the Wakefield Doctrine

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

Very early start to my warm-up phase of the week’s Six Sentence Story. Wednesday morning! (Yeah, ‘ayyiee’ indeed!)

In any event, the story-robbing world of work and reason is lurking outside my garage door like a garden-hose-wielding-gasoline-thief-magically-transported through-time-from-1974, so intent on stealing the precious fuel that he fails to notice that there are three plastic gas containers lined up along the wall of the garage, each one complete with Easi-grip handle^®. The better for running away from the police.

zoe and her prompt words! Or rather prompt word. Only one word each week. But… but! that one word has got to gather exactly six sentences around it in the form of a story. Otherwise she’d have to go and, like, totally change the title of this bloghop. And that wouldn’t be write. (ha ha)

(A.S.* This week’s Six is from a scene in the new chapter in ‘Home and Heart‘. Drusilla is the very able owner of a real estate brokerage who has been engaged by a large and aggressively growing company by the name of ‘the Bernebau Company’. The Bernebau Company is owned by one Cyrus St Loreto and Constantin Szarbo is his fixit man.)

Bend

“Knock, Knock.”

Drusilla Renaude’s scalp tingled from the atavistic effort of her hair follicles to stand straight up, the better to make her look larger, this in service of the most fundamental of human defensive strategies. The incongruity of the childish onomatopoeic greeting, more common among casual friends in an informal setting, coming from a man like Constantin Szarbo, enhanced her already adrenaline-laced blood supply with a tincture of ever corrosive fear.

Drusilla was a talented, educated and accomplished woman not given to being intimidated. Twisting her hips and bending her legs, visible through the glass-topped desk as one half of a pair of quotation marks, caused her upper body to turn, courtesy of the swivel-bearing in her chair, to face the door into her office.

“Yes?” The owner of Renaude and Associates offered a smile appropriate to asking a stranger who has clearly lost their way if they need some direction.

Constantin Szarbo filled the doorway, impeccably dressed in a suit from Savile Row, shoes from the Marche region of Italy, watch from La Chau-de-Fonds in Switzerland and a smile from the primordial jungle.

* yeah, Ante Scriptum, sorry! I don’t make this stuff up…well, sometimes

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)¹

(Old joke*) *Tenure on planet required to appreciate it.

Before we go any further, allow me to state what everyone who comes here, more than twice² knows both consciously and intuitively, i.e. stream of consciousness is the preferred style of communicating thoughts, acts and emotions, here at the Doctrine. One might, of course, argue that this simply represents an inability to organize thoughts in a logical and reasonable³ order, eschewing skilled presentation for the high-volume excitement of the random expression of thoughts and feelings that often sound bigger and more substantial than they are, after the smoke clears, the parenthesis are counted and majority of the ‘what the?!!’s are swept up and put in a bag.⁴
Or it’s simply fun. Fun in a (potentially) risky way. While it might be argued that effective writing must entail focus, discipline and attention to detail, it is also a relatively non-disputed fact that what ends up ‘on paper’ (both content and form) is a reflection of the writer’s personal worldview.⁵

So, lets all welcome our hostina, Josie Two Shoes who went off searchin for Dan’l Boone, (or Elvis or the Lost Chord*). Her work and the positive energy that she imbues  this here bloghop here with each week is a remarkable thing indeed.

1) I am grateful for html, at least the yellow plastic shovel and blue pail level of code exhibited here today.

2) Una always makes the list. Why would she not?

3) Phyllis is right up there too, competing with a certain Chodský pes and whatever frozen-for-a-moment kaleidoscopic view of the world I am afflicted by as I type.

4) the Wakefield Doctrine, the reason in general: well, because; in particular (this week): those superscripted citations above.**

5) photo

Una on the Couch
(Warning! Weird photo description ahead)
This is Una lying in the loveseat that sits in front of the picture window that, in turns looks down on the driveway as it recedes from the house, intent on connecting us to the neighborhood street and the real world beyond.
Una is doing that ‘lying down upright’ thing that dogs do. Back legs tucked under stomach, back curved to the side, head resting on her right foreleg, her left foreleg next to her head. Everything is at an angle facing to the slight left of the camera lens so as Una glances at me, you see her eyes purely by virtue of the white, sideways crescent, as she focuses on my, to her left.) She is black with white-black positive contours as a result of the light from the window (which is out of frame). The couch is a milk chocolate brown and there is a butterscotch-colored quilt on the back of the love seat, water falling behind her.
If I was a food guy I’d have the vocabulary for the chocolate butterscotch dessert items that some part of my brain is tapping upwards in subconscious morse code.

6) video

7) shoutout: Cynthia over at Intuitive and Spiritual (muy beneficial blog)  Zoe at ‘..uncharted’ (home of the Six Sentence Story and a certain canine with decidedly privateer inclinations)

8) Sunday Supplement (check back tomorrow!)

‘Have I mentioned that I derive an inordinate amount of pleasure from digging holes?’
No, seriously, I do! And, for any dirtaphiles, the earth that has been relocated is being put to good use, forming a more dog friendly approach to the bridge and adding to the width of the path to Phyllis’ tree house.

9) Sunday Supplement (check back tomorrow!)

Sunflower To Be.

10) Secret Rule 1.3

Click Here…. join the activity. It’s the weekend, you got time.

1) no particular significance, other than it is the stub-toed, curtain-blown-back-for-just-the-right-second for a view of something new, of this week’s Post

2) in the early years when visits were the measure of reach rather than the number of comments, it was generally understood that, in this used-bookstore, peep-show, neighborhood garage of a virtual world, chance encounters were likely, repeat visits were far less common, much greater import.

3) sounds like any rogerian worldview you might have come across recently?

4) yes, this is referring to our scottian brethren

5) lest we forget, the Wakefield Doctrine maintains that we, all of us, while living in the personal reality of only one of the three worldviews, never lose the potential to perceive the world as do the other two.

*  album by the Moody Blues although the song below was not on that album

**  above here…

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

Kind of a late start for my ‘warm-up’. It’s 8:19 on Wednesday.

This, of course, is the Six Sentence Story. A bloghop hosted by zoe. A story of six sentences total (no more and no less) based on/related to/involving the week’s prompt word. It can be fun. It can be aggravating. It can be both. That third statement is probably the most difficult lesson in life. (As a child, I held on to the belief that truths were simple, straightforward and unambiguous. As an adult I came to believe that the opposite was true. The lesson is that both can exist in an uneasy, life-affirming coexistence. Takes a lifetime to learn. oh well.)

This week’s prompt word: BORDER

The streetlights lit the interior of the Buick like chandeliers swaying in a nighttime hurricane, oblong shadows chased each other over the dashboard, climbed the seat backs and threw themselves into the canyon of the back seat. He held the steering with only his left hand, nestled in the plastic angle created by the spoke that connected the horn to the vinyl-wrapped circle, a bird of prey momentarily awed by the depths of the valley surrounding the nest. The console of the car bore defiant witness to the tenacity of human needs for security; designed to travel at speeds of over 120 mph, the steel and glass home had to have a cupboard, supplies were necessary no matter how brief the trip. The driver’s right hand lay palm up on the padded console, a willing (and hopeful), castaway rocking ever so slightly on the hard bone ridge of knuckles.

Light slowly bloomed in the distant night, the first of the stores and shops that stood to mark the edges of the small border town.

She smiled from the corner of her eyes, the arc of dark eye brows over eyes that would spark and flare more than twinkle and shine; the woman’s passion and power were inseparable, and with the first touch, any distinction, irrelevant.

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

‘There will be rejoicing among the hungry folks of Lilliputian.’
A Tomato Tale
On the top of a beige bench are from (lower) left to (upper) right: a pair of welding gloves, (only the fingers show in the photo) two small tomatoes, one, directly opposite the middle finger of the glove is a red globe. The two small oblongs of reflected light show it to be an un-even spherical shape. Above it, at about eleven o’clock and one o’clock are two tomatoes looking an awful lot like pumpkins. Actually they look, for all the world, like those pumpkin-shaped candy things from Halloween that are small, easy to eat and made from pure sugar. They inevitability cause the dreaded sugar burns, endemic during the holiday of The Free-ranging Calories.
To the right center is a cluster of yellow tomatoes. At least I’m being told that they are yellow tomatoes and therefore the color is on purpose. The largest in the bunch is also the yellowest and most regularly formed. The light creates the classic curved-window-pane reflection that tells us that it is a solid spherical object.
Finally to the upper right is a small paring knife. It has a dark gray blade that shows a lighter strip along it’s cutting edge. The handle is light brown with three perfect circles of the rivets that hold the wood (grip) to the metal blade.

What rough draft, it’s time come round at last, slouches into the electronic light of the blogosphere. This is being written at 12:11 am Sunday, so lets all agree to smile and not make a fuss at my picking up random literary references like lint at a clothes dryer convention. (And, the slightly bizarre asides too, if you please.)

The simple thing is the explanation. This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. It is hosted each week by Josie Two Shoes and it is an opportunity to reflect on those aspects of our (collectively) individual lives, this past week or past decade and share with so inclined, ‘the people, places and things’ that have evoked a sense of gratitude in us. It is simple, though not necessarily easy. That being said, the benefits of identifying with others who focus on an element of life that, ironically can be in short supply during those times when most needed, can be quite beneficial.

Seeing how I’m way late this weekend, let’s go mostly video! (The math: a picture is worth a thousand words, a video, at 30 pictures a second, times 117 seconds (of the main video) …carry the 3… 3,510,000 words! Best get Evelyn Woods on the line!)

1)Phyllis (see vid1)

2) Una (see vid1)

3) The Guard(en)

4) Phyllis’s Bench (From the remains of the old bridge, a new and useful form.)

Phyllis’ Chair
There’s a line in the first Chapter of ‘Almira’ describing the ward where Mrs. Gulch lay asleep (or unconscious),
“The chair was moveable and it was stable. When you thought about it, those are the only really essential qualities a chair required.”
The chair that Phyllis built follows that design philosophy.
The chair sits on a rise in a greenly wooded area. The lower level plants are green. If the trees are green, they are out of our view, only brown-grey trunks rise among the low brush like narrow volcanos, shooting up without the slightest implication of being concerned with ever having to return.
On this rise is the chair which simple is an arrangements of wood rectangles. The back are several pieces of wood (the wood used as decking on the previous bridge) side by side (no spaces between). They are that worn brown color of weathered lumber. Most of their claim to a color (grey brown it may be) lies in it’s texture which is smooth, yet worn deeply wood grain. The shadows between the ridges show as color.
The supports for the seat? Firewood! Or, rather, individual pieces of firewood, sixteen inches in length. Intended for the wood stove, they are running to earth in the hopes of avoiding a fiery if not noble end.

5) the earth moves, it’s a fundamental pleasure

6) Produce from Una’s garden, a certain look from the garden’s namesake

‘A dog, a carrot, a question.’
This photo shows Una’s opinion of the first carrot from the garden that is in the shape of her name.
For a photo of Una, not the most photogenic of canines, it is rich in detail. Provided of course, you enjoy appreciating how many shades of black are possible and still see anything.
Una is sitting in the center of the photo (a landscape format), on her hind quarters and is looking up at the hand the holds ‘the carrot’. Her face is quite visible. Her ears are relaxed back against her head, and you can see that her eyes are brown. Actually if there is a color called agate brown, I’d go with that. It’s a shade of brown that has a glow of gold beneath the surface, which is what stimulates that very distant memory of ‘playing marbles’ back in grade school. While marbles were available at the Five and Dime* there was always one kid who had more of them than anyone else and for reasons lost in time, his large collection was always in a very cool draw-stringed cloth sack. The top of the pyramid were pureies (sic) the colorless, clear glass marble. Within the ranks there were kingers and regular sized marbles. Cats eyes and agates were also in the taxonomy of marbles. There were games to be played, the prize? Marbles! And it was a high stakes game, at least until fifth grade.
Back to Una.
Mostly black, the variations in coloring tends towards the browns or what I imagine is meant by ‘sable’. She has two markings above her eyes… they would get noticeably closer together were she to frown. But Una has a temperament that puts ‘frowning’ in the category of an ambition reserved for Halloween.
In the photo her muzzle is showing grey. Just around the end of her mouth, but… ayiieee! how is this possible? It seems only a year or two that her driver dropped her off after picking her up at Logan and driving to our house!
Man!
*sorta Walmarts without the economic tentacles or people you trust need the money and genuinely don’t mind acting as ‘Greeters’. Which is, in and of itself an odd mutation of a once specialized social function. “On behalf of Sam Walton, may I wish you a pleasant shopping experience.”
What especially interesting in the difference a half a century can make, as kids we were on the alert for the people who would throw us out of the Dime Store (or Woolworths) for hanging around too long and reading the comic books.

7) Graviteer Kristi is settling into a new home. And though I can accept that she and John did not chose their (new) home city entirely because it figures prominently in ‘Blogdominion‘… there is something cool about see a real person’s photos about a place that I have included in a work of fiction. (Doubly so, as Kristi was gracious in offering me insights into the culture and life of a character (in the story) who was a member of the Mormon Church.)

8) zoe and them, down at the Six Sentence Story bloghop

9) It’s all about family in ‘Home and Heart‘, even the antagonist is not immune to collective attraction of family.

10) SR 1.3 (from the Book of Secret Rules, aka the Secret Book of Rules)

‘Click Me’

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

Wednesday Warm-up.

Zoe, she hosts a bloghop called ‘Six Sentence Story‘. A new prompt word is provided each and every week. Everyone is invited (yes, that means you) to write a little story using, in some manner or another, the week’s prompt word. By ‘little’ she means six sentences in total (and absolute) length.

You really should try it. It’s fun and satisfying (when you finally count the ‘periods’ seven or eight times) and hit publish. Come on down.

This week the word is ‘MINE’.

In the seat next to mine, the old man’s eyes seemed to sparkle for an instant, then dim as his eyelids moved downwards, like sunset on a sideways planet. Across the aisle, a young couple smiled at each other, sharing a look that was both lifeline and desperately frantic waving for help as they settled back into the cheap-furniture fabric of their seats, now firmly locked in their upright position. The landing gear began reaching towards the Earth, giving rise to an oddly guttural sound that inspired unease in all but infants, zen masters and the terminally ill; what was arguably the oldest of man’s spiritual ceremonies began in earnest.

Airliners, for all of their solid-state, high-tech operating systems, do not always make the transformation from magical flying ship to everyday, rolling-over-tar vehicle smoothly; sometimes they bounce, rubber feet squealing in fear.

As surely as the lightning spoke of death and power to the Neolithic congregation, huddled under the protection of low, tree branches, the contest between man’s ingenuity and Nature was both a challenge and a prayer; the first by the near limitless ego of the species, the second by the solitary person trying to believe in life everlasting.

“Thank you, watch your step,” the priestess offered the ritual blessing for a continued life following the pneumatic benediction as the metal retracted and a brightly lit tunnel opened up on yet another world.