The day four prompt of the 2018 National Poetry Writing Month challenge is “to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like ‘beauty’ or ‘justice,’ but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns.”
I used an essay I posted in December 2017, as an idea for the abstract noun tranquility. The concretes were the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that led to the abstraction. You can read the essay if you click here.
Tranquility Remembered: the sounds of silence
My young mind was filled with thought
As I walked, no music or sounds I’d hear
Only deep moans from snow as I crushed it below
A cold white blanket on my pensive dark thoughts
Fairies, charming and peaceful my footsteps they heard
They opened my eyes to tranquil aura yet silent
I saw in the darkness a light with no sound, but
The sweet sounds of silence sent aroma that night
My thoughts melted away into the image of stillness
I heard not a hush of sound cut crisp cold calm air
A silence of power and of peace lifted me up
The flavor of quiet and snow calmed the darkness
Like the artistry of a perfectly painted picture
A vision of nature stillness lived in my brain
That moonlit night not long ago
in halo of street lights and a
reflection of memory of new lying snow
I remember the cold night
I remember the sounds and the silence
I remember the calm peaceful taste of tranquility
I remember I Remember I REMEMBER!
(Bill Reynolds 4/4/2018)
Fill the gaps with memory.
Look for beauty both ways.
I have never played D&D, but I wish I had. When it was popular, my kids played the game. Since writing about these creatures, my daughter has invited me to play D&D with her, her hubby, and the grandkids. I discovered on-line role playing several years ago. That was when I learned how little I knew about elves, and I met my first elf who was a member of a sub-race of elves known as drow.
Of all fantasy creatures, I find elves to be the most interesting. They’re followed by dragons and leprechauns. That is a lot to write about. If we add reports and stories on other humanoids, such as dwarfs and hobbits, a literary subfield within fantasy emerges. Since elf crossbreeding, particularly with humans creates an exponential growth of character possibilities, contemporary story telling became fascinating for both creator and consumer.
If you’re not a fan of D&D or role play (RP), you may assume things about elves regarding stature, intelligence, and friendliness which are likely incorrect. In each case, I was wrong. They’re not little, stupid, and sweet. Admittedly, Santa’s helpers at the North Pole do little to correct the stereotype, but all is fair in fantasy and myth.
Dark, or black elves are from Norse mythology and thought to be the ancestors of the drow. These elves are usually considered to be evil in the inborn, bad seed sense. Yet there is ample evidence for a human-like nature versus nurture conflict and all drow cannot be depended upon to be as wicked as others.
Drow have dark grayish skin. Since they are given to self-decorating, green and even purple colors can also be found. Their hair is naturally white, whitish or yellow, but here again, drow know about hair coloring techniques. Female drow are dominant, being both stronger and slightly larger than males. As with all pure elves, neither sex is capable of beard growth. While eyes are normally red, colors can range. With crossbreeding, even human green or blue eyes are possible. But, if you want to see something spooky; a red eyed, dark-skinned drow can tilt your freak meter.
While drow are unwilling underground creatures, they are most often found by non-drow to be above ground for the obvious reason that subterranean existence for a non-drow creature is as a slave to the drow, if survival is even possible in such a wild, violent place.
Drow fight with anyone, and other drow are never off the hook. That helps to keep their numbers down, since when they do get along well with each other, they are also very prolific producers of offspring.
As with all elves, drow live long lives if they manage to avoid a violent and early death. Again, given all their magic and power, it is their inability to get along that manages to keep the population in check.
Despite what sounds like an evil appearance, drow are attractive elves. This causes surface dwelling races to tolerate drow presence if they behave in a non-drow-like fashion. Surface races of elves and other humanoids have been known to inbreed with drow yielding interesting, yet confusing, results: both good and bad.
Drow are fast, agile, and in their opinion smarter than all other humanoids including other elf groups. The most natural and overwhelming feature of all drow is their phenomenal sense of entitlement. While this can be an annoying and dangerous trait, like so much else regarding drow, it is difficult to tell if it is innate or cultural. Drow culture reinforces all forms of evil within their race beginning at a very young age.
Mind gaps to the world of the drow.
Look both ways as elves are poor drivers.
The third day prompt of the 2018 National Poetry Writing Month: Write a list poem in which all the items are made-up names. This poem is based on a tongue-in-cheek look back at working from the perspective of retirement.
NoMo’ WorkShuns of Retiremeizations
No mo’ traffic commushuns
No mo’ Monday bluesifications
No mo’ burnt coffee offeringtoshuns
No mo’ why I’m late excuzations
No mo’ performance evauliebations
No mo’ worrying about promousayshuns
No mo’ office gossip whosaytions
No mo’ workmate envy whodaypaytions
No mo’ idiot bossbigheadiztions
No mo’ recovery vacatoshortations
No mo’ meeting bordeathpations
No mo’ engineering gobbledygookovations
No mo’ organized rejobmobettatryzations
No mo’ more with lesspraystaions
No mo’ work aggravation peepsalazations
No mo’ monthly disgruntiliations
No mo’ hallucinational goalaberations
No mo’ feckup fairy malfunctioniztions
No mo’ maybenots of probationosensations
(Bill Reynolds 4/3/2018)
Working or retired, look both ways.
Mind those workday gaps.
The Khimaira (Chimera or chimaera) was a three-headed monster. If ya Google it without the mythology tag, most options will be links to ghost fish or sharks. This is no fish story.
Like so many monsters of Greek mythology, The Chimaera was the offspring of couple of monstrous sweethearts named Typhon and Echidna, a pair I envision as sort of an Adam and Eve couple of the Greek Mythological Monster class.
This bizarre, fire-breathing cat had the body and head of a lion (good so far). But peeking over its shoulder was a goat’s head rising out of its back. The beast had udders like a goat (no idea why). Away from the business end, the ubiquitous mythological snake rounded out the creature’s tail, with serpent’s head at the very end.
Since nothing good could possibly spring from the union of Typhon and Echidna, this beast ravaged the countryside of Lykia (Lycia) in Anatolia, which is on the southeastern end of Turkey. Contemporary Turkish history does not jibe well with older Greek myth, but at the time it all fit nicely, if fearsome.
As the story goes, this Chimaera cat was just kickin’ ass all over that part of the world until a hero named Bellerophon came on the scene. He was either asked or commanded, depending on who is doing the telling, by King Iobates to kill the beast.
Bellerophon rode into battle on the back of the winged horse, Pegasus, of course. He sought and found Chimaera and drove a lead-tipped lance into its flaming throat. So, the big cat-goat’s fiery breath melted the lead tip, promptly choking the beast on hot molten metal. Lead poisoning for sure. So, the beast died from sucking on a lead popsicle, Greek Mythology style.
Turkey has never been known for its geological stability. So, later classical writers believed the Chimaera creature was a metaphor for a Lycian volcano, of which there almost certainly were several.
The Chimaera can look both ways at the same time
and the snake can keep its eyes looking backward.
So, mind the gaps.
The second day prompt of the 2018 National Poetry Writing Month: Write a poem that plays with voice.
The Wake of Heirs
They sat in chatter and discussed
Their fortune left in will or trust
Set aside lest others see
What vultures now they come to be.
At the door I quietly knocked
Into the room I slowly walked
Eyes on me no longer talked
By death we are most surely stalked.
Tense is the room you just walked in
You know their hearts are showing thin
You’re welcome not just to be there
Last of the clowns, you – the final heir.
(Bill Reynolds 4/2/2018)
Look both ways as you enter a room.
Find the gaps and use them well.
A basilisk is a creature presented as a snake-type or other reptile. Some renditions look related to a rooster, but that would be a cockatrice. You’ve heard, if looks could kill? Well, if it’s basilisk, they do. A direct look from a basilisk and yer a goner.
It’s interesting how the fantasies go on with how dangerous this creepy-crawler is with venom and whatnot, but with looks that kill, who cares? Think Medusa. Ok, so you use a reflection for an indirect look, but unlike Medusa, you’re petrified anyway, meaning you are turned to stone. Think Lott’s wife. I can’t buy the petrified option as being any better than a direct death look. Look away if you see a basilisk coming. Oops, too late.
Basilisk Paining
Some sources (Britannica) list the basilisk as the same creature as the cockatrice, but one is a snake the other a pissed-off rooster that looks related to the village dragon. In mythology there is an odd biological, half-sibling, relationship between the two. This basilisk creature comes into being because a cockerel (rooster) sits on and incubates the egg of a snake or toad. For the cockatrice, the rooster lays the egg (see the problem?) and either the snake or a toad pulls off the incubation challenge.
If a sex is assigned to a basilisk it is often female, yet, due its appearance with a mitre on its head, it is referred to as king of the serpents. The Pope wears a mitre as a kind of crown. It must have been safer to piss off a king, since there were many, than the Pope, of which there were few, if only one legitimate. Since these folks have roosters laying eggs, I suppose that is all fair enough. It’s fantasy, right?
The first writing about a basilisk dates to around 79 AD, about the same time New Testament Gospels were allegedly first written. And if you worried about one of these suckers turning up at the front door, you could simply do pop goes the weasel. Apparently, taking a cue from Asia and the King Cobra’s nemesis, the mongoose, the Europeans made the odor (effluvium) of the weasel be a deadly weakness for the basilisk. That makes sense. With more quafting weasel stink everywhere, there’ll be fewer basilisk, which explains why Europe has such a small problem with basilisks roaming the countryside. Of course, if you did see one, you’d die and be unable to tell us about it.
Cockatrice
Literature is replete with references to the basilisk. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, Anne Neville wishes her eyes (like a basilisk) would kill her husband’s murderer, and in Cymbeline a character refers to a ring as a basilisk.
Samuel Richardson in Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady, and John Gay in The Beggar’s Opera, have characters who refer to the basilisk in dialogue. Others include Jonathan Swift in a poem, Robert Browning in A Light Woman, and some writings of Alexander Pope.
Shelly refers to “the imperial basilisk” in Ode to Naples; and again in Queen Mab like this:
Those deserts of immeasurable sand,
Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love
Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods,
Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness beheld
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,
Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,—
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
To see a babe before his mother’s door,
Sharing his morning’s meal
with the green and golden basilisk
That comes to lick his feet. — Part VIII
The basilisk also appears in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling.
Be careful looking both ways.
You want to miss seeing the basilisk, but mind the gaps.
One of my grandchildren is named Furie. I was told that her name was based upon Furies of Greek Mythology. That was my inspiration of this blog.
While there were three Furies, I am focusing on one: Alecto (unceasing in anger), mostly because it fits the challenge.
The three furies
In Greek mythology the Furies, were female deities sometimes referred to as “infernal goddesses.” In Roman mythology, they are the Dirae. One Roman writer said they’re called Eumenides in hell, Furiae on earth, and Dirae in heaven. Indeed, these goddesses have significance in the underworld.
In addition to Alecto, her sisters are Tisiphone (avenger of murder), and Megaera (the Jealous one). Each had a role in dealing with the dark side of human nature and behavior.
I am not messing with her.
Alecto dealt with people who had problems with others (anger). She was like the goddess, Nemesis, who enacted retribution against those who succumb to arrogance before the gods. However, Alecto was concerned with human to human interpersonal issues, rather than human to god.
The Furies came into being when Cronus, technically their brother and leader of the first generation of Titans, castrated his (and their) father, Uranus. Uranus’ testicles were to be cast into the sea, but blood from them was spilled on Gaia (the Earth) and produced the Gigantes, Meliae, and Erinyes. The Erinyes, or Furies, pursue heinous criminals, punishing them according to their crimes. The imagination of ancient people must have phenomenal regarding their myths.
Furies revenged homicide, unfilial conduct, offenses against the gods, and perjury. A victim seeking justice could call on them for criminal retribution. The most powerful of the curses was of the parent upon the child – for the Furies were born of just such a crime, when the blood of Uranus (or the sky) impregnated Gaia, following Cronos chopping off dad’s nuts, thus Alecto’s unceasing anger.
Their wrath manifested itself in several ways. The most severe was the tormenting madness inflicted upon a patricide or matricide. Murderers might suffer illness or disease; and a nation harboring such a criminal, could suffer dearth, hunger, and disease.
Alecto and Tisiphone
The wrath of the Furies could be placated with purification and some assigned task for atonement. However, Alecto had no sympathy for the wicked.
The goddesses were also servants of Haidas and Persephone in the underworld where they oversaw the torture of criminals consigned to the Dungeons of the Damned. A goddess from Hell who is always angry with everyone and everything should make us behave. As with all such things regarding ancient mythology, the dealings were direct and fierce.
Look both ways for Alecto. Mind yourself, the gaps go clear to Hell.
Let’s roll out monsters, goblins, ghouls, and all the fantastic creatures that existed in the minds of men and women from before anyone could write until the present day. Fantasy is not fake when we believe it; and we have for over 100,000 years of human imagination from which to draw. Unfortunately, writing is only about five or six thousand years old. But going way back in time, our innate human ability to imagine is phenomenal. That is my reveal: fantasy creatures displayed front and center.
From angels to zombies, I will select fantastic creatures from legend, fairy tales, fables, and myth. From poems, books, and stories, and from cultures around the world; I will package up those delectably stunning and enchanting fantasy life forms and bring them to you in words and forms.
During April we all do a lot of reading and writing. If you count taxes, arithmetic too. It is a busy, but fun-filled month. I shall attempt brevity and will only present one or two creatures per day beginning with “A” on Sunday, the first day of April, for the 2018 A to Z Blog Challenge.
As my trailer here, I present two Celtic kings: The Forest King, better known as the Oak King or sometimes as Green Man, along with his nemesis, The Holly King, often depicted as a woodsy version of Santa Clause.
The Forest or Oak KingThe Holly King
Semiannually, these two battle and fight to the death for supremacy. One time per year, each defeats the other. Depending on the culture and beliefs, a final battle is on summer and winter solstices, or, and more logically, at the time of the Fall or Spring equinoxes. During summer, the Oak King reigns. The Holly King kills the Oak King and reigns in the winter. It is the classic holly vs. ivy symbolic battle called out in King Henry VIII’s, Green Groweth The Holly.
The Oak and Holly Kings Battle
The battle is also echoed many times in other myth and folklore such as the fights between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Lugh and Balor in Celtic legend. In all cases, one must die for the other to triumph.
Regarding such battles and the killing of one king, god, or man, George Frazer wrote,”But we have seen that the very value attached to the life of the man-god necessitates his violent death as the only means of preserving it from the inevitable decay of age.” They are two essential parts of the whole (seasonal reality) that battle all year long. Despite being enemies, without one, the other would no longer exist. Sort of reminds one of yin and yang, doesn’t it?
Look both ways in all seasons of life. Mind well the gaps.
Note: I will be participating in the National Poetry Writing Month challenge separately. Those poems will be identified as NaPoWriMo. This means that during April “Our Literary Journey” will have two posts each day, and one on Sundays after the first.
“You were the moon. All this time. And he was always there for you to make you shine.”
“Was he the sun?”
“No, honey, he was the darkness.”
Darkness was always there
Before firmament formed, she was
Before Earth, Moon, Sun, or Stars.
She was waiting when Chaos came.
Darkness comforts me
My eyes open or closed, her arms around
in sweet and loving tranquil repose.
Touch me softly, my old friend.
More certain she is than the Sun
Who sends burning fire to each day,
With passing twilight she allows
Sun’s return to warm us all.
Before light again warms my soul,
She grants me respite from the day.
She allows my night a chance to rest
In dreams we dance the night away.
As each day ends, she comforts me,
Harbors my soul, balances my heart.
Touch me Darkness when you come,
Grant me peace as you depart.
With resting shadows, I cannot see.
Hold me Darkness, help me mend.
When I’m alone you understand
You are my nature, my old friend.
She gives my spirit a life to spend,
There’s yet Darkness for me to tend.
Grant me courage one more day,
Thank you, Darkness my old friend.
(Bill Reynolds 3/11/2018)
Don’t look both ways, Darkness is everywhere. In the dark, adjust to see, then mind the gaps.
I like this: “Yet it is far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.” From a sermon by W. L. Watkinson. I would add, “Better to love the darkness than to light a candle.” It mixes metaphors, but makes a point.
Our Literary Journey 