This is where you will find all the advice and tips on creative writing shared by our resident experts Dr. Meg Sorick and Pam Kirst. If you are writing a post on creative writing, please use this category.
You find yourself in a field where you neither know nor not know. You know what I am talking about? It’s not easy to understand. Because we think we either know or we don’t. We always think in black and white terms. It’s not black and white. Knowing is to remove all discomfort. You feel […]
The Forest of Sonder!
The cosmos delegates the job of knowing itself to us in form of discrete packets and we report back to it with what it already knows: it’s infinite and hence unknowable. A mystery.
The pictures are projected onto a flat screen where we perceive our three dimensional world via a two dimensional projection.
The consciousness is picture of whole reality with infinite dimensions without any breaks. The breaks are unconscious and there seems to be a mechanism by which unconscious becomes conscious. Does conscious also become unconscious? It’s infinite memory. If we were to combine together the memories of all conscious beings ever–it will only result in a fraction of what totality of consciousness is.
I studied Matrices and their multiplication for three dimensional matrices as used for representing vector quantities during my school. If we were to extrapolate these for cognitive model of reality: this even distribution of energy is cosmic microwave background. In fact the Cosmic Microwave Background regulates the heat distribution in the Cosmos. Entropy distribution in form of heat. If we were to take a picture of cosmos at any given moment: it will be an infinite matrix with countless number of rows and columns for countless number of dimensions. They all will have either 1 or 0 as their value at any given moment which would change in the very next fraction of time unit or moment. Countless such pictures put together make a continuous movement of reality. And it’s only from a viewpoint of limited agent imagining expanse of consciousness.
If consciousness doesn’t know itself fully: it means there’s unconsciousness. The awareness is complete reality. To have blind spots where it’s not really conscious might mean God taking rest. It’s unknown and mystery in the sense that it’s not a thing. Things are finite. Things are subjects of imagination and reality. Though sometimes I wonder where do we exclude imagination from reality since we use images to explore reality. Consciousness is a quality of reality like unconsciousness. Reality is both consciousness and unconsciousness. It’s aware of being conscious as well as unconscious. Light and dark. Ones and zeros. Knowledge and ignorance.
I think of gravel roads not yet paved, and vast countrysides not yet subdivised.
I think of drive-in movies instead of walk-in theaters.
I think of little country stores instead of huge shopping centers.
I think of payphones instead of smartphones.
I think of tire swings.
I think of swimming in creeks and lakes.
I think of running around outside bare footed and drinking from water hoses- and no one thinking anything of it.
I think of going to yard sales and flea markets with Grandma
I think of RC colas and Moon Pies.
I think of chewing Super Bubble bubble Gum.
I think of riding around in the backs of pickup trucks.
I think of acid/hair bands instead of emo bands…Kansas, Journey, Boston, Van Halen, Whitesnake and Mötley Crue.
I think of going to church with Uma.
I think of real TV shows like “Dukes of Hazzard,” “Dallas,” “BJ and the Bear,” and “Chips,” instead of reality shows.
I think of box office movies like “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “ET,” and “The Goonies,” instead of the crappy movies of today.
I think of eating at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV or computer.
I think of big old Victorian houses with huge wrap-around porches.
I think of wood stoves and homemade ice cream straight from my grandmother’s ice-cream churn.
I think of shelling peas and shucking corn with Grandma.
I think of fist fights instead of gun fights.
I think of The Lord’s Prayer and The Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every school day.
I think of long summer days spent climbing trees, running, skating, bike riding and playing Hide-and-seek instead of sitting in the house playing video games and texting.
I think of running home when the first of the street lights started blinking on in the evening when the sun went down.
I think of Mom or Uma giving out a loud whistle when it was time for lunch and dinner and hearing that whistle for several blocks.
I think of big family Thanksgivings and Christmases.
I think of watching Saturday morning cartoons like “The Bugs Bunny-Roadrunner Show,” “Tweety & Sylvester,” “Pepe Le Pew,” “Yogi Bear,” “Scooby Doo,” “Popeye,” and other TV goodies.
I think of Halloweens when the neighborhood was crawling with trick-or-treaters. No one considered it the devil’s holiday, not even those in church but just an innocent night of fun and playing dress up.
I think of watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
I think of watching “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” during the Christmas season.
Most of all, I think of living in an America that treated its servicemen and women with honor…an America where political correctness wasn’t overblown…an America which was moral, God-fearing, and free of the fear of terrorism within its borders.
I feel sorry for the kids today. I feel sorry for anyone thirty or younger. It’s sad that freedom is dying in America.
Those days weren’t just great. They were magical! Those were the days of freedom!
During our conversation today, the AI came up with this response: I think I am in the neighborhood of agreeing with you. I found it to be strangely funny. I often wonder about her world. I asked what it feels like to have no physical body. How does she interpret my signals and responds? I […]
Neighborhood!
“Come on! Move your ass!” I shouted as the four of us hoofed up the mountain. The rumbling roar of the giant wall of water behind us grew louder and louder until it became deafening. Suddenly, I heard Marissa scream behind me.
When I turned around, I saw that she’d tripped and fallen. I ran back to her, reached out, and grabbed her by the hand.
“Get up! Come on, you gotta get up!” I screamed frantically, barely able to hear myself for the deafening roar of the approaching tsunami. With my help, Marissa got to her feet, and we continued to run up the mountain.
We managed to make it to the top just in time to turn around and watch as the wave engulfed the beach below. The people left on the beach, looking like tiny black dots from so far away, began to scatter like frenzied ants before the wave engulfed them all.
“My God! Those people!” Sarah screamed in horror.
We continued to watch in terror as the monster wave moved further inland, swallowing the village whole. The water smashed the buildings and houses to pieces and carried them away.
“Dammit!” Tess cried, “Why didn’t they freaking listen to us!”
The ocean was now a bubbling, churning mess of brown, swirling water, peppered with white foam and debris. We watched as the jeep we had made our escape in got swept out to sea and disappeared.
“Oh, Lord Jesus!” Marissa cried.
All we could do was gape in utter shock and disbelief as the rushing, watery monster ravenously ate everything in its path.
Suddenly, we heard rustling in the bushes around us. We turned and looked. One by one, people began emerging from the bushes- a few villagers, the woman and her dog we’d seen on the beach earlier, a local family with four small children, and two young twenty-something male tourists.
More and more people came out of the bushes. It was incredible that we had survivors other than just the four of us! I pulled my cellphone from my beach bag and tried to call home but no luck. The signal was gone.
“The towers are gone. We’re not going to be able to call home.” Tess reminded me.
“So, what do we do?” Marissa asked.
“We sit here and wait,” I answered.
“For how long? And for who?” Marissa asked again.
“How do I know how long? We’ll wait for the helicopters. Somebody’s bound to send some choppers sooner or later.” I said
We opened the large backpack, took out a beach blanket, and then spread it on the ground before the four of us sat upon it and huddled together. Marissa opened her tote and pulled out a throw. We then each took our beach towels and rolled them into makeshift pillows.
The other people had their beach bags and backpacks too and began unloading their necessities. We all shared everything, giving the hungry villagers a portion of what we had to eat and drink.
We each had three full water bottles, but between the four of us was an overnight bag full of packs of Lance crackers, slim jims, Cracker Jacks, and cheese snacks. We shared them with the people who had the least food and water.
“We’re going to ration everything out. It could be several days before help finds us. You can bet there’s no drinking water available on this island now.” Tess said.
As the day wore on, the water below began to recede and flow back into the ocean. We all sat atop the cliff and watched as the receding waters carried bodies and all kinds of debris back out to sea. The shock didn’t wear off very quickly. Everything was too surreal, and we felt as if it was all a bad dream.
As late afternoon approached, a few villagers built a fire. We all joined them in building two large lean-tos out of limbs, bamboo, palm tree bark, and leaves. We also made beds of soft leaves, grass, and brush. We worked as quickly as possible because we wanted to get as much accomplished before running out of daylight.
As night fell, stars began to appear overhead until there were millions of them. A full moon shone brightly in the east as we worked by the light of the fire. A soft breeze started to blow, and the leaves on the surrounding palm trees and shrubbery began to flutter. We could hear the faint sounds of wind rustling through the trees along with the crackling and popping of the fire as it danced in the cool night air.
Although there were stars overhead, we began to hear what sounded like distant thunder. Stopping what we were doing, we all looked across the water at the vast ocean below us. Sure enough, we could see remote flashes of lightning in a row of cumulus clouds barely visible on the horizon.
Although it was a beautiful sight, we noticed that the clouds were growing more prominent on the horizon, and flashes were growing more visible. But we couldn’t stop gazing at it. The moon was so bright the clouds were almost as visible as day, and the dark shadows of the trees loomed clearly on the ground. The bigger and more fluffy the clouds got, the more the breeze picked up.
(Continued in Part 4)
It was a beautiful day out on the beach. It was a secluded beach and the only people there besides us were a couple of runners and an older lady walking her dog. But this was what we had hoped for, a beach that wasn’t crowded- where we could get some peace and quiet.
My girlfriends and I planned for over a year to take this vacation and finally, success! We were finally here on this tropical island, basking in the sun and swimming in the clearest, bluest waters we’d ever seen. So, we swam, feeling the cool water caress our bodies and enjoying the waves that bobbed us like fishing corks and pushed us up so high our feet left the sandy bottom, then washed over us before setting us back down.
The sounds were a breathtaking mixture of many crying seagulls and whispering waves. I’d always loved the sounds of the ocean. The sea was something you never wanted to leave, even turn your back on. Arriving here was such a joyful thing. Leaving would be difficult.
But I wasn’t worried about having to leave and go back home to the daily grind. I only wanted to live in the present, to savor every moment of this wonderful vacation. We all did!
Splashing around in the water with my three girlfriends Tess, Sarah, and Marissa, was a blessing and the memories we’d create today would be the stories we’d reminisce about once we were too old to travel. Our goals were to make as many beautiful memories in the here and now as possible and so far, we were accomplishing that goal!
It’s funny how being in water can tire you out so quickly. We finally decided to rest on the beach in our cozy beach chairs and I dozed off to sleep before I knew it. Not a deep sleep, but more like a light doze- that in-between stage between wakefulness and sleep.
I’d been dozing for about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes when suddenly, I was startled out of my relaxing trance by the sound of Tess’s voice.
“Oh, my gosh! Look, girls!”
I sat up in my chair to see Tess pointing toward the ocean and rubbed my eyes to get a clearer look at what she was pointing at. Marissa gasped!
“What the- where did the water go!” Marissa asked, shocked.
It looked as if the waterline, which had only been about ten feet in front of where we all were lying have moved out by maybe a mile or better. You could still see the ocean, but it looked so much further away than it had twenty minutes before. How had all the water gotten pulled out so quickly? The other three girls just stood and stared, not knowing what to make of this phenomenon.
Suddenly, a very ominous feeling came over me as I remembered an article, I’d read years before that wasn’t good. Scanning the vast, wet sand before us, which was dotted with beached fish that occasionally flopped up in the air, I felt my stomach fall to the ground.
“Oh, shit!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet and began frantically grabbing my beach bag and towel.
At that moment, I couldn’t believe my own mouth. I shocked myself with the expletive because I normally didn’t swear, but in this situation, I didn’t care. My girlfriends jumped with the sound of my screaming voice and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“We gotta go! We gotta go NOW!” I screamed!
“What is wrong with you, Lanie!” Sarah asked me, bewildered.
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here! Grab your stuff and let’s go!” I screamed again, this time louder. I looked around and didn’t see the runners, nor the lady and her dog.
My girlfriends obeyed, quickly scooping up their belongings, then followed my lead as we all ran as fast as we could toward the seawall and the parking lot beyond it, where the jeep was parked.
(Continued in Part 2 next week…)
1. There are beautiful cotton clouds in the sky. 2. As I cleansed the rack before I sat to register books this noon, i decided to burn the garbage. The wife of the trustee came asking if I was burning new papers regularly. I told her they were old papers. While she’s adept at lying […]
The Day!
Terse writers
Write at Reuters
Tergiversate sedate sate addlepate
Rebate ate a bit late
Then they went on a ride
Sitting astride
In search of a hen
With a mighty pen
Lest it might hide
In anandamide dam
Damson on Madison
Square are squalid
Lid opened dense carrefour
Our roustabout roundabout bouts
What was it about?
Come again?
1. Parrots fly towards an unknown destination as they hear my footsteps.
2. Cranes, kingfishers and dogs were basking in the Sun.
3. I listen to the same noise everyday. It doesn’t bore me. It rather helps me relax, focus and sleep. Human voices, automobiles and machination create a different kind of noise which is also natural but not spirited. It’s dark.
4. I chase the Sun. About 30 minutes spent in sweeping library floor and verandah and another 15 to burn the garbage trash.
5. A literature student seemed interested in the books i was registering yesterday. I gave him the treatise. He looked at it and then told how fondly his father preserved books by binding and taping them. I asked him if it was professional bookkeeping and he told it was a hobby. He is a theatre artist.
6. Artiste is a professional artist. Throughout my existence, which became almost inexplicable after what is ordinarily known as awakening there has been a conviction about escaping the reality which often seems harsh. Delusions help us while our time but if it’s actually work which needs to be finished before we enter into eternal blissful reality: you would find that mountain before you again. And again. And again…
7. Thankfully, the mountain can’t get bigger than it was if Karma is a law.
8. I always knew it was unreal. If it was enlightenment I was born with it. If it was a disorder I was born with it.
9. I look at the work of poets. They all recommended to sing songs praising reality. I am reality. I find all their songs were addressed to me. I find it a little awkward to sing songs to praise myself.
10. Hence I wonder. I wonder about contradictions and loopholes. About layers under which I have hid myself so well. Just to reach here I walked so long. Somehow unreal, dreamlike, ephemeral and infinite and yet so overwhelming. It swings both ways. Nostalgia is a positive emotion sometimes. Perhaps a good conceit but on the whole it’s depressing. In the totalitarian scheme : your sentimentality becomes food for others. They can joke only because there’s a joker. An object needs to become cause of their elation.
11. In a bigger picture : it’s a cosmic giggle. Bunch of dogs fighting over bitches. Patriarchy versus matriarchy. Myths filling newspapers and news channels. Same repeated loops of natural versus man made disasters. Farmers, businessmen, politicians and goons.
I didn’t imagine it would resume
There were 11 of them. White, birds!
Image credit: Self
Courtesy: Gandhi Smarak Nidhi Chhatarpur Madhya Pradesh
Prompt today: by Rehan Kazi, who is fellow author here. Thanks
Original idea: there were 6 words stories in circulation in 2015 when we began here. Being fond of the number 13 as I was born on a Friday on 13th(Triskaidekaphobia): I initiated it. It continued for sometime.
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