Storms have come and gone,
Yet you and I,here, still stand
Always one — a team.
Discover Prompts, Day 27: Team
Tag Archives: writing
Note: A Haiku and a Thought
Simple scribbled word
On unpretentious paper —
A note makes one’s day.
—-
It does not take much to put a smile on someone’s face — a very simple gesture of kindness or thoughtfulness can do that. A text message asking how somebody’s day went can make that person feel that someone cares. A flower picked from the garden to give a family member one is stuck at home with, can most likely brighten that person’s day.
We do not need to do something “big” to prove we care and make someone happy.
Sometimes a simple note on a Post-It can do the trick.
Happy weekend!
T.
Discovery Prompts, Day 23: Note
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Silence and Words
When silence tortures
the mind, body and the soul,
Writing soothes and heals.
Have a peaceful week! 🙏🏽
T.
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Week 1 Prompt: Addiction
Xiamen Island viewed from Jimei, Xiamen
How do you do it?
How do you manage to make me want
To be closer to you
Even when I know
It’s unsafe.
You’re unsafe.
Yet this addiction
To the mere sight of you
Seems to have no cure.
Do I even want to recover?
*****
As there is no longer a Daily Prompt from the Daily Post, I decided to make my own prompts to make me write. Feel free to join me and write your own posts using the prompt.
Have a lovely week!
T.
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Daily Prompt : Paper
When we were just little girls, my sisters and I collected scented stationery. Those sheets looked so pretty and smelled so sweet, we couldn’t write on them. We just looked at them. Well, some of them. There finally came a time when we used them to write to someone who deserved such beautiful paper. Of course we made sure our handwriting didn’t ruin the look of the paper.
Three years ago, my friend gave me this boxed set of notecards and envelopes. They look so pretty I still haven’t used them. I know one day I’ll be able to scribble a few lines for someone who deserves such a beautiful note card.
But that person will have to decipher my handwriting.
Have a lovely weekend! 💕
T.
Daily Prompt: Paper
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On Thinking and Writing
Kinetic Rain Sculpture, Changi Airport, Singapore
The Kinetic Rain at the Changi Aiport is a beautiful thing to watch. It had a calming effect on me. If I had more time, I’m sure it would’ve inspired me to think. 🙂
I miss thinking.
I have not been writing, not even reading except for online news. Most of my time the last three weeks has been spent doing things a mother is supposed to do. I’m not complaining, it is just a fact.
I did have a very short break when I went to Bangkok four weeks ago, but it wasn’t a leisure trip. This time I will have a few hours of quiet as I plan to just stay in at the hotel for the whole afternoon and evening before my flight to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow.
I look forward to reading and be inspired to write again.
Wish me luck. 😉
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On Words and Immortality
I personally know a few people who look forward to the discovery of making humans immortal. Although I’d be very happy for and proud of humanity should they make such an achievement, I don’t think I will be around long enough for that, and I don’t really wish to become physically immortal.
Having recently seen someone I love suffer, I cannot see the point of prolonging one’s life if one is unable to function normally, both physically and mentally. It is heartbreaking to see a fellow human being’s condition deteriorate like that, especially when it is one you hold close to your heart. It makes you wish you were suffering instead of them.
So, no. Immortality in the physical sense is not for me.
I have said before that I would probably reconsider if life could be painless, and one could remain young and healthy. But I think that is too big a dream for humanity — one I find extremely hard to hope for.
However, some people have successfully immortalized themselves and others they cared about thru arts and literature. There are too many works and artists and writers to mention them all, but one poem that promises immortality thru poetry that has really stuck with me since I first read it as a student is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The first two quatrains of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 explains why the speaker cannot possibly liken the subject (supposedly a young man but some people insist it’s a woman; it doesn’t matter to me) to a summer’s day. The third quatrain explains further how time nor death cannot rid the subject of his/her beauty.The couplet promises eternal life to the subject, saying, for as long as people can read this poem about him/her, he/she will always live.
And the poet has been proven true to his promise. We are still reading about the young person’s beauty. You are reading about it now as you are reading my post.
To me that IS immortality.
How (in what way) would you like to be immortalized?
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The Tryst
As I lie in bed
Waiting for the husband
To put down his book,
I think of the words,
Imagine them flowing,
Hearing the sound,
Savoring each syllable.
As soon as the light is off
I wait a little more
For the eventual snore
A sign that I was free
To get up
And to be
With my lover.
I check on the little one
Sleeping like an angel,
And then, quietly, I go
To meet with my lover,
For my lover makes me feel
And think
And smile.
My lover heals me
And comforts me
And helps me move on.
As I step into the room
And walk towards the table
Where everything
Will soon commence,
I say to myself,
Now I can do this.
I can let the words out.
I am in love with words.
And writing is my lover.
If it isn’t obvious yet, it’s written tongue-in-cheek. A reaction to the questions asked of me recently: what I’ve been doing with my time and why I like being alone. 🙂
Why do you write?
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Writer’s Block (Or, Where’s Bradley Cooper when you need him?)
People inspire me. What they say and how they behave are ideas that get me writing. When they leave or just disappear from my life, I will be inspired to write some more for a week or two, and then there will only be silence.
No amount of free writing will make me come up with something I’d be happy with.
I can write a rant about a number of things, but I feel I am too old to be making my rants public. I’m supposed to have better self-control and calm that go with age.
At the moment I have zero inspiration for any creative thinking. It is too bad that one’s spouse can’t be an inspiration. My husband is a wonderful person, my best friend number 1. A witty, sometimes very funny and intelligent man. But he is so real to me. So real. And I say that with love.
What gives me inspiration is having people around me who can call forth my imagination, and right now my brain’s a desert.
Where’s Bradley Cooper when you need him?
There he is! Got this pic from this site.
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On writing and inspiration
For as long as I can remember I have always said to myself I could never be a Writer. But, I can always be an aspiring writer. My uni professor had my story, a tale I wrote for his Creative Writing class, published, and it was then I started to hope to become a writer.
To hope to become a writer.
That was over twenty years ago, and I am still hoping. I have had a few of my short stories published in literary journals back home, but having them published does not make me a writer. How do I know I am not a writer? I still depend on inspiration to make me write.
Recently I watched a movie called The Words. I would never have heard of this movie here if not for my best friend #3 who knows I’m crazy about Bradley Cooper (I know I’m 42 and married and have a child, so what?) And he was right about me liking the movie because gorgeous Bradley Cooper plays a writer in this movie (a gorgeous writer!)
I keep digressing.
Although the movie is about making mistakes, trying to correct them and redeeming oneself, what moved me most was a couple of lines uttered, not by gorgeous Bradley Cooper, but by Jeremy Irons.
The old man (Jeremy Irons) spoke about that period when he wrote the novel, how he forgot to eat, how the words just flowed from nowhere, and he just kept on writing. He was inspired. The muse came to visit him, but never came back after that. That’s my favorite scene.
When I watched that scene, I felt like it was I telling the story. I experienced those same feelings over twenty years ago when I wrote my very first short story –a love story– at two o’clock in the morning. Earlier that evening I saw a scene from a romantic movie, the silhouette of a man and a woman standing on the beach, watching the sunset. That scene stayed with me even after I fell asleep. Then in the middle of the night, I woke up and felt the need to write something. And I did. My hand shook as I was writing, and I was writing so quickly as the words just kept coming, flowing, and I was afraid I would lose them if I failed to write them right away, like sands slipping through the fingers. When I finished I felt exhausted but at the same time relieved that it was over. That was the first time the muse came to me. And it never came again.
Last week I could not write anything. Or I could have, but I did not and still do not want to write about anything depressingly sad and those were all I encountered last week: a friend getting divorced, a friend thinking of breaking up with his girlfriend, a young person I know passed away (RIP). When I told my husband I could not write anything, he just said “Don’t force yourself to write or you will just write something that says nothing.”
And he’s right. I cannot will myself to write. I always need something to make me write. I am not a writer.
But I can always be an aspiring writer.
Thoughts on Life 