Is it weird that I remember the band, Oasis, more for the fights between Liam and Noel Gallagher than I remember their songs?
I suppose the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is true. We humans seem to have a better memory for the negative than the positive.
The Tuesday Use It In A Sentence prompt is brought you this week by My Loving Wife at A Word Adventure. Click the link and join in today!
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about serendipity on this blog. The last time was just a little more than two years ago. I talked about how I met my children’s father; it was a serendipitous occasion.
However, something happened more recently that makes me think it’s possible for serendipity to work in reverse. Allow me to tell you a story.
Once upon a time there was a girl who was walking alone around Tokyo, browsing through the open air market on a crisp but sunny November day in 2015 when she came across a man selling silver jewelry. This girl loved silver jewelry, in fact she was wearing four rings upon her fingers, all of them in silver.
As she perused the gentleman’s wares, she came across a ring that was identical to one of those she was wearing. Unable to contain her excitement at the chances of this happening, she pointed to the ring on the stand and then to the ring on her finger, to share with the man this unbelievable find. What she didn’t have the vocabulary in Japanese to say was that she had bought the ring she was wearing eleven years ago… in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada!
Extraordinary, wouldn’t you say?
Fast forward to Sunday, January 24th, 2016, the very same girl was out taking pictures when she accidentally took a picture of her ring with her cell phone.
How silly, she thought, and she considered deleting the picture but for some reason she didn’t. And now the girl is glad, for she had no way of knowing she would lose that very same ring the next day. No more than she could have known she should have bought its duplicate when she found it in Tokyo.
Because as it turns out, she found her ring in the most unlikely place in the world, two months before she lost it.
The “Serendipity” prompt is brought to you by Jan at JT Twissel. If you don’t already know her, please head on over and have a read!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 28th post here!
I always thought the word “felicity” meant easy. And it does, kind of. One of the definitions is, and I quote from Merriam-Webster online, “a pleasing manner or quality especially in art or language,
“an apt expression.”
So it seems to me that it means a way of wording something that makes the something easy to understand. Yes? Yeah, okay. I’m trying to justify myself. Is it working?
The first two definitions of “felicity” from the same source are, “a : the quality or state of being happy; especially : great happiness, b : an instance of happiness,
“something that causes happiness.”
So I suppose it really means happiness.
“Felicity” always reminds me though of an early 2000’s TV show called Felicity. I never watched it. I do recall seeing previews in which a woman (presumably Felicity, played by Keri Russell) seemed to be always in a state of angst. Which would have made the show quite ironic I suppose. I don’t enjoy watching ironic shows – they make my head hurt.
There’s one other thing the word reminds me of – felicitations, meaning best wishes or, as a translation from French, congratulations. I’ve always wondered at people saying congratulations to an individual for turning a year older. But it is indeed the way some say happy birthday. Weird.
The “Felicity” prompt is brought to you by Fun at Simply Me. If you don’t already know her, please head on over and have a read!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 22nd post here!
Wow. Okay. “Oh Thesaurus The Great” gave me “redress” to work with today. Your guess is as good as mine where this is going…
As a verb, a few of the synonyms are adjust, correct, rectify, and repair. I suppose in blogging terms we redress our posts in that we edit them (if we’re perfectionists or even semi-perfectionists) all the time. Typos abound in my posts; if I didn’t edit them you wouldn’t be able to read half of them. But even that doesn’t seem quite right (as a definition of the word) since some of the other synonyms seem full of regret: make amends for, mend, and repay for instance. So is it fair to say that if I regret not editing my post I am full of redress? Let’s see what it means as a noun.
Atonement, indemnification, (there’s a mouthful) quittance, reparation, and restitution among others.
And here I was expecting to talk about trying on new clothes… 😉
As you probably know, my words for this A-Z Challenge are coming at random from my thesaurus. I’m absolutely committed to sticking to the rule I set for myself to take whatever word I open the book to that is the second from the bottom on the left-hand page. This will not, by the way, apply to the letters X and Y and Z- there aren’t enough pages for those letters. But I digress. My main concern today for the letter C was one particular entry that just happens to be the second-last letter in the left hand column on page 104:
Yes, this could have been the word of the day. It was with a grimace and a prayer to the word gods of the planet Thesauri that I gingerly parted the pages of my big red book and believe me, it was with a sigh of relief that I discovered I wouldn’t have to talk about cocks. Luck was on my side; I landed instead on page 108 and the word “commit.”
I think to a certain extent we all have things that we’re compulsive over. One of my biggest compulsions is that I must stick to a commitment. I may even be worse–more determined–with the commitments I make to myself, though I’m pretty fierce when it comes to doing whatever I promised someone else I’d do. Which is why it just about kills me when I can’t keep up with these challenges I set for myself.
One of the synonyms for “commit” is “imprison.” I do, in a way, imprison myself when I dedicate myself to something. I box myself in but that’s really not all that bad. For an unemployed (at least in a 9-5 sense) woman, structure isn’t something my days are filled with. Yes, I have to get up when the rooster crows (see what I did there?) for my kids, and I have to be here when they come home, but what of the space in between when they’re at school? A commitment to something consigns me to a task. In the case of this particular commitment–blogging–you, my friends, are my overseers.
I wouldn’t let us down unless under duress.
What, apart from your family and your job are you committed to? And how far would you go to honour your commitment? I’d love to know.
There are people in the world whose words are consistent with their actions and there are people who say one thing and then do another. Okay yes, there are times that the former type lapse into the latter, just as I’m sure there are people who are almost constantly doing things contrary to what they say might be tempted to actually do what they say. But it’s the latter type I see as not really knowing what they want out of life.
Of the latter type there seem to be two sub-types, as it were. There are those who say they’re going to do something and then never do. (We’re all guilty of that occasionally though, aren’t we? I was going back to school in September… ha. Maybe next year.) And there are those who say they feel a certain way but their actions don’t match. Take, for instance, a person who says he wants to meet, in person, a friend who he met online. He might say, “I’d love to get together,” but then always finds an excuse not to. Or a woman who is cheating on her husband: at night she may come home and tell him she loves him, and would go to the ends of the earth for him, but the moment he leaves the house in the morning she’s having it off with the pool boy.
Lying to the people around oneself aside, the dishonesty in these kinds of actions must take a toll on the psyche. In the case of the woman – does she want the happy life she portrays with her husband? Or is freedom what she really wants? Likely she has no real idea, so she juggles both, possibly while she attempts to figure it out. Even in the less life-altering case of the man, the stress of having to keep up the appearance of wanting something he doesn’t really want (which is shown in his actions) has to come with some kind of cost. The cost is in energy and on the conscience.
I strive to match my words with my actions as much as I possibly can. I try to be honest with myself, even if I can’t always be honest with everyone I meet. (Of course that hairdo looks wonderful on you!) In being honest with myself and for the important things with other people, I feel that I am able to know what it is I want in my life.
Do you know what you want? What you really really want?
The good news is, I’m getting some editing done. I’m allowing my imagination to wander and I’m picking up on my character’s vibes; getting their words from their mouths to the page, as well as their actions and their thoughts. Spending some serious concentration on my novel is something I’ve been trying to do for a while, though it’s not likely to last into the weekend. Unfortunately, my ex crapped out on me yet again, so I have the kids. Again.
The bad news is, it seems that all I’ve been able to do for the last couple of days is be creative. So while my right brain takes the lead I haven’t been able to come up with anything to write about on my blog. I’m all kinds of imagination and no real life. It’s a good way to be – I think so anyway.
Still, in a way it’s frustrating. When I’m “in” my novel, I walk around the block on my paper route and I see nothing around me. The absence of photos these past few days (is it weeks already?) is proof. I go into this trance-like state, sometimes even walking right past the houses I’ve been delivering to for two and a half years now, and having to back-track. My family has to say things to me three times before I understand the words. Which is interesting to me, because according to the research I just did, the left brain (that I’m not using very much of these days) is responsible for words, among other things.
I suppose I should be pleased about this. In my experience it’s hard to get to the point I’m at right now, able to use my creative side. When I’m pulled out of it usually, by having someone interrupt me when I’m trying to write, I get so annoyed that it takes me hours to go back, if I can at all.
It must, however, be extremely inconvenient for anyone who tries to interact with me when I’m like this. Wouldn’t you hate living with a writer? I would.
I must check to see if I start off with my left foot to go up and down stairs when I’m right-brained…
There should be a word specifically for the feeling you get when you say something you shouldn’t have.
It happens to everyone, I’m sure. It’s the verbal vomit that comes out of your mouth in what we delicately label a faux pas.
It’s the facebook post that you realize was something that should have been kept a secret, or the mass email you thought you’d sent to only your best friend and closest confidant, just to discover your kids’ teacher is now aware that you have a yeast infection.
For things like this, the word “regret” doesn’t quite cut it. It’s that disconnect that separates good intention from devastating action.
Even the witty comment you think of half an hour after the fact, which is far less embarrassing but easily as annoying.
Communication impediment is too bulky. Linguistically challenged comes to mind… How about “linge”?
We could say, “Excuse me, I linged,” when we ask an acquaintance how her husband is, only to find out she just went through an ugly divorce. Or, “Damnit, I could have said ‘Duck!’ when the ball came flying through the air behind that guy, rather than ‘Watch out!’ making him turn and get it in the face instead. What a linge!”
Yeah, “linge.” It’s gonna be big.
Blog post of December 5th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
lindaghill.com 