Wasted Time?

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Raivenne

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
Though often (mis)attibuted to John Lennon, the earliest certain source of the popular quote was by Marthe Troly-Curtin in her novel “Phrynette Married” (1912).

I used this exact opening a couple of weeks ago when I attempted to have a day vegetating. Today I use it response to a complaint.

“God! Every time I call! Why are always writing a story, or working out a poem, or you’re painting something. Pick something, ONE thing and be good, really good, perfect at it. Maybe you could make money off it and stop wasting your time.”

My pithy response: “I write and I paint because I like it and because I have no space for carpentry workshop and a kiln.”

Oh, there was so much to unpack with that loaded statement and her not understanding why I was offended by it.

What is with limiting a person to one form of expression? The whole pick one thing and be good/perfect at it nonsense, is in a word nonsense. Dion Sanders and Bo Jackson excelled in both baseball and football in their heydays. Venus and Serena Williams are both phenomenal tennis players and wonderful clothing designers. Several of Hollywood and UK actors also excel in other creative outlets. It’s Art. You know that thing like beauty is in the eye of? So who determines what’s good or God help us perfect creatively anyway? Who determines its clock value? Is the pursuit of a second passion for pleasure only limited to those those who can afford it? If it’s not making money, it is waste of time?

As I understand it Art students study other art to learn what’s good. Though they both use pointillism, no one is going to confuse a Seurat with a Lichtenstein, but they’re both good. Rembrandt, Warhol, Monet, Max, Michelangelo, Haring, Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock, are all amazing artists, not one looks like the other and none of them did what they did to be “good.” The artists painted what they wanted, the way they wanted – period. That others cottoned on and made some of them renowned during their lifetimes was a lucky bonus. Some of the names mentioned were not famous, until after their deaths. It likely wasn’t perfect, to some of them. It may not have even been “good” to them, but you know what it was? Good enough to make them happy or they tried again until they were. They did it for they were inspired, because it pleased them. I am 10,000 percent sure someone had said to each them at some point “stop wasting time.”

Why must damn near everything in life sans breathing, and bathroom functions, can only be considered worthy of one’s time if it can also potentially line one’s wallet? Stop that nonsense! Elizabeth Barret Browning, Alex Haley, e.e. cummings, Arthur Conan Doyle, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Octavia Butler, Stephen King, Diana Gabaldon, Andrew Wilmot, Amanda Gorman: none of them wrote their very first stories and poems, because they were out to make money, they wrote because they had stories to tell. It just so turned out that eventually others liked the stories as well. The rest is the luck, ill or otherwise, of the draw. But we know their names in the first place solely because they had a story they needed to tell. The story got told. It was not a waste of time.

We blog, and some of have regular followers, but the mass majority of us are not, nor have any intent to be “influencers.” Still, we blog because we have stories to tell, in words or in art or both.

I create because it pleases ME. The moment it becomes something I have to do to make money, it becomes a job. And knowing me – it will no longer be something I enjoy. I create the ways I do because I want to. I’m not trying to be good, I am having fun. That others enjoy it is wonderful, but is never the impetus for me to type out pixels or pick up my pencil or brush. It is always time well spent, even if I hate the result. On the outside I am an adult exuberantly expressing my creativity through mixed media. On the inside I’m a four-year-old happily making a mess scribbling and finger painting. Ask any preschooler…

…That is never a waste of time.

Slice of Life – Tuesday Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

Never Imagined

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Raivenne

They were alone at last.

On his knees.

His face wet with falling tears.

How he always liked him.

Hands clasped tight in front of him.

His voice hoarse from begging.

His knees wet with the tears that have fallen.

How he always wanted him.

He waited for the stark voice of his command.

He waited for the tantalizing touch of his control.

How he always needed him.

He knew he waited in vain.

So, he looked up at last.

In wet tears of grief.

In front of the marble headstone.

How he never imagined him.

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 6

Muse does enjoy taking things in an unexpected direction. Sorry/not sorry.

The Proposal

Posted on April 5, 2021 by Raivenne

Photo of a vineyard at dawn vine laden with dark purple grapes.

Walking the vineyard
Early that morning
Wine fermented air
In the day dawning

A table waited
Laden with mounds
Of the deepest
Sweet rounds

There sparkled a diamond
Brighter than the dew
“My love,” you knelt smiling,
“I’ve a grape to pick with you.”

dVerse Poets Pub : Quadrille # 125 – In Praise of the Grape

Tonight at dVerse bar Linda serves us some wine to prompt our taste buds to verse the quadrille.

A Quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title. It must include the prompt word wine. Muse was in a silly mood.

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 5

Risen

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Raivenne

Rendering of the three crosses on Calvary/Golgatha with the Christ's tomb partially opened glowing with light from within, nearby.

We rise now in this fateful hour
Once in thorns, now is nimbus crowned
For He is risen, the blood has power

Knelt in prayers and tears dour
Those of us who are still earthbound
We rise now in this fateful hour

Some stare in awe, others cower
None can deny, the sight astounds
For He is risen, the blood has power

From our knees we grow and flower
New grains to sprout up from the ground
We rise now in this fateful hour

On this third day to now shower
A faith anew with life is found
For He is risen, the blood has power

We cling to the Almighty bower
Spread The Word with joyous sound
We rise now in this fateful hour
For He is risen, the blood has power

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 4

And today Easter Sunday I offer a Lenten poem in the form of a Villanelle.

The Villanelle is a poetic form composed of nineteen lines. These are arranged as five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a quatrain (four-line stanza).

There is no established meter to the villanelle – modern villanelles tend to pentameter, while early villanelles used trimeter or tetrameter.

The most striking thing about a villanelle is that it has two refrains (“A1” and “A2”) and two repeating rhymes (“a” and “b”). The first and third line of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the refrains, until the last stanza, which includes both refrains.

With this, the pattern of the villanelle can be illustrated as as

A1bA2
abA1
abA2
abA1
abA2
abA1A2

where “a” and “b” are the two rhymes, and the upper case letters (“A1” and “A2”) indicate the refrains.

All That I Need Is Time

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Raivenne

All that I need is time
To smooth these nipped edges
How much more can I take
I’m living a nightmare
While standing here awake

All that I need is time
To help me muddle through
These dreams of yesterday
Like popsicles in sun
They come then melt away

All that I need is time
You're still very much here
Not like I have much choice
Each breeze ignites your touch
As the wind holds your voice

All that I need is time
Just take it day by day
Small comforts slowly grow
Nothing lasts forever
This urgent pain will go

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 3

And today’s poetic form is a Monchielle

The Monchielle is a poem that consists of four five-line stanzas where the first line repeats in
each verse. Each line within the stanzas consist of six syllables, and lines three and five rhyme.

The rhyme pattern is Abcdc Aefgf Ahiji Aklml.

This Love’s Season

Posted on April 2, 2021 by Raivenne

Spring came with a quickening
Belies frost from days ago
The verdant grass thickening
Wraps this love in rays aglow

Summer raised up paradise
Ablaze in tender poses
Focus on the edelweiss
Blinds this love’s thorns in roses

Autumn felt the forbidden
Narrowed eyes that look away
From tears that come unbidden
Cools this love gone so astray

Winter brought down Xanadu
Once filled with hope so pleasing
In apathy’s residue
Leaves this love interred, freezing

National Poetry Month for 2021 Day 2

Has me trying a brand new form (for me): Ae Freislighe Poems

The Ae Freislighe is an old poetic form from Ireland. It has a quatrain stanzas (4-line stanzas) of only 7 syllables per line. What makes is interesting (and somewhat frustrating) is its rhyme scheme.

Lines 1 and 3 rhyme together, but they rhyme as three syllables (xxa)

Lines 2 and 4 rhyme together as two syllables (xb)

A unique element of the form is that the final syllable of the poem should be the same rhyme as the very first syllable of the poem.

An Ae Freislighe poem can be as concise as one stanza, or scale out as far as a poet wishes.

This Morning

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Raivenne

Calm
Peaceful
I slumber 
In morning void
Of unneeded noise

Crash!
Rumble!
Thump! Bang! Boom!
That which man builds
Brings with it much sound

I
Wake to
Cacophony
Of construction
Morning peace now gone

I begin National Poetry Month for 2021 whinging in poem as this morning I was once again startled awake by the sounds of construction happening around my block before my alarm clock had the honors.

Today’s form: the Arun.

A nonce poem created by friend and fellow blogger, GirlGriot, an Arun is a fifteen-line poem in three sets of five lines. Each set of five lines follows the same syllable structure: starting with one syllable and increasing by one syllable with each line. 1/2/3/4/5 — 3x. There are no other rhyme or structural requirements.

This Time Together…

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Raivenne

I spent most of this day wondering how I would close this month out. March has, as it does each year, dragged and flew. At the beginning of the month I knew I would make it to the end. Granted, I also knew there would be some very late night close encounters, which there were. And 2021 will forever hold the asterisk for when I published yet fell asleep before I could post as hubris, but I did it.

Most of all WE made it!

Whether you made all the way through all the slices, or missed a slice or two, or more, as always…

🎵 I’m so glad we had this time together… 🎶

* tugs on ear * [Some of you will get this]

We have survived an entire year of Life in the Times of Covid! It has not been an easy year for any of us. But with the vaccinations happening slowly but surely we can finally see the better days coming ahead. I imagine next year’s challenges will be sprinkled with the things we get to do again compared to now and it will be great.

Being that today is Tuesday, it seems fitting as we know return to our usual Tuesday slices.

It’s Day 31 of the 2021 Slice of Life Writing Challenge. And then there were none.

A Quiet Morning

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Raivenne

I wake up to a nice quiet morning. Well “quiet” is relative given I live in New York City and it’s a weekday morning, but you know what I mean. I say quiet because in the past couple of years there are three multi-unit dwellings are in some process of construction within a block’s radius of my building. A three blocks away, people have begun to move into a new building that must house at least 50 apartments units. Another mixed-use construct rises across the street from it promising even more housing units, plus ground floor commercial space from the size of it.

Because Covid delayed much of for months, once they were allowed back it was with a vengeance. The usual 7am – 3pm became 5pm and later depending on where they are in the process. While clearly loud it was never so egregious to disturb any of the virtual training classes I hold remotely as I work from home. Suffice it to say, these days, any morning I wake up and am not immediately inundated with a wall of construction sound that has but become a form of white noise to my day is noteworthy.

So I enjoyed this moment of Zen. I rose, showered, dressed, made a light breakfast and sat at my desk prepared to work. Still quiet. Excellent. At 9:30am I begin my usual what I call “pre-boarding check” before each session to ensure I have everything I need at the ready. My screens display the correct information. I do not have spinach in my teeth etc.

9:45am I open the virtual training session in case there are early birds and sure enough at 9:50 someone logs in. I chat with the student as others sign in and at 10:00am on the dot all are ready to begin and…

CRASH! – BANG! – RATTLE!
THUD! – RUMBLE!

“What? On? Mother? Earth‽ Was‽ THAT‽ ‽ “

[Oh, my natural tendency to cuss like Martin Freeman (it’s safe for work I promise), becomes amazingly rated G when the audio is on for training. My students, all adults, don’t necessarily have that restriction and give a Samuel L. Jackson character a run for the F-bombs that I hear dropped in reaction.]

Oh, did I forget to mention the public school right behind my building? The public school that is closed as its denizens learn remotely? The closed public school which is surrounded by scaffolding and netting? The closed public school which is surrounded by scaffolding and netting that now is in the first stages of refacing its brick façade? The LOUD first stage where they break off chunks of bricks and dump it down a plastic and metal chained chute to land in a huge commercial dumpster oh so conveniently located right outside my [please stand by while I insert Martin Freeman’s imagined, albeit still impressive, string of foul verbiage here] window? Yeah, apparently that is going to be a thing in my life for a while; at least while they work on this side of the building. Grrr!

It could be just my over-active imagination, but I do declare all of the constructions workers had a pow-wow this morning when it was quiet. It must have ended just before 10am because every room in my flat has construction noise seeping or thundering in from outside.

The quiet morning is done.

And then was one.

Slice of Life Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers

There’s One In There After All

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Raivenne

Just because I’m presumin’
That I could be kind of human
If I only had a heart
— Jack Haley [The Tinman] / “Wizard of Oz”

I so often joke about the black hole, empty echo of space, where my pulmonary organ should be. Today I proved the utter fallacy that jest. At least the physical manifestation of said organ, though the emotional/psychological variant thereof may still be in question.

I chose today to finally get around to filing my taxes. I have never filed taxes this late before, even when I owed the IRS. No idea why I chose this year to be so lackadaisical with it, but C’est la vie. I mentally chastised myself for it and got down to business. I file online and it took the little over an hour the it usually takes to get it done. All was fine until I needed to verify myself by providing the document numbers on my state ID or license. I have a lot of things memorized – that is not one of them. So off I go to my bedroom to retrieve my purse and wallet.

Bedroom? Check. Purse? Check. Wallet? Wallet? Bueller? [insert Ben Stein followed by tumbleweed and crickets here.]

Oh! DUH! I didn’t use my purse yesterday. I must have…

…dropped it on the console when I came in? Nā.

…forgot it in my jacket pocket when I hung it up? Nee.

…placed it on the dining table? Nein.

…left it on the bed before it was made and it’s under the cover? Non.

…put it inside the drawer when I took off my jewelry? Nyet.

[That’s a negative in Bengali, Dutch, German, French and Russian for those who weren’t curious.]

Let’s just say I cycled between languages, rooms and locations in said rooms. I bought the wallet in a bright color so that, though small, it stood out among things and be easy to see. So why couldn’t I see it? I even checked the refrigerator, okay? Each negative added to the increased panic. Was I wrong, did I lose it while I was out and it’s all GONE? I was daunted by all the things I’d have to replace in my wallet: credit cards, ID cards, insurance cards, etc. All while being simultaneously glad that while I have most memorized; I also have photo copies of everything, including contact info, so I could begin that arduous process.

Forty-five minutes, and do not ask about the state of my bedroom, later. I plopped down in the club chair in my living room, head lowered in hands, another maybe fifteen minutes from tears of frustration when I spy a splotch of bright colored leather wedged between the side of the sofa and the broken paper shredder waiting to be picked up for refuse. That was when I remembered I had laid my jacket there before I hung it up, not knowing my wallet had fallen out and slipped down but did not make it to the floor I had checked.

The resulting emotional WHEW! was when I noted the palpations that began to ease. I hadn’t noticed as my heartbeat ratcheted up in my increasing panic, but I sure felt the release valve engaged. And me, being me, only had one thing to say for myself as I finished my taxes and put the rooms Hurricane Raivenne ransacked to rights:

I’ll be damned – there’s one in there after all!