Archive for Flipped Friday

Flipped Friday: Heath

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: Heath

What is a heath? The definition: a tract of open and uncultivated land; wasteland overgrown with shrubs. (Dictionary.com)

I’ve read about heaths in books all my life, from The Secret Garden to Wuthering Heights. As a Southern California girl, heaths lived only in my imagination. Then I had the chance to go to England and visited an actual heath where our tour group climbed a turnstile, stood in a heath while a light wind blew about, and listened to a man with a lovely accent read Thomas Hardy. And though, I expected the heath to be wild, I suddenly understand the untamed beauty that appealed to so many authors.

All pictures were taken by me.

From The Secret Garden: the Musical – Song “House Upon the Hill”:

MARY: Is it always so ugly here?
MRS. MEDLOCK: It’s the moor. Miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.
MARY: What is that awful howling sound?
MRS. MEDLOCK: That’s the wind blowing through the bushes they call it wuthering that sound…

From The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett:

Nor it isn’t fields nor mountains, it’s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on but wild ponies and sheep.

From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte:

Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade.

From Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte:

It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it.

From Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy:

Thence she started on foot, basket in hand, to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the low-lying meads of a further valley in which the dairy stood that was the aim and end of her day’s pilgrimage.

Flipped Friday: Arm’s Length

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: Arm’s Length by Kris Delmhorst

I write to music. It helps set the mood for my work, and it gets me into the writing mindset. But if you ask me what artist I’m listening to, quite frequently I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Most of my music choices come from Apple’s iTunes Genius feature or from Pandora. The song below I must’ve listened to 20 times while writing. Today was the first time I really listened to the lyrics, and they have some stunning moments I wish I’d written. This song is obviously about a break up and it’s aftermath.

Bloody onions - Such a simple image, but what’s left after a broken relationship – bleeding heart and tears

I’m lost in an arm’s length of space – I really wish I’d written that. Says so much in so few words.

I’ll leave it at that and let you enjoy the song for yourself! Happy Friday!

Listen here.

The Lyrics…

Arm’s Length by Kris Delmhorst

I thought about you today
Didn’t mean to, it was uninvited
That’s what this band-aid is for
I just looked down, saw bloody onions

Now go, don’t stay no more
I don’t know what to do with my hands
And I’m lost in an arm’s length of space
And I can’t find a good place to stand

I talked about you today
Kind of funny, a total stranger
I didn’t mean what I said
But it surprised me, felt so clean

Now go, don’t stay no more
You’ll have to find your own way to the door
Cause I’m lost in an arm’s length of space
And I just can’t smile like this anymore

You know that windows are for seeing through
Forget that they can show things back to you

And I had it coming today
Said all the things I made myself swear I would not say
And what goes into your ears is there to stay
So I got to watch it, but I can’t hold this tongue

So go don’t stay
I’m not really sure this is my life
But I’m lost in an arm’s length
And I need something I can pull in tight
Need something I can pull in tight
Is there something I can pull in tight

Flipped Friday: Hope

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: Hope is a thing with feathers…

Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets. It was not a fast and furious love affair. Her work is not always easy to understand. But if you are patient and you read it several times, her words sink into your soul.

A couple of years ago my friend Laurie – who is that person that always gives you the perfect gift you didn’t even know you needed – gave me a necklace charm with a snip of one of Emily’s poems. It’s still my favorite piece of jewelry because it reminds me how fragile hope is, how necessary it is in the direst time, and how hard it is to put into words what we are hoping for. Note: the brackets are entirely my interpretation of the poem.

a

Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers [think of a bird - flitty, fragile and FREE]

That perches in the soul, [those same characteristics are how hope lives in us]

And sings the tune without the words, [sometimes we don't even know what we are hoping for]

And never stops at all, [even when we think we've lost hope, it's still there singing]

And sweetest in the gale is heard; [hope is most necessary in the face of a storm/bad times]

And sore must be the storm [how awful are the bad times]

That could abash the little bird [that can make us ashamed to hope]

That kept so many warm. [when before the storm the hope kept us going]

I’ve heard it in the chillest land, [hope happens in all places, times]

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity, [But never, even in the most extreme times]

It asked a crumb of me. [has hope ever asked anything in return]

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Sigh. I love this poem.

Flipped Friday: The Eiffel Tower

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: The Eiffel Tower

This is a quick video I took of the Eiffel Tower in July 2009. I wish I could say this was on purpose. That a higher artistic principle was at work. That, like Picasso, I have a unique skewed view of the world.

Sadly, that would be a LIE. I really thought I could turn the camera while recording video and have it work the same way. That laugh you hear is me realizing what a total horse’s ass I am.

So here is a “flipped” view of the Eiffel Tower in the most literal sense.

Flipped Friday: Summer in San Francisco

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: Summer in San Francisco

First off, yes I do sound like I’m twelve. And it works out for me really well when solicitors call. Second, I’m a So Cal girl who grew up going to the beach every summer. I THRIVE in 90 degree weather. People assume the weather in San Francisco will be great in the summer. Because it’s part of California, and everyone knows it’s hot in California, right? WRONG. I can’t stress how wrong. So let me whip out this Mark Twain quote:

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

It’s in the 50s and foggy here in July and August. In fact, I’m wearing a scarf as I type this. Enjoy this video of San Francisco that will make you rethink spending summer in California.

*Thirdly, why didn’t anyone tell me I’ve replaced “like” with “actually”? *dies*