This week’s words: Tenable (capable of being held, maintained, or defended, as against attack or dispute) Lateral Avian Lissome (supple, flexible) Nunchi (the subtle art of listening which allows you to gauge other people’s mood and respond appropriately.) Gambol (to skip about, frolic) Puncture Nexus Pottery Trachea Vacuum Bonhomie (frank and simple good-heartedness; a good-natured manner;friendliness; geniality.)

When Lisa Gambol skipped into my office I could tell from the lissomness of her figure that she was a girl who exuded physical prowess in some sport or other.

As it turned out it was a lot of the other. I sat and listened to her tale and exercised my nunchi taught to me by the holy monks in the highest ranges of the Himalayas. And exercise it I did, as Lisa was a young lady who spoke rapidly and who could probably talk under water with a mouth full of marbles.

It was obvious that she was agitated. Her sentences were punctured by exclamations of hysteria such, as you’d expect from a person with a severe tick.

I began to think that she had something caught in her trachea and that if something wasn’t done soon there might be a case for a trachendectomy to be performed and I dreaded the thought as my last one had not turned out well.

I asked her if she had some throat condition and she reported that on a trip overseas she had come in contact with travellers who had been ill from avian flu and she thought she might have caught a strain of that.

One of Lisa’s outstanding qualities, apart from her lissomness, was her ability to think laterally. Now not everyone can do that but her mind worked in an intriguing sideways manner and for the most part she had me enthralled.

Her issue was that she had her heart set on becoming a potter and pottery as we both knew was like anything in the arts, a bit of the old hit and miss. But she wasn’t into coffee cups and bedside lamps rather she envisioned a career in sculpture for she has been given a scholarship of several thousand dollars tenable for five years. Plenty of time for her to learn and produce a definitive piece.

So rather than live in a potters vacuum she saw herself as inhabiting an art studio where like minded artistic folk would commune and assist each other in the creation of useful art.

She recognised a nexus between art and society, a nexus that would result in art sculptures that would be accessible to the ordinary man in the street. She felt there was a lot of crap out there parading as art and wanted to produce something that reflected her grasp of what was tenable in a world that was for the most part untenable.

Our conversation and the bonhomie of her character was enough to convince me that Lisa was going places and that with the right amount of encouragement and support she may well achieve her goal.

On the other hand her nunchi would develop with age and maturity, her lissomness and her bonhomie would always complement each other and with a bit of luck her brush with things avian would come to nothing.

I said farewell to her as my cleaning lady appeared with her vacuum cleaner to do my office.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/wordle-83-october-19-2015/