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December Landays
“It (a landay) must take on one of five subjects: meena, love; jang, war; watan, homeland; biltoon, separation; and, finally, gham, which means despair or grief.” — Eliza Griswold.
December Landays
Do not play games with love — you won’t win:
Love is a cheat with a marked card always up its sleeve.
The era of mercy is delayed.
The mankind fails to learn, and the bell still tolls, tolls, tolls…
Across the ocean there stands a tree
that prays for me — a leaf torn off its branch is my soul.
For what is space if we can face time,
and talk, and smile, and laugh, and lean in, and touch the screen?
There is a different kind of blue:
deeper, and broken — a shard of the yesterday skies.
©Sasha A. Palmer 2016
This December try your hand at Landays.
Just Keep on Writing
Employer Branding & Freelancing
Thoughts on Thoughts
“Though thought may incorporate other material, such as images, it seems to be predominantly linguistic…
Thoughts are often fragmentary and frequently condensed or elliptic: Many things are left unsaid, and the dots are not joined.
This presents a challenge to novelists who want to deliver a character and her world entirely through interior monologue. Our consciousness, after all, doesn’t have to tell itself many things that readers may need to know in order to follow the plot.”
Raymond Tallis on “The Voices Within” by Charles Fernyhough (WSJ, Books, Sat/Sun, October8–9, 2016.)
Alfred Hitchcock on Suspense & Style
“For 17 years I have been making pictures described alternately as thrillers, dark mysteries, and chillers, yet I have never actually directed a whodunit or a puzzler. Offhand this may sound like
debunking, but I do not believe that puzzling the audience is the essence of suspense.”
Read “Let ‘Em Play God” by Alfred Hitchcock — a short article on suspense and style, written in the instantly recognizable “Hitchcock” manner.
Did You Know?
The Japanese language does not include swear words.
‘Perhaps profanity’s ascendancy will eventually bore people into finding new and more interesting ways to express themselves. For now, however, anyone hoping to escape the triumph of what was once called “gutter talk” should either lance hie eardrums or consider relocating to Japan.’
— “Salty Oaths and Bloody Words” by Dave Shiflett, WSJ, Books, Sat/Sun, Sept 17–18, 2016
“A natural river never…”
“A natural river never flows more than 10 times its width before making a turn.”
(A tidbit taken from Tristan Gooley’s “How to Read Water.”)
Read “Studying the Face of the Deep” by Angus Phillips to learn more about Gooley and his book (WSJ/Books/Sat-Sun, Aug 27–28, 2016.)
Janey, the Muse
A photograph of Jane Morris by John Robert Parsons, 1868 (via The Paris Review)
“It is likely that no one had ever said she was beautiful … and may indeed have described her as plain or even ugly.”
— Janey’s biographer Jan Marsh
Read about the Pre-Raphaelite muse née Jane Burden, Jane Morris, Janey.
Data Cards: Do or Ditch?
What’s in a data card? Or rather, what isn’t?
sasha a. palmer 