Tell Me A Story

Posted on October 17, 2021 by Perpetua

How do you respond to this question or statement when I ask you “tell me a story” instead of “how are you?”

Is it an art to be able to respond to a simple question? Or you’d rather not talk about it? As I get older, I noticed even in my family, I could sense their discomfort in sharing even the best of life’s situation. Thank goodness, I am learning to be still.

There is a site that offers vestige stories of women that are open to storytelling.

Let’s share meaningful narratives.

Vestige is the poetic synthesis between the essence of minimalistic beauty and the gravity of storytelling. Stories collected from women of different paths form the basis of our designs, which are then woven, sewn or embroidered into each garment. Storytelling has long established its place as the most essential tradition of all human culture. We hope this precious custom can extend beyond the literature and media we consume, and permeate the very products we use in our daily lives.

Photo credit: Vestige Story

Talk of the town

Posted on October 13, 2021 by Perpetua

Now all the babies are born, all three of them, one boy and two girls, the centre of our conversations is about the babies. You can just imagine the chin wagging on how to raise a child from the elders.

I for one hardly say on how to raise a child. I just want the child to see the ordinary and make it extraordinary.

This is Lucy. She’s now a grown up studying at UBC to become a lawyer. I don’t know if she remembers the simplicity in life. But I think she does. The other day, she sent us how fall is blooming in the grounds of the university reminding us that it’s time to visit and see the ordinary beauty of nature turning into extraordinary.

Can’t wait. This time bringing my other sister who wants to escape from intellectual conversation.

How do you plea?

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Perpetua

Plea the Fifth Amendment. I refuse to answer for this might incriminate me. In Canada, we call it Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Self-Incrimination.

“Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.” And then I swore on the Bible. This was my experience as part of a Jury for 10 days. A priest once told me when he is called on to swear on the Bible he refuses because he has already taken the Oath when he decided to serve God and mankind. Of course, I forgot about this when I was asked. I placed my hand on the Bible, and I said:“I swear.”

It was quite an experience and an honour to serve Canada being selected as a Jury. It made me think that the future of this man lies on my hand should I decided against the other jurors. I was Number 8. Mind you, we were given a manual on pointers on how to become a jury and how to make a decision based on just law. No bias, no discrimination. The jurors came from all walks of life. One juror, in my opinion, was very fashionable. She made sure that she is well dressed for the public and for the Judge. This is not a criticism. It’s important that we are dressed properly. But once we deliberate behind closed doors, we have to divest ourselves. Not our clothing, but our just minds. We have to have an open mind without the probability of a doubt.

We did reach a verdict. NOT GUILTY. Whew. I was glad we came to a conclusion. What was the case, you asked? Joe vs. the People. Joe was accused of killing his brother. Just like in the Bible, Cane killed Abel. But Cane was guilty; Joe was not.

Back to swearing on the Bible to tell the whole truth; when I was a child, my Mother always reminded me to tell the truth. That is so plain and simple. Should you ask me WHY, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind. (click to play the song)

Tell the truth, try, you might like it. Nothing adversarial.

One Minute Meditation:

“Why is everyone here so happy except me?” “Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere,” said the Master. “Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere?” “Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside.” || Anthony de Mello, SJ

Light Made it Visible.

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Perpetua

To reach the peak of Mt. Sinai to witness the first light of the day, one has to start trekking at zero dark thirty.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.” ~ Rumi

Dawn of a new day
On top of Mt. Sinai.
Half light, half dark
The light made it visible.

It is a place for everyone.
Muslims, Christians, Buddhist, Atheist.
All is welcome.

Zero dark thirty is a phrased I picked up from Tina.

You light up my life. Not the sun, but the moon.

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Perpetua

By the light, not the dark but the light
Of the silvery moon, not the sun but the moon
I wanna spoon, not croon, but spoon
To my honey, I’ll croon love’s tune

Honeymoon, honeymoon, honeymoon
Keep a-shinin’ in June
Your silvery beams will bring love’s dreams
We’ll be cuddlin’ soon
By the silvery moon

The rest is details

Posted on May 3, 2021 by Perpetua

I want to know God,
The rest is details.

We chose to stay at home to be surrounded by love ones.

Photographers and people who have let themselves be photographed assume that someday people will see their images and do something in response to what they see, she argues. They imagined you, their future viewer, hovering above them at the moment the picture was taken, and you must live up to their expectations.

Azoulay asks her readers to project themselves into the scenes of photographs, to notice the power dynamics at play, to identify the participants, and to view the outcomes not as inevitable but as one possibility among many. Looking at photographs this way, Azoulay thinks, can loosen events from their seeming inevitability and reveal that history didn’t have to proceed the way it did. Things could have been different. Viewing a photograph becomes a kind of reanimation: the still photograph begins to move, and though this motion cannot erase inequality, it can trouble oppression that might otherwise seem intractable. Azoulay understands that actions in the past are irreversible, yet she insists that photography introduces a kind of malleability, the potential for change. “The photograph is out there, an object in the world,” she writes, “and anyone, always (at least in principle), can pull at one of its threads and trace it in such a way as to reopen the image and renegotiate what it shows, possibly even completely overturning what was seen in it before.

Quotes source: How We Should Respond to Photographs of Suffering

Beauty under my naked eyes

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Perpetua

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket save it for a rainy day ~ Perry Como

Snowflake

It’s snowing. Finally, I’ve been waiting for it. The last time it snowed was on Christmas. As it falls, I tried catching a flake. As soon as it touches my skin, it melts into water. I figured that my body temperature is not cold enough to keep it for a second or two. Trying to take a photo using an iPhone 6 seemed to be a futile activity, but I persevered. This flake stayed long enough, and I have used a burst of shots.

Since it rains so much here in Vancouver, it’s so easy to forget the snow.

Snowflakes

Today is a good day to inspect the snow. The air is so dry and the flakes are hardly sticking. I tried looking at the snow on various surfaces and colours. Red, blue, green, yellow, orang, umbrella, nettings, plants and even on my jacket. It’s was fascinating to seem them glitter like diamonds.

The snowflake makes its first appearance in recorded history when people identified individual snow crystals—with their distinctive six-fold symmetry—as the constituent elements of falling snow. The earliest known account was in 135 B.C., when Chinese scholar Han Yin wrote “Flowers of plants and trees are generally five-pointed, but those of snow, which are called ying, are always six-pointed.”

Subsequent Chinese writers mentioned snowflake symmetry as well, an example being the 6th-century poet Hsiao Tung, who penned: “The ruddy clouds float in the four quarters of the cerulean sky. And the white snowflakes show forth their six-petaled flowers.”

“The snow crystals . . . come to us not only to reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Nature, but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade way. But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent, like the beauties of the autumn, as of the evening sky, it fades but to come again.” ~ Wilson A. Bentley

Write. Read. Wrong?

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Perpetua

Write. That is a complete sentence — a full statement.

Having learned how to write, it becomes an obsession. I still prefer longhand writing using the old cursive loops. Sometimes, I can’t write fast enough as fast as I think. I can’t write them all. Just as well, maybe it’s not that important. Yet, writing to me is a compulsion. I am a compulsive obsessive writer. Sometimes, I write on white space using my breath and a window. It leaves no trail. Poof.

There is a box full of spiral notebooks accumulation of my writings. I don’t read them. I write my thoughts to make room for more thoughts. I am not a writer. Nor do I want anyone to read my innermost thoughts. Hence, I started purging. Again.

If I had written negative about somebody else, and then they surprised me by behaving completely differently to how I had characterized them, I might say, “Well, they made me eat my words” (in hindsight, this may embarrass or even pleasantly surprise me. Should it’s embarrassing, I have to take back whatever negative remarks I made about them). Is it better to put my foot in my mouth or to eat my own words? Idiomatic.

Nowadays, most of my writings consist of groceries or a things-to-do list.

End result of purging my writings served on a plate.

Nothing has been written that hasn’t been said before. So I use some writings as a quote and unquote. Quotes are better.

I recently used a quote and posted it as a comment on Donald J. Trump’s Facebook page.

"The SCOTUS isn't insane enough to be on Trump's side. 
He will lose again. This makes me happy. 
Trump is a horrible human being."

Note that this was posted previous to the SCOTUS decision. I truly have no idea how the Rule of Law will swing nor how SCOTUS will respond.

Much to my surprise and amazement, this comment received more than 1.5K replies, all inflammatory directed at me. Aside from that, I received messages via Messenger. Some visited my personal public FB page, left a trail of laughing and angry emoji. Some were bold enough to write comments. The good thing is that FB is smart enough to filter their comments. All I have to do is delete them. Easy peasy.

Read! Doesn’t anyone know how to read at all? It’s a quote. Geez.

One exception. One person read. One person really knows how to read. And I quote:

*Daamnn its sad over 1000 people never heard of quotation marks…youre almost famous now lol”

Wow! Wow…wow…wow…you actually caught the quote. You are the only person that paid attention to what I posted. If this is a lottery, you won the jackpot. I responded.

“Ya…it looks like [they] were screwed tho.” He responded.

Write. Read. Wrong?

You Should Be Writing

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Perpetua

Recently, WordPress sent me a happy anniversary notification. Wow. At least someone remembers me. After that, I was notified that my Personal account is set to expire on January 15, 2021. Thank you again, WordPress, for the friendly reminder.

You Should Be Writing! I see this all the time from another site that I subscribe to, Writing about writing. This is another fun place that I spend time reading, not writing.

Yep! Been busy writing. Writing comments (my opinion) on FaceBook. I know I can be opinionated objectively. I am not a hater. I do not attack. I do not post emojis or GiFs (god, I hate those!) because I should be writing.

BAMM! Haters and spammers, beware. Haters receive vitriol awards while spammers are reported to FB admin with a reply “spammer reported.” Oh, they easily remove their content. I go further and check out the rest that they replied to all commenters. I received applause, thank you, like, and love from commenters. This is just something to do while I entertain myself during Covid times. Desperate measures in desperate times bored to kingdom come.

BAN HAMMER

Since FB has difficulty banning hate speech on posts and commenters, I am taking this matter and using Thor’s hammer. I wonder how many users I can block? I’ve lost count.

Goodness. I do receive some good responses and people with a sense of humor. Those are the best. For example, I respond to this comment when our good doctor decided to prohibit all religious sites from having services for the next two weeks. (This news did not go well) Anyway, the conversation goes … thread.

SN: It baffles me too. Restaurants, bars, and even schools remain open, but you can’t attend church! This is starting to look like the government take over!

Me: SN, I posted the same thing on different media. Churches have been good in the prior mandate of 50 max attendees; they use masks, and only two people in a pew every other row. Transits, trains, restaurants, bars, cinemas, malls are high traffic. If the government has to mandate, it has to be objective and universal. The media’s first focus was the temples, now the Catholics. What’s next?

Someone chimed in:

PM: The government will place an agent in your house, and you’ll be prevented from any form of worship. This happens on Monday. Afternoon.

Me: That would be really nice. I hope the agent is not allergic to cats.

PM: hahaha. I hope he loves cats.

Me: I sure hope so; cats are gods. I worship them. Tee hee.

PM: I like them, but my dogs take exception to cohabit with a cat(s). My dogs discovered eBay and sold the cats.

Me: Laughing hard. This is way too funny. Dogs are just way too smart than the masters, I want to have a dog, too, but my cats insist on total loyalty.

PM: my dog is smarter and better looking than I ever was. (Sent me a picture of his dog.)

Me: Well, but wisdom comes with age and good humor. This is one handsome canine. This dog reminded me of my Doberman many years ago.

We both had a good conversation outside a sensitive topic.

Back to writing about writing. I did make one contribution to the community, and it went very well amongst the writers.

WordPress: Please do not feel neglected. I am still you’re number one fan. I love it here; feeling secured from spammers and the community of bloggers is tremendously wonderful.

FaceBook: You could do better.

Be Grammared or Be Hammered

Image

I’ll catch the sun

Image

I’ll catch the sun

It is better to light just one little candle,
Than to stumble in the dark!
Better far that you light just one little candle,
All you need is a tiny spark

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