General

Hosted by the enterprising and ever helpful Reena at

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #Week 6

What is it that makes you feel powerful? What is that strength which makes your time on this planet worthwhile?

FLY ME HIGH UP THE SKY

By Neel Anil Panicker

MONDAY, 12 NOON,

FACULTY ROOM

‘Dammit, I have another class after this. Hate teaching a bunch of stupid students?

‘Bad luck, Arvind. Don’t forget it is idiots such as these who sponsor our salaries, who help make both our ends meet, who…’

‘Know it Rahul and cut the spiel, will you. These good for nothings, when they throw  cash on the table it helps bring us ‘food on the table  What do you say, Animesh?’.

At that instant the bell rang and Animesh thankfully extricated himself from the Faulty Room and strode purposefully down the corridor towards the corner classroom for what was his second class of…

Rod Serling said, “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.  You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas.  You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”  This is a state of surrealism, where things that should not make sense seem to do so. When you arrive here, you are likely to encounter strange phenomenon and bizarre events.  The Twilight Zone is a mental state between reality and a world of fantasy, or an illusion that resides between light and shadow, and is somewhere between science and superstition.

The Twilight Zone featured a collection of tales which range from comic to tragic, they often had a wicked sense of humor and an unexpected twist.  They could be weird and scary, as they explored humanity’s hopes, despairs…

I am powerful in every way
Way to go, as my parents say
Say what I feel and believe
Believe that I could sashay

I’ve always been, since I was born
Born the second but acted like first
First to leave the country and explore
Explore and be well versed

I think I’m a good wife and mother
Mother to the son who’s left the nest
Nest of love and now he’s married
Married and now on their own quest*

(c) ladyleemanila 2017

* Loop Poetry is a poetry form created by Hellon. There are no restrictions on the number of stanzas nor on the syllable count for each line. In each stanza, the last word of the first line becomes the first word of line two, last word of line 2 becomes the first word of line 3, last word of line 3 becomes the first word of line…

What is it that makes you feel powerful? What is that strength which makes your time on this planet worthwhile?

The word powerful is not one I would use about myself as I wouldn’t think of myself in that way. There were times when as a teacher I had to wield some power in the classroom to survive what were some days an ordeal.

I tend to see myself more as a person who tries to be there in the moment, supporting others and trying to understand what it is that is going on.

An example is my attitude to my children. They are a diverse lot of people with as many ideas contrary to mine as you can imagine. But early on I decided the best way for me to be in their lives was to be there for them. Our children never do everything we might like them…

I feel empowered when I can say something that is witty.  I work as a substitute teacher which requires me to inform the students of the lesson plan that their teacher left for them.  The other day my students finished their assignment and there was still time left in the class, so I told them a story from my first book, ‘Man’s Footprint in Water’.  They had just watched a short video about Jamestown, John Smith and Pocahontas and I told them that I had another story about the Virginia colony and I asked them if they wanted to hear it.

I told them this story from my book.  In the fall of 1609, several hundred European settlers were struggling to survive on swampy Jamestown Island, as they were riding out a brutal drought and hoping for boatloads of supplies to arrive.  By the following spring, after a horrific…

Reena’s Exploration Challenge

With grateful thanks to Reena who this week asks us:

What is it that makes you feel powerful? What is that strength which makes your time on this planet worthwhile?

A SPECK OF ENERGY

When Spring rains tease, and make believe
this year there’ll be no splashing seaside days —
no beach ball play, no sandy feet, or plastic spades —
I smile to hear my friends’ predictable complaints,
then, when fickle summer deigns to show its heated face,
I bathe in its flirtatious fleeting phase.

When sunny haze gives way to skittering breeze
that flutters fading flags from yawning trees,
to drop them all in heaps
on forest floors and fields and lawns,
it saddens me to see them crackle in the gardener’s autumn blaze,
and turn to ash as if they have
no valid place in fenced-in, trim hedge symmetry,
yet even boot-black ash has…

The reason there were no documents surrounding the previous strategies was fairly obvious. No one wanted to admit to failure and their own level of incompetence.

The embarrassment they all felt when the academics penned ‘military intelligence’ as the newest oxymoron to be added to modern lexicon didn’t give them a lot of reason to explore the thought or rather lack of thought that surrounded the futile practices of the war.

It was a blight on the powers that be that so many were sacrificed in battles doomed to failure in the planning stages, but as they saw the common soldier as expendable and necessary collateral damage, so they persevered safely stowed away in their bunkers miles from any danger to them.

I surveyed all this and wondered what my next move might be.

Clearly, present strategies were not working, except if you were an undertaker and they were overwhelmed…