Ophelia's Nun

FinsburyParkCarrots

Make ya look
Made ya stare
Made ya lose
ya underwear

FinsburyParkCarrots

Invent a character. Give them a name, an age, an occupation and a wage. Give them an attitude to all four. Give them a favourite newspaper and television/radio show, a specific town of habitation and an attitude to current affairs. Then,give them an inherited family trait of which the character is well aware and tries (sometimes unsuccessfully) to check. Give the character a long standing ambition: is this ambition to escape from or become more involved in their present community? Give this character one annoying relative and a partner who are not sympathetic to these aspirations. And propose something that might enter this character's life that would offer them a way out.

dyaogirl

Name: Stiberforth Ripplepond Jr. -“Stiber” for short (A Frog)

Age: 23

Occupation: Student. Stiber loves being a student. He has noticed ecological changes taking place in his environment and has devoted his time to studying these changes.

Father’s Occupation: Community leader and Choral Director for Spring Wetland Concerts. Stiber’s father would really like his only son to follow in his footsteps and take over as Choral Director for Spring Wetland Concert Series, which is a very well thought of position within the community.

Stibers Long Time Ambition: To be a Scientist. He would like to escape the small mindedness of the community, yet does love them and desires to stop the recent negative environmental changes he has observed around his homeland.

Inherited Family Trait: Stiber is a frog that should know his place in the wetlands and pond community but sees changes he can’t ignore.

Stiber has a loving family who mean well but don’t understand or comprehend evolutionary anomalies. They do their best but are uncomfortable with Stiber’s apparent love for research and discovery. Stiber also possesses a secret evolutionary anomaly himself that his family desperately tries to conceal thus subconsciously instilling shame in Stiber. However, Stiber is busy with his studies evolutionary pond activity and takes little note of the changes he is going through that differentiate him from the community. He starts to think beyond the pond, which makes his family even more nervous.

Newspaper: Amphibians Today/ Aqueous Humor

Propose something that might enter this character's life that would offer them a way out. Stibers submits a research article on climatic changes and the negative effect it’s having on wetland environments to a scientific review magazine. (Yet, he submits it under an assumed identity, as frog research papers aren’t published.)

FinsburyParkCarrots

Everyone! do this exercise!

In the meantime, here's a Tagore poem:

I AM RESTLESS

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.

I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone!

From The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore ( New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913).

FinsburyParkCarrots

Beautiful, Julie. Stiberforth!

More, people. More.

dyaogirl

Garden Party...Garden Party...Garden Party....

........Making her way through the ever-growing crowd and looking a bit confused, Molly flags down a gentleman wearing a bright orange-red blazer with the word “Staff” boldly printed across his back. “Is this where the botanical lecture on Impatiens Capensis is?”, she says looking completely lost. “I-I-I was looking for professor Monarda Didyma” she informs the security guard. “I was told she was lecturing at the Magison Garden Conservatory.” Her head leans into him straining to hear his responses. -"You said what? This is where? No lecture here, you say?" She's getting frustrated so asks, “Well, what are all these people doing here anyway?”

“Oh! I see”, she says, sagely head nodding. “A concert, hmm!” Molly hears him say something about a Ricky Nelson. Molly asks this guard one more time, “Are SURE he’s not a Botanist?, and you did say Madison Square Garden?”

Molly pushes her glasses back up onto her face in frustration and digs through her purse to find her notebook. She peruses impatiently her address and directions. As she is reading through her notes, the lights begin to dim from the nearby auditorium, and she hears music coming from the corridor in front of her.



"I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again
When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name
No one recognized me, I didn't look the same

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

People came from miles around, everyone was there
Yoko brought her walrus, there was magic in the air
'n' over in the corner, much to my surprise
Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes wearing his disguise

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself"


(Lyrics to "Garden Party" Copyright (c) Ricky Nelson )

FinsburyParkCarrots

Morphological variants

In the UK, people look for accommodation, whereas in the US, people look for accommodations. British people fly in aeroplanes, US people in airplanes. Brits drink cola out of aluminium cans, Americans out of aluminum. British kids ask Mummy to help with maths homework, and US kids ask Mommy to help with math homework.

In the great Blissweave tradition of bringing people together across the English-speaking globe, let's explore words and phrases that vary across both sides of the Atlantic so that confusion may no longer reign o'er us! Please research variants and include them here. We'll then know our drawing pin is our thumbtack, our paraffin is our kerosene, our telly is our TV and our letter zed is our letter zee!

FinsburyParkCarrots

http://www.myspace.com/rachelpyle
http://www.myspace.com/crinnish


I've done a new one. Coming soon.

dyaogirl

Part I
The Very Very Beginning


She stood behind the clothing goods counter at her job on this lazy summer afternoon feeling tanned and quite content. Giving herself to the lazy hummm of activity in the store her mind soon began to drift. Summer was closing in and she became lost in the daydreams of her future engagement! The parties! The festivities! The Wedding! The buzz of excitement! She lost track of time, enchanted in thought, as the sun sank lower in the sky.

Lost in a state of lucid dreaming she barely noticed the door of the store slowly swing open. As she was leisurely taking pleasure in her thoughts, something was seemingly pulling her back into the present. It was a strange and intoxicating odor. Nothing like she had ever experienced. The sweet heavy odor intensified and hung in the humid summer afternoon’s air. The sugary scent was so thick she felt she could reach out and touch it. She could taste the sweetness and its overwhelming flavors devoured her.

The western exposure of the store’s picture window was glaring in the afternoon sun. She looked up from the counter towards the window and through foggy eyes barely made out a shadow of someone standing there. Odd she didn’t hear anyone come in. She called out “hello”, but no response. She brought her hand up to block the over powering glare of the sun and the outline became more pronounced. She gasped and whispered to her self, “It’s a man”. He seemed to loom even larger than his 6’1” athletic stature. He was a bit scruffy; dirt streaked face, big thick boots, and a well-worn woolen plaid shirt with thick mud soaked dungarees.

As she stared seemingly countless minutes into the sunlight, he ventured to ask her for her help. He had steel blue eyes. The kind you would think bullfighters must have when staring down a bull. His prominent forehead accentuated his masculinity and she sat there speechless. Emotion bubbled to the surface and every sense seemed to be overtaken.….

(The rest to this day remains a blur for her….She just shakes her head and exclaims, “It was the smell. Oh, God that thick languid smell.”)

He was a student at the University of Washington majoring in Mechanical Engineering and playing football. His schedule was full with football and studying and he didn’t have much time for anything else. Except on summer breaks, when he would go help his grandfather on the Bee Farm. He loved being with his grandfather and enjoyed all the labor-intensive aspects of being a Beekeeper. It was on a day towards the end of summer that he noticed they were out of the mesh materials needed to strain the honey. He had been working all-day and hesitated to go into town covered head to toe with honey and looking quite a mess. But, they needed the mesh to complete the days tasks, so off he went.

He entered the store only to find a stunningly attractive woman behind the counter. She seemed a bit taken a back by his appearance and wasn’t responding to his inquiries for help. Damn, he thought to himself, I look a fright! What must she think!

After helping him, she invited him that very evening to a picnic a friend of hers was hosting....

dyaogirl

Part II
Curled up with a Good Book under Tropical Skies


Her Dad was an Engineer with an Oil Company, which afforded him many different jobs in many parts of the world. He had just announced another move. “Hawaii?’, she thought, “Will I fit in?”. She had her doubts. But her family was close, and they were always there whenever she needed them.

She fell in love with the people and the place immediately. The aloha spirit which envelopes the islands seemed to hug her, too, as she arrived at the airport. She knew this was to be a truly special time in her life.

The house they lived in was nothing special. And in Hawaii nothing special means nothing special. No need for heat or insulation, the only adjustment was making room for the wonderful harmless native insects that shared your dwelling. On the shaded north side of the house was a wall of brown hollow cinder blocks. As her family took up residence in this island’s retreat, another family of bees was moving in that cinder block wall. What a perfect place to nest, make memories/honey, and be happy both families thought.

The cinder block’s interior wall was located in the back 2nd bathroom. There in the soft yellow-gold glow of the small room, the scents emanating from the hive were most perceptible. Honey mingled with the floral scent of Hawaii, that room hummed and had a life and an energy all its’ own.

It was that room that she liked to read. She would take her pillow and set it down near the wall. The wall was always warm, softly buzzing with constant energy and activity. As she cuddled against the wall she could feel its gentle hum. It wasn’t so much a sound as it was a vibration. The smells assaulting her senses were the sweetest fragrances one could possibly imagine. It was the wild tropical pollen of the islands mixed with the fruits the bees were generating. Curled up against the wall, over taken by sensations only this room could afford, she read.

And as she read, the world blossomed with each new book.

FinsburyParkCarrots

He bought a pack of shaving razors, now
he's at the bathroom mirror, shaving. Up
he pokes his chin. He drags the blades with slow
steady downward care, and pulls a group
of bristles from their roots. Now he moves
the razor to his face; through soap the steel
slides; skin shine appears in soft pink grooves
while curls of foamblue beard unfurl like peel
and fall down in the white sink water. "Am
I lucky! Yes! Some lands won't let you shave
Your face!" Meanwhile the covert minicam
between the twin blades films him. "Yes, we have
true freedoms here!" He draws the razor close.
Surveillance gets a view right up his nose.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Post post post post post post

FinsburyParkCarrots

Create two characters, old friends suddenly reunited after several years. ...


And responded to dyaogirl's posts,



try this!


Describe the socio-economic status, politics and attitudes of each person; flesh them out; consider how the two characters have grown apart in their fortunes and opinions and how they cope with the revelation of their distance. How do they negotiate this change with themselves and each other? How could you narrate their past closeness and contrast it with the present world of the narrative?

Now, think of an event, a situation that happens to bring these two together either to reconciliation or to conflict. It could be a football match, a shared love, an accident: The more you exercise your imagination with the realms of realism the better! Then, focus on the psychological dynamics between the two characters.

You could write a short story, a piece of dramatic script or a poem, but the key thing is to try to express not only the spoken but the silent language of distance.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Create two characters, old friends suddenly reunited after several years. ...

Describe the socio-economic status, politics and attitudes of each person; flesh them out; consider how the two characters have grown apart in their fortunes and opinions and how they cope with the revelation of their distance. How do they negotiate this change with themselves and each other? How could you narrate their past closeness and contrast it with the present world of the narrative?

Now, think of an event, a situation that happens to bring these two together either to reconciliation or to conflict. It could be a football match, a shared love, an accident: The more you exercise your imagination with the realms of realism the better! Then, focus on the psychological dynamics between the two characters.

You could write a short story, a piece of dramatic script or a poem, but the key thing is to try to express not only the spoken but the silent language of distance.[/quote]

olderman

Flitt T. Riley was his given name, as
Was his wife given life, a monument
To excess, wanted Flitt to cringe and has
On some occasion, been know to lament
That she could never press Flitt for answers,
Flitt did all the pressing in the olive stamp
His education, left unread, joyful sirs
Is attrocious, give this man a new life, damp
Flitt's fall from immortal grace, float his soul
Above the salted tides and waves, boiled foam
Is his destiny, pursues his dream to roll
Down a hill with Mary, he wants her home
Again as she was his true love that night,
Mary - she is the love made him alright.

FinsburyParkCarrots

You will run the wet fields barefooted in the raining dawn. You will dally, lovedally down, skipping in windblown patterned skirts along the rustling dewstarred boglands by the mouth of Doona shore, the black ford, under a sky awhirl with raven stars. You will ramble down to the sandybank well, your waterpails keenclanking, keen clanking. Pails to be filled, to be brimmed, to be oceansteeped and weighted; a heart to be filled in an ocean dawn of rain. You will cross the green bound rushwet stones,dewshingle mistmorning sandybank mantled, your bare feet imprinted with insignias of grass and toes twined with skirts of bog pink posie petals. You will pass Corrigan's field in the September rain with Achill winds blowing your goldenhair, ablaze in sunny longshadow rain like the mane of Grainuaile on the prow of her proud ship, aflame and aglow in sunrise breezeraying seaspraying oceanrain. You will feel the wordless waterwhisperings of women whose mountain heartsongs rained throughout centuries of love like dew that fed deep veinous roots in the cuddled earth beneath your naked feet. You will skip the path to Corrigan's well, your broad deepthroated pails catching rainbow glimmers from the cleft of Saddle Head. And you will lean to the well's brick white grounddeeping wall, feeling it under your palmtouch to be, to be, not solid but a mass of fizzing, whizzing shimmerings of electric pulses, conversations within withinness, while your woman's breath diffuses with the deep, clear filmless water within, a water of a face, your face, bright, timeless, fluid, jewelbesparkled; a face liplapkissing as water, as dreaming, as diving,as fishpassing under the surfroaring surface of the sea in the shimmer shallows and deepest blueing gulfs of stream, of bending spectral light, of aqua sound. You will feed the deepest veins of roots of new wild western ocean blazing flowers; you will wave deep flower tangles in underwater sun, you will grace wild twines of rush underfoot; you will wear gold suntangling hair of a seaborne pirate queen; and you shall shimmer as the deepest seamade veins of the true heart's core.

FinsburyParkCarrots

A: Will you have a sandwich?
B: What's in it?
A: Have a sandwich!
B: What's in it?
A: I don't know what's in it. Onion, tomato.
B: What's in the brown sandwiches?
A: Cheese.
B: What kind?
A: Red kind.
B: I'll give it a miss. I never eat really, when I'm working. I'll have a shot of tea though, if you've got some.
A: Plenty.
B: Where are the mugs?
A: Under your nose, under the dashboard there.
B: That mug's filthy! It's got lumps of grit in it! Is that tarmac!
A: Here, hold your mug up. I'll wash it out with this tea from the flask.
B: Careful! Watch it! You're spilling it on me!
A: Keep the mug still then!
B: I am keeping it still. Did you open the top of that flask properly at all? Nearly scalded me for life there.
A: Arra, course I did.
B: The stream came out all funny, twisted.
A: It's you that's twisted. Keep still.
B: Open the mouth of that flask dead on the threads, it'll come. Yeah, like that. Now pour. That's better.
A: More?
B: Keep pouring... whoa, that's enough. That's enough! How much milk did you put in this tea?
A: Plenty. What do you want milk for?
B: You'd need a jack hammer to get through this. How many tea bags did you put in the flask?
A: A few.
B: Looks like it. You like your tea strong.
A: Strong, strong. So a mouse could run across the top of it. No point drinking weak tea.
B: We got a fair bit done this morning.
A: We did. There's plenty more to do. But when you're in the ditch, don't be pulling the fork towards you when you're gathering the cress up. Stick the fork straight in and lift it, and fire it up on the bank from the forearms. That's where all the power is. Don't be dragging the cress back on yourself in the water in heaps and sticking the fork in on yourself. Those waders cost me two hundred quid.
B: These?
A: Them. And don't be making holes in them. Want a look at this paper?
B: Alright then.
A: Take your gloves off then. Don't be marking the pages with dirt. Pooh, your hands stink of sweat! Look at the steam coming off them!
B: They're all wrinked too.
A: Wash them!
B: With what?
A: There's tea here.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Look what they done with my vote ma
Look what they done with my vote
Touched the vote screen button, fine
Then someone tripped on the cable line
Look what they done with my vote

Look how the lawyers gather 'round, ma
Look how the lawyers gather 'round
They say the vote result's in doubt
For $$$$ they're gonna drag this out
Look how the lawyers gather 'round

Remember all them dimpled chads, ma
Remember all them dimpled chads
Now the voting's gone hi-tech
But does it work right? Does it heck!
We ain't moved on from dimpled chads

Who's gonna be the president, ma
Who's gonna be the president?
We have to wait a week or three
Before the high courts can agree:
That's when we'll know the president.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Did you ever hear this song?

http://www.kevincoyne.de/MP3/hoth4.mp3






http://www.kevincoyne.de/

FinsburyParkCarrots

Small bird, white gentle bird, blue bellied, dead
In knuckle grey men’s grip of what is here
And what is gone: Begin a wing beat bead
Of flight. Trail fire from your spirit cere.
String our senses in your spirit breath.
Blue flame, write life and light our grey ground death.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Like a scythe top with no handle, you hacked
at shoots of minds that might dissent.
your half hacking left me cut, Empire blade,
but it’s my own dirt on your face that’ll kill me,
kill us both.