79 word epic

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes10 Comments

An Epic in 79 words

In the beginning was the word, and the word was god and became human in the dialogue between, imagining; imagination becoming the domain of the humangodword – that subject/object constituting between or the recognition of being – that is, difference, fluctuate identities, change-charting actions of passing marks reanimated with each kenosis and subsequent in-dwelling, in other words, words began the perceiving that learned us something like self, necessitating others to be being, i.e. recognizable in varying contexts, backdrop origin…language.

N Filbert 2012

Results

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The Results in 79 words

The brothers knew it wasn’t right, what they had done.  Though Alfred had thought it was, before.  Not now, though, no one would argue the results.  Were bad.  Were harmful.  Would be difficult to live away, if ever.  Ends were so unlike their means, and either could be culpable.  The boys knew that now, blaming as they did each other, by which I mean, themselves.  Stuck with it, the consequences, are also new beginnings.  Arden took the cue.

N Filbert 2012

For Image-lovers

On By NW FilbertIn Photography2 Comments
Interim Figure
Bill Jacobson

Check out Gypsy Wall!

http://gypsywall.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/taking-note-rememory/

Survival

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Survival in 79 words

He composes within the disaster.  Step one is to mention his life.  As it goes.  For the record.  Just in case.  Reassembling rubble is only one form of resist.  But not timing, nor space.  Step two is to edit.  To search what remains.  To look for a memorable trinket.  One rarely finds something precious, or treasure, but one man’s junk…because there aren’t any rules of the game.  Evaluation, correction, such fickle appraisals, are the process of finding step three…

N Filbert 2012

On By NW FilbertIn WritingLeave a comment

a blessing

Gabrielle's avatarthe contextual life

At a time when publishers are concerned about ebook pricing, many believing that going below a certain dollar amount devalues both the book and the author (a theory I am sympathetic to), an intriguing project from a major publisher is taking place. Forty Stories, a labor of love spearheaded by Cal Morgan, publisher and editorial director at HarperCollins, is available today as a free ebook through all major retailers.

In January of 2009, Morgan started an online community for short story writers called Fifty-Two Stories. As the name suggests, each week a new story would be posted for free on the website. For all you trivia junkies, Simon Van Booy’s “The Missing Statues” was first. From 2009 until the first half of 2011 the output was consistent. Then, in August of last year, something happened and only one story was posted that month. Someone would have…

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming

On By NW FilbertIn Photography1 Comment

This one developed into a series.  My wife’s art works are all about the house and I move them here and there for various inputs/effects on my brain as I work…She recently hung a few encaustic pieces in our dining room where I have been writing due to the heat in our studio attic.  For “dreaming” I’d had the idea that I’d challenge myself with my Pantech phone and try to take some pictures of my head and smear it up without help from photoshop or other treatments.  It grew into a little series, beginning with her pieces and their slow consumption of my world.

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A Contradiction

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes2 Comments

A Contradiction in 73 words

A principal aspect in being human is opening to change.  First one thing, and then another.  To be deceptive.  By which we mean adaptive and successful.  The insurance one will thrive.  If only one.  “That which differs from itself is in agreement” (Heraclitus).  I understand.  We’re talking tension, balance, strain – a relation.  Stitching together in hopes it will hold while everything tears.  If we equate human being with living.  It changes.  We adapt.

Pomegranates…in 78 words

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes4 Comments

The Temptress in 78 words

Her words taste pomegranate – the tart – bitter, erotic, and sweet.  I tickle them over my teeth with my tongue, trying to untie them.  I like the way the air glides over them, whispering cool and moist into my ears.  I swallow.  She speaks without using her mouth.  I listen hard.  So this is what it tastes like?  Is difficult to digest, it vaguely turns the stomach, and I want more.  Addicted as I am to the showers of seeds.

N Filbert 2012

79 Word Stories

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So a new formal challenge emerges.  Tipped off by Duotrope, I stumbled on this interesting competition sponsored by the Aspen Writers Foundatino and Esquire magazine: A short short story of exactly 79 words, judged 25% plot, 25% characterization, 25% theme and 25% originality.  Why not, right?  I mean many of us compose 100-word stories (rarely EXACTLY 100, but) for Madison Woods “Friday Fictioneers” photo-prompts…so why not give 79 a shot, eh?  So as a little side project over the next month or so I’ll be delivering various aborted attempts…I’d love feedback, but they’ll probably keep appearing anyway!  Thanks all.

1. A 79-word story in 78 words

             I slipped there, on my way out.  I cried.

Someone held me, shaping me thus.  That’s what I heard, but never quite believed.  So they told me other things, and showed me pictures.  It began to sound like music, that I’d made.  I played.  And continued to study.  Soon it was all words and experience and me stumbling away.  Or sailing back, on rough waters with a rowdy entourage, and fear.  And love.  In either direction, I’m here.

N Filbert 2012

Dismantling the Art(s)

On By NW FilbertIn Writing3 Comments

Interviewing Correspondence (-ts)

 

Composing letters is good exercise for writing.  Imagined audience and relation, fitting language to a function with a purpose.

 

Dear WordPress Users:

                        I regret to inform you.  I’d like to congratulate you.  It has come to our attention.  In the matter regarding.  Allow me to introduce myself.

            The address sets a tone.  There is little to waste.  Readers can be lost in a matter of moments, of letters, of marks.

Sex.  Hate.  Cookies.  Pups.  Nudity.  Self-loathing or injuries sustained.  Rants.  Cuss.  Sexual organs.  Deviant tastes or behaviors.  Righteousness.

            These terms as keywords capture the bulk of contemporary humanity.  Money, sugar, self-sustenance/survival/success, fame.  Beauty, distress, the hideous, tragedy and laughs work as well.  Also superlatives.  And challenges.

You’ve never seen a _____ this size!  Fires burn out of control, lives lost…  Wowza! She’s got _____!!   You have no idea _____!  Did you ever imagine _____ could be so good?!

            Direct-ion.  Scan billboards and headlines, logos and slogans – these things are devised to capture attention, activate interest.  Use imagery and images – somehow we’ve evolved into a very visual culture – we taste, hear, touch and listen – with our eyes!  Watch a video with the sound turned off.  Gaze at some pictures of food.  Read poems.  I challenge you (smiley-face) – what are you unable to sense…just using your eyes?  (Whatever it is will cause you to act).

Action works.  Activate.  Stimulate.  Request.  Invite.  Offer.  Command.  Insult.

You really have no concept of what you’re doing here, do you?  I mean, reading this?  Hoping for some pleasurable payoff of insight or delight!  Something succulent or soothing, entertaining or erotic, secrets or solutions.  You selfish bastards!  Give a little!  It’s all ‘what’s in it for ME!?’  Sucking the world dry like these pages…

            Give people something to find that they’ll consider “wrong” – people LOVE to feel “right.”  Scapegoating works well – and it can be anything – people will follow: bottled water, big government, Christianity, children, homosexuals, genres, stupidity…the lemmings will leap.

 

Dear WordPress Users:

            I regret to inform you that the following letters are not art. 

“Works of art represent webs of sounds, movements and ideas… Human beings are contradictory… Freedom is the law of human nature…At the basis of every artistic work, every stage in artistic construction, lie similar principles of revealing the contradictions… artistic compositions show the fallacy of simple solutions… one can do anything, but there is no purpose…”

(all Viktor Shklovsky, from “On the Dissimilarity of the Similar”)

            Dear WordPress Users:

I urge you: exercise freedom and complexity!

Utilize everything!

Sincerely,

da Man-O’-Word(s)