Written Whispers

For today’s prompt I picked “Opposites” or “Paradoxes” depending on preference. For something I like to babble and theorize about quite a bit I had an amazingly hard time with this prompt but I’m going to assume it’s mostly because Crystal and I stopped doing them for awhile as we were both consumed with stuff during April.

Oh and by the way, Jo has recently joined our little prompt writing circle. *dances around happily* I’ll update this post as soon as they get their’s up so you can read and enjoy theirs as well.

[Edit: You can now find Crystalina's response here.]
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This way and that.
Here and then there.
Right or wrong or left or right or upside down!
Turn and turn and turn again.
Walk one way and another and another and another until you’ve no place left to turn.
Of everything and nothing.
The paradox of incomplete completion.
A perfect imperfection.
Equal and not so.
Feeling and numb
Reaching and falling.
Failing and flying.
Singing and seeing and loving and being!
Walking and running.
Turning and burning.
One thing of all things and all things of no thing.
Opposite and opposite and same.
One, none, all.

For the prompt: Eyes. :)

Here I sit- inside my head.

I also just, dance, sing, speak, and philosophize, but mostly I just sit and look out these windows of mine, the windows to my soul. They are so like a two way mirror as I can out yet no one sees in.

I’m stuck in here- sometimes regrettably.

There are things this sitting version of me would like to say that my physical mouth often tries to hold back. My brain functions as an organ. It does what it does with little prompting on my part but instead by the will of neurons, the paths they take and the ways they censor my actions often formed by society.

My mind on the other hand is not an organ but a concept, the shadow of my soul that seeps through into my being and as such it’s free from all that civilized nonsense. I control it. I choose what I accept and what I don’t, what I believe and what I desire.

Though my mouth may censor things at the command of my brain, my mind censors nothing and my soul, that which my mind shapes over the course of many lifetimes, takes on the brunt force of all possible thoughts.

Sometimes I feel trapped behind these eyes of mine. There are things I see and hear, beliefs and theories I develop that I have no way of explaining and even if I did they may only have context deep within the confines of my skull.

Here I sit- looking out at the world. Sometimes I cry out, hoping someone will see me behind these eyes of mine but more often than not I am merely the hazel observer. The bit of light that glints in the mirror or compels people to trust me, telling them that there is something in there abet hidden carefully under layers of flesh.

Perhaps this is my soul- this conscious piece of my mind that observes everything.

Perhaps it is my imagination- or a figment thereof.

The world behind my eyes is vast. Filled with words, images, stories, knowledge, memories, and experiences- all of which I hold dear. Here I sit with them all swirling to and fro around me like the roughest of tides. like the roughest of tides.

Here I sit watching and waiting. Uncensored and evolving.

Here I sit behind my hazel windows.

Here I shall always sit.

Can you see me?

Here is the second prompt between Crystal and I. This one is by her: Age. You can find her response to the same one here. :) Not my best work but then again it’s my fault because I kept watching the box with people inside that steals souls. ;)
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Age. The process of decaying over time as many see it. The road to death and the end of all things. This is the way many see it, why else would women allow needless to be stuck in their faces full of botox (sp?) and other such chemicals? Why else would Ponce deLeon have gone searching through hell and high water to find that rumored fountain of youth? Why else would we see the grim reaper as a dark skeletal figure?

I do not.

Age. The process of growing and maturing. The universes way of showing we have ‘been’ and walked down many paths, some more than others, some learning from said paths more than others as well. We have started out as young babies, no, not ever that. We started out as cells, dividing and multiplying, ageing in that sense till we became babies and slowly afterward children and adults.

Death is not the evilness in dark cloaks come to take our souls away but rather a beneficent being come to give us rest after all our trials and tribulations. Some say he comes before our time and that may be so in one sense but in another- when we are done learning and growing in this world, we are ‘done’. At least for a time being.

The body ages. The mind ages. The spirit ages. We mature, grow, become, and then become something else to start all over. Age is not to be feared.

This is for the prompt ‘Stars’. I’ve asked my wonderful friend Crystalina to help me with my prompt writing by doing one with me once a day, if we’re able, and so this is the first one we had. She asked me to give her one off the top of me head instead of in the book and that’s what I came up with. :) This is the finale result.

Thank you Crystal. I couldn’t have gotten around to this without your help! You have so much potential as a writer, please never give up and never hold back your spirit. Talent like yours is too precious and rare a gem to go wasted in this world. I do not doubt you will do grand things.

[You can find her awesome and beautiful response to the prompt here.]
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The good mother moon rises slowly in the sky, dancing out from behind the guise of blue as day fades into dark, a quilt of twilight wrapped firmly around her shoulders.

Sagittarius, Gemini, Libra, and all the other great houses spin above us as she turns, embroidered on the edge of that great quilt. It’s woven with the stars and painted with dreams and mystery in hues of black, blue, and indigo. To us it appears little more than little lights in the great pool of dark, bright specks oh so far away.

Little more than her face is shown to us and sometimes not ever that as her crescent gaze falls upon the earth, sometimes a mere sliver and other times her full white glowing smile so bright and radiant it’s hard to make out the details. Other times it seems as though she isn’t there, hiding her face during the darkest of days no wonder little children do the same with blankets of their own. They have learned it from the mother.

Night moves on as she continues to twirl and rise in her quilt of stars. She sings with the voice of crickets and kisses us good day with a soft breeze. Her footsteps following a path older than time her dance slowly comes to a halt as she descends, worn at last.

She will rest once more under the guise of a day sweetened sky, all the while dreaming of the stars wrapped in her quilt of twilight.

I say self inflicted because it was a bit more than a bit painful at first. My Hunny and I both work at the same place but in different departments. It’s a resort. I work in the kitchen and he works as security. When we both work on the same day I usually end up there an hour or two early because that’s how our shifts go. On these days I bring my laptop or a book I’m overly engrossed in, usually the former, and I spend my time with headphones on and fingers moving.

I got some wild hair up my bum that it might be a good idea to try writing without the laptop for a day, well, an hour or so. I’ve been reading up on all kinds of writing exercises and usually they talk about all the different things you can do in a notebook, practice writing and such and all the different ways it can help the aspiring writer. For starters it makes me have to rewrite it at least once. Second, if I’m using a pencil I cannot edit. Thirdly… well as it turns out when I don’t have the laptop people won’t leave me alone and I have to practice concentration and relaxation.

Concentration because a kitchen is the worst place to have to write unless you are able to tune everything out which I was not. I had people bugging me even though I had the MP3 headphones on. Tomorrow when I repeat this exercise I’m bringing in my ones I use for the laptop- big, obvious, not bulky, sound can’t get in or out unless I have them pulled off my ears. They’re the kind that fit completely over the ear. I love them. When I wear those people expect me not to look up. I had people talking to me, asking me if I was doing homework, and moving all around me. Bleh.

Relaxation because I don’t do well when I feel like I’m being watched. Even when I’m not I have this paranoia thing. Then there’s the matter of I’m constantly wondering if someone is looking over my shoulder. Writing, as it that’s so obviously what I was doing with my notebook, pen, book of prompts, out in the open like that comes with it’s own stress to top everything off. I was clenching my hand and tensing my jaw like I do in most social situations except this was ten fold.

I’m hoping this will give me more practice at handling what I consider to be social, or people related stress.

I wrote about three pages and tried not to agonize over my penmanship and the odd sensation of having one word in mind but oddly enough writing another, or doing the same with a single letter. I couldn’t close my eyes and watch my thoughts like I enjoy doing when I type but all in all it was an interesting experience. I learned a couple of things I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t tried this. I saw that when I can’t write as fast as I type I tend to think things out a little more and add more detail, also I’m not as wordy. My words still flourish alongside my vocabulary but I don’t use needless words quite so much. On the down side when I can’t type as fast as I think I tend to lose my train of thought or forget what I was doing when the part of my mind the muse is speaking to goes off in multiple directions.

So, the prompt I read for today went along the lines of "Write about a time someone said no." It wasn’t today’s prompt but I didn’t like today’s prompt so- I simply decided to randomly pick another. I can do. There’s no rule that says I can’t.

I find myself thinking about all the times that I (as the someone) said or didn’t say no.

I have said no to this and yes to that. These are my choices. In some I have fallen and in others I have risen, some choices I would change if I knew in that moment what the outcome would be, but looking back from ‘this’ moment I wouldn’t change a single one.

Each choice is a footstep down one path or another. They take me this direction, left, and right, and back again. I can’t know where they are leading me or the directions I have chosen to take and from whence I came to make them. That’s how choices work after all, isn’t it? It is to me.

I have said no to drugs even when my own mother offered. It was a choice I only had to make once as I make sure everyone else around me knows that I’m not into that sort of thing. I don’t disapprove of certain drugs and how they are used but that things just not for me. It’s like clams. There’s nothing wrong with them but I don’t want them, heck, I like clams but I don’t eat them. I just don’t want to so I choose not to.

I have said yes to sex a time when I shouldn’t have. I kept my virginity longer than most girls in this day and age, and for that I am proud, but a part of me will always wish I had wait just a year longer. I regret much about this choice but not enough to go back and change it if I could.

I have said no to those trying to change my faith. My beliefs are as unique as my soul and the pattern of my thumbprint, a snowflake among religions. This is a choice I make more and more often as I discovere more and more what I do and don’t believe in. I’ve also chosen not to force my beliefs on others, to believe that what they believe is right for them and only them. Organized religion seems a crock to me, for it is the individual who must believe and not the group.

I have said yes to loyalty many a time. Some of those times I should not have been so loyal. It was not good for me nor the other person, but I still hold the same respect I hold till this day though my tongue is a little looser on the subject and I’m a little more cautious of others motives. This choice has taught me much. It has taught that I’m a good person but that I can also be a fool, it has taught me that other people can be monsters but they can also return the loyalty in their own time.

I have said no to my darkness. Though I willingly accept both the light, the dark, and the gray within I will constantly battle to do what I feel is light in motivation. I am capable of foul deeds but I have chosen to keep an eye on myself, to question myself, and keep true to myself within my own boundaries.

I have said yes to family. I can’t imagine ever regretting this choice and I would make it over and over again given the chance. A fiance’, siblings, adoptive, and biological family. Friendship that surpass that whole blood is thicker than water thing. Besides water doesn’t leave stains quite so gruesome on the carpeting of my soul. ;)

I have said no to choices. Sounds like an oxy moron kind of thing to say, right? Well, I mean it none the less but perhaps not in the way you may think. I have said no to the choices others have given me, saying I have ‘only’ those choices and no others.

I say no to that. I will make my own choice and choose my own paths. No one can take that away from me. I will not allow it.

I have said yes to my own choices as you can plainly see. Yes and no. These aren’t the only ones, not in my mind, but they are the clearest and each one makes a greater difference than  you can imagine. If I had changed my answers for all the choices you see above would I really be here, posting like this, right now? I don’t think so. I would have lost so much of myself and become someone else, it would have still been me but something within says it would not have been a version of me I would have liked.

This was a writing prompt from a book I just got: The Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. The prompt consisted of this one word. I was supposed to write whatever came to mind and at first- I was lost. Then I thought about what I think of shadows and some concepts I hold. As I wrote it turned into bits and pieces from one of my characters. A supposed bad guy doing what he has to for the greater good, or balance. Warning, this is unedited (aside from spell check) and written without looking back, grammar and misused versions of to, too, there, and their are to be expected. Please don’t point them out, I want to try to polish it on my own one first.

What came from my fingers cannot be taken back. I will leave it as it is and learn from it. That and I’ll be adding a nicer, more understandable version to my private blog in a moment or so. You guys just get to see the practice work. ;)

Shadows are silence. They are the darkness between things and yet that which fills empty space.  Dark comes from light as fire casts darkness in it’s attempt to illuminate. Darkness and shadows. One of the same or two different things?

The place where no light goes but only light can create. The place where beings of whisper float and waft like wisps of fog and smoke. Curling around one another in an endless dance of insubstantial touch.

Traveling between worlds we must fall into shadow. Travel as a group and don’t look back. Keep your eyes forward lest you fall behind unavoidable lost in the endlessness. Don’t let them touch you, these shadow creatures. They seek merely to take your threads of essence in hand and corrupt you. Twisting and twining them in the most foul of ways.

Keep your eyes forward and don’t look around but don’t forget either. Don’t pretend they aren’t there, that they don’t exist. That would be stupid. Acknowledge and respect the shadows. Their presence is forever true and like the sky above your world they are a part of something much larger than you, they contribute to the balance in unseen ways. Without them we would know no light, if the light could even exist without it’s counterpart we would not know it. We would have nothing to compare it to, nothing to point out it’s presence to we weak and small minded humans.

The shadows give us perspective. Respect them but do not look into them. Only a spare few can walk into that fury with open eyes but only because they are already tainted. They have already had their threads twisted and twined, pulled and prodded. They survived but they were strong and none return unscathed.

Respect them but keep your eyes forward. Do not look back. Do not look into the black. Keep your eyes forward and your mind alert. Keep your eyes forward but never forget.

The dark is not evil nor the shadows bane. They’re doing merely what they must. Protectors of the balance. They seek to do what most cannot stomach, to be the bad guys when bad guys are needed. To feed from us and corrupt us because if they didn’t their might not be an us at all.

Without them there would be no light, nor gray. We’d be lost in a sea of sameness without knowing the different, without knowing anything, without definition. Shadows bring us perspective and in essences they are the true light workers, the true good guys.

Accept your shadows, watch them within yourself, see the threads of fate, but don’t look back.

Shadows do the jobs that no one wants to do. They take the labels and titles and names that no one wants to bear. Guilt, anger, hatred, self loathing, depressions, sadness, the emotions no one wants to have. They do the dirty deeds that no other can do but yet must be done. Balance must be maintained. Imperfect perfection, the chaos causing peace. Even imbalance has it’s purpose.

Just don’t look back.

Please don’t look back.