A Kaleidoscope of Words
Two Images Crossing Paths in a Kaleidoscopic Ballroom
I love words, and I love kaleidoscopic images. The word kaleidoscope means “beautiful form” and I can get lost in the visual acrobatics of these types of images. I love them as mandalas (a mirrored disk look), tessellations (repeated patterns like tiles), fractals (patterns that repeat progressively and get smaller as they do), and other creative and colorful patterns.
My love for words has inspired me to write novels during the month of November a number of times. The event, National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), is a challenge and a joy for me even when I don’t win. The times I’ve missed have made me feel like I missed something important in those years. Therefore, I’m going to give it another try this year, and I’m going to use my blog to update my word counts as an encouragement to myself–and possibly to others.
If nothing else, I will post a new kaleidoscopic image each day, so be sure to follow me during the month of November to see how far along I get and to see my newest images. If you’re writing for NaNo, let me know in comments. If you would like to add me as a buddy on the NaNo site, find my (yet-to-be-updated-for-2018) profile on the NaNo site at https://nanowrimo.org/participants/crystal-writer and, if you’re a Christian writer and on Facebook, feel free to stop by the group “Christian Wrimos on Facebook” at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChristianWrimos and introduce yourself. From there, you can join old conversations, start a new one, or challenge other writers to a word war. I hope to see you there soon and throughout November.
Monosyllabic Challenge
Three Kitty Cats in the Window, Rock Texture, Syllable Text, by Crystal A Murray, All Rights Reserved
Click image to open a new tab/window to view my cats and critters album at Flickr.
Monosyllabic is a five-syllable word that defines words of one syllable. Only in the English language, right? But, if you’re like me and like rhythmic poetry like haiku, you might count syllables in words just for fun. For example, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has 14 syllables, even if it is a made-up word. If you want a real word, there is a word for a lung disease that has 19 syllables, but I’ll let you do that research for yourselves. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, in the urban dictionary, monosyllabic is actually a word that means “lame” or “boring.”
In an effort to keep this post from being lame, I’m going to challenge readers to write a monosyllabic piece. In other words, create a paragraph or story made up of only one-syllable words. You can keep it to yourself, or you can share it in comments for me to read. I prefer the latter. Just to make it fair, I will share a quick one-syllable story, and this one even includes a cat just to match the image above. Here goes…
High noon, when the sun sits at the top of the sky, is too hot to work, but there is so much work to be done. But how can I work when life will not yield its strength to me. I need strength. I need hope. I feel the pain of my loss as it digs a hole in my heart. It makes me weak. I am bound by it, and I can’t do a thing to make it set me free. It haunts me. It taunts me with its knock, knock, knock at my brain.
I watch the cat curl up in a warm spot of sun on the floor, and I wish I were a cat. Not that cat’s lives are filled with ease. I know they are not when I watch them sleep and dream of that cat and mouse chase where they may win or they may lose. But when one has just sensed a great loss, it makes me think it would suit me more to just lie down and sleep.
There are dreams I would like to keep in the depths of my heart, and there are dreams I would like to share. But gone are the dreams I think could come true for me since my new dream is now gone. And it would have worked so well. But, like the cat and mouse game, the thought was there when I went to sleep, but when I woke up, it was gone. So it seems best now to lie in the sun and take a nap like the cat does each day at noon. It could be that as I sleep, my dreams will wake in me once more.
In case you don’t get the hidden subject, I don’t want to leave you thinking this is a negative story. It’s just about those ideas that you think about when you lie down to sleep, or dreams you have in the middle of the night. You are so sure you will remember the idea or dream, so you don’t write it down. And then, when you wake up, it’s all gone. You then hope that it will come back to you the next time you sleep. If it doesn’t, you write a story about it just to have something to feed your muse. 🙂
Now it’s your turn, and I hope you share.
31 Days of Thoughts on 31 Days of Proverbs
This is just a short introduction. In an effort to get myself writing and blogging every day, I am going to use a variety of tools. I plan to use different tools each month to go with my prismatic personality. I figure that if I change it up at least once per month, I’ll be less apt to get bored with my subject matter and more apt to keep pushing myself forward.
So, for the month of January 2013, I will write my thoughts on the study of the book of Proverbs. I have often gone back to the idea of reading the Proverb for the day for each day of the month. For months with 31 days, it works perfectly. For months with 30 days, I just read 2 chapters at the end. I cannot tell you how many times the reading for the day has been perfect for whatever I was going through on that day. Now, as I move forward, I will have the opportunity to share exactly how that is working for my current day.
As you can tell, I’m jumping off a day late, so later this afternoon, you should see two posts from me. I hope to stay on top of them for the rest of the month. If you’d like to read the subject matter ahead of time, go to the You Version website at https://www.youversion.com/bible/97/pro.1.msg (I’ll likely do most of my studying using “The Message Bible” and the NLT translation, so I’ve linked to “The Message” here), and pick your favorite Bible version to read from. Read the entire chapters of Proverbs 1 and 2, and then come back and see what I’ve gleaned from them in my personal life. Wednesday is my new designated writing day, so I’m excited to have a little extra to share for that anyway. Now, I must go to sleep to rest my writer’s mind since I’m still actually working on Tuesday the 1st. I was going to go ahead and write my first Proverb post before going to sleep, but I’m afraid it won’t have the same meaning if I don’t first get some rest.
Talk to you tomorrow,
~Crystal
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