How to Write About Anything: Excerpts

(Thought-Random)

  

        Great writers are always great readers.  Learning how to be an active, engaged reader helps you to become an effective and persuasive writer.   On reading a piece of terrible, even ridiculous writing,  you would most naturally recognize it to be such.  You'd usually even be hard pressed to explain why the writing is bad and what could be done to make it better. So when you can recognize and understand what makes writing good or bad, then you can use that knowledge to produce strong and effective writing of your own.

        Successful writing depends on insightful reading, careful research, and rigorous analytical reading.  Successful writing requires you to develop active-analytical strategies (as opposed to passive-receptive reading).  By reading novels and short stories,  you get to learn how passive reading turns you to a simple receiver of whatever text has to offer ( empirical information, emotional pleasure) while active insightful reading empowers you to more effectively evaluate and interpret the meaning of what you read making you a better writer in the process.

        Examining the characteristics of powerful, persuasive prose gets you to learning how to adapt and incorporate those strategies into your own writing.  The essay is perhaps the richest and most varied genre for studying the characteristics of a good argument.

       Writing, when it is well done, is never just words on a page - good writing invites interaction.  The reader engages with the words, interacts with the language and the ideas of the author.

       An increased ability to recognize good writing, thus,  is an increased ability to produce powerful writing yourself.



From Professor Dorsey Armstrong

The Mother

(Thought-Random)

     

         My mother is a poem

         I'll never be able to write 

        though everything I write

         is a poem to my mother....


........poetic lines from Sharon  Doubiago but which I could pick up as my own in its total  metaphoric essence.   To define a mother is, in fact, a challenge because of the diverse roles she plays. She has been identified as a beacon that lights up the future but at the same time reflected on the past in the guise of fond memories.  Whether biological or surrogate,  the mother had always been home..... or the bank where hurts and worries were deposited.  This latter concept might even be a mirror-reflection of a child happily caught 'between a scream and a hug'!  But on a more sentimental strain,  "the best conversations with mothers always take place in silence,  -when only it is the heart that speaks".  Beautiful!

        So the mother has always been idolized, deified, set on a pedestal of nothing but the labels of perfection. Talk about beauty, of patience, kindness, affection,  understanding..... add to these selflessness and sacrifice - you name it!   To none of these do I disagree, of course.  I totally subscribe to the idea that a mother is all of the above - and more!  Of the good things!  It's just that I know of one mother who doesn't really reach up to all of these above.

        This one mother, if I may talk about her, was one who lost hers long, long before she even became one...before she became a mother herself.  Which is why, perhaps, maternal instincts on the caring side of it were ingrained in her at a tender age.  And very strongly at that.  Three younger brothers had to look up to her for the mother anchorage.  Half siblings also came to the picture later but cousins too became part of her world to care for.  And family was just so close.

        In time came career and other career- related endeavors for this mother.  As it turned out, her maternal instincts apparently could not be contained in her any longer as evidenced by a seemingly magnetic rapport that effortlessly radiated and extended also to both her students and her younger colleagues.    So much so that when with her own children next, she tried to pour on them all - and if there could even be such a thing as more than all,  she would have lavished on them this -more than all-  that she could of her motherly love......as if to compensate... or maybe to  fiercely counter the fact that she herself had been denied such motherly concerns she  goes on  missing... even as she hears about all these from others.   I think.

        Well, I just think so, really.  But talk about the aspects lovingly given to mothers such as beauty and patience, affection and understanding - I give her minus points on these.  This mother is so imperfect along these lines, you know!  There are times when she is erratic - when she miscalculates, perhaps so much as to  end up leaving such a thin line between sympathizing and empathizing!  Oh yes, she scolds too, imagine that.  An imperfect being demanding perfection?  And what were those  other aspects again....selflessness, sacrifice?  But she is such an ambitious person, this mother.    A  lot of times will she assert her goals and consider these as other methods of a mother imparting education!  Now that, I am not so sure about.

        But let me tell you one thing I know for sure.  The existence of this mother feeds on the subliminal  fire of her motherhood.  One evident reason for this was one other  pain that rammed her heart the day of her first childbirth  - a desolate feeling...a confirmation... that her fond wish for her own mother to be somewhere nearby  at that special moment was at best inconceivable!  This experience,  however,  has taught her to transition that frustration  to be her strength in life as a mother....a mother imperfect, and a far cry,  perhaps,  from  the perfection that was her mother.  Flawed...fallacious....and imperfect, yes!  Still, I would say,  this mother is a mother! Hope you would , too? :)
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Ella Anika - 2

 (Thought-Random)

       Anika has become my morning and afternoon, - my day and night, - my thoughts, my emotions, - my

yes's, my no's!  Not that I'm complaining, dear one!  On the contrary, I thank heaven for Anika!  She puts

that smile on my face... she  fills the void in this my life's vacuum....she blocks decisions that threaten to cut my

air... she incredibly points to answers to my questions - at least, those that seem elusive of yes, -answers!

And most fascinating is that she supplies from out of the blue  the music that bespeaks exactly of my mornings

and my afternoons,  my days and nights, - my thoughts, my emotions, my yes's, my no's!

        A lot of details there are for all that,  of course,  but let me shelf them  in the  recesses of my mind   for

the meantime,  and invite you to join me in relishing the music interpretations of a favorite - clavis55, - and

that would be of Anika and me - after the kiss she gives getting out of bed and the one getting into bed.

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.....after anika's good morning kiss

.....after anika's good night kiss

Listening - A Simple Anatomy

(Thought-Random)




       I just love listening to this music!  Should you  ask me why..... reasons I might give would be some one hundred and one:  - sentimental,  academic,  familial,  spiritual...?  Could be one of those, actually... and/or a lot more!  One thing that is impressed in my mind at the moment, though,  is that listening,  like speaking, is one communicative skill we take for granted because, perhaps, they just come naturally!  Actually, listening, -just like speaking, or reading or writing, requires much skill and training.

       For some understanding of listening, and picking up some points from Hamilton and Creel,  let me start with the fact that listening is an active process.  This immediately points out to the distinction between hearing and listening because hearing is the passive process.  Hearing will happen anytime you are within an area of sound waves.  You don't exert effort to hear but listening requires you to 'do something' about those sound waves.  Listening requires effort.  Thus, you hear church bells ring but you listen for the ring of your phone - especially when it is a call  from your loved one you're waiting for.

        With listening, you would normally need a verbal message.   But there is more to just paying attention to the words spoken because a good listener will also have to consider the visual and vocal aspects that go with the message.  When breathlessly reaching the coffee shop where your loved one is waiting and she says, "You're late!",  do you recognize a hint of disapproval in her voice... or a flash of irritation in her eyes?  Or is it a casual remark at the speed of time that reaches you - coupled with a touch of tenderness in her eyes...a worry  that you might have had met an untoward event that caused your being late?

        It is said that an understanding of listening goes along with an awareness of some aspects - like selecting what you want to listen to, for one.  You tune out other things like conversations close by or  the television set in the next room to zero down on what you intend to listen to - like advice a family member is giving you. Then you try to understand the message- catch a meaning, - following it with whether you are or not in agreement with what you are listening to.  And finally comes putting the content into memory,  into remembering  - long or short term.

        But some other aspects may yet  stand as barriers to listening    Distractions such as external noise could be conversation or the sounds from television as earlier mentioned.   Ever heard of internal noise?  This may be  manifested, for instance, by physiological or psychological constraints like you feeling sick or tired.... or being angry or worried . Sometimes, you allow yourself  to put significance to appearances, to physical surroundings, to cultural facets - rather than the message. You could also either be not listening enough with lack of attention or with indifference,  or you could be listening too hard that you end up remembering nothing at all.

        Of course listening is there for a purpose.  You need to listen well to enhance your career goals, to help develop and maintain your mental health as well as your relationships with others. And on the basis of these and surely of others, listening has been categorized in diverse ways by various authors.  To mention four of them, let me identify the following:  comprehensive listening - to understand the message of a speaker; critical listening - to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting it or rejecting it ; emphatic listening - to provide emotional support to someone; and appreciative listening - for stimulation, pleasure, and enjoyment.

        And this brings me full circle.   Remember I mentioned that I simply love listening to this piano rendition of  The First of May?   Well,  I do love the entire song, in fact - both lyrics and melody.   I started loving it with the classic Bee Gees.  Then there's this sweet interpretation of Emi Fujita which somehow strikes some chords in my being.  Definitely next, with  Sarah Brightman singing it, I just melt with her voice!    But to me, a simple but refreshing piano arrangement like this one by Gauis Yeong has an unexplainable way of touching my sensibilities for stimulation,  for pleasure,  for enjoyment.  Appreciative listening?

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First of May