Z is for Za Zen Zoa (haiku)

Day 30 (final day) of Blogging from A to Z.
Today's letter is Z.

Za Zen Zoa, we
on cushions voicing prayers
midst empty forests.

(c) Perle Champion.

Overcoming Blogger's Block

Day 29 of Blogging from A to Z is a Sunday and according to the rules it’s a day off. 

Tomorrow is Monday and the challenge ends with Z.  I’m pondering it.

I discovered blogging in 2007 when I, along with 400 other people, was laid off from Saks.  “Hey, I write every day in my journal, how hard can it be?”  I smugly thought until blogger’s block reared its ugly head.  Truth is, it is not as easy as I thought it would be, and not everything I write in my journal has in place in a public forum (amazing that some people don’t understand that).  And in the years since I began, I found it hard to post my blog on a regular basis.

But I realized something about myself.  I’m deadline driven, and I keep my word.  So I signed up January 1, 2012 to take the 365 day (plus 1 for leap year) blogging challenge.  In order to keep that commitment, I must post a blog by or before midnight each day.  I’ve posted a few only minutes before.  Right now as I type, it is 11pm and the minutes race ahead of me.

In April, I took the Blogging from A to Z challenge.  I figured, I’m committed to posting a blog a day anyway, let’s add a month with the alphabet as a prompt.  It’s working.

I may need to find a new series of prompts for the next 9 months of the year.

 Writing is like any discipline.  The more you do it the more you can do it.

 I’ve taken one page from a friend who used to work for a newspaper.  She had to write stories on demand on a daily basis.  There is no time to think, rethink or overthink.  You must simply make a decision, throw a rough draft on the page, hammer it out until it takes shape and get it done then move on to the next one.

I’ve taken another page from an on-line friend who said ‘give yourself permission to be mildly creative’.  That permission freed me to crank out the words.  Some will be true gems and that’s great, but some will be only mildly creative and that’s okay.

© Perle Champion

Y is for Yesterday's yarns yield.

Today is day 28 of Blogging from to A to Z.

Yesterday's yarns yield
morals for the day's youthful
deaf ear and blind eye

X is for Xerophyte, Xeric and Xylem (haiku)

Day 27 of Blogging from A to Z. Today’s letter is X.

X is for Xerophyte, Xeric and Xylem

Desert

Meridies cloaked - gone

Xerophyte's Dew kiss - Xeric

store and Xylem stash.

W is for Winter wends its way. (haiku)

Day 26 of Blogging from A to Z. Today's letter is W.

Winter wends it's way
succumbing to Spring clad arms
spent before Summer.

V is for Vast Veiled Vistas (haiku)

Day 25 of  Blogging from A to Z.  Today's letter is V

Desert's vast vista
Runs beyond earth's very curve
Veiled behind heat's folds.

Undaunted Urban Urchin (haiku)

Day 24 of Blogging from A to Z. 
Today's letter is U.

Undaunted urban
urchin cloaked in velvet night
moon's light exposes.

T is for Tease, Taunt, Terrorize.

Day 23 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today's letter is T.

T is for Tease, Taunt, Terrorize.
Just a few T words that all mean one thing - Bullying.

The bully's excuse, "I was just teasing",  is not longer acceptable.  It never was although school, parents, and students, society in general let it slide. 

They all turned a blind eye.  No more.  Recognize it when you see it.  Take a stand, a loud vocal stand, against it.  Report it. 

Teasing begets taunting begets terrorizing. 

Time

Time
You’re an enemy
Of mine
So many things
Who’s pricetag you are
And time
You only stretch
So far
How many days
In how many ways
Have I willed you
You to stop and
Allow me to do
All the things
I must do
And leave time for
All the things I
Would do
Deaf ears your
Ears you
Hear me not at all

S is for safe and sound and secure.

Day 21 of Blogging from A to Z. 
Today’s letter is S.


S is for safe and sound and secure.


I often wondered when I was young when people spoke of safe and sound and secure as if these were goals.
How many things did they miss out on because they were deemed unsafe.
How may jobs did they warn themselves and you away from because they were not secure.
How many lost out on sound through plain bad habits of excess.  That excess leading to ill health, and no body is safe and secure when it is no longer sound.

R is for reason, raison d'etre, rationalization.

Day 20 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is R.


R is for reason, raison d'etre, rationalization.

People always have reasons for the things they do. It’s a need to find that reason, a raison d’etre.  But when they cross the line to rationalization, therein lies the problem.

That process is rampant throughout the darker times in the  history of our planet, from tyrants, to despots to the church.  Yes, the church – think crusades, inquisition, slavery, native Americans, and every other intolerance of those who do not follow a particular belief.

Q is for quest and quixotic quodlibet (Haiku)

Day 19 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is Q.
Q is for quest and quixotic quodlibet


En Garde


Quixotic quodlibet
magic surreal encounter
Windwhipped flame
eternal, finite quest.

P is for painted poses and photos.

Day 18 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is P
P is for painted poses and photos.


I’ve painted pictures of myself and posed next to one in profile for a photograph.


I’ve posed for photographs before there was color film, and the photographer would paint by hand all the colors of me and my Easter dress and hat.


I’ve posed for paintings done by others, but by far my favorite poses are of me with painted face. 

Every year all the shops at PepperPlace host a Christmas open house.  My favorite face artist is always there, and I am always first in line.

O is for onomatopoeia, onomatopoetic, onomato

This if the 17 day of Blogging from A to Z.  Today's Letter is O 

O is for onomatopoeia, onomatopoetic, onomato

The root word onomato  means name joined to poieîn,  we have to make names.  The very word onomatopoeia or my preferred form, 
onomatopoetic, because sometimes the words are poetic,  refers to those words that were made up to emulate the sounds of things.

I prefer the form onomatopoetic, because at least in some languages, the words are more poetic to my ear.  They conform to some  linguistic system they are part of;  so although a clock may sounds tick tock in English, it is dī dā in Mandarin, or katchin katchin in Japanese.

But back to plain ole, if not so poetic, onomatopoeic words here in the US;  oink, oink, sounds the pig, and Batman and Robin utter oof and ow when hit by 'Pow!" 

N is for Nascent, Neophyte, Novice (Haiku)

Day 16 of Blogging from A to Z.  Today’s letter is N.

Nascent, Neophyte, Novice
Nee, star at nadir
Poised to streak cross the heavens.

Sunday, Taxes, and Fish Berry Jam

Sunday started out well.  It would take more than taxes to keep me from having my Sunday ritual.  I rose at sunup, put the coffee on and walked to the corner store for my Sunday paper (the knee is healing nicely).  I could smell the coffee from the street before I opened the door.

I like to half listen/ half watch GMA, Today and CBS Sunday Morning.  The beauty of having a small TV is I can turn it toward the balcony door and watch from my aerie to accompaniment of nature waking

But the taxes were an ominous cloud on an otherwise perfect day.  I sat and cranked up the computer, only to have the printer fail with the first document.  No time to diddle with the thing – I called then went to WalMart to get another one ($38), and back to work.  What a pain.

I turned the TV toward my office, put on the first movie “Independence Day”, opened a bottle of champagne after the last of the coffee was gone, mixed it with OJ and lots of ice.  That was around noon.  Several movies later, (Sleepless in Seattle, Tomb Raider, ST Insurrection…) and a lunch of cheese and crackers chased by watered down mimosas, I am finished.

I just printed the last of the forms and neatly done.  Thanks to Joyce at HR Block, who although too busy to do it for me gave me some pointers and advice that will hopefully save me from audit..

If it doesn’t, such is life.  I’ll cross that bridge if I must.  For now, I’m pouring myself a glass of straight champagne and dinner will be more crackers slathered with butter and piled high with ‘fish berry jam’.

M is for Mnemosyne, Goddess of memory, mother of the Muses.

Day 14 of blogging from A to Z. Today's letter is M.

M is for Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, mother of the Muses.

Memory is mysterious.  Is it any wonder it was personified by the Greeks.  Sometimes Mnemosyne wakens to music -  I hear a certain song, piano or guitar riff, and I remember a time and place, a love, a loss, a triumph, a failure. An aroma transports me to Mrs. B's kitchen in the Wadenhoe House in 1956 England.

We don't really know where memory lives.  Is it in our mind, or our very flesh?  People who get transplants report having memories that are not theirs; feelings odd to their remembered life experience.

Mnemosyne is a comfort and a bane, depending on the circumstance.  I so appreciate her when an old song plays and she takes me back to forgotten times, places, loves..

L is for Longfellow's Legendary, Lengthy Lay

Paul Revere's Ride

 Day 13 of Blogging from A to Z. Today's letter is L 

L is for Longfellow's legendary, lengthy lay written 150 years ago today (more or less).

It is still recited in schools.  One of the most famous narrative poems in  American literature, it made a part of history more famous that it would ordinarily have been.

Oh, the power of the pen - as mighty as any sword.   Longfellow, the bard - the paparazzi of his time wielded it well.  

Who in the world doesn't instantly recognize the name Paul Revere? Who hasn't heard the phrase " the shot heard round the world?   

More than that, who in this country doesn't appreciate Revere and others, who each in their own way, won for us one of the most enviable ways of life on this earth?