That bronze bowl? Is it one that has been singing - singularly, salient and oh so sweet - since antiquity? Today is it's tuning to 'The Song of Achilles'?
Those three other #bowls that make-up the quartet of bowls ensembled each with its particular provenance and story of an for today to convey . . . are they somehow siblings or simply strays that have blown in balled in tumbleweed to centre stage of your imagination?
Such a very short story. Sparkling; so many sparks already, today, on just one first reading. Tomorrow? Another horizon, over which who knows what sparks may catch what kindle to ignite fresh story fires?
Such a very short story. Such a very excellent short story. Such a very excellent short story indeed.
Thank you so much, Rob. The vss365 community in Twitter passes the host baton every two weeks, when another vss writer supplies the rest of us with the day's prompt. I have been doing this every day since August 2022 and it's been a transformative writing experience. :)
That wooden bowl? Where in today's world could it be that, in what's still a world of plenty albeit it at risen prices, a starving child striving to find food for the family found only two grains of rice?
Were it in the land of Canaan, circa two millenia ago, who knows what multitude turning both grains carefully into a warming cooking vessel, adding just a little water, bringing to the boil then simmering awhile might feed?
Pardon me for begging the questions of availability of kindling for fire, an intact pan, clean water in my dreaming of hope for those kettled and clinging, eyes wide open, in the patch of tortured land that is Gaza!
And what next for that wooden bowl: what bounty will be found in its concave precincts tomorrow?
That ceramic bowl? That single copper penny sitting parallel to its flat bottom?
The attributes of the bowl, say, "smooth and sophisticated" or "rough and raw"? The attributes of the penny, say, "bright, shiny, fresh minted" or "dull, grimy, much used"?
Set me pondering Tuesday, on first reading, about possibilities; transported me to a flimsy first pamphlet published by a 'he who was to become famed writer'; sits with me still, this Thursday morning; this collage of bowl / penny / writer.
Could it be that the penny is one paid for the last of something left still to be sold? Could it be that the penny was paid for the last pome postcard or for the last pomme left lying in a wicker worked basket on a stall? Could it be that Camila's imagery has morphed, for me - this reader - into a ticket to ride back down the vista of years to a moment in a time of decision?
Could be that this is a branch-line born of a bifurcation, one that may be continued but not until at least the day after tomorrow, which is Saturday. Tomorrow is Friday so it must be that glass bowel's time to be stepped into the transitory limelight of our Word Stage popped up here courtesy of and in collaboration with Remote Control Inc.
Amazing 🙀 to have found so much spinning off 🌪 from first reading such a very very short short story . . . whatever next 🎭 ?
That glass bowl? Does it still exist? Two beaten eggs in it? Ready to be turned into a hot pan and made into an omelette for someone's lunch?
Or is there now no trace of that glass bowl, of the eggs beaten in it? Was it blown to smithereens yesterday in the moments when in excess of Another One Hundred Palestinian Lost Lives were added to the Terrrible Tally that mounts day by day in Gaza?
Is it that David has become Goliath?
Pray yes, but for what . . . guess it depends on who you are and where you stand . . . I only now that I feel we, in what we label The West, are Eyeless rather than Seeing in relation to Gaza . . . but perchance I'm reading the runes wrong . . . perhaps Friday Prayers will be followed by a Modern Miracle of Manna as that penny proves plenty to buy bags more rice and dozens more eggs that can be woven in as the warp and weft of a dream that comes true to confound the catastrophe of continuing humanitarian disaster that William Blake's vision was right and there is an Almighty with a Compass to Mercifully Cradle the Innocents of Gaza?
Tomorrow is the Sabbath and I intend to return to that moment of choice back down the arc of the story of my life. In one way a trivial personal indulgence in another way a tale that tells that neither Thou in originally writing or I in writing, successively, in response can know which way our words will land or how they may flow on over 🌄 land or across 🌅 water.
And after Saturday, why it's Sunday and so my 📝 pen will rest, having placed a last full stop on this page of texts that have so unexpectedly been typed in these comment 🗨 windows 💬. Typed, gingerly, as 👁🗨 gently recover from retinal detachment surgery.
On that story I mentioned back last Thursday, the one seeming to shape as a ' branch-line born of a bifurcation' in the sequence of instinctive narratives sparked by a VSS, Let's get back to it, briefly, somewhat in the manner of picking up a dropped stitch in closing out creating a collage work. Some other stuff of life - a visit from my son and our travel over to where my wife has been staying and then my dropping off to sleep through the early evening took care of Saturday and on Sunday I rested, read and listened in spells, and slept again deeply and long.
So now it's Monday, early afternoon, sunlight's bright enough for early March, and here's my end post (in this thread at least).
Back when I was looking to what might come next after finishing school, I met a young man who was a year or so older than me and who had as is sometimes still said 'gone up' to university. We were each browsing the shelves of the then Collier's Bookshop in Trinity Street in Coventry. One of my two likely roads to travel after schooling was to 'read' English at university. I happened to ask what was the first book he'd had to read (The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg) and what was the pace at which he and others were expected to read and react to texts (simply too fast and furious for my appetite, so his answer struck me). If undergraduate English is envisioned as sitting pretty contained in a bowl then the consequence of this glancing conversation was to encourage me to go with studying in the realms of the subject sitting prettier in its bowl: Geography. And that was a real choice that turned on a moment . . . and which has, just as another Robert's poem etches on it's readers recollections 'made all the difference'.
Thanks again for sharing such a fine VSS.
Who'd have thought it would have triggered such a sequence of short(ish) therapeutic (for my improving Eye and I)? Not I, I can say with at least a modicum of confidence! 😊
Rob
PS. I look forward to reading more of what you choose to post here on Remote Control Camila 🧱 > 🌅 > 💦 > 🏊♂️ > 💡💡💡
That bronze bowl? Is it one that has been singing - singularly, salient and oh so sweet - since antiquity? Today is it's tuning to 'The Song of Achilles'?
Those three other #bowls that make-up the quartet of bowls ensembled each with its particular provenance and story of an for today to convey . . . are they somehow siblings or simply strays that have blown in balled in tumbleweed to centre stage of your imagination?
Such a very short story. Sparkling; so many sparks already, today, on just one first reading. Tomorrow? Another horizon, over which who knows what sparks may catch what kindle to ignite fresh story fires?
Such a very short story. Such a very excellent short story. Such a very excellent short story indeed.
Thank you Camila.
Thank you so much, Rob. The vss365 community in Twitter passes the host baton every two weeks, when another vss writer supplies the rest of us with the day's prompt. I have been doing this every day since August 2022 and it's been a transformative writing experience. :)
That wooden bowl? Where in today's world could it be that, in what's still a world of plenty albeit it at risen prices, a starving child striving to find food for the family found only two grains of rice?
Were it in the land of Canaan, circa two millenia ago, who knows what multitude turning both grains carefully into a warming cooking vessel, adding just a little water, bringing to the boil then simmering awhile might feed?
Pardon me for begging the questions of availability of kindling for fire, an intact pan, clean water in my dreaming of hope for those kettled and clinging, eyes wide open, in the patch of tortured land that is Gaza!
And what next for that wooden bowl: what bounty will be found in its concave precincts tomorrow?
I am praying hard for Gaza.
That ceramic bowl? That single copper penny sitting parallel to its flat bottom?
The attributes of the bowl, say, "smooth and sophisticated" or "rough and raw"? The attributes of the penny, say, "bright, shiny, fresh minted" or "dull, grimy, much used"?
Set me pondering Tuesday, on first reading, about possibilities; transported me to a flimsy first pamphlet published by a 'he who was to become famed writer'; sits with me still, this Thursday morning; this collage of bowl / penny / writer.
Could it be that the penny is one paid for the last of something left still to be sold? Could it be that the penny was paid for the last pome postcard or for the last pomme left lying in a wicker worked basket on a stall? Could it be that Camila's imagery has morphed, for me - this reader - into a ticket to ride back down the vista of years to a moment in a time of decision?
Could be that this is a branch-line born of a bifurcation, one that may be continued but not until at least the day after tomorrow, which is Saturday. Tomorrow is Friday so it must be that glass bowel's time to be stepped into the transitory limelight of our Word Stage popped up here courtesy of and in collaboration with Remote Control Inc.
Amazing 🙀 to have found so much spinning off 🌪 from first reading such a very very short short story . . . whatever next 🎭 ?
Friday. Noon approaches.
That glass bowl? Does it still exist? Two beaten eggs in it? Ready to be turned into a hot pan and made into an omelette for someone's lunch?
Or is there now no trace of that glass bowl, of the eggs beaten in it? Was it blown to smithereens yesterday in the moments when in excess of Another One Hundred Palestinian Lost Lives were added to the Terrrible Tally that mounts day by day in Gaza?
Is it that David has become Goliath?
Pray yes, but for what . . . guess it depends on who you are and where you stand . . . I only now that I feel we, in what we label The West, are Eyeless rather than Seeing in relation to Gaza . . . but perchance I'm reading the runes wrong . . . perhaps Friday Prayers will be followed by a Modern Miracle of Manna as that penny proves plenty to buy bags more rice and dozens more eggs that can be woven in as the warp and weft of a dream that comes true to confound the catastrophe of continuing humanitarian disaster that William Blake's vision was right and there is an Almighty with a Compass to Mercifully Cradle the Innocents of Gaza?
Tomorrow is the Sabbath and I intend to return to that moment of choice back down the arc of the story of my life. In one way a trivial personal indulgence in another way a tale that tells that neither Thou in originally writing or I in writing, successively, in response can know which way our words will land or how they may flow on over 🌄 land or across 🌅 water.
And after Saturday, why it's Sunday and so my 📝 pen will rest, having placed a last full stop on this page of texts that have so unexpectedly been typed in these comment 🗨 windows 💬. Typed, gingerly, as 👁🗨 gently recover from retinal detachment surgery.
On that story I mentioned back last Thursday, the one seeming to shape as a ' branch-line born of a bifurcation' in the sequence of instinctive narratives sparked by a VSS, Let's get back to it, briefly, somewhat in the manner of picking up a dropped stitch in closing out creating a collage work. Some other stuff of life - a visit from my son and our travel over to where my wife has been staying and then my dropping off to sleep through the early evening took care of Saturday and on Sunday I rested, read and listened in spells, and slept again deeply and long.
So now it's Monday, early afternoon, sunlight's bright enough for early March, and here's my end post (in this thread at least).
Back when I was looking to what might come next after finishing school, I met a young man who was a year or so older than me and who had as is sometimes still said 'gone up' to university. We were each browsing the shelves of the then Collier's Bookshop in Trinity Street in Coventry. One of my two likely roads to travel after schooling was to 'read' English at university. I happened to ask what was the first book he'd had to read (The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg) and what was the pace at which he and others were expected to read and react to texts (simply too fast and furious for my appetite, so his answer struck me). If undergraduate English is envisioned as sitting pretty contained in a bowl then the consequence of this glancing conversation was to encourage me to go with studying in the realms of the subject sitting prettier in its bowl: Geography. And that was a real choice that turned on a moment . . . and which has, just as another Robert's poem etches on it's readers recollections 'made all the difference'.
Thanks again for sharing such a fine VSS.
Who'd have thought it would have triggered such a sequence of short(ish) therapeutic (for my improving Eye and I)? Not I, I can say with at least a modicum of confidence! 😊
Rob
PS. I look forward to reading more of what you choose to post here on Remote Control Camila 🧱 > 🌅 > 💦 > 🏊♂️ > 💡💡💡