Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
‘The Stone and a Glass Bird’ A landscape view (wider than tall, 4 units wide by 3 units tall) out a window. The elements of this photo can be divided into two equal right triangles. From the lower left corner, to the upper right corner. The lower right triangle is indoors, the upper left, outdoors. Dominating the photo, (by size, bright colors and clearly a risky over-confidence in it’s attractiveness) is a cut-glass window ornament. The bird’s head is to the right, tail to the left. The head is blue glass with a round black eye and looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece. It’s lower body, from breast down under to tail is a somewhat predictable red (in the Age of Digital photography, everyone’s an art critic). The wings are folded, the tail extended and the figure hangs from a round shape in the middle of it’s back. The upper left right angle area is of the yard outside the window from which the stained glass bird appends. The foreground (including what can be seen around the bird) is grass-green lawn. The upper half of green is divided by brown earth, a single tree trunk and the Stone. The Stone shows as an oval but with a ridge, forming a slight flattening in the upper third, while it’s lower half is smooth, regular and dark grey that blends into the brown of the ground.
TToT Time today! Thanks, as always to Josie Two Shoes for the care and effort and very hard work that goes into getting this here bloghop here out on the airwaves each and every weekend. It’s not a simple or easy thing, I suspect, to organize and provide a welcoming environment to a very diverse group of writers, bloggers and readers, as she does starting on Friday and running right through the weekend (and out the other side.) Thanks J!
I often joke about how eclectic the TToT posts often are, what with the themes and the stream-of-conscious approach to something that should be as simple as 1,2,3. But, despite this, (learning to express my Ten Things in a simple and direct and yet engaging manner, in the style of Pat or J’s Journal or Jo or Mimi or Kristi) goal, I most often find myself following breadcrumbs, rabbits-with-pocket-watches and tiny, little cakes with lettering on their tops.
So, the question for today (Friday) which path to take.
1) Una: She has been exceptionally well-behaved in and around the garden. She found the soft dirt irresistible only once, and fortunately we were there to remind her that the garden was for less mobile lifeforms. She is allowed a short cut (photo below)
Una’s shortcut from the shed to the deck… between the corn and the tomatoes. In this landscape orientation photo, the plants of the Una garden are in the center. The letters that make it ‘the Una garden’ are not discernible. Except where Una is walking. She is walking towards the camera and is crossing the right-lower ‘leg’ of the letter ‘U’. This small section is brown as there is nothing growing where the ‘U’ turns upwards. Una is a shiny black shape and it is only in the variations in the black are we able to recognize her as a dog. Her face is mostly black, but we see it as a face because the bridge of her nose is shiny. It’s a small pointed oblong, like one of those ‘planchettes’ that teenagers scare themselves with, when playing with a Ouija board. It points towards Una’s eyes which are two, very small parallel light(er) spots. We’re helped in the identification by her ears. Two black triangles, her ears stand out against the shiny black of her body that follows the face. Where there are ears, theres almost always a face.
2) Phyllis
The end of last week’s work on the Bridge. Phyllis is sitting on one of the two beams that cross the stream. The beams are, of course, the underlying structure of the once and future bridge. The beams are light, almost white, boards beginning in the center foreground and extending up the center of the photo. Phyllis is sitting on the left beam with her legs in the space between the two. She is wearing a white tee-shirt that, perhaps in rebellion against the overwhelmingly green scenery, seems to have taken a bluish tint, the pale color of sadness that comes with the perception of the futility of standing out against the crowd. The two beams are supposed to be parallel. However, in the photo they can be seen almost touching where they end on the far shore. That was the reason for stopping for the day. The right hand beam is curving inwards towards the left hand beam. Loneliness? Fear of heights? A determination to get closer to a mate that the world has otherwise determined will always be unreachable? Hopefully it’s just that the boards that were joined to create the beams were a little off when the bolts were put in. Only time will tell.
3) Digital photography (phones and otherwise). Seriously, the ability to take a high-resolution photo anywhere, anytime is one of the true benefits of making it to the 21st Century.
4) Una’s Garden. It is coming along. The plants are starting to get all territorial and whatnot, it’s like the squash plants are totally indifferent to the corn! While not always sharing a letter (in the case of the squash, that’d be the letter ‘n’)
A Landscape of Green and Glass. Had Escher spent more time outdoors as a child, as his mother urged, he might have painted this, rather than the self-portrait of ‘An-artist-trying-to-look-crazy (-and-succeeding)’ that you see in the thumbnail (if you go back out to the homepage). Famous drawing/painting/whatever. A source of inspiration for a generation of college-aged clarks who looked upon his wonderfully skewed, contradictory and otherwise warped vision of the world of the Outsider and felt a little less alone.
5) The Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) While all bloghops have rules to give shape and consistency to the posts, written words and lists that are solicited, only the TToT has the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules). That is one of the totally fun and liberating things about this here bloghop here. While there are a few basic suggestions: a list of Ten Things, (more or less), about Gratitude (how you might perceive or experience it), everything else is kinda open ended. And that’s were the BoSR/SBoR comes in real handy, like. Lets say you have photos but are really tired. N.P! SR 9.328 (for example and for illustration purposes) says [in part] “It having been widely established and generally accepted that the rhetorical value of a photograph (or photographs) is put at 10,000 words, the implied equivalency extends to (the) application of a [p]hotos to any and all lists; In tempore illo (“have at it”)”
6) Simple, declarative Grat Item: I am off to work (as soon as I complete this Item). I am grateful for an occupation that allows me to have varied hours. Even at the cost of most of them occurring during the weekend. Control of time (and place (and circumstance (and, apparently, pretty much everything))) is big with clarks. Even when the control is mostly an illusion. (As long as we don’t tell ourselves.) Lets make that insight a tie in to Item 7
7) The Wakefield Doctrine. Among other things it’s good for, the Wakefield Doctrine is a tool that allows me to better understand myself and my current place in the world around me. (Serious students of the Doctrine are smiling and thinking, “yeah, that understanding jones that you people have, never ends does it? At least as a people, clarks rarely are bored. Unless forced into a place or activity or role that has less than the illusion of self-determination. Then it’s awful.) And the Doctrine, by reminding me of this aspect of how I relate myself to the world around me, makes things a little better.
8) A Bridge too Far Before and After today’s construction session:
9) A Yellow thing from the Una garden:
10) SR 1.3 Click on the icon and join us! (Tell ’em the Doctrine sent ya) (or not, you might want to walk around to the main entrance, nice people there….normal people. Quite friendly.)
Hey! Click here!
About clarkscottroger
Glad you have lots to be thankful for. I am definitely a clark, I am never bored. :)
cool. (for the next level of usefulness of the Doctrine, consider secondary and tertiary aspects. These are ‘qualities’ that would appear for all the world to indicate that we are one of ‘the other two’ …but only for a second. Usually under extreme duress or demand. Using myself as an example: I have a significant secondary aspect as evidenced by my behavior in the context of the Doctrine. I am way not shy or insecure when it relates to the Wakefield Doctrine. Everything else? absolutely. The holds that we all have the potential of the three but live in one world only. I should issue my standard warning at this point. After reading about the world of scotts and the world of rogers and how they relate themselves to the world around them (as predators and herd members respectively) we begin to identify them in out our world. The thing is, once you ‘see’ the rogers and the scotts, you may not be able to not see them. ya know?
Hey! It might take a while to come across a couple of videos I’ve posted that totally illustrate the personality types, so here’s one that shows a scott and a clark and roger so well you’d think the screen writer called me up and said, ‘hey clark! a little help here I go these two actors David Carusoe and Robert De Niro’ No seriously! Spoiler alert. No surprise that Carusoe’s the scott and De Niro’s the clark but look at this interaction and see how the three characters are relating themselves to the world around them.
Strong Language Advisory
Everyone’s an art critic, except me. I am not. I just miss it.
Where there are ears, theres almost always a face.
Love this line. Made me smile.
Again, I love your photos and especially how you describe the glass bird and the bridge one.
I wonder if Una realizes that garden is done up in her honour.
I’ve gotten the thing about being a critic, at least in the sense of the arts. I suspect that there are distinctions in the world of art critics that I’m not aware of due to the fact that I don’t really know anything about it (art and criticism).
The ears and eyes is true in the same way that we, all of us, are surrounded by magic and miracles, it’s just a matter of finding the time and freedom (from knowing whats real and whats not real) to take advantage of it.
I’d like to think that she does. She doesn’t go out of her way to dig up the garden. And you know how dogs can be with soft, easily-dug dirt.
Una is such a good dog.
Do you have a professional camera. You take great pictures. I am dependent on my phone camera.
She is that.
Thank you, but no, nothing elaborate for equipment. I do totally believe in the ‘take a thousand and hope to get lucky’ approach to taking pictures. And in this, digital cameras are a total godsend.
Your thankfuls add to my reasons to smile!
LOL I still have my MC posters from college days. Somewhere….:D
For #7. The post from the link below showed up on my, let’s reminisce, FB page. Too bad the vids expired:D
Classic Doctrine post, back in the day.
https://wakefielddoctrine.com/2012/07/16/and-while-we-wait-for-the-multitude-to-gather-this-brief-word-with-handy-reminders-from-the-wakefield-doctrine/
I’ve never been very good at description and I’m thinking I should take up your little exercise here of describing your photos I know you do it for the benefit sub our friend but it strikes me that it’s a great little exercise for someone like myself who really sucks at description. I just haven’t spent enough time on my blog lately I guess. But I do love some of the things you come out with under your comments for your photos. I’m glad that you know Garden is working out seems to be producing. Although I have to say I’m missing me some una videos
It’s cool how difficult it can be! (Credit where credit is due, it was our friend Kristi Brierly who I noticed had descriptive descriptions (lol) under her photo. She’s probably been doing that all along but for some reason it dawned on me that is was a remarkably thoughtful thing to do… typical of Kristi. So I thought to myself, I thought, ‘hey why not try it, how hard can it be?’
yow! like everything else in the world rhetorical, harder than it looks and it can be a different thing for everyone. but the bottom line is that it is, as you point out good practice/exercise. Kinda like everything else here in blogbville (Blogville Official motto: “And you laughed when all your English and Composition teachers said, ‘pay attention, there’ll come a day when you’ll wish you had.‘)
But like so much else in the world, there are lessons within lessons here in the things we do in the ‘sphere. To imagine what words would convey the nature and character of a thing to someone in another room, in a another country, in a state where the array of colored dots are without value, damn! So that part is fun. And, as you, my professionally intuitive friend will not doubt be thinking, we are what we write and what we write is a part of who we are.
ya know?
will get a video of our next ‘walk’
Your photos and their accompanying descriptions are always such a delight, Clark, not only for the very apt description of subject content but also for the tidbits of Clark wisdom and humor tucked in! “Where there are ears there’s almost always a face.” :-) I loved the creative aspect of the indoor/outdoor photo with the stained glass bird, and the green leaf with raindrops (or dewdrops) from your garden gives such a feeling of beauty, freshness, and peacefulness in the flow of lines.
I can see that Phyllis has the bridge project progressing nicely, and that’s not easy work! I loved the possibilities you presented for why the far end of the right beam might be curving slightly inward. :-) It’s going to look really good when it’s done, and be safe and secure for crossing.
Your Una garden is producing! I see a lovely yellow squash that will surely soon be eaten. I have to agree with you in #5 that the value of photos is definitely greater than or equal to a written item of gratitude. We love photos that give us glimpses of each other’s lives. And yes, the ability to take those photos and share them so easily with our digital phones, tablets and cameras, has totally changed the world of photography and enhanced our ability to share our lives considerably! I remember a time when rolls of film were used and developed sparingly at some expense and often only a few on the roll would be truly worth the money spent. Now we can take a dozen and discard all but one and be satisfied with the result!
Your occupation is truly the perfect choice for a Clark, and the flexibility (translate freedom) it allows you. Also just the right amount of social interaction and the satisfaction of identifiable results. You mean we aren’t really in control as much as we like to believe?! LOL
Most surely you are right in #10 that the good folks who frequent our TToT linkups are a nice, friendly bunch, though normal is clearly subjective! Thank you for smiles to begin my new week with, Clark, your writing skills shine through even in something such as this list of grats. Have an awesome week ahead!
Thanks, Josie, they are fun to write. The bridge project is progressing, had some adjustment/semi-engineering things to figure out, but we will be putting the decking on next weekend, with any luck. The squash is Phyllis’ I’m partial to the corn and tomatoes and celery (yeah, exotic taste in foods lol) There is something going on with Number 3 tomato plant that I cannot figure out. Hopefully it’s just my imagination. I’m still enjoying the learn and developing of the writing thing, so I cannot complain, although SR 7283k2.3o does permit complain under certain circumstance and bound by a set of parameters that make it easier not to.
Have a good week your ownself
Congrats on the Bridge too Far. Excellent reconfiguring.
I’m sorry I’m not there to partake of the first edible vegetable from Una’s garden!
getting there, bridge-istically speaking, of course
I’m never bored, either. No, wait…if I feel boredom coming along, I will find a way to SHAKE IT ALL UP and place my life upside down. lol. it’s what I do. Cuz, I’m a clark. :D
the only constant is change, no?
Thanks for identifying that object for which I didn’t even know it had the name of planchettes.
That bridge is coming right along.
I like The Landscape of Green and Glass photo. Drops of water on leaves and petals makes for beautiful photos.
Before the summer is over that “yellow thing” won’t feel quite as lonely. It is such a versatile vegetable. I even used them to make a mock pineapple jam using zucchini.
Thanks for the mentioning my TToT.
gotta love the internet (easy access to all sorts of things)
Hope to start the decking (of the bridge) this weekend.
The garden bigger, one (of the four) tomato plants seems to have died. Another is ‘behaving’ rather oddly. Leaves full, open and healthy looking first thing in the morning, come back for lunch and they’re like totally shriveled and bent back on themselves.
(Will take morning and lunch photos, maybe you’ve seen this in plants)