Posts by Miranda

12/17 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Wow! After posting yesterday’s contest reminder, I didn’t have to spend much time waiting for entries — six of them! Very tough to select a winner this week, but someone has to receive the $10 amazon.com gift certificate — and it’s Debra Bellon, for her beautiful poem. Congratulations, Debra!

Waiting
She hears something moving in the leaves:
a rustle, like a velvet skirt twisting against itself
in a cold wind. She does not move, not even
to brush away the snow that has gathered
in the tender indentations of her neck.
Another half-season: rain to ice and ice to sleet,
the days grow shorter, the night stretches out
like the path of a thousand hours.
There is nothing there at all; she walks inside,
stunned by the quiet there, longing for the time
(not long ago) when she watched them sleep,
their lips rounding and flattening
in airy soliloquies.
Of all her dreams there were only ever two that mattered:
the one in which she hurries,
and the one in which she waits.

From Jen Johnson: “Had fun thinking about this week’s prompt; kept bringing back memories of my pregnancies and the waiting therein. Didn’t have the time and focus for a new written submission, so instead I tinkered around with one of my favorite pregnancy photos.”

From Karen Winters, a painting entitled “I think it was the Fourth of July.” Karen writes: “I painted this last summer inspired by our visit to Chicago. The question it prompts is…how many minutes of our lives do we spend waiting around?  Waiting for the light to change…waiting for the barista to fix the coffee…waiting for the car to get lubed…waiting for inspiration to hit…waiting for the big opportunity or the special person that will magically transform our lives. Only the clock at Marshall Fields knows…and it’s not telling. In the past few years, I have minimized the annoyance of waiting time by always carrying a sketchbook with me. Even five minutes can be turned into a drawing exercise that helps keep my eye sharp.  Time is the only thing we can’t buy more of. So it’s a good policy to look for ways to use those waiting moments, even if it’s in restorative, restful reverie.”

From Kelly Warren, a double set of poem and image pairings(!):

From Cathy Jennings, an image created in Adobe Illustrator:

From Cathy Coley, a poem and image pairing:

Waiting
December and the geese and leaves
are finally gone from my lake.
One seagull one cormorant
found warm calm waters
a mile inland from the sea.
I am mistaken about the geese.
It’s seventy three degrees.
A honking call echoes
from shoreline to shoreline.
Grey the sky, grey the water,
the bench and branches, all of it grey
waiting for rain whose forecast
lingers from day on to day
but never seems to wet this dry peninsula.
The black dog barks at another walking, both leashed.
I still wait for rain, watch the clouds
cover sky in gunmetal thunderheads,
wish them to snow
I know will never come.

From me (Miranda): I anticipated writing something about waiting for Christmas, but I ended up waiting for life to return to “normal” after an ice storm hit New England and we lost power and heat for 36 hours. The first day we sat at home by the fireplace, waiting. It might have been fun and relaxing, but the baby was fussy and I found myself trying to entertain two small children in the dim chill of my living room without much inspiration. No coffee maker, no computer. No electronic babysitter. As the day wore on, I realized that we were waiting for something that might not show up anytime soon. And it didn’t. There was a lot more waiting in store, and I found it an interesting challenge to try to enjoy the present moment and not just focus on the wait. I did capitalize on the chance to take some photographs of the frozen landscape. Here’s one of my favorites.

This week’s prompt: “Gift”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 23. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

12/10 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

A warm glow — and ominous smoke — from this week’s contest entries for the prompt “fire.” Our winner is Juliet Bell, who sent in a beautiful pen-and-ink drawing from her archives. Juliet writes: “I was never happy with the tree reflection, and I can see now there are other things that need fixing, but I did like the way the fire came out.” Totally dreamy, I say. Juliet, your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

From Cathy Coley, a poem (glad this particular scenario didn’t turn out differently!):

Fire

Prometheus’s booty set loose amongst us.
Evidence: a match tip burn on my bed.
Who was in my room,
found matches,
and curious,
struck one for the hell of it
and walked away?

Apparently those invisible devils
Huh, Not Me, and I Dunno.

From Karen Winters, a scary take on fire that I hadn’t even considered:

When I was younger, growing up in Southern California, I don’t remember the wildfires becoming such an annual event, like the tornadoes of the midwest or the hurricanes of the gulf coast. Yes, there were the occasional big fires, like the one that swept through Bel-Air, or the Malibu conflagrations. But they weren’t a ‘given’ with the advent of every Santa Ana wind.

Times have changed. With so many more million people living here it only takes one or two small accidents to spark a firestorm. A welder’s spark. A bird landing awkwardly on a power wire and blowing out a transformer. A carelessly put-out cigarette. A car parked on dry grass where the catalytic converter can cause a sudden flame. And those are accidental starts, we’re not even considering the cases of arson.

When the Santa Ana winds blow in October and November, nowadays the smallest error can cause hundreds to lose their homes and even some loss of life.

I don’t see a solution to this problem. We are out of dwelling space as homes are built among chapparal hillsides. Even with a defensible space, embers fly for miles, igniting rooftops far away.

Several years ago there was a big fire in Ojai. I don’t live there, but we were driving up the coast to Santa Barbara and saw the plume soon after it had begun. I painted this in my sketchbook to remember the occasion.

From me (Miranda): My firstborn son, Russell, turned 18 last night. It was hard not to focus on the fact that I probably won’t be seeing him on his birthday again for quite a while — at least for the next four years. A happy birthday evening, but bittersweet.

This week’s prompt: “Waiting”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 16. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

12/03 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Thanksgiving was the prompt for last week’s creativity contest. Our winner is Debra Bellon. Debra writes: “I finally got my internet connection back after moving (took forever!) and I thought I would celebrate by taking part in my first weekly creativity contest.” Lovely poem, Debra. Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

Grace
Suddenly you wanted to say grace
as though it were something you were used to—
ingrained, like the timbre of your mother’s voice, or
the lines imprinted on your long fingers—and not,
as everyone suspected—a kind of mockery,
aimed at unsettling the believers.
When you laid down your head on clasped hands
it was both calm and urgent, your voice
like milk warmed on a low fire
your eyes pressed closed, as though heavy
with visions of something outside—
the tender blackened branches or
the deep soil, turned hard where the frost settled or
the yellow light from distant rooms, where,
bundled in shadows, other people were gathered
to bow their heads and pray, as you did,
for everything and nothing.

From Kelly Warren, a gorgeous image and prose poem:

Thanksgiving night while my family finishes dinner
I look out the door and see one solitary shrimper.
I wonder if he has a family to share a feast with
or if he’s just taking shelter for the holiday,
looking longingly at the homes along the river,
wondering what it’s like to feel the warmth of kin.

From Cathy Coley, a haiku and image pairing. Cathy writes: “Miranda, there is always more sweet potato pie filling left for ‘souffle’ and the marshmallows are always more burnt b/c it can’t fit on the bottom shelf of the oven w/ the pie. Gotta keep traditions intact!”

Mama Stanley’s Sweet Potato Pie
To her granddaughter
Sweet Southern toasty goodness
Taste is passed — not name.

From me (Miranda):

My Thanksgiving was a little too full of simmer and tang — qualities that were nicely exemplified by my roiling cranberry sauce:

This week’s prompt: “Fire”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 9. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.