Category: Creativity
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Invention delight
As I mentioned the other day, I’ve taken on a challenge to re-create a myth in poetic form. This in honour of the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, itself an homage to Homer’s Iliad in which the Odyssey is recounted. My chosen myth over the past weeks has been the Inuit tale…
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Thinking: ?Cognitive reflex?
I’ve been thinking this morning about the way a cognitive stimulus travels, the journey it provokes. We’re sending off a little package to our grandson today, a print-out of my historical fiction short story and an accompanying letter. Maybe he’d like to do some illustrations for the piece? The stimulus way back over a month…
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Sharing a shortlist is fun . . .
Although my effort did not reach the vaunted heights of an actual cash prize (£50 for each of the chosen top four!), it was a delight this morning to see my little poem shortlisted among the top twenty submissions for this month’s Visual Verse challenge. As I mentioned in a previous joyful entry, I had…
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The joy of research
I’ve been embarked on a short story in historical fiction mode that’s taken me back to Viking times. Every Canadian knows, or should know, about the early voyages of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red, as they explored the coast of the new country they called Vinland. An excavation at l’Anse aux Meadows, on…
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Indolence, indulgence and/or perseverance
Sometimes Kali cat is happy to rest on our laps, of an evening, when she’s fully fed and replete, warm and cosy with the fire blazing, and we’re quiet ourselves. She still hunts for small creatures, and gobbles them whole, all except the guts. But mostly she perseveres with her importunings: feed me; feed me…
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The joy of challenges
Without some sort of stimulation, boredom soon sets in and we might feel aimless, unable to concentrate, enervated and de-motivated. Too much challenge and anxiety levels creep up to create discomfort. But just the right challenge and I’m away, throwing myself into the fray and revelling in the attempt to fulfill the task. I did…
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Golden dawn . . .
Dawn is something that I rarely experienced in my youth, but as winter draws near it’s an increasingly frequent delight. This morning’s golden hues evoke a sense of optimism that is frankly at odds with the prevailing climate, economic and political situation here. Often, when showing visitors around the place, I point over to the…
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The big picture . . .
Funerals are one particular point at which we stop, look back, and consider a life. The obituary is a condensed recitation of the deceased’s odyssey, and in my experience these small and intimate biographies, declaimed from the lectern above the casket, can convey surprising breadth and understanding of where the beloved has come from, how…
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Family stories . . .
Images can capture a lifetime of memories in s single frame. My mother loved her family’s ‘sugar bush’ and she conveyed, onto a canvas, her childhood experience of maple sap collection and its semi-magical rendering into syrup. I think she used a postcard of a late winter scene from a farm near Toronto as her…
Roads to Joy 