Jan. 8th, 2017

ysabetwordsmith: Damask smiling over their shoulder (polychrome)
I posted "Together We Have It All," which is the giant epic about Turq reuniting with his foster family. DW and LJ are being hinky again.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
This poem is spillover from the January 3, 2016 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from [personal profile] janetmiles, [personal profile] mdlbear, and [personal profile] redsixwing. It has been sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles.


"Heisenbugs"



In the febrile gap between
letters and numbers live
the Heisenbugs.

They bring the déjà vu
of things seen again and again,
a glitch in the matrix; and
the jamais vu of things
never seen before.

They perch on the tip of the tongue
and crunch numbers before
they can be summed,

words before they can be recognized.

They make the misconceptions
and the mistaken readings,
the lexical gaps and overlaps.

When is it fog, and
when is it a cloud?

Oh, wait, the word in the list
was humility, not humidity.

They live in computer programmers,
and thereby get into computers
and programs, far more fatal
than the wing of a moth.

The next thing you know,
December is January and
we're left wondering

how the glitch stole Christmas.

* * *

Notes:

Déjà vu  is an eerie sense of repetition.

Jamais vu  is an eerie sense of unfamiliarity.

Tip of the tongue is a sense of almost knowing something: the query activates the correct memory packet, but it fails to make the transit up to the conscious mind.

The first computer bug was an actual moth.

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
This is from the January 3, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] corvi. It also fills the "gods / goddesses" square in my 1-7-17 card for the Dark Fantasy Bingo fest.  This poem has been sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles.


"Loopholes and Destinies"


The thread of fate is unbreakable,
but it always has loopholes.

Clotho smiles, and pushes her hook
into the burlap backing of her rug.

For every prophecy, there is
some way to avoid it and
get by on a technicality.

For every impenetrable protection,
there is a donut hole it doesn't cover.

For every curse, there is
a means of breaking it.

For every all-knowing program,
there is a glitch in the matrix.

Lachesis winks, and
her silver needle twinkles
as she crochets.

The hero's journey is not
about destiny, self-discovery,
getting the girl, or even
saving the world.

At its heart, the quest is really
about finding the loopholes in fate.

Atropos laughs, and
sharpens her scissors.

* * *

Notes:

The Three Fates are goddesses of life, death, and fortune.

Latchhooking is done by knotting short yarns through a mesh to make a rug.  Read instructions or watch a video on it.

Crochet uses a hook to loop yarn into cloth.  This site has all kinds of introductory material.  See a video or read a tutorial about this craft.

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Fandom Snowflake Challenge

Day 7

In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so
.


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Well, this ran slow due to me having a ton of fishbowl work to do, but I managed to squeak out something. It's tough going because Hulk is working through some serious trauma from the fast, but he's found a clever way to do that and Uncle Phil is awesome.

Read more... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Fandom Snowflake Challenge

Day 8

In your own space, make a list of at least 3 things that you like about yourself. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so
.

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Although the label says this is a hard one, for me it's easy.  I know myself very well.

So okay, that's the first thing: I have high intrapersonal intelligence.  I am my own person.  My identity is indelible.  The fact that this also makes me social teflon has its pros and cons, but I wouldn't trade it.

I'm wordsmith.  I'm an adept-level poet.  I'm a master at nonfiction.  Fiction, I haven't done as much with, so maybe master, maybe still journeyman.  I'd feel more inclined to claim master status if I'd actually finished a fiction book on purpose.  I've written more books by accident than on purpose, but oh well.  Wordsmith is me!  :D

My detritus food chain is 3 days to apex.  That's my proof of skill in rough-and-ready permaculture.  I don't do the fancy stuff. I'm looking at raw nature for my inspiration.  I've turned part of the yard into a full 7-layer jungle, it's just ... shorter than the Brazilian kind.  But it's all there.  My little modular, model ecosystem in a not-quite-bottle.  \o/  My observation and naturecraft skills have paid off.

On the interpersonal level, I love my audience.  I love that if a flamewar breaks out on my blog while I am asleep, someone else usually puts it out before I wake up.  I love that if someone asks a question I can't answer, another reader usually can. I have a whole handful of folks who fill in descriptions of cartoons or images for my vision-impaired readers, when I don't have time to post more than a summary.  I love how people pull together for the Hard Things and Good News posts, sharing the ups and downs of their lives, and sometimes kick-ass problem-solving.  And I have this awesome audience, because I put some serious effort into developing online community parameters.  The first time I posted a draft of those, I think it was 1995.  Wow.  So, it's gone through a lot of evolution since, but if you open my profile page you can see some of it in action, and the parameters are in my Memories.  Thus, my people skills have gotten pretty good at least online.

I'm crafty.  I can make some things on my own, like scrapbooks or hand-sewing.  I also know enough about other crafts to make knowledgeable contributions.  I like making things, and I like supporting other people who make things.

I am a crowdfunder!  I hit the glass ceiling of "there is no money in poetry" and smashed it to bits and used the bits to make sparkly decoupage ornaments.  But more than that, it ties into my audience, my support of the arts, my creativity -- it's a whole field of awesome where I do all kinds of things as a creator, prompter, and patron.  \o/  And I helped build it from the ground up.  I encouraged people to get into crowdfunding back before it was even really a thing, and that worked.  I just got into it later myself because I didn't want to start a blog before I had something serious to sell on it, which was my first book.  After that, things kind of ... mushroomed.

I am a competent priest/ess of Pagan ways and also fairly fluent in interfaith work.  I like studying different traditions and taking the best from each.  And I can explain   how things work if other people get stuck.

I could do this all day, but I should get back to the fishbowl I haven't even finished writing for.

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