Month: February 2017 | the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘take seven!’

February 16, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Another Thursday slips and slides towards us, a drunken elephant accidentally delivered to the ice fields of the Canadian Northwest rather than the arid savannahs of Equatorial Botswana, it’s only consolation being the 180 proof amnesia that will welcome the pachyderm, bruised knees and sore trunk on the following morning.

Ahem! sorry for the odd warm-up. This is, of course, zoe’s Six Sentence Story. The Six Sentence Story bloghop is where each week, our host, zoe, offers a prompt word and invites us to write a story, six sentences in length. It’s fun. You should try it?

Sink.

The cast iron sink was old and it was nearly empty. The years showed in the worn enamel, now the ancient pale of an attic-baked newspaper, its original self not entirely covered in ink-bled words. The pitted chrome faucet aimed it’s perfectly formed drops at the bullseye of the drain, a dark sun, shiny edged with a pale green halo. An empty can of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef Soup, its thin metal top tipped at an angle, the lid of a toilet frozen in nearly-open/ almost-banging-shut position, sat to the right of the drain, silent witness to the single drop deluge. Suspended beneath the long, smooth neck of the faucet, like a lifeboat stuck between a massive ship and the stormy sea, was a wire-frame basket, a red and blue dishrag strangled itself, lengths of rough-smooth cloth hanging limply over the sides.

Leaning against the sink’s voluptuously rounded edge, the young man felt the touch of warm flesh against his back and resolved, in the eternally sincere desperation of morning, to find the path that would allow ‘what might be’ to have equal footing next to ‘what probably would be’.

sink

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘I replace the broken keyboard and the first thing I post is a ‘re-print’!?! who’s a clark? lol

February 14, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Yes, I did buy a new keyboard. That means…. it’s ok to make mistakes because I have a delete key once again. lol no, seriously …. I can!

Today is, of course, Valentines Day and being a High Faux Holiday in the Ecclesiastical Calendar of Hallmark, I naturally thought to write a post. Trouble is, I’ve been writing this blog since 2009. I may have written myself out. (The one saving grace: since I’ve been writing about the Doctrine since July 2009, I’ve been doing little else, (‘if it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing.’) Maybe something has happened in my life in the intervening 5 or 6 years that I haven’t discovered yet! oh boy!)

Anyway. I need to work on the final Chapters of ‘Almira‘ so here’s a Post from 2012, titled:

“St Valentine, was he a roger or was he a clark…the Wakefield Doctrine deals with the important questions of the day.”*

“No, it’s ok! I’m a Saint.”

St Valentines is the worst, most contrived and cynical, gyno-centric guy-bait(ing), toy-with-the-emotions-of-innocent-bystanders, holiday on the whole damn calendar. Of course we are all familiar with the origin of the holiday and the internet is positively turgid with countless blogs, and stories and articles that tell us all about Hallmark and the candy industry and the rest of the sordid tale of this day in February. I will not try to compete with these other more skilled and capable Commentators ( and -torinis), as I do not have the time or the ‘writing chops’ to do such a ripe topic justice. Instead, let me tell you about my most lasting memory of Valentines Day.

Third grade, parochial school (St. Imelda) and a classroom of 25 students. The boys were required to wear blue shirts and blue ties with OLM printed on the front, fortunately ‘clip-on ties’ had been invented by this time, so easy-peasy; the girls wore the catholic school uniform, i.e. plaid skirts white shirt, socks. damn, little did I realize at that pre-pubescent time of my life how potent that little Roman Catholic Church fashion dictates would become for me and countless other men at a later stage of life.
So with much fanfare, Valentine’s Day arrives and we 9-year-old boys and girls are told that in the afternoon, before the end of the school day, we would have time to deliver our Valentine cards to each other. ( The day before we spent ‘Art Period’ making little baskets out of construction paper and taping them to the front of our desks. These would serve as ‘mailboxes’ for the cards we would receive the next day).
The thing was, the horrible twist to this introduction to the world of love, relationships and rejection was that, the time when class stopped and we were allowed to get up and deliver our little cards was not the end of the school day! It was right after lunch… and it lasted 15 or 20 minutes…as in ‘ now return to your desks and we will continue with the afternoon’ classes’. To sit for 90 minutes staring at the contents of the container on the front of my desk… I will leave it to the Reader to decide the emotional landscape of that afternoon on a February 14th.

Anyone out there not comfortable with finishing the story, or satisfied with their conclusion of this little tale, write us a Comment! ~~Regular Readers~~ Students of the Doctrine know that the rogers gave the biggest cards, the scotts received the most cards and the clarks delivered the most cards(….secretly without the recipient ever knowing who the really fun card came from.)

Now I better get back to work, before I get in trouble.

*edited for content and times**

** as in, ‘to account for the experience of (the) reality during which the events forming the subject of the post actually occurred and the effect of the passing time since, and it’s effect on the author.

ok, Back to Almira and the story of two girls growing up a lifetime apart but meeting once before parting.

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology Tagged With: relationships, self-improvement, the Wakefield Doctrine

-the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘a Post with no delete or backspace key available’

February 12, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

I was about to (type) that that’s the last of the error free text to be found in this Post today, but even though I’ve typed ‘Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and roger) more time than I can remember , the self-awareness that lurks to the right of ou us each minute of each waking day, ready to juggle our elbow or push our hands , (yeah, no backspace)

So I thought, a) I could simply not write anything on the computer today or 2) I could drive a half-way across the state of for the only store that sells the keyboard I need.

I think I’m c going with the ‘drive across the state’, though I need to spend a few minutes to understand if I’m overlooking…. Ha! I believe I just discovered the workaround!

Thank you for your patience in reading this (because, lets all be honest, we type with the anticipation/expectation of what we write being read by another person. We (at least those of us in the b;oosphere blogosphere) know that somewhere someone might read out our words our thoughts… in a way, is this not the sm same foundation upon which all of the major religions with their countless numbers of lives shaped and steered by beliefs in something that they can never prove?

(So yes, zoe, I guess I am saying that god is a blogger)

With a single key malfunctioning on my computer keyboard we have re-capitulated and re-framed the Questions of life that all of us struggle with consciously or otherwise :

is it better to think than not think? (after all, not typing out my thoughts here in the ‘sphere should not mean the end of my day/my life should it?
because I think it, or to be more direct, because I perceive the world around me, do I gain any value or benefit by sharing my experience ?
for that matter, why do I need a delete/backspace key in the first place… theory tells me that the life lived in real time, without try -overs and re-sets is the only reality when you think about it.
boy, do I need to get out into the real world more

lol ok end of this. I have my workaround (involves a remote access to my office computer* I will get ‘out there’** and do something useful and productive and (hopefully) beneficial to another lifeform.

**This Just In! No, it does not help to live by Proxy. The solution that I genuinely ** felt would work did not… for reasons that most of us will guess, it did not work. **

*jeez louise I do not want to think through the implications of my finding that to be an acceptable substitute to my problem today, do I?

**meaning I thought I felt I had a valid solution

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine-

February 9, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

This is, of course, my pre-writing writing. I find it immensely helpful to get some words in the Post prior to writing a Six Sentence Story. There is something about words already being ‘on the page’, or perhaps, it would be better to say, ‘it’s good, when deadline time arrives (tomorrow morning), not to have to stare at a plain, white, empty page. So, I come here the evening or perhaps the afternoon of the day before zoe calls for Six Sentence Stories, which she does every Thursday. Each week there is a new prompt word around which we are asked to write a story of six and only six sentences.

It’s fun. You should try it. Now. This week. As in …’today’.

This week’s prompt: ‘Bread’

Claire Griswold brushed at the wave of blond hair projecting beyond the hood of her coat, now a crystalized shield from the blowing snow, and ran across the street. The young woman realized, only as she leapt over the slush-clogged gutter, that, hidden under the white innocence of the freshly fallen snow, the concrete sidewalk was glazed with ice. Deciding that, if her fate was to meet Death on the streets of a small New England town with the improbable name of South Egremont, upright was preferable to supine, smiled defiantly as the plate-glass front of the bakery rushed towards her.

Deprived of any other constructive course of action, Claire concentrated on reading the lettering on the rapidly approaching glass storefront which, like the ice field of an arctic bay with it’s cold-dark blue interrupted by patches of cold-white ice from broken glaciers, had patches of snow obscuring the gilt-painted lettering, ‘..sh bread and past..’ the only intelligible message. Out of nowhere, an encircling grip established itself around her waist, as her feet and her head, still in the grips of Newton and therefore determined to continue on to the building, bent slightly over and under the arm that held her mostly in place.

Claire felt, as much heard, in a woolen semaphore, a strong voice penetrating her ice-crowned hood, pressing up against still-warm ears, ‘gotcha!‘

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: Personal, personality types, the Wakefield Doctrine

Six Minute Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘hey, I haven’t a clue what that’s supposed to mean!’

February 2, 2017 By clarkscottroger

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

Today I am reminded of the wisdom of writing warm-up words for this Post. I am reminded because I did not write a warm-up Six Sentence Story post yesterday, the way I always do. Nothing in particular, the day got away from me…. (‘hmmm. ‘the day got away from me’ ya think?…. nah‘)

In any event, this is zoe’s Six Sentence Story ‘hop.

New Readers? A word is given, this week the word is; ‘Share’. We are then invited to write a story involving that word, composed of six sentences. No more. No less. Come and join the ‘fun’.

Share

“Ok, I think this might actually work,” typing, you wonder why you’re narrating your own actions.

You pull your fingers away from the keyboard, not a great distance, less than an inch, just enough to reduce the chance of words accidentally getting on the screen, your skill with this POV being as limited as a toddler’s first attempt to pour dry cereal into a bowl.

“Four more sentences to go,” you feel the cautious optimism of a patient when the dentist reaches up and tilts the light away, “surely the readers feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth and you can end this Six.”

“How do you suggest we do that,’ your stomach sinks at the realization that you not only have no surprise ending, but you’ve gone and employed a plural personal pronoun. With the cold flash of a naked-in-public nightmare washing over your face, you realize you haven’t a clue of the effect a plural personal pronoun would have on a second person POV narrative.

Looking at the time, I noticed I was late, so I walked to the bedroom doorway and said, “Clark! did you happen to remember to include the prompt word?”