WHAT IS THE CORRECT MEANING OF…
UHLAN
Check in on Sunday for the Answer
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Breathless
Every now and again, I read a book that leaves me breathless with its sheer brilliance and I am both uplifted and saddened. Uplifted because, I didn’t just read the book, I lived it and breathed it for the days it took me to reach the last page. Saddened because it made me feel so inferior as a writer. Yet again, I begin to question this burning need I have to write at all costs.
Some of my favourite books spur me on to continue with what I think of as my vocation. They remind me what it is to engage the reader and they reinforce my desire to write.
But then, along comes Gillian Mears with Foal’s Bread and a lump forms in my throat. As I turn the pages, my breath catches and my heart races and I am astounded by the sheer beauty of the prose. For a time after reading it, I am numbed and stupefied; unable to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.
Despondent now, yet I continue to write. No choice.
NOTE: Mine is an uncorrected proof copy that I was lucky enough to win (thanks Allen & Unwin and ANZ LitLovers).
The answer to Friday’s Fictionary Dictionary… TANTAULUS is a locked case for wine bottles in which their contents are tantalizingly visible.
Filed under Uncategorized
8 States of Catastrophe Review
Terrific review of 8 States of Catastrophe by Lisa Hill. Check it out.
Filed under Uncategorized
The Passion of Larry King
A Weekly Series of Riffs in 200 Words
I’m currently reading Larry King’s autobiography My Remarkable Journey and his passion and daring as a young man strike me as extraordinary.
All Larry ever wanted to do was to be on radio and watch baseball. In his passion for baseball, he’d round up his friends so early in the morning that they’d be heckling the officials to open the gates long before the game started.
And in his passion for radio he listened to it, practiced it and made his own luck by making himself the best choice available at any given time.
Larry’s passion inevitably morphed into television and braces (after a gambling detour courtesy of early successes and a truck-load of money) and there’s nothing lily-livered in his dedication to either.
I was passionate as a young person too. Fairly bursting with it. But I was passionate about too many things: boys, fashion, movies, popular music, shoes, parties, champagne…and the list goes on.
It seems only in the last decade or so that I have honed my skills enough to concentrate on the thing I truly love and my writing is all the better for it.
That’s why I often refer to myself as a late bloomer.
THE ANSWER TO FRIDAY’S FICTIONARY DICTIONARY… Sciamachy is a fight with an imaginary enemy.
Filed under 200 words
It’s Fictionary Dictionary Friday
If you get a chance, check out the subject of Lisa Hill’s Meet an Aussie Author on the ANZ LitLovers blog. It just might be someone you know.
Now, back to it…
WHAT IS THE CORRECT MEANING OF…
SCIAMACHY
Check in on Sunday for the Answer
Filed under Fictionary Dictionary Friday
Reflecting on a New World Order
Years ago – after 9/11…after the Bali Bombings – I wrote this poem, wistfully imagining a better world, or at least better humans. Today seems like a good day to share it.
A NEW WORLD ORDER
Vertical dominoes collapse, compressing lives,
making molehills from monoliths.
A stark realization of death. An unexpected deliverance
unto evil lurking in the collective soul.
Chasing shadows over dunes and finding children
building castles in the grey sand.
Sympathy looms beneath the surface. Bewildering waves of empathy
crashing loudly over long-held dogmatic moulds.
Rose petals scattered overBali’s sand in remembrance,
turning holidays into ash.
A sharp reminder of transience. An unexpected transcendency
from the apathy feeding the collective whole.
Chasing terror through tunnels and finding mirrors
reflecting human grains of truth.
Free will hovers precariously. Freewheeling tides of activity
demanding an eye for an eye if truth be told.
Green haze, thunder and light shows televised each night,
six degrees of separation
No need to face reality – for this is true Reality TV
and we grow cold and watch the ones who won’t grow old.
Searching for answers to questions that are not asked
except rhetorically
Knowing the futility yet trying to face responsibility
of nurturing a kinder fairer collective soul.
The Answer to Friday’s Fictionary Dictionary:- RAGULY is…having an edge with oblique notches (but thanks to those who, tongue in cheek, voted for C and made me laugh)
Filed under General Interest, Writing
Karenlee Thompson 