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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘remind us to complete this post tomorrow!’

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

They don’t call it RePrint Monday for nothin’

But wait! Wait!

Once again validating the RePrint approach to self-prompting for topics of post, see that photo above?

That was the image we used on the post we could not find this morning. (And still cannot, which means we’ll have to recreate it in the small amount of pre-dawn time left.)

So, it may have been before the concept of ‘the Everything Rule’ coalesced or, it might have been just afterwards, but we described, by way of illustration (and therefore, explanation) a scene:

a clark, a scott and a roger stand on the sidewalk directly across from a very popular restaurant at noon. On a Thursday. (Or Friday. Any day, except for Monday. Or Wednesday.) In any event, there is a line out the door and up the sidewalk.

In keeping with one of the stated goals/benefits of an understanding of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, what is it the three are seeing. More to our point, what are they  experiencing?

Take your time. If you run out of space, raise your hand and a proctor will provide you with an additional blue essay book.

Begin:

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… of development, writers clubs and understanding the world around us.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Do we outgrow the past or do we simply forget? Do the improvements, growth and developments we achieve (through effort, ambition and circumstance) become like, well, the way it is.

We admit to a fondness for the occasional peculiar word or phrases that, although uncommon in everyday conversation, are fun. Today (in light of the opening sentences) the fun word/phrase/expression is raison dêtre. (which our friends at wikipedia define as  “…a French expression commonly used in English, meaning “reason for being” or “reason to be”.”)

The Wakefield Doctrine is the reason for the existence of this blog. All, and only, because it hit me one night that it would be good to ‘formalize’ my personal system for explaining the world and the people in it.

The Wakefield Doctrine holds that we are, all of us, born with the potential to experience the world as one of three characteristic realities. At an early age we ‘pick’ one of these three ‘worldviews’ and we are on our way to becoming clarks, scotts or rogers. The Wakefield Doctrine, as a personality ‘theory’, is not concerned with how you would describe yourself, the results of questionnaires created to identify traits and interests or even what you think that girl is doing sitting out there in the middle of the field looking back towards the house filled with people she may or may not be related to (well, sometimes we enjoy the traditional approaches; I mean, damn! give yourself away in one description much, clark? lol). Unlike other tools developed by psychology, sociology and phrenology, tools easily transposed to popular media such as ‘the Face Book’ where they lie, attractively packaged, club-shaped mirrors waiting for someone to notice, “Oh, honey! Come here! I found this personality test in my magazine and it so has you down to a T! Lets take it together. You first.”

Central to the hypothesis of the Wakefield Doctrine is the notion that we all live in a reality that is, to a certain degree, personal. Nothing weird, mystical or magical. Simply that if you and I are standing in front of the entrance to, say, a very popular restaurant, our experience of that moment will not be identical. The Doctrine takes this and jumps up above the individual and says, ‘Suppose the world was one in which individuals are separated from each other in a way not easily discernible or, better still, imagine that the life we wake up into after each sleep is that of the Predator, simple and direct, eat or be eaten; or suppose everything in the world is knowable and, to a degree established in a way that allows for complete agreement among like-minded people, that the universe is, in fact, definable and quantifiable.’

This is key to understanding the Doctrine. Children (you, me and the girl behind the counter asking if that’ll be Regular or Premium) all grow and develop (their) personalities in order to successfully interact with the environment that surrounds them. Social, physical, the whole thing. And this is done in the context of the nature and character of the world, as they experience it. These strategies evolve and develop into the style we refer to as our ‘personality type’.

I grew up in the world of the Outsider (clark). I developed a way of relating to the people and the world around me that permits me to stay out of the limelight (can’t have people pointing at me and telling everyone that we don’t belong) while at the same time giving me the tools and the drive to search for whatever it was that I didn’t learn when I was too young to realize it i.e. how to be a real person.

A friend of mine grew up in the reality of the Predator (scott). She’s a lot of fun to be around, gets more done in a morning than most people do in a week. She is always on alert, never is not paying attention to whats going on around her and everyone likes her…except for the ones who are terrified of her. Temperament is often un-fairly pronounced with the accent entirely on the first syllable… we prefer the word: mercurial. You want something done right away, you ask her and step out-of-the-way.

If you want that thing done right… you find my friend who grew up in the life of the Herd Member (roger). He will know how to do it so that the joints line up, the glue doesn’t stick out at the ends and it stays the way it’s supposed to be… forever. He knows the simple fact of the life that there’s a Right Way.  No, nothing as an alternative, no second-runner-up. One way. Fortunately, my friend has so many other people around him that grew up knowing that they all belong. Sure there’s minor disagreements over decor, but it’s all one big hap…. Herd. The world is good. Just have to understand.

OK enough for a Monday morning.

 

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TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Not the bridge in Grat #7. Someone else’s bridge, entirely

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s traditional contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop.

Readers? ‘This is a Grat bloghop’*. (A little football humor there.) Speaking of football, our founderess, Lizzi is reportedly exploring financing options in her quest to buy the Manchester Mandrakes. Of course, the game referred to as ‘football’ played in parts of the world  is not quite as formal as that which the source of our opening (and purely gratuitous**) quote.

Be that as it may, such an ambition is minuscule tubers when embraced by the woman who, when starting this blog, back in 1984, premiered with Fifty Things of Thankful. The collective ‘aiiyeee!’ from Blogville could be heard around the world). Fortunately for us, she relented and allowed us a break with a 20 percent reduction in list size. (No, our gift for math will not appear on the list today.)

The Doctrine offers the following list of people, places and things that have resulted in our experiencing gratitude-like subjective states.

1) Phyllis

Phyllis and Una in the (then) new treehouse.

2) Una

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop  This week’s pic of the sic: ‘A Long Ache‘ by Miskey

5) the Unicorn Challenge bloghop  This week’s Best-of-the-‘corn: Margaret‘s ‘Beach holiday

6) our co-writ, Serial Six, ‘…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood’  (Tom being the writer of the cool Co-Ordination of Supervillains)

7) in the 10k dept

8) something, something

9) weather approaching ideal (ideal defined as: warm enough to sweat from minor exertion (without a coat) but cool enough not to wake certain, multi-legged creatures.)

10) Secret Rule 1.3

 

*Vince Lombardi

** that is how you play the Grat-blog game! booyah! (lol)

 

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Frides of Arch -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clark, scotts and rogers)

Detail of the painting “God reprimanding Adam and Eve”, by F. Zampieri (1625)

 

Yeah, you are correct. You have scene the image above before. In one of our Unicorn Challenge posts. Superstition is the religion of the desperately unimaginative.

That being said, you do know what Friday means: ‘the Unicorn Challenge‘., do you not?  It is the day-of-the-week when jenne and ceayr go all ‘June and Ward Cleaver’ on the blogosphere and invite a small group of talented writers to get al TAT on the photo below.

Anyway. Two Hundred fifty words is what they allow us to write a story keying off the photo below.

Yeah? Well, no matter what that old saying, choice is curse of the Garden.

The man stood on the rock. The wind was calm, the sea was flat. The sky was a uniform, overcast grey; so much so, there was no horizon. Anywhere. In any direction, except landwards. The man had zero interest in that direction.

When there is no horizon, only gravity can provide direction. Taking the hint from this most fundamental of forces, the man looked down. Without a bright sun overhead, jealously casting reflections on anything it felt threatened by, he could see to the bottom. Like most of his world this particular morning, it consisted of unexceptional variations on the shade of grey. The exception to this almost blankscape were three red stars.

A phrase from a proverb, long favored by nuns charged with instilling the moral guilt demanded by Mother Church of it’s youngest, came, quite unbidden, “Well I made a difference to that one’.

The man laughed and nearly lost his balance. He noticed his rock pedestal was smaller. Time and Tide, he mused, time and tide.

Feeling his resolve recede, he glanced over the increasing gap between his stand and dry land. Let go, he thought.

On the shore, a boy’s voice met his thought, “Let go! I’ll throw” Childish laughter and wagging tail wrote a couplet of love and innocence as young human and ageless canine played on the beach.

He stepped into the ocean betting that solid land would welcome him.

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise with one thing on her mind: sentence count (Hint: rhymes with Six)

Prompt word:

REMOTE

“Hello?”

If one wanted a specific, though not overly-comprehensive, insight into how the tall, thin man related himself to the world around him, the interrogative appendage to his query, stepping from the darkening hallway at the far-end of the bar, would’ve spoken volumes.

“I’d swear this place was crowded with Proprietors and guests,” Lips pressed into a non-committal expression, (another classic tell), he walked past the small stage to a round wooden table upon which was a laptop, a remote control and a high-quality embossed white card, “Press Me” in simple but elegant script.

Looking around the empty Café, the thought, ‘Better safe than sorry’ intruded, serving double duty as both a cautionary admonition and a suitable, if not regrettable, inscription on, say, an anniversary watch or, perhaps, in thrall to a fit of congenital irony, the transom of a sailboat; the Proprietor pushed the red button on the remote.

A live video feed lit the display screen, a title scrolling up “Live and Remote… as opposed to Remote and Alive… the Travels of the Four Proprietae: Chris and Mimi,  jenne and… Denise…” music from the seventies began to play.

Somewhere on the far side of the globe, the Raconteuse sat at a wrought iron table on the edge of a formal garden in the gathering dusk, smiled, waved and said, ” JenneDenise and Mimi, just left, they should be home soon. Don’t leave the kitchen a mess now.”

 

 

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Six Sentence Story “…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood” [Part 1.5]

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise with one thing on her mind: sentence count (Hint: rhymes with Six)

If you’re a new Reader (or a regular Reader who might want to refresh their memory) here’s an opportunity to read the story Tom and I are writing from the beginning. The link to ‘…of Heroes and the MisUnderstood‘.

Prompt word:

REMOTE

I came to on my back, covered in girl and had a flashback to a dormitory-morning from my road-less-travelled college phase when a girl from my Intro-Anthro class walked in with two coffees, one donut and a small pipe of hashish; at the present moment, unlike the morning in a distant dorm, all I had to go on were a bunch of 8×10 still-shots of memory:  riding in the back of a speeding van, excessively bright lights, and, finally, the vehicle tipping over and sliding to a stop.

My eyes opened, (only the one time, as opposed to the continuous, seamlessly-repeating-sequence that some drugs think you’ll love), and I took stock of the interior of the old van that most recently served as our getaway car: above me, a girl-shaped pile of arms and legs and breasts and such, to my left, Rue hanging upside-down from the empty space where her door used to be and the ‘…and Friends’ limey who was kinda playing the concierge to our misadventures this third night in London.

Before I could say,  ‘What the bloody hell’, (I took a certain professional pride in my ability to blend in with the locals, even when they had glowing arms and a total crush on the woman I was assigned to protect), I heard my boss, Lou Caesare, putting a footnote to my instructions to make certain no harm comes to Rue DeNite, ‘Assess and attack, the best defense is a dead opponent’.

As time returned to one-second-equals-one-sixtieth-of-a-minute, I heard: Rue laughing as she jumped to the street, that Moonshadow guy asking her about something I couldn’t see, a really strange sound approaching the van and, from my prisoner-ette a surprisingly lucid, “My name is Isla Sora, implant remote number 314159…”

At that moment, the back door of the van disappeared, so I unlocked my prisoner’s ankle ‘cuffs and pulling her along, got out and stood on reasonably-solid pavement where the English guy was pointing towards the back-passenger door of a fairly nice SUV; the source of the strange noise turned out to be a fricken rocket launcher and overhead we were treated to a midnight sun that made a noise like a big-assed ceiling fan.

I felt two things as I moved towards our newest getaway car, my Glock pressing against my back instead of it’s holster and disappointment that I let my prisoner get the drop on me while still in handcuffs… total déjà vu from that college morning so long ago.

 

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