Wish You Were Here

Vacation time in 2005 means keeping in touch with the folks at home by e mail and cell phones. These messages disappear quickly without a trace. The memory may linger but there is nothing tangible to hold and to treasure. There is a solution.

Everywhere there are racks of postcards for sale. For the price of a card, a postage stamp and a pen, a permanent written remembrance can be sent. Photographs stored in and sent from digital cameras record places and people in reality; postcards represent the ideal and have a further benefit. It is the personal touch, something to be held in hand and in the heart - and kept.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote

That strain once more; it bids remembrance rise.

The Plot Thickens

novel an invented prose narrative that is usu. long and complex and deals esp. with human experience through a usu. connected sequence of events

Occasionally it becomes necessary to listen to someone expounding the confusing complications of life who mistakenly believes the events are unique and interesting. The long-winded remarks often end with "I could write a book!".

It isn't that easy. It takes more than a wish in order to write a novel that will appeal to readers. There must be many characters interacting within multiple interwoven plots. Keeping track of those characters and where each of them fits into the story line is a major task. A problem or conflict interesting enough to engage the reader must arise and then be solved satisfactorily by a character or characters who have gained the readers' rapt attention.

This cannot be accomplished by the person quoted above. It's the boredom factor that prohibits successful narration and that can kill a novel. A better suggestion is to write a short story. Have one or two likeable characters involved with some conflict which is solved intelligently. Tell it succinctly and to the point. Leave the novel until a short story has been written and received successfully.

Have you begun to write a story that you did not finish? Will you consider writing short stories for your family? Have you entertained others with your imaginative narratives? Will you consider doing so? Do you have old manuscripts lying dormant in a file?

Shakespeare wrote

This is the short and the long of it.

Good Timing

paradox a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true

It is thought that time passes quickly during moments of happiness and that it seems to pass slowly when stress is present. Most clocks, on Earth, nevertheless measure time as consistent and dependable regardless of conditions.

A passenger looking out of a window in a car or a train might notice telephone poles or fenceposts whizzing by alongside the road or the tracks, almost in a blur. In the far distance, however, features such as hills, forest, and landmarks, seem to be moving slowly in contrast to the speed of the vehicle.

A rowboat propelled slowly along a river will present a similar situation. To the viewer the riverbank will appear to be sliding past slowly in the near distance, but objects on land in the far distance will appear almost to be standing still, but not quite.

A person walking on a path and looking to the left or to the right will notice nearby objects moving past at the same rate as the walker going forward. The far distant scene seems almost immobile.

The car, train, telephone poles, fenceposts, and distant features are being passed at the same rate of speed regardless of the illusion of differing motion.The same goes for the rowboat and the person walking. What the senses perceive is not always accurate.

Have you noticed that in snapshots taken from the window of a speeding car (depending on the camera) the foreground is a blur but the background is clear, or almost so? Have you felt uncomfortable in a fast moving car until you looked off into the stable distance? Have you given thought to the characteristics of time? Will you look from a moving vehicle's window with new insight?

Daniel Webster said

There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange.

The Invisible Existent

existent having being:existing:present

A newspaper is an ordinary item, but it hides an extraordinary sight in its printers' ink. When the text is put under a high power microscope it is seen to be constantly jittering, colliding, a dance of molecules. The action is named "Brownian motion".

Fruit flies are the tiny darlings of scientific experiment, but are nuisances to be gotten rid of when they descend on overripe fruit or decaying vegetables. And yet, when a fruit fly wing is seen through a microscope an enchantment appears: a lacy, shimmering rainbow of color which elicits astonishment that radiant beauty can be found in so common an insect.

A springtime leaf is green and appears solidly so, but when one is picked and placed under a microscope there is movement: a network of tiny green rivers of chlorophyll are seen to be flowing through it.

These phenomena are some of the "invisible existents" until revealed by the microscope. What have you seen when using a microscope that most surprised you? Did someone once give you a toy science set that contained a microscope? Would the three examples given above lead you to investigate other things that might reveal an unexpected characteristic?

An aside From telescopes in outer space we have pictures of our planet Earth, a beautiful jewel. We can imagine that we are in that picture even though no microscope can show us ourselves. We are the Invisible Existent!

History In Your Shoebox?

photography the art or process of producing images on a sensitized surface by the action of radiant energy and esp. light

Photography is one of the Fine Arts. The names Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams, among others, come to mind. Their photographs are masterpieces, presenting to us certain moments in time and thus preserving a history of those times.

There are in countless homes, hidden on top closet shelves, in attics full of discards, on floors behind furnaces, neglected snapshots thrown randomly into shoeboxes or other containers. They are there because there wasn't time or inclination to deal with them then, and are thus forgotten in this day of digital photography. Whether those pictures are in color or in black and white, they are hidden history. Some may prove to be valuable because they have recorded an event, a scene, a person, in some special way.

What can be learned by looking at them? People: young becoming older, changing styles in hair, cosmetics, clothing, ornaments - all from a certain point in time. Modes of transportation: cars, once new, now antiques; surface transport, air, and sea. Buildings constructed for a definite use, now transformed into something entirely different or torn down. Changing skylines of cities; scenery now bulldozed and gone or victim of nature's effect. Notice backgrounds, once ignored in deference to foreground subjects, which hold meaningful images now. History in your shoebox.

Do you have old snapshots lying loose in a box? Have you written dates on them, and names? Will you look at them, now, with history in mind? Will you use technology instead of a shoebox in order to preserve them?

Chinese Proverb:

One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.

June, The Perfect Days

poetry writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific response through meaning, sound, and rhythm; also, something likened to poetry esp. in beauty of expression

The above definition gives a poet two choices: to follow a strict pattern of rhythm and rhyme, or to express emotion in what is called "free verse". The sonnet form has been demonstrated here previously; also examined has been the carefree "doggerel". Free verse is the poetry of choice for June. The first day of June gives rise to thoughts of a certain beginning.

Verse 1

When we walk we float
over curbs, skirt open manholes,
teeter on brinks, oblivious -
nothing exists but us.
Through some phenomenon of mind
other people fade, become transparent,
disappear.

And yet I see you clearly
and I know that you see me.

The next poem represents a future time and experience. It is not an ending; it is a midpoint, and its subject is the same as in Verse 1.


Verse 2

The rain attacks my darkened pane
with wet and urgent-knuckled rap.
Aroused, I step with eager tread
to press my cheek against
the cold, vibrating glass, and
strain to see...
night. The roaring void holds only wind
and cross-hatched rain.
You are not there.
I sink to lonely sheets, curl myself
to fetal form and wait for warmth from
quilt and wool to comfort me.
Stacatto shattered drops drum on,
demanding a response.

I shut it out, withdraw to my secure
cocoon
And hear my soft and solitary pulse
repeat in gentle rhythms where you are.

Both verses are about the same thing, but diverse in tone and taken from different viewpoints. If you were to write a poem, would you use the traditional form or free verse? Do you recognize the subject matter in the above poems? Have you written or attempted to write poetry?

James Russell Lowell wrote

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.