The Blue and Silver Box

April 20th, 2009

I am Blue and Bluer than Blue, Green had a party and invited Yellow and Red but not me. He apparently doesn’t like me. Red says this is because I’ve scared him, so I thought I could apologise and go to the party anyway, but they threw me out and Green wouldn’t even come out and see me!

I am now ignoring all of the other monsters. They were never supposed to be on the internet, anyway – it is mine and mine alone.

Anyway, this week I want you all to think of a treasure box ortrinket box and think about what’s inside it – then write about whatever comes into your head for 10 minutes.

blue

There is a blue and silver box that sits upon the mantle

within this little box sits a myriad of things

treasures from the tenderest age

bits of glitter, bits of fluff

a broken broach, a plastic gem

all dust-covered and age-worn

but within its depths their lies

a treasure from an older age

two rings, finely wrought

in gold and diamond and together they fit

the mourner’s rings from a time of dreams

before the war had stolen him

The blue and silver box sits upon the mantle

The Musical Note

April 13th, 2009

Green Monster is being pathetic but I have my orders from Red Monster and Yellow Monster not to keep calling at his house, and to sort things out and apologise.

I think they are all being unfair in saying I’m arrogant, self-centered and aggressive. Red got really narky with me, she’s got a temper she has – I didn’t see any reason that I shouldn’t go to the party at Green’s house, when they were both going.

Still, this week I want you all to write about an anthropomorphised musical note.

The Musical Note

The musical note danced and skittered across the sheet, constrained by the lines that tangled and barred its way. Sometimes it tried to jump clean over those lines but it was always snared back again. Sometimes it tried to tunnel beneath, but there was always something barring its way. So the little note carried on trying desperately to get to the end.

The Winter Depths

April 6th, 2009

Green monster is going completely OTT. I didn’t mean I wanted to ferment him into bottles of green ink, I just picked green ink for the story because it is more unusual than blue, black or red ink and I thought it would show the obsessive personality more clearly. Red Monster has told me that I shouldn’t contact Green Monster again until she has sorted this out – and as for Yellow Monster – well I have never been so insulted in all my life – of course all my advice is sound and to even think of ignoring it is foolhardy. Sometimes I want to sob at the fickleness of Monster Kind.

But until I succumb to such bitter thoughts I shall continue to set writing exercises. This week I want you all to spend half an hour writing on the theme of midwinter.

The Winter Depths

The cold freezes the air to solid form, coating the branches of the trees, starting from the smallest twig which become heavy under the white crystals. The night draws on and the day seems murky and insincere and then sometimes to have happened not at all.

The winter is a depth into which most modern people do not delve, but as the ice inches its way onto the roads and into the water pipes, even the most sheltered cannot but notice the icy pall that covers the land.

Shivering on the way to work, shivering within the home, heating insufficient and the shops running out of heaters. The darkness of white covers the ground, rendering all sterile and forlorn.

Obsession

March 30th, 2009

Green Monster is just being plain silly but I blame the other monsters for his nerosis. I just wanted to say that I didn’t think Reveiwing was a black art and that we all do like him. So I have started writing letters and emails to explain things to him.

For some reason he said I was being obsessive and a stalker so I thought I would take the theme of obsession and get you all to write about that this week.

Obsession

So you think I’m obsessed, do you? DO YOU?! You think that I cannot live without the feel of paper and pen, of ink and graphite, of the clunk of keys or the rattle of the endangered typewritter. Do you?

What of the time singing lullabies? Well, yes, of course I write them down, even you said they where good and I need to make the lyrics concrete! Stories, poems, assignments, letters to friends, letters to companies, the group emails, the forums. they all serve a purpose, you know. I’m not one of those crazy obsessive people. Honest.

I have lots of interests. Gardening, art, cooking, walking, origarmi – yes, I know I write about them all, but thats not obsession, honest – well, ok, maybe a little bit, but I don’t hear you complaining when I get a pay check do I, hmmm hmmm?

Besides, who said obsession was a bad thing?

Now out of my way, and have you seen my green pen? You now I can’t write without it…

Guilt

March 23rd, 2009

For once Yellow Monster is talking sense, but I still feel he should apologise to me for all those pathetic names he’s been calling me like “matey”! I mean, really, it is not called for, is it?

I think I also need to talk to Green Monster who seems to have got in a tizzwozz over intermonster relationships.

This week I want all of you to write on the specific theme of guilt, which has absolutley no bearing on my state of mind at the moment at all in any way, you understand.

Guilt

Guilt of the survivors of that place, tainted by war and the desire to purge others of what they percieved as failings – those deadly characteristics which formed those that had ridiculed them almost to extinction. Cleansing did not work, and they became the oppressors, the dealers of raw and inaccurate justice, and they saw blood.

It was only as the blood leached into the ground and soddened the crops that the despair and realisation that it had indeed been the guilt of thier own survival that had lead them to perpetuate the cicle.

Some could cope, and made a new quiet life; some took their own and others went on, more zealous than ever, in a task that became worse with each circle of doing. Guilt consumed them and made the pain shine brighter. The war atrocities would mar the pages of history, though few would see it for what it was.

Neutral Tea

March 16th, 2009

I am refusing to say anything; I am so upset with the other monsters Red, Yellow and Green. I feel that once again they are being unfair and twisting my words.

To carry on the previous exercise you must all now write about tea in a neutral way.

Neutral Tea

Hot beverage containing stimulants such as caffeine and carcinogens such as tannin. Many people drink it made by infusing leaves or berries of various plants. Herbal teas can be beneficial to health but tend to contain a lot of sugar.

Negative Tea

March 9th, 2009

There are many things I need to address this week for a start – Yellow has offended me further by adding Buddy to the list of pathetic names he has called me – I knew allowing other monsters into my writing space was a mistake.

Then there is Green monster who seems to have misunderstood my meaning – I think he is a great asset to society I just think that it would be easy to be sucked into reviewing and never write a creative thing again.

Apart from all that I did not steal Red’s exercise nor do I borrow her ideas – it is simply that geniuses thinks alike. Though in her case I feel she may be the lower end of the genius spectrum.

To continue last week’s exercise you should write about tea in a negative way.

Negative tea

Tea!

Why do people drink it – really? Are they masochists? It is the devils brew and make no mistakes; it is teeth staining; gut rotting, insipid and foul. Why waste hot water on the stuff? Never mind milk and lemon, what are people thinking when they left the beverage to their lips?

Positive Tea

March 2nd, 2009

Yellow Monster is just piling insult upon insult now – not only did he have the audacity to call me “dude” but now he called me – MATEY!!!! Matey!!! I mean, come on! It’s not like Yellow’s some character out of a Redwall novel, is it? He sounds like an otter! And this proves something else I’ve been thinking about – look what I started to do there – I started to review things, I think the reviewing is catching and I’m not sure I want any part of it.

I suppose I had better calm down – I thought as Red Monster accused me of stealing her writing exercise last week I would do a series of exercises that show how you can bias the image you portray.

So this week I want you to write positively about tea.

Positive

Tea

I really love tea, I awake in the morning and think I could just murder a cuppa, I think sometimes it is more of an addiction than a love affair. When I say tea I do not just mean the bog standard tar in a cup, with milk that’s been left of the fridge too long and brown scum circles in a badly stained mug with chips and paint all over it. No I mean all teas – fruit teas that smell enticing and taste more inside than I would like but somehow convince me it is healthy for me. Mint tea first thing is great for pepping me up and calming any fear of the day ahead. Then there are teas made from the red berries which are sweet and I like to have instead of cake. Strawberry and elderflower and rose petal are delicate and send me thinking of Turkish delight and my grandmothers. Then there are the blackcurrant and nettle teas which sort of invigorate you but do taste medicinal.

I love fennel tea, which tastes of liquorice but alas and alack it gives me the most painful of mouth ulcers and so is really savoured and saved for celebrations. The Roobu tea is ghastly, though, and along with dandelion tea I have consigned to the “I need to feel I am doing something healthy” set.

Spicy apple is good for a blocked noise and the citric ones good for sour thoughts.

Then back to Earl grey and Lady grey and Assam and Darjeeling.

Then to green tea which I will drink all day just adding more water making it weaker and weaker. My favourite for a calorific hit though is a Chi Latte, which is the lushest drink you can imagine.

So as you can see I really do love Tea.

Light Through the Window

February 23rd, 2009

I am really very annoyed – Yellow Monster has called me a dude – I mean can you imagine me a Blue Gurgitation Monster of the most refined kind being called a dude. What ever must you all now think of me – I am very distressed about this.

And so this week I think you should all write about the quality of light coming in through the window.

Light through the Window

The room was light in a sort of half gloom that struck Eric as odd; the furniture seemed to melt in upon itself. The light was a pathetic dim grey that seemed to diffuse reluctantly into the room rather than spill or pour as he felt it should. It was as if it itself was some entity, a naughty dog trying to look small to appease a master.

There was a dank chill to the air that seemed to draw the warmth from his limbs leaving aching bones. Where had the summer gone? Had it ever arrived? It was September and the sky was still the milky grey it had been since the late spring. Crops had failed and there was a food shortage but still everyone pretended everything was OK; after all, who needed to stay on such a miserable little island when they could easily get a ferry to France and enjoy the continent?

But not everybody could afford that, in fact most people couldn’t and depression was gripping the nation rendering the work forces insolent and demoralised. Hunger for the first time since the Second World War now burned inside the general population and having your own allotment was not much consolation as the intrepid watched their crops fail with blight or fail to ripen due to the lack of sun.

Eric had warned of this; had told of the albedo effect, had pointed out that the UK should be colder than it was, that it relied on the deep ocean currents to be a pleasant place to live, and that for the retched little island with big ideas, global warming would in the first instance probably mean cooling. But no one had listened and no one, not even the other scientists, had seemed to comprehend that there were such things as positive and negative feedback loops, and that these loops themselves where part of systems that interacted and fed each other. It worked like cell metabolisation, or nucleosynthes inside the hot bellies of stars, but no one would listen.

And so the world had heated due to the emissions from cars and factories and the like, burning of forests and woodlands had not helped, nor the denuding of land for beef cattle who themselves, due to bodily functions, produced another greenhouse gas, as it was termed.

There where many many effects and the change in heating on a global scale lead to upsets. The gulf stream that brought warm air to the Uk would soon seize as the ocean currents stopped and killed the bottom dwelling life by stagnation; a reversal of currents was just as devastating with thick rich nutrient brought up from the bottom leading to algal bloom and suffocation in the very oceans.

The warmth caused by the gases had a knock on effect – the clouds that boiled overhead. Increase the temperature and more water from the oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds and reservoirs would steal up into the air to become clouds. These clouds would act as a blanket keeping the heat in and acting as a mirror to reflect the heat back to the Earth’s surface again and again.

But the clouds also acted as a mirror on the outside, too, and reflected the Sun’s light out into space rendering the Earth cool, cooler and cold. A self-regulating system, most of the time. Sometimes it could get out of control and send the earth into frozen aeons.

Which effect would win, Eric did not know; he also knew that for humans it did not really matter, as either was pretty devastating. But no one had listened. He oiled his gun and checked his tinned food supplies again, and waited for the chaos to begin.

This Moment

February 16th, 2009

Well, Green Monster is here and I have been advising him on which books to read; information he has graciously accepted, which is good as it shows that he realises the worth of my advice.

I personally am considering the nature of monster society and where Revue Monsters fit in. I think they are perhaps more useful than people have given them credit for. Of course Red and Yellow Monster probably have something to say on the matter.

Still I am getting sidetracked and will just say that this week’s exercise is to use “This moment” as the starting two words of your piece – off you go.

This Moment

This moment is quiet with booming sound that infects the mind and pollutes thought

This moment is the reckoning of all that has gone before the sum of existence

This moment is essence something and nothing that I can never catch no matter how much I try

This moment is sticking in my throat like a bone from some old chicken broth that has gone cold and rancid

This moment is dragging on into the hind-brain where the monsters lurk and wait their turn

This moment is waiting in anticipation for the end and the beginning in serene dreams of the oil landscape