Journal Monday Prompt #11 – What Shapes Me

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Michael
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(Image is me standing in front of a mural wall I helped my artist son paint in 2014)

This week’s prompt: write about something that helped to shape your outlook on life.

I found this prompt challenging in that it forced me to look inward at what constitutes me.

I think I am a combination of many factors.

My upbringing was in a Catholic household and one virtue my parents taught me was to be humble. We played a lot of sport and defeat was a common occurrence but my mother would say so long as did you best then accept the other guy was better for no matter where you go in life there is always someone better than you.

I was taught to see people as people. It was explained to me in simple ways: everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time. Everyone feels pain and hurt and at the end of everyday we all need to lie down and rest.

Fundamental to all that was the knowledge that love in its many forms would always win over adversity.

I didn’t come from a very demonstrative family so such things came to me in difficult ways.

I don’t possess the best social skills in fact I often feel out of place in social gatherings.

But when I had children of my own I tried to be there for them in every way I could. With six that wasn’t easy as the youngest would always demand the most attention but somehow despite everything we all turned out ok and we still like each other.

I found, as I grew older that my spiritual beliefs changed as I educated myself about different religions and looked closely at the one I was brought up in.

I agree that religion has a lot to answer for in this world. It espouses so much doctrine but has moved away from what the gospels actually said due mainly to those who thought they knew and therefore didn’t want anyone to think otherwise to their narrow views. I was brought up in a world of hell fire, fear was a factor that overshadowed every action, missing Mass would send you straight to hell and deprived the local priest of his weekly takings from the plate.

From my understanding of the gospels I discovered a God of love as opposed to the God of vengeance in the Old Testament. I wonder what happened to that God, as He seems to have been replaced by various Gods who apparently want nothing more than your blood for causes that to me are very spurious in nature.

As a teacher I tried to encourage every student in the work they did. Some times I was more successful than other times. We learn through applying what knowledge we have to any task and keeping our eyes open learn a little more as we go along.

Life is a continual learning curve, some lessons are welcomed and some are scary as.

Being open to others is a challenging way to be as so often you find yourself doubting what you do believe and at other times you feel grateful you have your beliefs not those of the crackpot you just wasted time on reading.

In the end you come to the conclusion you are you, and that sits ok with me.

I don’t know everything, I know something’s.


Written for: https://therattlingbones.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/journal-monday-prompt-11/

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Wordle #66 “June 22 2015″ – ‘Stinging’ Nettle

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Michael

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This week’s words: Converge Prod Burrow Messiah Tendon Gag Poultice Limit Intenerate (to make soft or tender; soften) Peroxide Generosity Nettle

John Nettle was a most spiky character, There was nothing intenerate about him. He didn’t have a soft side and he basked in the knowledge that most people feared him.

The sad thing about ‘Stinging’ Nettle was that he perceived the fear as a form of adoration as if he was a messiah of some kind when in reality he was a low life dog of a man.

On days where he thought taking from the poor to give to his own rich coffers was a form of generosity and that his generosity knew no limits was made painfully clear to Many Smithanopolis the day Stinging found him with his hands in Stinging’s till.

Many was gagged and bound, his ankle tendons cut and strung up and tortured within an inch of his life.

Stinging peroxided Many’s hair, which he knew, would raise Many’s ire that one notch further but Stinging didn’t mind nor did he care.

Stinging was without a doubt a self-serving bastard who liked to lord it over anyone he thought he could lord it over. His ultimate humiliation was to apply a bread poultice to the back of a victims neck and then shove him down the burrow he had built in his back yard, just big enough to jam a man down but near impossible to extract him.

With your head in the burrow Stinging would prod you with a big stick asking the question he wanted to know the answer to and when he received an answer he didn’t want to hear he’d drop you down the burrow a bit further.

His comeuppance came the day the police converged on his place and stormed his house arresting everyone who looked suspicious, which meant everyone.

Stinging tried his Messiah act on the police who merely laughed, he tried to make his escape down his burrow but discovered he couldn’t fit and he was afraid of the dark.

The police had their man and it didn’t take much prodding to reduce Stinging to blubbering mess.

They put him away in a place where intense intenerations were used to break his character and where he was gagged at night to remind him of the limits the human body can endure before it breaks.

Twenty years later Stinging was released but had by then acquired a new name. John ‘Singing’ Nettle had become a new man.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/wordle-66-june-22-2015-2/

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Writing Prompt #112 “Personification Car” – Blossom

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Michael

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I was the model of 53,

Swish and just the ant’s pants

As modern as you get back then.

I’ve carried a family

From one end of the state to the other.

Blossom was what they called me

Reliable and started every time

Gave excellent service

For a family that was ever growing.

The father bought me in from a friend

Drove me home proudly

Had a garage all ready

Cared for me

Serviced me

Kept me in tiptop shape.

At holiday time he piled in his family

Drove carefully round the winding roads to the city

Only once was stopped:

A copper said I travelled over the centre lines

The father was mortified, feared gaol

But he was the worrying type.

We journeyed on and at the lights

We were struck from behind.

Chaos reigned

Was every one ok?

By back end was badly bent.

We journeyed on and repairs were made.

I was always apprehensive after that, at lights.

Over time as I aged and began to fade

The boy took me over

Drove me to his first job

Over exhausting hills

And rolling plains

But I got him there

I never faulted

I coughed and panted

Wheezed but always focused.

He treated me kindly

But one day let me go.

He wanted small and zippy

And that I certainly wasn’t.

So a collector has me now

I sit in a shed all covered

And once a year he brings me out

And runs me round his yard.

It’s been a good life

There’s still spark in my plugs

And air in my tyres

And everything works

In a limited way.

But I have character

And personality

Not bad for a 53 model.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/writing-prompt-111-personification-car/

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Literary Saturday Prompt #11 – Final Act

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Michael

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This week’s prompt:

To sleep! perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.
—Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare.

It was about your escape

From pain and memory

From associations

That kept you awake at night

Gave you cold sweats

Moments of extreme panic.

In death you found your peace

Where dreams could exist

And reality blocked out.

I hope it was worth it for you.

But for me its constant anguish

At you, at me, at the everything

You left me desolate

No warning, no statement,

A friend I thought I was

We could have talked

Sought help for you

But I was not considered

As a player in your final act.

Written for: https://therattlingbones.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/literary-saturday-prompt-11/

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Fiction Friday Prompt #11 – ‘Love is a many splendored thing’

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Michael

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This week’s prompt: ‘Love is a many splendored thing’

Write from: 2nd person POV

You don’t know the thrill I received

When into my inbox came your card.

I didn’t think you’d noticed me

But my heart leapt the second I saw you.

Christmas does that doesn’t it?

Allows us that one time to reach out

And you did and I hoped you might again.

But nothing after that for some months,

Just polite banter on the words I wrote

Until one day you again wrote and here we are.

I know I was always attracted to you

There was something about you.

You showed such an understanding to my cause

When in fact you had no life experience.

You made that clear that you were an innocent

But you saw my cause as being of merit

A worth you said that others would gain from.

You have brought me alive

From a place I thought long dead,

Where the monotony of life

Was commonplace

And I was ok with that

My lot in life I thought was cast

And I accepted as I aged that that was that.

But you have awakened me,

Shown me I can love again

But more importantly shown me I can be loved.

Within me there is a glow

Long thought extinguished

But today a roaring flame.

I hang on your every word

Teaching me to love again

You are my hero.

Written for: https://therattlingbones.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/fiction-friday-prompt-11/

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SoCS June 20/15 – Bone

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Michael

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Badge by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

This week’s prompt: “bone”

‘Can I have a sandwich?’ I asked.
‘In a minute,’ my aging neighbour would say.

‘Oh but I’m hungry.’

‘You have wait a bit, I have a bone in my leg.’

I was brought up with that saying as my old neighbour who was very old when I was kid would sit out in the sun and I would go over and sit with her and we’d talk about one thing and another. But as soon I asked anything that required her to get up out would come the “ bone in my leg’ statement.

She was a delightful old lady who had the same surname as me though we were Irish Catholic and she was Protestant Congregationalist.

I spent so much of my childhood in her garden or front sunroom. She had photo albums full of flood photos as I live in a place where some huge floods have occurred over the years.

We would sit for hours looking through them and she could recount stories of the great flood in ‘55, which came up under my house and rose to with two inches of the floorboards.

She was the reason I learned to spell bread because if I wanted a sandwich I had to spell bread and as I did want one, as a kid I ate constantly I am sure, bread became a word worth knowing as it meant that bone in her leg would be put to work carrying her small but round frame out into her kitchen where she would fix me a vegemite sandwich, the staple for any Australian kid.

Written for: http://lindaghill.com/2015/06/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-2015/

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“Words to Write By” Prompt #10 – Pistillates

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Michael

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This week’s words: vulture rubble bleached resound pistillate overindulge ghostwritten sienna washed-out stepchild

My uncle Rex grew pistillates. He had hundreds of them in his greenhouse and around his yard. He tended them daily and said they were the only women he could trust. You knew where you stood with them he’d say. He had this loud resounding voice that called to you from down the yard where he would be knee deep in the sienna coloured soils he was so particular about cultivating. They matched his dirty washed out old overalls bleached in the midday sun.

But Uncle Rex did suffer from years overindulging in the sun with no hat. It was his end the skin cancers that attacked him and in the end his step child Rosa found him beside the rubble heap in such poor condition we wondered how disappointed the vultures that circled overhead would have been had be not been found.

It was a frustrating end for me as well as I had the week before taken on the job of ghostwriting his life story.

He’d be so pissed off I thought leaving his pistillates to the mercy of nature but we have our day in the garden of life and Rex had had his.

Written for: https://therattlingbones.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/words-to-write-by-prompt-10/

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Tale Weaver 18: Fathers in a Flash – A Bit of Pece and Qiet

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Michael

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My dad worked a lot when I was a kid.

He left early and came home late in the afternoons.

Sometimes he worked on the weekend as well.

As a result we did a lot around the house, chopped wood, ran to the shop when asked, helped mum.

Fathers day being on a Sunday there was always morning mass.

Dad would be up helping to get us ready and off we’d go.

I remember one Father’s Day I asked him what he wanted and he replied he’d like a bit of peace and quiet.

Being very young at the time I thought about this and knowing that my father worked hard but also had a sense of humour, come Father’s Day I presented him with a card with this inscription:

A BIT OF:

PECE

&

QIET

Thankfully he did see the joke. I made mention that the next year I’d give him the missing bits and so he’d get some again the next year. Once a year seemed to please him.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/tale-weaver-18-fathers-in-a-flash/

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Poetry Prompt Wednesday #11 – Gathering

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Michael

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Today’s prompt write a “gathering” poem.

It was a gathering of the minds

Of the tall and the short

The black white and brindle.

We gathered as one

Shoulder to shoulder

Arm in arm.

What asked one are you here for

I looked a little puzzled

Why for you of course.

Oh she said and moved on

Stopped and looked back over a shoulder

Smiled as if she knew.

In the midst of so many

I lost her for some time

I wondered where she’d gone.

With resolutions made

Farewells were uttered

We headed for the door.

Against the doorjamb she leaned

A cheeky look, a twinkle in her eye

She took my hand, led me away.

I wonder now about that gathering

How we amongst so many

Found each other.

 

Written for: https://therattlingbones.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/poetry-prompt-wednesday-11/

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FFfAW: Week of 06-17-2015 – Saturday Ritual

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Michael

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Dad was sitting at the table with the racing form guide in front of him.

This was a Saturday ritual at our place.

He’d study the lists of races, select the horses he thought were worth betting on, fill out his betting slips and I’d take them to our local betting shop and set it all in motion.

During the afternoon with the television set on the racing channel he would sit and watch each race.

It was often worth the while to sit with him and watch his reaction as each race finished.

If he won he would have a smug look on his face, he’d write down the amount he’d won and fold that betting slip up ready for use the next week.

If he lost, he’d draw a cross on the slip and throw it to one side.

At the end of the afternoon I would ask him if he was in front or behind.

So often he was behind and would look up at me and say: It’s a hard game.

Written for: https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/fffaw-week-of-06-17-2015/

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