General

The prompt is to write something that brought about a change in the life of a protagonist, family, community, nation or the world. 

Through the numbness that went with the leaving there emerged a relief, a weight taken from his shoulders and it was several days after he had vacated his home leaving his wife, angry and her heart full of vengeance, his younger children dismayed, his older children understanding.

He had taken the step many thought he didn’t have the courage to do was surprising when it happened.

He didn’t care what anyone thought, for once he was doing something for himself and as much as it pained him to be leaving his children in the ‘lion’s den’, so to speak, he knew they would be ok. Despite her bluster, she wouldn’t do any of them harm, so he thought.

He walked to his new home that first…

If frustration could be used as a,

Fuel,

When chided,

Snubbed, frowned upon,

Rather than hold a grudge against the one,

And involve in pettiness,

Use it as fuel to ignite dreams,

Care not, if you shy away from predefined rules,

Care less, if you fail to live by someone’s preconceived notion of you,

Care to, live by dreams you aspire to achieve,

Care less, of what the world’s gotta say about you.

---

Prompt :–

QUESTIONNAIRE

by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the freemarket and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.
2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.
3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works…

Every evening my ma would sit me on a stool, run her fingers lovingly through my hair and brush with gentle downward strokes. Her tenseness and agitation would lessen with each stroke of the brush and each sip of Jack Daniels.

“You’re my little angel” she would repeat over and over as if in a trance ” my little angel”. After a while she would tell me about my daddy.

Your daddy was always holding up the wall besides Lucy’s convenience store, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a permanent smirk on his face. I would pass that way every morning and afternoon going to and…

I loathe The Man
whose power bulges
out of waistbands,
whose double chins
wag double talk,
who equates dollars
with immunity,
claims superiority.

Whose dominance
intimidates, so I
duck out of the way,
bite my tongue,
refrain from speaking,
cower in the face
of injustice.

Who, I ask,
is the more evil?

(Reena’s Exploration Challenge this week asks us to respond to the words of Wendell Berry’s Questionnaire. I chose to respond to question #2: “For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? “)

Reenais the host of Reena’s Exploration Challenge

~*~

They proclaim to be the righteous ones

Holder of all good thoughts that anyone can think

They have a mission to correct all the wrongs anyone has done

With burning batons of fire, they march on

The old must be destroyed to create the new they proclaim

The tree of evil must be rooted out before fresh saplings are planted

No sacrifice is too great to achieve the purity they desire

No deed too dastardly to complete their mission

They will demolish the present to bring home a perfect future

Rivers of blood and tears flow on the way to utopia

Beware of these well meaning ones

Those who think they will fix all that is broken here

It’s not a worry for them when they wreck havoc

In the name to making things better

image link

Reena asked us to choose from a list of questions and answer. This is the one I chose.

“For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.”

I wouldn’t have a clue how to answer the other questions because they seem to be more rhetorical than looking for an answer. This one, though, is one I can write to. During the 18 years I worked as a juvenile probation officer, there were things some might call evil that I was willing to do, but I would never say that those acts were acts of hatred.

I still remember sitting in the interview with one of the administrators and the person who would be my immediate supervisor and learning that part of my job would be to put…

Colin Kaepernick is bad for football; he is a bad seed and I could readily do without him.  He is the guy who would not stand during the national anthem and LeBron James is among the celebrities who jumped on the bandwagon to support him.  He has alleged that NFL owners have conspired to keep him out of the league.  Pete Rose should be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame way before Kaepernick is ever allowed back into the NFL.  Kaepernick claimed that he was protesting racial injustice and police brutality against people of color, but he was being paid to play a sport, not to be an activist.  He hasn’t played a game since becoming a free agent in the offseason of 2017.  The NFL has reached a settlement with Colin Kaepernick after he was blackballed.

Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in…

Seven is my number of power. I’m not sure why. Some mystical significance in an ancient spell long forgotten. Some random number chosen by my mentor, long since departed this earthly plane. Who knows why we adopt certain attributes and habits. But butterflies, I have no trouble understanding their significance and power….and I now have seven butterflies fluttering in a cage. Where is that spell book.

• two tablespoons of honey
• one tablespoon of brown sugar
• 7 oz. of brandy
• seven large lettuce leafs cut into bite size pieces
• mix ingredients thoroughly
• seven butterflies

I opened the cage carefully and reached inside waiting patiently for a butterfly to flutter to my finger. My patience rewarded I quickly withdrew my finger towards the cage door and swallowed that delicate creature. I felt a slight tickle as the butterfly eased down my throat…