know because of distance over time.

(8). If you could meet any mythological creature, what would it be and why?

I’d like to meet my mermaid. It would be nice to go to Narnia.
(9). Would you rather stay busy or have a lot of free time? Why?

I like being busy doing what I want to do under my own terms. Life has had enough bells and timetables in it.

(10). If you would have a chance to travel to the moon, would you do it?

No. I like it fine here on Earth. The moon is like a desert. I love our green planet and our salty seas.

(11). What music album are you still frequently listening to now that you also
listened to years ago?

The Magician’s Birthday Uriah Heap. Focus and Mother Focus. Me and Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson, All Leonard Cohen, All Queen but in reality I don’t often listen to music. I prefer silence.

I’ll pass these questions on to Periphery Arts and One Minnesota Writer Let’s have your answers on your next BLOG Constance and Kath

Thought for Tuesday • Small World

John Ritchie and I are Writewords friends but we have actually met in real life in London and here is a story of his published by Dave Morehouse who is an EDP poet and who joined Writewords and whom I have also met in person in Minneapolis. They have never met each other but they will one day I’m sure. It’s a small world.

The Killing Bottle by John Ritchie

In BwS this week is a poem I wrote for my husband who loves snakes and was born in the year of the snake and this is the year of the snake too. Don Webb is the editor of BwS and has also published work by John. We met Don last year in Toronto.

A Snake Awakes is the title of my poem in BwS this week.

While you’re there check out the two poems and art-work there by Rececca Liu Kiernan (haven’t met her but have corresponded recently )

And since it was Earth Day and that is the subject of our Every Day Inspiration this week, here is one I wrote on Sunday just for fun from a list of word Bill West devised over in Writewords. I’ve not met Bill but I will one day and after all it’s a small world.

A Moment of Idle Thought

God had nothing better to do that day
so he took off his crown to scratch his bonce
and had an idea – a good one for once
to create a little friend out of clay
but where was he going to get any?

Clay/earth earth/clay his mind whirred merrily.

Nice name Earth – and he’d call his friends mankind.
He’d make two of them and give them a fork
a garden and fruit trees and let them work
the land with lots of animals to husband.
he’d even offer them choice at a price…

and as he thought, before his very eyes
a universe exploded into view.

Satan finds work for idle minds to do.

© Oonah V Joslin 2013

HAPPY ST GEORGE’S DAY

Thought for Tuesday • I’LL TELL YOU WHERE THE HARM IS

 I find it disturbing that in this climate of austerity and increasing poverty, I am seeing a lot more ads on TV for online gambling.

Politicians will issue warnings against ‘cheap booze’ whilst beer in a pub can be £3 a pint — thus pubs are closing, wrecking the healthy social aspect of just meeting friends or family for a chat and a quiet drink! But GAMBLING? They have even abolished the tax on it my husband tells me and now it’s being portrayed nightly on screen as sexy and fun!

It shouldn’t surprise me. Gambling is like how markets work at their most simplistic — banks take our money, gamble with it, lose, pay themselves huge bonuses for losing and so on. And rich people take a keen interest in relieving the gullible of their cash — the house (ie the share holder) always wins. Financial risk not stability, is at the heart of society — therein lies the problem. But Gambling isn’t good.

I place one bet every year as did my mother (even if it was just a family sweep sometimes) and that is on Grand National day. So I had my yearly bet this year too –  £2 each way on Teaforthree — a very nice horse which gave me back my stake + £3 In the Bookies afterwards collecting my win, I saw men with gaunt haggard faces directed at the screen, having placed round robins or whatever, they looked like they had to win. I didn’t understand how they could spend all afternoon in that awful shop staring at anything so boring. But then I’ve never been bitten by gambling. Even as a child when we went to Barry’s in Portrush, I never fed the fruit machines or Penny Falls. I’d spend my money on icecream instead. Gluttony is much more my sin! (Oh the government are against that too by the way.) So — gambling doesn’t show — or does it?

It does you know. It shows in crime rates and loan sharks and ruined families and lost houses and the desperation of addiction and it is dispicable to advertise it. It is another synical aspect to the incoherent policies of greedy and indifferent men of power. I’ll tell you where the harm is. It’s at the top of our society and it’s trickling down!

Thought for Tuesday • IN OTHER’S WORDS MY SONG

In my opinion the flagrant inequalities of our current systems of government are bound to result in all manner of suffering and eventually lead to BIG trouble. I am not talking about the odd riot and some shops being burned. There are larger concerns at stake. It’s not just a matter of an elite of wealthy people, but an elite of wealthy nations and the struggle that is shaping up to control that wealth. I have to admit, I am not only angry at internal turn of events in this country — where millionnaires are voting themselve tax breaks whilst dismantling the means by which the majority access health care, charging them for having an extra bedroom and creating a divisive culture where it is encouraged to think of pensionners and disabled people as ‘scroungers’.

The unwritten contract of mutual respect between those who create wealth/ make money and those who serve the community broke down when hospitals and schools — everything in fact — came to be regarded as businesses and everything now is about money rather than about its legitimate function. I fear for the future!

I read Thomas L Friedman’s article in The New York Times Sunday Review with a growing sense of helplessness and dismay — maybe I shouldn’t have read it… I had to agree with him though. and no, that’s not my usual read — I found the link in FB on a friend’s page.

I am too little to put the world right — shame really ‘cos I have empathy and compassion but those are not required political qualities. And I am sure the nation will never celebrate people with empathy and compassion, doctors, nurses, teachers and the like, the way they do war-mongers, bankers and aristocrats. Tant pis. I’ll keep on saying it like I see it anyway and I know I am not alone in: WHAT CONCERNS ME written by Dr. Geraldine Green. It chimes perfectly with how I regard the demise of the woman upon whose ideas our present government patterns its actions. Do take a minute to follow the link and read it. 

And if you take nothing else from this take the thought that neither does a bird sing because it is PAID TO.

 

Thoughts for a RUBY Tuesday

A friend offered me this piece of advice last week:

Well-behaved women rarely make history.

I suppose that’s true… To be famous you have to take risks. However to be happy, you may have to confront the fact that you don’t like taking risks and that you are nervous around people and that you may therefore not be happy being famous. Gone are the good old days when one could be eccentric and fashionably reclusive, sip a lone martini and simper, ‘I want to be alone, dahling!’ — and everyone would think that was ‘classy’ which is old money for cool! Alas I am uncool most of the time. (It’s these hot flashes!)

But FAME is a fickle friend at best. And fame easily or quickly won, can be a dangerous master.

You know the story
5 minutes on telly
YouTube
sudden stardom
meteoric rise
inability to cope with sudden pressure,
drink,
drugs,
fall,
sudden demise.

Martyr to the media flame of fame.

It’s not that I am completely pucillanimous! Nor incurably antisocial. I am still prepared to do a reading, front the occasional writing group. Sometimes I enter a room with as many as TWENTY other people in it! Ask anyone!

Last week’s writing group was on c o l o u r and I wore my mood ring that I got last year in York and a red cardy and my ruby earrings. On the way there on the bus, my mood was yellowish grey. It then became yellow and within half an hour of the session beginning, turned green. By the end of the session it was blue and when I got home it changed hue to a lovely shade of purple-ish mauve. What did all this signify?

As I write this it is JADE Clearly, limelight isn’t my shade. So having decided not to expose all my talents (which are considerable and wide-ranging) on YouTube immediately and to continue to behave reasonably well in most situations, I seem perhaps doomed to obscurity.

Of course for some Fame is a lasting phenomenon — and something they cannot live without. This day in 1967 — 2nd April this song was released — RUBY TUESDAY
That’s 46 years ago, folks! It’s one of the few Stones songs I actually liked. The Stones are performing at Glastonbury this summer I am told. Still behaving badly and hanging on to that FAME.
Ruby is my birth stone and this Ruby is the most loveable doggy I know and she always behaves well though her hair is a bit unruly

Ruby-dooby-doo, I love you

Now you’re famous too.

Love Truffles as well of course and their owners, my good friends, Kath and Jim Mickleson, have their 20th Wedding Anniversary this week — that’s half way to RUBY Have a great time folks xxx

Thought for Tuesday • BLOGHOP

Something I am looking forward to this week is leading the writer’s session in my Newcastle group, Carte Blanche, on Thursday. It’s going to be on the theme of colour. And speaking of colour, that silver-tongued divil Amos Greig of A New Ulster, talked me into this BLOGHOP and on Oonahverse on Friday, the very lovely and talented Marion Clarke treated us to a fabulous curry! Anyway part of the deal was that I answer these questions that Amos set — so here goes — please follow the links and hop about a bit and try not to fall over too much!

1) What is the title of your next book?

Oh I like that Next book eh? I am still working on a sequel/ending to A Genie in a Jam which I still hope one day to get published in print one day but so far the paper book remains a figment. I am working on a collection of my short fiction with Editor Nathan Rosen of Microhorror. I have only a working title for that — Feeling for Frontiers. And I am working on poems for collection or chapbook too but that has always been a cherished hope. I have been in a few books though this year — New Sun Rising, Twisted Tales, and Another 100 Horrors is yet to come — sequel to this book.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

Genie’s inspiration is well documented as having started as Flash Fiction but Nathan suggested editing the collection and the poetry book is something I just want to do and always have since I was about 12.

3) What genre does your project fall under?

These projects are all very different – novella, short fiction and poetry. I tend to cross boundaries a lot — hence the title above.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Johnny Depp is DJ in my mind but I see a cartoon DJ too so maybe the voice of Depp. I wouldn’t say no to Ben Barnes either — I mean — who would? Or Karl Urban? I’d trust any good director to choose who played the part; so then…Hollywood here I come.

5) What is a one sentence synopsis of your work?

It’s — Eclectic.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I don’t like the thought of self publishing. I like some validation for my writing. I hope someone will eventually pick up my work and think it worthy of publication but these are hard times.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I don’t really work like that. I never really stop tinkering but the word manuscript throws me into a wild panic so I just do a bit at a time ’til things come together — then I revise, revise, revise, revise ad infinitum.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Nope. That question draws a blank. I like to think of myself as an Asimov but that would be arrogant. He had the cheek to write a story called ‘Mars Say Yes’ though — ever read that one? Made me g r o a n. And Poe? – some hopes. Poetry-wise — I don’t know — ask Don Webb.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

With Genie I am writing a book I want to read and I only wish I could illustrate it too – alas I’m not an artist but if anyone wants to collaborate… Science and History are constant sources of inspiration to me in no matter what genre and C.S. Lewis. Feeling for Frontiers has sort of a loose theme. Triads, frontiers, boundaries, territories of the mind…

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

I’d like to think that almost anyone who picks up my work, be it poetry, story or novella, will find something within it that will make them think about the world and life in a slightly different way.

Now allow me to introduce you to a most inspiring Blogger (who does a weekly Tuesday and Friday spot with always something to capture the imagination) and my Joint Editor of Every Day Poets– the colourful –

– Kathleen Cassen Mickleson.

Kathleen is a great colleague to work with, who became a close personal friend and we met last September when we stayed with her and her lovely family in Minneapolis — NICE — and together we launched The Best of Every Day Poets TWO

Her BLOG is called One Minnesota Writer. Go along and see what she has to say this week and how she answers those questions. It’s sure to inspire any writer!

Thought for Tuesday • TIGER

It’s not every day you see a live tiger. This one was at Minnesota Zoo in September. But I had an experience that day which shook me a bit and this week’s poem Touching the Tiger in Bewildering Stories is about that experience. I hope you enjoy it.

A New Ulster recently took a poem that was about my very first ever experience of a zoo animal — My First Elephant — encountered in Belfast Zoo when I was very young — I’ll have to ask my sister what age.

Sometimes I write poems because of inspiration from real life, like those. Sometimes it is because someone says ‘why don’t you write a poem about…’ Either way what I come up with always surprises me. Last week I wrote and performed a poem about the Ides of March and I was talking to my friend Amanda Baker about how you can write a poem about anything. She recently read out my piece The Higg’s Boson to some children to demonstrate this fact. It’s nice to think I may still inspire some young person to write something they might not have thought of.
At EDP we put up an INSPIRATION every Monday to get the creative juices flowing and sometimes we get poems back from that which is great

Speaking of Amanda Baker — tomorrow 20th March, she is reading from her story The Remainder in Appleby’s Bookshop Morpeth 12:30 – 1:30. If you live nearby — come along!

She is a bit of a tiger but she promises not to bite this time!