Quicunque

Prompt: Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)

At the core of me is a survival story. Despite what last year threw at me and dragged me though, I'm not a victim, not a failure, not a has-been. I'm still standing and still strong, still quietly walking towards the future with my eyes on the event horizon. I don't share my story with the world because it's something internal and personal and what does the world care anyway.

When I consider my responses to the prompts this month, both those written and those silently contemplated, I find a general lack of respect for trite or flimsy buzzspeak and a mile-wide streak of cynicism. I don't think that's a bad thing. Cynicism isn't necessarily a negative trait; it's the inevitable result of walking through the world with open eyes and mind. Nor is it unexpected that I find it threaded through my reflections; years ago one of my first lovers told me that for a romantic idealist, I was awfully cynical.

I'm just glad to have got to end of Reverb 10, and completed it with my sanity and sense of humour intact. I can start analysing whether I achieved anything from it beyond the miracle of completion in itself once the initial heady rush has subsided. A post mortem of the experience will no doubt follow later.

Prompt: Gift. This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What's the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year?

Gifts have been rather sparse this year as myself and everyone else I know in fleshpace are being dull and economising. I did treat myself to a new snow shovel, but I'm not sure that was particularly inspirational to look back on. It was damned useful though, and I had many occasions to bless it heartily in the few snow-blanketed weeks before Christmas. I was given an Amazon voucher for Christmas which was most eagerly welcomed too, since I'm in desperate need of something to read and the local library doesn't seem to have had any new books in since 1976. But I suppose the gift I'll most remember from this year is that my partner and his father together provided the wherewithal for us to be able to take a much-needed holiday in the sun even though I wasn't earning any money and couldn't have paid my own way.

Prompt: Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

I'm having a déjà vu moment - haven't we covered this territory several times already? There's not a great deal more I can honestly say that I haven't said before - the event that most affected my life this year was losing one job and getting another, and that's it.

I feel like I should invent something more interesting 0_o

Prompt: Achieve. What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.

Since I haven't been able to find fulfillment this year, I suppose that's going to be the main thing I'd want to find in the next. But it's a fluffy, intangible thing to aim for -- not a specific something I can qualify like having an ambition to win a gold medal at the Olympics, getting a top job, having a book published or marrying George Clooney. It's the weaving together of all the strands, the bringing into actuality of hopes and intentions, the feeling I'm travelling the right road and doing something rewarding and meaningful that I enjoy. Been a long time since I achieved that, but I know it's do-able because I've done it before. I just need to work on doing it again.

When I attain fulfillment, I will feel... uh, fulfilled. I mean, satisfied. Contented. Like, duh.

Okay, time for a list. I love lists. This is my 10 things/thoughts:

1. Don't let the bastards grind me down
2. Accentuate the positive
3. Keep the goal realistic, and in sight
4. Don't beat myself up about failures
5. Celebrate the milestones
6. Get a new hobby!
7. Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw
8. Make more quality time for the important people/cats/things in my life
9. Finish up some of those started-and-abandoned projects
10. Like myself

Prompt: Ordinary joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year

Life is filled with ordinary joys and small pleasures, but ordinary moments are not the kind that you can just pull out of a hat and say THIS was the best one. It might have been any number of times I paused on the highest point of the ridge to look back down the trail into the green valley spread out below, or any of the times I saw low sunlight glancing through the beech and silver birches, or walked through a carpet of bluebells. It might have been sitting on the steps of a cathedral in an ancient sunlit, tree-filled square listening to a street musician play stately baroque guitar pieces, but most likely it was one of those quiet, understated but still profund moments of peace and connection shared by two humans, 6 (or 5) cats, a bar of Bonnat chocolate and a good film.

This is my entry for the Yuletide Flash Fiction Challenge at PanErotica - "The challenge is to write a short story of no more than 600 words. The only other rule is your story must begin with the following first line: The lights appeared out of the darkness.

The lights appeared out of the darkness, a score of candles dancing in the unnerving stillness of the night, fixed to a small pine tree that had been set up on the parapet of the enemy trenches some seventy yards away. There was still some sporadic gunfire and the dull thud of shelling in the distance, but along this stretch the artillery had fallen silent on both sides of the line. Instead, the still night air carried voices across the span of barbed wire and mud: snatches of laughter and shouts, bursts of singing drifting across the stilled battlefield.

The stench of rotting and unwashed bodies, stagnant mud and cordite was little better above ground than in the trench, but he lifted his face to the night sky and breathed deeply anyway. After weeks of cloud and rain, it was a clear moonlit night. On the enemy side, he could see small groups of men emerging from the parapet, and behind him, his comrades were singing carols of their own.

The two sides met among the bodies of their fallen comrades in the open ground between the trench lines. They were cautious of the extraordinary and unexpected truce at first, but soon small souvenirs were being offered and accepted. Hands were shaken, buttons snipped from greatcoats and exchanged, tobacco swapped for chocolate.

“Ein Licht für Ihre Zigarette, Tommy?”

He glanced round to find an enemy officer, a lieutenant of some kind, grinning at him, holding up a brass lighter and miming lighting a smoke. He accepted with a nod and leaned over to let the tip of his woodbine touch the offered flame cupped in the officer’s hand. The brief flare of light illuminated the grime ingrained into the skin, the broken and bitten nails, and for a moment he felt a powerful sense of intimacy with this stranger.

“Thank you, danke,” he straightened up and exhaled a lungful of smoke, gazing at the face of his deadly enemy.

Not the sadistic and cold-blooded devil that propaganda would have him believe, but a man just like him, young with ancient eyes that had seen too many atrocities. It was hard to sustain hatred for a man who shared the same grim and brutal reality.

He offered a cigarette from his battered case, which was cheerfully accepted. Tomorrow they would go back to trying to kill each other, but tonight was a different country.

“Für Sie, behalten Sie es.” When he shook his head, not understanding, the officer reached out and took his hand, pressing the brass lighter into it. The metal was smooth and still warm from his enemy’s touch. Turning it over, he saw there was a name engraved into it but it was illegible in the dark.

In return he gave the cigarette case. It was heavily dented now and the silver tarnished, but the officer grinned and seemed pleased by the exchange. From the pocket of his greatcoat he produced a small flask of schnapps and they toasted each other in the temporary peace of no man’s land.

“Fröhliche Weihnachten, Tommy.”

“Merry Christmas, Jerry.”

Prompt: Soul food. What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul?

Oh my. I was already struggling to take this seriously and then I re-read that last sentence and had to bite back the most obvious and very raunchy reply that immediately jumped into my head! Someone should really have thought harder about their phraseology there; we don't all have clean minds.

Okay, moving on.

My culinary highlight of the year was a box of Indian sweets I gorged on shamelessly. A friend who knew I loved them had brought me a box of assorted varieties for my birthday - some gleaming with edible silver foil, others glistening with sugar syrup, some were halwas studded with slivers of pistachios and dates. Despite the high sugar and and condensed milk content, I have no self-control when it comes to Indian sweets, and although they made me a very happy (albeit slightly queasy) bunny indeed, I have to admit there is very little soul-ful about my greed for them. It's just as well they are such a rare treat, I suppose. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

Prompt: Photo - a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

Now you do realise there is totally no way this is going to happen, don't you? If I'm not prepared to share my real name online, nor am I likely to share my photo, telephone number or bank account details. Besides, no photograph can tell more than a fragment of a story. There is so much more to a person than can ever be captured in one imagine. A thousand words is not enough to encapsulate anything significant about me. 50000 to 100000 words is considered an average count for a chapter, but my life is a whole novel.

Prompt: Everything's OK. What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?

Now just you hold your cotton-pickin' horses there - what makes you so confident that everything is going to be alright when I'm not so sure myself?

Best moment? *snorts* Sure, I'm not down in the very bottom of the trough of despair, but not only do I have no even half-way convincing proof that everything is going to be alright, but if I am to look at hard economics and general satisfaction with my life, all is NOT okay and I have to say I find this prompt's giddy assumption that it is to be totally patronising.

Prompt: New name. Let's meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

But why for just one day? It would be Jerry Cornelius, and technically, I do it every day.

Yes, that's right people, I am sorry to disillusion you but Jerry Cornelius is not really my real name. It's simply the nom de guerre I adopted some years ago for the online writing/social communities I participate in, and it's the monicker the interwebs companions I met through those channels still know me best by. I've never used my real name online and never will.

It's slightly creepy how quickly one can grow into a cyber name though. The boundaries start blurring rather more readily than you'd expect. It hasn't happened yet but it wouldn't surprise me if I did absent-mindedly introduce myself to a fleshspace stranger as Jerry Cornelius and I'd certainly answer to it if I heard it called. But then, I've been known to say 'lol' in normal conversation when preoccupied so who am I to joke about it?.

Hasn't everyone invented new or different names for themselves ever since they were old enough to be discontented with what their parent's labelled them with? The first name I can remember wanting to adopt was Marmaduke, after our neighbour's handsome ginger tomcat, and I never looked back. I love doing those silly "Your Rockstar/Stripper/Redneck/Alien Lifeform Name is...." quizzes. Life on the internet has made it so much easier to adopt whatever name (or however many) you want without question or need for legal formalities. Yay verily, we live in escapist times.

My heating is fixed!! I have hot water again!!!

The plumber arrived with today's snowfall* and worked and cussed for a few hours until we were rewarded with the crank and grind of the boiler firing back to life. You don't realise how much you take heat and hot water for granted until you spend a week without either in sub-freezing temperatures at a time of year when plumbers are booked up with weeks of work. Now I have the radiators switched high to drive off the lingering cold and melt the ice inside the bathroom windows. The cats are passed out on the bed like hot little rags and the household is happy again - see how we're easy to please with a few basic creature comforts?


* this reminds me of a character I write at PE, a spirit whose appearance is conveniently heralded by snow storms - theatrical maybe, but I do like a bit of theatre in my stories.

Prompt: Travel. How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year?

'How' is a very odd question! I travelled in the usual way most human beings do. On foot, in a car or coach, occasionally a tram or train, twice an airplane. And I guess next year I will be employing exactly the same modes of transport unless someone invents a really small, economical and easy-to-park trans-atmospheric spacecraft in the meantime.

Where I would like to travel is a better question. I would like to return to Italy, specifically Siciliy or Rome. However, due to financial constraints, I know that isn't at all likely. If I'm lucky we might be able to afford to take a small holiday somewhere in England in the autumn.

Prompt: Future self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?)

How can I give myself advice for the future since I do not know what will; happen or what will be required? So much is happening that is out of my hands I can't begin to imagine where I will be in five years. All I can say is that any projection based on the current trend is not something to look forward to, and I can only admonish myself to stand fast, hold tight and deal with it.

As for my younger self...

Prompt: Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

There were many things I didn't do this year but most of them were to do with the lack of temporal and financial resources. Of those that weren't, well, I should have written more, I should have stayed in better touch with my friends, I should have appreciated the rare day of sunshine because the next day it rained for a month, I should have told my partner more often than I did that I love him.

Will I do it? I have the best of intentions.

Prompt: Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

I cannot do better with this prompt than direct you to Ashtoreth the Eldritch's response to this prompt, where she gives the answer I believe it cries out for. I honestly can't think of anything else to add, except that I went light on the chilli powder and am not so confident about increasing my exercise in 2011, but found grapefruit seed oil essential for tummy upsets (most of which were occasioned by my cooking).

Prompt: Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn't go for it?

Like several others I could have liked this prompt better if it had said 'experiment with' instead of 'try', because although it might seem like idle semantics, there is a subtle difference in positivity involved. One is to attempt something with a view to achievement, the other is to test it with a view to discovery,

I am notorious (short concentration span, butterfly brain yadda yadda) for experimenting with many different things, some of which I adopt as more serious pursuits and some of which I decide simply aren't for me. I do things simply because I am interested in new experiences, it's rarely deliberately planned, and carries no obligation of guilt or failure.

Thanks to several unforeseen domestic disasters, including the death of my heating boiler during the coldest week in 30 years and subsequent inability to stay in the unheated computer den for any period of time, I'm falling behind with Reverb 10. Can't say I'm all that eager to tackle the couple of prompts I've missed so far, but I did so want to complete something I started this year that I'll likely catch up as soon as my fingers thaw enough.

Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I learnt that even though I may throw my hands in the air like a temperamental diva and proclaim that life sucks/the future is hopeless/Ragnarök is upon us and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are entering the home straight, somehow I still endure. That's something to feel pretty satisfied about, no?

Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?

Let me say straight up, I don't have a great circle of friends, just a few soul mates. I'm a solitary, antisocial, shy person and as with most things in life I've always pursued quality over quantity when it comes to making friends. Those I do have are very treasured and appreciated - yeah, even if I forget to let them know that as often as I should. Some of my dearest friends I have never met in person, and may never do so, but that doesn't mean I value them any the less. Fleshspace and interwebs friends alike encourage and inspire my creativity, support me and raise my spirits when I'm down, scold, sympathise and laugh with me. And I love 'em for it.

I don't think I've changed myself or my outlook radically this year because of a anything a friend has said or done, and to be honest I'm not sure I would want to. Sure, we've mutually introduced each other to new authors, new music, new cafés that serve ace Italian coffee. But to me, friendship is about comfort and familiarity rather than radical change. Warm fuzzies, dude.

Prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

Five minutes is too generous - thirty seconds would suffice. I'd rather forget about most of last year. The largest part I want to remember, or will want to in the future, are the stories I've written or brainstormed with my co-writer. The other good stuff - the moments of love and laughter, the days the sun shone and the soft warmth of living fur beneath my hand - were not unique to 2010; they are tucked away in the old neural connections and I hope I shall experience them all over again, and afresh, in 2011.

Of course, some people, including my long-suffering partner, would say I didn't have a memory to lose. Sometimes that's an advantage. What was I saying?

Prompt: Appreciate. What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

Okay, so I've decided that the only way I can handle Reverb 10 is to tackle the prompts on my own terms. Since I signed up in the mistaken belief the prompts would relate to creative writing rather than new-agey self-help concepts, then that's how I'm going to interprete or re-invent them from now on! It's the only way I can keep going, and I make no apologies for not being the kind of person inspirational buzz-words and repetitive retro/introspection suits. It's simply horses for courses.

So here we go with Reverb 10 (The Remix)!

Prompt: Action. When it comes to aspirations, its not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step?

My problem isn't getting ideas, it's what to do with them once I've had them.

Nearly all the fiction I write is collaborative, and my co-writer and I are devils for sparking up new characters and storylines between us, and not having the physical time to carry those ideas to fruition. We both have overactive imaginations, but we both have to go to work and we both have families to spend time with. So, for every story we write, there are at least two that never see the light of day. As I write, I have three fairly new characters created for specific stories that due to time contraints imposed by the necessity of living sometimes in the real world, are not likely to get written anytime soon, if ever. All we can do is try and let as many of these embryonic stories and characters as feasibly possible be birthed and written. I used to fret about the unborn ones, but I'm learning to accept my limitations. If they're worth revisiting, they will get their chance one day.

Prompt: Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

I think I've crashlanded on the wrong planet. I've had 11 hours to ponder it, and I still don't have the faintest clue what the heck 'body integration' is supposed to mean or how to respond to this prompt with anything more intelligent than a totally baffled "Huh, WTF?"

I naively believed people whose minds live a totally separate and independent life to their bodies only existed in scifi and gothic novels.

Prompt: 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

Here we go, in no particular order:

Regrets. I've had a few. But then again - I don't really want to drag them after me into the next year. I'm a bit to prone to wailing about lost opportunities, but It's time to move on past the what-ifs and if-onlys.

Apathy. Oh I can't be bothered. You know? It's all such a big deal. If I don't do anything about it, it will go away quietly. Will it heck as like! It'll still be hanging round my neck like an albatross in 2012 if I don't put a boot under its arse.

Debts. 'Nuff said. This one's a bit out of my control apart from the old adage about not being a borrower. I'm not reckless with what little I have, but neither am I super-duper at stretching it and I need to work on that this coming year.

Hankering after things I can't have. I'm like a kid with its snotty nose pressed up the sweetshop window sometimes. Why do I do this? I mean, I don't think I'm a particularly materialistic person, and most of my wants are pretty modest and within the means of someone earning a decent living wage (a Flip, not a Ferrari), so it's pretty pointless, right? I suppose this is what coveting thy neighbour's ass means.

Procrastination. This seems to crop up on many people's lists. How can that many procrastinators be wrong? I'll think about it another time.

Worrying. I worry a lot, which is something that may surprise people who don't know me as well as they think they do. I worry about the cats getting sick, climate change, finances and work (or lack of either), my friends, the quality or lack thereof of my writing... oi, I need to quit sweating the small stuff.

Stuff I've started and never finished. I've got too many projects I embarked upon with boundless enthusiasm and gay abandon and then set aside and forgot about entirely, I lack stamina and have the concentration span of a goldfish. If I make it through the whole Reverb 10 month, it will be a bloody miracle. I should force myself to finish one abandoned project before I can start anything new. However.. [see above, Procrastination]

Negativity. I'm certainly not a depressed or depressing (I hope) individual but I admit that if there's a down side, I'll notice it and worry about it (see above, Worrying) and drag it to your attention. And wallow in it and say "I told you so."

That's eight things and I've run out of inspiration now. So I'll make up the numbers with three things I am NOT planning to eliminate next year or any foreseeable time after: clutter, caffeine, chocolate.. Because I'm worth it. (Should I have added self-indulgence to my list, maybe?)

What the heck was I thinking of when I signed up to Reverb 10? Actually, I know why I signed up for it. I wanted to set myself a writing/blogging challenge because I needed the stimulation. Howvever, I confess I misunderstood what Reverb 10 was all about, heheh. I thought it was going to be creative writing prompts, rather than the navel-gazing, self-searching kind. Couldn't have read the mission statement very well!

Day 10 and I'm already tired of talking about myself. I'm just not that interesting a subject. After a few days scratching my head over alien concepts, I started feeling inadequate, like I wasn't the kind of person who should be doing Reverb 10. It was nice to discover I wasn't alone. Reading other people's daily prompts, I found that while many apparently are finding the exercise inspirational, motivational, emotional and deeply fulfilling, there are others like myself struggling to get a grip on the prompts. Maybe we're the cynics, or something. Hi, guys!

One of the reasons I'm struggling is that I'm a deeply private person and some of the prompts would shove me out of my comfort zone if I really let myself go in answering them. I'm just not prepared to reveal that much of my personal life and emotions online. It's between me and my daimons, and that's not going to change. Besides, I'm not the kind of person that thrilling, life-changing events happen to, so it all gets rather dull and negative after a while - or maybe it was just a particularly dull and unpleasant year I'm looking back on because I swear I wasn't always such a dork.

But I'm determined to see the month through, even if it does my head in by the end of it. I'm obstinate like that sometimes. And in a perverse kind of way I am getting a kick out of it, and even if the mental stimulation wasn't what I thought it was going to be at least it's fired a few synapses. Plus I've made the acquaintance of a few simpatico and interesting people on the back of it, which is a damned fine thing *nods*.

Prompt: Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

Let me start with the disclaimer that 'wisdom' isn't a concept I'm very familiar with at the best of times. At the worst of times, well - just call me the village idiot, or court jester, whatever. Okay, on with the prompt.

Some years you're the jellyfish, and some years you're the tide. 2010 was a jellyfish year for me. It was a year in which I didn't get to make many decisions for myself, and of those few I did make, I have no idea yet if they will prove to have been wise ones or not. They were prompted by necessity rather than real desire and only the longer term will demonstrate if they play out good, bad or just ugly.

Come to think of it, perhaps being a jellyfish was the wisest decision I took. Sometimes its better to flow with the tide than to try and swim against it when you don't really have a great deal to lose or win either way. I hope next year circumstances might be such that I can be more proactive and seize life by the balls. Never a shark, but maybe a stickleback.

Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

Anyone following my Reverb 10 entries must be thinking by now what a grumpy, antisocial misery I must be. It's not true, I swear it! I am a happy little sunbeam generally, but... okay, I admit they might be a bit right about the antisocial part. I don't do parties. Loads of people I don't know drinking, dancing, networking and getting their groove on with each other just doesn't rock my socks. I'm not comfortable in large social groups and don't beat myself up about that nowdays. It's just the way I am.

I prefer small laid-back gatherings of people whose company I genuinely enjoy, and I've missed meeting up with my several good friends this year while I've been working at weekends, which is the only time they're not at work. We have our favourite meeting places where we can sit and put the world to rights. Traditional pubs are getting to be as rare as hen's teeth nowdays since the breweries are closing them down or turning them into Thai restaurants faster than you can blink, but we're fortunate in that we do still have a smattering of small local hostelries where one can leisurely enjoy a pint of the local brew with one's mates. Or in my case, cider or coffee since I don't like beer.

My favourite haunt serves up a pretty good taste in music as well as what I'm told is a decent selection of ales. On the average evening you might get Warren Zevon, Dylan, Nick Cave, obscure early punk bands, Irish folk and Joe Bonamassa. People bring their working dogs and ferrets in with them. I still get a kick out of that. You don't get people passing their ferrets round in the city winebars I used to frequent before I moved into the wilds.

Prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

Okay guys, I've got some news for you. No one is as 'different' as they think they are. Out there, there are millions of people with the very same traits you think make you unique. And in striving to be 'different', we very often simply fall into another defined category - remember how you demonstrated your 'difference' as a teen by joining a youth subculture and subscribing to its predefined physical code and attitude? And just how different do you really want to be anyway? Different isn't automatically beautiful. Different can be very ugly and drag with it a whole set of problems, prejudices and hurts. Growing up gay taught me that, and being gay is only 'different' because other people make it that way.

I don't want to be different. I just want to be special. It's not the same thing at all.

Things that make me beautiful: I love unreservedly but am aloof with strangers; I daydream when I should be working and get excited over small pleasures; I'm vain but shy and introverted, am fierce in defense of my personal space and prefer animals to people. I am reputed to be closely related to a cat. I don't light people up, but I sometimes amuse and please them.

I am not different, just unique.

Just in case you can't tell, I'll admit I didn't like today's prompt. Maybe it's the phrasing rather than the intent, but I found it subtly self-satisfied and irritating. But I guess that's one of the challenges of something like Reverb 10 where you're not choosing your own topics to muse on - you're going to get some prompts that you simply can't personally relate to. Moving along now.

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

In terms of online communities, strictly I didn't really get into any new ones last year. I've been a regular member of my main two writing communities - PanErotica and Panhistoria - for many years, although I'm less active overall than I used to be. I did start some solo creative writing efforts at Livejournal and Dreamwidth, but although I met several interesting and inspiring people through that, I wouldn't say I discovered 'community' at either of those places. Yes, communities do exist at those sites, but for myself, I simply shared an environment with thousands of other individuals without interaction, and probably without much common interest.

The only real life community I've really become a part of this year is one of my two workplaces. I've worked at home or with only other one person for a few years, but back in the Spring I took an extra part-time job that put me back working in a team. A small team, but a team none the less. People I had something in common with - even if it was only our work, but in some cases shared interests and outlooks too. This turned out to be an eye-opener! I'm a shy and reserved person in real life but quickly found I liked the contact and interaction with my work mates. I'll never be a sociable animal, but I hope to find a similar sense of connectedness in whatever job I find myself doing next year too.

I wrote a blog post last year about the loss of community spirit in modern Western society. Community, in the local sense, is becoming rarer than hens' teeth, especially in larger cities where one can live in lonely isolation amongst millions of individuals, with no friends or relatives in the neighbourhood. Internet communities are much maligned by some social commentators who blame them for contributing to desocialisation, but one could just as easily make a case that the lack of community spirit in our real lives contributes to us heading in droves to the big, bad cyberworld in search of social interaction, however shallow. Uh, okay, I'm starting to ramble round in circles now, it must be bedtime...

Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

Aha! At last a prompt that's about something tangible and physical! (at least, that's how I'm choosing to interprete it...)

Well, My partner would say the last thing I made was an unholy mess in the bedroom, using duvets, pillows, cats and casually dropped clothing, but he would say that any time you asked (and no, he isn't any tidier than me either).

The last real thing I made was a Christmas cake at the weekend. I was late making it this year; I've normally made it back in early November and dowsed it with rum a couple of times by now, but things got away from me a bit this year. Fruitcake gets a bad rep, but done nice and moist and packed with tea-soaked dried fruit and a few glugs of Captain Morgan Spiced or Sailor Jerry, it's damned good stuff really. Especially when consumed with a chunk of good Wensleydale cheese and a glass of home-made damson gin (which I set steeping a few months back so doesn't count for the purposes of this prompt). This year's cake might not be as matured and flavoursome as previous ones, but I'm sure it will be fine!. And I still need to make another cake for a culinary-challenged friend who would otherwise resort to buying a supermarket nasty.

Because I've been so disorganised this year, I've also really left it too late to make pomanders, which I am disappointed and cross with myself about. I love making them, and I love the spicy cinnamon-clove scent of them drying by the woodburning stove. Maybe pomanders needn't be just for Christmas though, and if I start them now I'll still appreciate them in the cold, colourless, dreary days of January?

Oh and I also need to collect some holly and ivy to make a Christmas wreath for the front door. And make that Bailey's Irish Cream fudge I promised my partner... what the heck am I doing sitting here drinking coffee and munching Hobnobs when I need to start getting busy!

Prompt: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Loss has been a theme of this year, and a good deal of it is something that for the most part I didn't choose and don't care to revisit. At least not yet. Sometimes, the things you have to let go are things that you weren't ready to lose.

However, depending on what, or whom, and the circumstances and history of the matter, the act of letting go can be liberating. Just as animals shed their winter coats at the start of spring, and a snake sloughs its skin to allow for growth, so sometimes it's necessary to shake off the past, people, habits or material things that have outstayed their welcome, or are holding us back.

That's the theory, anyway. I do confess I'm not really very good at letting things go. I'm an archivist by nature, and tend to clutter my life with baggage and stuff. But this year, I had to finally accept it was time to cut some old ties and move on from a work situation that had stagnated and was stifling me. I admit that I had help making the decision. My hand got forced by events outside my control - global economic events got real personal, like they did for so many others this year - otherwise even now I might still be making excuses for clinging on like a limpet. It will be okay, I'm sure it will be.

On a more mundane level, I finally persuaded myself to take all the VHS tapes of my favourite films to the charity shop, since I'm never likely to ever get a machine that can play them again. In fact, I haven't had such a machine for well over two years..... See what I mean about holding on to clutter? I just hope I don't regret it! When I moved here, I reluctantly got rid of all my lovely old vinyl records because I no longer had a turntable, and I'm still kicking myself and cursing about it now.

We only have so much space in our lives. If we don't let the dead wood go, how can we ever find room for the new branches to grow? Now if only I could persuade myself to put that into practise more often... *grin*

Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I'm one of those undemanding people who tends to quietly appreciate the small stuff in life and find something to marvel at in the simplest things. And since this city boy followed the man off his heart to the country a few years ago, I have found I don't have to deliberately cultivate a sense of wonder, because happily it's never too far away from me.

I have always been fond of solitude, and on my expeditions through the woods and fields, moors and cliffs that surround my home I have not only found many peaceful (and creatively encouraging) moments but also many marvellous ones - and I mean that in the literal sense of something that provokes wonder and amazement.

Nature is truly a wonderful mistress. I'm not strongly articulate or deep enough to avoid horrible clichés where she is concerned, but there is incredible beauty in the fragile skeleton of a rotted leaf, mist curled like a cat in the valley, roses crystallised in hoar-frost, the fascinating alien microcosm of a clump of moss, cobwebs in sunlight strewn through the branches of a tree like fairy hammocks, the slant of light through a beech wood. These things are all still as fresh and wondrous to me to me as they were when I first saw them, and I don't think they will ever lose their magic:

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

Oh my, this is a tough prompt today! I think I commented back on day one that this year wasn't noteworthy for its bright moments. I was tempted to flunk out altogether by simply stating there never was a moment when I was truly, conciously alive this year - I was too busy keeping my head down and plodding onwards! I admit there was one occasion that leaps to mind, but it's still too painfully raw to commit to the gaze of strangers so I'm not going there today.

What does that leave me with? Faulty, incomplete memories and impressions like polaroids arranged out of context. Rare but happy days with warm sunshine on my face, the scent of mown fields and the precious sense of peace and quietude one finds in the woods. Far, far from the madding crowd, thank you Mr Hardy. There were times of love and beauty, fullfilment and thrill, but I honestly can't pinpoint any one specific moment in time and say that meant more than all the rest.

I think I've chewed this prompt over too much in the hours I've been dredging my brain for something worthy of mention. And after all that I've simply come to the conclusion that there wasn't one unique moment, but a whole motley crew of them.

I suspect I still flunked this one. Maybe tomorrow's prompt will fire the synapses more constructively.

(Hell, I'm just chuffed I've managed three consecutive days!)

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it?

The obvious answer would be work, which is a non-creative financial necessity that I can't eliminate if the cats and I require a roof over our heads and kibble. But after I thought about it for a moment, I realised even work contributes a wee dribble to my writing. None of my characters have even been in the same line of work as myself (can't imagine anything more boring to write, or read) but even tiny little elements drawn from one's mundane working life and experience - observations, ideas gleaned from idle conversations, that kind of thing - do sneak in.

So what else do I do that doesn't contribute to my writing? Eat? Yes, I've often thought about how much time we spend on cooking and eating and what else we could be doing with that time if our bodies didn't need this complex fuelling system!

Seriously, the thing I do daily that is least productive is procrastinate. I love 'having written' more than I like 'am writing'. I'm lazy and not a good self-motivator, and if it weren't for the gentle and patient support of a wonderful co-writer I probably would spend all my time woolgathering and never get around to writing at all. Look at me now - I'm sitting here writing about writing rather than doing it!.

Can I eliminate my procrastination habit? Maybe tomorrow.

Prompt: One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you're choosing that word. Now, imagine it's one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

It's much harder than you think to choose just one lonely little word to summarise an entire year in one's life. So many trends and themes that to single out just one of them gives a skewed impression. At first, I was going to choose 'loss' as the word that encapsulates my experience of 2010. I lost my job. I lost my Best of Cats. I lost my perspective and my groove. Loss was certainly a dominant theme in my year. But I decided that although 2010 has been a helluva horrible year it's too defeatist to leave only a negative memory of it. And so I'm going to choose instead the rather more upbeat, survive. Because hey, I did survive it! And that's about the best thing I have to say for a year that would have been best stuffed into a dark bag on Jan 1st and beaten to death with a large stick ;)