Go out and kick some leaves! You know you want to… 🙂
Hugs,
M&M
Tag Archives: play
Poetry at Play
Hello Dear Ones!
Recently I’ve had the privilege of expanding my poetic skills with the coaching, guidance and inspiration of several fellow Twitter poets. I was encouraged to commit to writing a poem a day through 2020. Well, we all know how that year unfolded! For me, it was a series of lessons, of deep diving within my own being. Powerful! Not only did I succeed at the commitment, but I have continued to do so daily since! And it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There has been a great deal of play in reading the works of others as well as in my own writings. Especially the writing of my favourite ~ the haiku: a Japanese-style poem of 3 lines &17 syllables, usually in a 5/7/5 format.
Just yesterday an online friend challenged me to write a 3-word, 3-line haiku with the required 5/7/5 syllable count. Three words! Yikes… it meant I had to come up with two 5-syllable words & one 7-syllable word and to make it actually sound like a coherent thought or series of thoughts!
Here is what I published after much playful deliberation:
incongruencies
infinitesimally
extraordinary
You know, it actually was really fun to do! The fun aspect is what encouraged me to use that theme as my topic today.
Referring back to a post written by me several years ago. I chose a snippet of that article as an example of Poetry at Play. Though not haiku, it is a technique I’ve often taught to youth and to folks new to writing their own poetry.
Here’s the description:
Envision an 80 something woman with long ringletted hair, wearing a sun-faded yellow, broad brimmed hat with wilted blue silk flowers. She sports an aged gingham print summer dress hiked to her knees, showing off her rolled-down support hose while riding a rust-red bicycle. She hums a tune that has her smiling. Though you do not recognize the tune, imagine it to be … any tune you choose. Possibly: “K-K-K-Katie, Beautiful Katie, You’re the only G-G-G-Girl that I adore” … Or maybe: “Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes, Barney Google with a wife who’s twice his size” … ( yes, those really were songs that were popular in her day!)
Now, make a poem from the above as it inspires you. Make it playful, fanciful, light, loving. Yes, you can make it sad if you are so moved … yet my hope for your expansion today would be to show you how easy it can be to become poetic – in every aspect of your life, from the frying pan’s sizzle to the awe of dew drops on the first crocuses of Spring – and to do it playfully as a child might.
Here are a few examples from my own inspiration:
The yellow hat brim flapped and flapped
Against her cheek it slapped and slapped
The bicycle chain it tapped and tapped
As the old woman hummed a tune.Or how about?
The blue flower wilted, drooping sadly
Rolled support hose retracting badly
Little old lady peddling madly
Humming gladly.Or this one?
Yellow hat and wilted flower
Hair in ringlets a winded mess
Support hose rolled beneath the knees
Above the knees a gingham dress.I’ll leave you now with, hopefully, inspirations floating around in your own mind. Go find that pen and some paper or open up your word processor and have fun!
So today, this 19th of February 2021, I wish you a play-filled weekend!
Happy poeming…
In Light and Laughter
Marcia
Creative Photography Work
Hi Folks:
Originally wrote this as an e-mail to a friend but thought we should post this as well. Our friend has mentioned that she has been in a bit of a creative slump with her photography recently, so when I came across this article, I thought of her: Explore Photoshop Mix and Fix with Visual Artist Amr Elshamy.
I do pretty much all of my cell phone processing using Snapseed, but I also have Photoshop Express, Ps Fix, Ps Mix, Prisma and some other apps installed. They’re all free. Prisma does offer an annual subscription plan but if you’re not interested you can ignore that. Prisma is pretty much a one-trick pony, but the one thing you can do is to swipe left/right to vary the amount of effect from the filter you’ve chosen. For any given image most of the filters will look terrible, but there are usually one or two that look good.
Serious Play
Hi Folks:
I put this post in the ‘Spirituality’ section of our blog for two reasons: first because I think play is a wonderful spiritual exercise, and second because it gave me the opportunity to include a couple of great quotes on the subject. The first is from Seth:
“I communicate with your dimension, for example, not by willing myself to your level of reality, but by imagining myself there. All of my deaths would have been adventures had I realized what I know now. On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.” ~ Seth Speaks, session 518.
He Says, She Says…
Hello, Dear Reader:
Welcome to our He Says, She Says post!
Both of us have been undergoing some interesting transformations of late, and this generated some discussion between us late last night. A part of that was an idea that arose yesterday afternoon, and so we thought we’d address that today. If you’ve read our He Says, She Says… posts before, you’ll know that we choose a topic together but neither of us reads the other’s post until we’ve both written what we have to say. This way we don’t influence each other’s thought processes.
So, without further ado, this week we’re going to explore our ideas on ‘The Sandbox’.
Have a great week!
Hugs,
M&M
Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View