Crimson’s Creative Challenge #45

A drop of ink dirties a glass of water, but not an ocean. And for some people, their human hearts are oceans which are not tainted easily. But even if a human heart can sail an oil tanker like an ocean does, there is still a limit.

He learns the hard way that the limit is during a low tide.

That is when what is thrown out during the day comes back to haunt him at night, when the ocean washes the trash back. What is washed back is even worse – rotten and smelly after being out in the sea for too long.

If there is such a thing call karma, then it must be the rubbish being washed back.

(121 words)

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If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

Here’s how it works:

Every Wednesday I post a photo (this week it’s that one above.)
You respond with something CREATIVE

Here are some suggestions:

• An answering photo
• A cartoon
• A joke
• A caption
• An anecdote
• A short story (flash fiction)
• A poem
• A newly minted proverb, adage or saying
• An essay
• A song—the lyrics or the performance

You have plenty of scope and only two criteria:

• Your creative offering is indeed yours
• Your writing is kept to 150 words or less

Prompt: Crimson’s Creative Challenge #45

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The Simple Things #3

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

1. alone time

2. music

3. reading

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If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

Every Saturday, I will share three things that I believe to be the simple things in life, yet things that make me extremely happy. I invite you to do the same.

Now, it’s your turn! Share with me three simple things in life that make you happy. Please reblog, share this post, and give others a smile and a little bit of love. If you reblog the post, please ping or tag my blog and use the words “Simple Things” and “Happy“ as your blog entry tags.

Prompt: The Simple Things #3

Kira’s Sunday Scribbles

He lost his head.

He was very much confused when the people around him said he had not grown his head yet. Was his head not well matured enough? How would one grow a head then?

For years, he searched for an appropriate head. But there were so many to choose from! As he was growing up, he saw heads of all shapes and sizes – round, square, triangle, big, small and distorted. Then, when he started working, he saw even more heads – wooden, metallic, beautiful and rotten.

And he tried them all on. Even then, not a single head seem to fit him properly. After a while, he stopped trying to find an appropriate head and just put on one that was always readily and conveniently available, no matter how uncomfortable that head felt at times.

He still mulled over the question from time to time – how would one grow a head?

Eventually, he looked down at his own head which he put aside years ago. He decided to put it back on. Strangely, it suited him despite years of disuse; he still found it the most comfortable.

He decided to keep it.

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If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

Welcome to Kira’s weekly inspirational art piece.

Let the whole picture tell you a story, or dive into the small intricate details to make one up! Write a poem, a fiction piece or come up with a picture or drawing of your own, that you feel relates to it.

Feel free to copy Kira’s drawing, to add it to your own post!

Anything goes, there are no rules. But don’t forget to link us to your post with a pingback. Not sure how to do that? See how to create pingbacks here.

Prompt: Kira’s Sunday Scribbles

Scintillating Saturday Share #18

Night Sky|Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt

dance of white hope
in darkest hour

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It’s never truly dark out out there. Somehow, one way or another, you can still see the clouds, floating in the night sky.

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

Every Saturday, I will share a photo that touches my heart, makes me happy, or lifts my spirits in some way. The purpose? To send love, light, peace, and kindness out into the ether. Scintillating Saturdays: one definition of the word scintillating is as follows: witty; brilliantly clever.”

Now, it’s your turn. This’ll be our “Scintillating Saturday Share #18.” You can respond to this post, reblog and respond, or create a standalone post of your own, but please ping or tag this post so that I’ll know to read and respond to yours.

Using up to 7 words, tell me what this photo sparks in you.

Care to get creative with me for this scintillating Saturday share?

Prompt: Scintillating Saturday Share #18

Three Line Tales, Week 184

photo by Dave Herring via Unsplash

Next Stop, Happiness

With each colourful step she takes away from that church, chaining stress and caging expectations unshackled.

She turns back only for a briefest moment to look at the conservative culture managing every aspect of her life, before she turns around for good to continue her journey.

Religion doesn’t bind; it frees.

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If there is one thing I cannot understand, it is why people like to enact their expectations on others under the facade of religious rules. I’m a Buddhist, but there are no cardinal rules on diet, or women, or sexual orientation. Only a series of karmic causes and effects, as well as philosophical scriptures which requires guidance or risk mis-interpretation.

But when I was younger, I have been approached by many Christian missionaries, with the opening lines of “Do you believe in Jesus?” and rapidly spiralled into “Only do you believe in Jesus can you be saved” rhetoric. I was impressionable then and my takeaway from those interactions was “Christianity seems very enthusiastic about Hell and condemnation.”

Until some of my Christian friends raised their eyebrows at me when I candidly asked them about Christianity years later. That’s when I realised, Christianity never asked to convert anyone by fear; those “missionaries” I met were going out to convert people because they wanted money for their church.

Hence the story.

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

You’ll find full guidelines on the TLT page – here’s the tl;dr:

• Write three lines inspired by the photo prompt (& give them a title if possible).
• Link back to this post (& check the link shows up under the weekly post).
• Tag your post with 3LineTales (so everyone can find you in the Reader).
• Read and comment on other TLT participants’ lines.
• Have fun.

Prompt: Three Line Tales, Week 184

100 Word Wednesday: Week 131

Image by Bikurgurl

She had always been nimble since she was a child, climbing everywhere before she could walk properly. Her mother used to call her “my little monkey”.

And all her jobs had got something to do with heights; window cleaning, billboard painting, power lines installing and the likes.

But bounded to a wheelchair now, she was a shell of her former self, unable to even climb the stairs.

“Look how high I’m going, Gramma!” the little girl laughed.

Running to the other side, her granddaughter went down the slide fearlessly.

She smiled. “Climb, my little monkey, climb!”

Her legacy lived on.

(100 words)

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How beautiful it is, to pass on one’s skill to the next generation. If there is only one regret I must name, it will be my clumsiness to learn my mother and paternal grandmother’s culinary skills. My mother had inherited my paternal and maternal grandmothers’ recipes of traditional dishes. While I learnt to make the simplest and most basic dishes, I lacked the aptitude to learn the more complicated dishes.

How much of history is lost if I can never learn them…

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

How to participate? A few guidelines as we begin….

1. Simply check my feed, or search the reader, for the 100WW or tag #100WW, post each Wednesday. I’ll also be posting on my Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Feeds.
2. Write your submission on your blog, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook Feed and ping back to the weekly blog post. Feel free to use the image provided or your own. Please do credit the artist whose image we use — Links provided.
   
3. I have not enabled automatic pingbacks due to a plethora of spam messages attempting to link up. Do feel free to also continue posting your links and I will enable your pingbacks as I check my blog. Thank you for understanding!!
4. I’ll provide a Weekly Summary, or Windup, of posts on or by Tuesday; take the opportunity to read and comment on your fellow bloggers posts {keeping in mind to give each other grace and space}. I try to read them all and post your submission in the Weekly Windup.
5. Have fun! I enjoy reading your challenge submissions!

Prompt: 100 Word Wednesday: Week 131

Scintillating Saturday Share #12

Toa Heftiba|Unsplash

vibrant life rides vibrantly

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“Life Is Like Riding a Bicycle. To Keep Your Balance You Must Keep Moving” – Albert Einstein

I saw the prompt from Tre (A Cornered Gurl) and this quote immediately came to my mind. Oftentimes, I’m so preoccupied by whatever matters that vex me I lost sight of what I’m supposed to be doing – simply keeping the balance between my inner world and my environment, as cliche as it sounds.

It’s nice, then, to have this reaffirmation every now and then.

PS: I’ve been doing Scintillating Saturday Share for quite a while now, but I just don’t know why it never occurred me to do standalone piece like I do for other prompts. My mind is weird. *shrugs*

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

Now, it’s your turn. This’ll be our “Scintillating Saturday Share #12” You can respond to this post, reblog and respond, or create a standalone post of your own, but please ping or tag this post so that I’ll know to read and respond to yours.

Using up to 7 words, tell me what this photo sparks in you.

Care to get creative with me for this scintillating Saturday share?

Prompt: Scintillating Saturday Share #12

I Write Her Weekly Haiku/Senryu Challenge #21

I will not be trapped
by the four oppressing walls
but fly with the moon.

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The desire to fly under the full moon, toward a destination, without any baggage. The best kind of flight ever. But the image is poetic in how it captures the full moon, the clouds and the birds, using the buildings as a kind of frame.

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

PLEASE follow them! I’d hate to not see your piece(s) represented in the recap the following week! Confused? Any questions – email me at sushibocks@gmail.com   

For more detailed information, read about this challenge here.

• Create a standard three line, 5/7/5 syllable count haiku/senryu
• Deadline to submit for this week’s challenge will be 11:59pm 6/1/19
• Up to 3 pieces permitted
• Link your piece to this “IWH Haiku/Senryu Challenge” on your post
• Always give photo credit if there is one
• Complete entry form below

Prompt: I Write Her Weekly Haiku/Senryu Challenge #21

 

I Write Her Weekly Haiku/Senryu Challenge #20

Daily Doodle

Acceptance

You keep one eye closed
to all the flaws found on me
when I bared myself.

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I am revived during the holidays (Vesak Day, a Buddhist celebration in honour of life in our part of the world, in case you are wondering). Refreshed and ready to write again after the break!

And speaking of in honour of life, this is haiku which sprang to my mind almost immediately when I saw the image prompt. Can we ever accept people into our lives without finding faults and flaws? *shrugs*

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

PLEASE follow them! I’d hate to not see your piece(s) represented in the recap the following week! Confused? Any questions – email me at sushibocks@gmail.com   

For more detailed information, read about this challenge here.

• Create a standard three line, 5/7/5 syllable count haiku/senryu
• Deadline to submit for this week’s challenge will be 12:59pm 5/11/19
• Up to 3 pieces permitted
• Link your piece to this “IWH Haiku/Senryu Challenge” on your post
• Always give photo credit if there is one

Prompt: I Write Her Weekly Haiku/Senryu Challenge #20

Weekend Writing Prompt #104 – Meander

Photo by Sebastian Sørensen on Pexels.com

Over the Next Hilltop

Joel has a routine; breakfast, work, lunch, work, home, dinner, sleep, repeat. Even the food, the routes and the work are routine. But driving to work that day, he suddenly decided to go down a road he meant to explore. Meandering ever since, he has never stopped.

(47 words)

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I love and loathe routines; love because it gives a structure but loathe because there is no change. On some days, in the words of Sheila from Santa Clarita Diet (which is a great TV programme, by the way), “I want to shake shit up”. Then real life beckons and I’m back to the routine again.

PS: the name “Joel” comes from the same programme too.

If you are interested, the prompt is linked below.

The challenge is simple: each week you will be given an exact number of words you can use to write a poem or piece of prose.  You can use any format or style you like; go wherever your inspiration takes you.  The only rules are these:

• your poem / prose must contain this week’s word.  The word does not have to count towards the exact word count total – it can be in the title, or the first letters of the lines of a poem can spell it out – you can be as creative as you want as long as it’s there somewhere.
• the length of your poem / prose must match the number of words stated in this week’s challenge.  No more.  No less.

Prompt: Weekend Writing Prompt #104 – Meander