Hi again folks
Thanks for sticking by me. I'm sorry for not posting too regularly recently but life's a bummer and has to rear its ugly head just when you were getting into the swing.
Still, I'm back and the old engine is up and puffing and it is time to let off some steam.


While I was doing some bedtime reading I found this insight that I've never really thought about but seemingly thoroughly understand:

    "There are secrets in music and poetry. Secrets few knew and even fewer understood. Their power often stole into a listener subtle as the memory of scent on a drawn breath, less than a whisper, yet capable of transforming the one gifted, an instinctual ecstasy that made troubles vanish, that made all manner of grandeur possible - indeed within reach..."

    I have probably got the wrong end of the stick with this one but I think that he is saying that poetry and music do not have to be blunt instruments that we, as the authors use to ram our message into our readers' forebrains but more like acupuncture needles that pierce the thick "skin" of our conscious minds and alter the pathways beneath to allow our older, more primitive brains to receive and react.
    The same author goes onto say:

    "A skilled storyteller, a wise storyteller knows that at certain moments in the course of a cycle of a day and night, the path into the soul of a listener was smooth, unobstructed, a succession of massive gates that swung open to a feather's touch. This was the most precious secret of all. Dusk, midnight and that strange period of sudden wakefulness known as the watch - yes, the night and its stealthy approach belonged to the heart"
(Reproduced without permission - Steven Erikson "Toll the Hounds" pp 553)

    That has to be some of the truest fictional writing I've ever read. It must be why ghost stories work so well as the sun dies or the moon coats all with its glistening light.

    Could it be possible that make up poems and break up poems can be easier to write at certain times of the day?
    Dawn, the rising of the sun, the new day could be a brilliant time to write a life-affirming make-up poem. A new day, a new love life, a new you ??
    The same could be said of dusk, the drawing down and out of the evening light, the increase in the darkness, the reducing temperature could very well mirror the ending of a relationship, the cooling of the fires between you, the specter of a time coming, alone and lonely.

    Can that be turned over..would the best time to end a relationship be the first thing on a sunny morning when the warmth outdoors could thaw the resulting ice in the heart? The making-up done in the evening when companionship holds back the encroaching, perceived fears of the night?

    Even further.. end a relationship on a Sunday morning, make-up on a Friday night? Finish with them in the Spring and mend in the Winter?

    Hmmm.. worth a thought isn't it?

I found this story out there on the 'Net while trawling around for material for a new post and something about it really struck a chord with me:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package.
"What's in there? I'm betting it's food!" the mouse thought.
He was devastated to see it was a mousetrap!

Running into the farmyard in a panic, the mouse shouted out a warning
"There's a mousetrap in the house! OMG! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said gravely,
"Mr.Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."
The mouse turned to the pig and told him,
"There is a mousetrap in the house! OMG there is a mousetrap in the house!"
The pig sympathized, but said,
"I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."
The mouse turned to the cow and said
"Help! Help me! There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The cow said,
"Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but, to be honest it's no skin off my nose."
The mouse went back inside, thoroughly dejected by his fellow farm-dwellers responses, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house:
"SNICK"
The sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife, filled with joy, rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a rattlesnake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital , and she returned home with a fever. Now, everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, sadly she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had to slaughter the cow to provide enough meat for all of them.
The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the moral of this story is?

Next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey we call life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

Have a great weekend

Peace

John