the Wakefield Doctrine

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

I was about to start the post with a ‘mix ‘n match’ theme, stopped and thought, ‘nah …too celevery’. Then I thought some more (yeah, I know, how likely is that)… and then I was all why the heck not? Life itself is mix ‘n match… I’ll go as far as to say, the major developments and forward motion of most of life, maturing, enjoying, discovering what we didn’t know and forgetting some things that we do is, effectively, a multiple choice test.  (Sometimes, no matter how much we wish otherwise, the correct answer is ‘None of the Above’ (here’s a bold statement, when we’re in our teens to 30s most of us experience a certain amount of anguish due to this fact of life.)

1)  Josie

2) Una

3) Phyllis

4)  Kerry

5)  zoe

6) Pop-Up Books

7) the Wakefield Doctrine

8) suburban farming

9) Secret Rules (of the Book of Secret Rules aka Secret Book of Rules)

10) SR 1.3

11) Steely Dan

(extra credit) ‘Home and Heart’ (votes at jukepop requested)

***

A)

B) (i)

C) (ii)

D) (iii)

A Shipping Envelope that tells the Tale of the Sender’
A manila mailing envelope takes up all but a vertical left hand border. The border is composed of pink and white horizontal rows. It has the effect of looking like what I picture when someone says, ‘gingham’.
The envelop itself is manila (which is kinda of yellow that didn’t want to get out of bed) and it has a texture. Not so much a texture as a shape. There are regular variations showing in the surface which is due to the bubblewrap that lines the interior as protection. (Bubblewrap itself is the original talking book, of course, being ‘flatly round with it’s heart in every bump’) Someone (and by ‘someone’ we mean the sender (and by ‘sender’ we mean zoe)) has drawn a pirate ship on the outside of the envelop. In the left center, the flatten, stretched triangle of the hull has two vertical lines representing masts. At the very top of the rearmost mast is a little rectangle with one ragged, jagged edge. The battle torn flag of a privateer. Below the flags are two nearly-squares where there are the mainsails (pronounced mn’sill). The top sail has the traditional skull and cross-bones, aka a Jolly Roger drawn on it and the bottom has the traditional dog bone, (of Joules St. Jonathan, legendary canine privateer). Leaving no doubt to the identity of captain and crew, at the back (or stern or the somewhat appropriately named, ‘poop deck’*) is a dog with a sword raised and the word balloon ‘Argh’ (Hopefully your reader app has the capacity to replicate the traditional pirate sound, ‘Argh’ or ‘ARR!’ It is less throat clearing and more a self-conscious discovery of ones true character with an overtone of celebration, despite the reception by those around you.
Yes, I will stop now.
In and among the jagged, horizontal lines of the ocean upon which our pirate ship floats are both ‘catfish’ and ‘dog shark’ which are, of course, real things. lol
It is the essence of redundancy to mention that this envelop is the work of zoe. (Few of us have the combination of creativity, skills and the spontaneity that she has.)<br /> *no! serially, that is the proper name!

E) (iv)

‘Gift from z and Joules’
The book is taller than wide, text bookishly-shaped. It is resting on the yellow mailing envelop. Both lie on our dining room table. You can tell it’s the dining room table because: a) there’s a battle of colored and patterned cloth covering the surface. To either side of the book is a field of pink squares in horizontal rows (the afore-mentioned gingham* and 2) there appears to be a steak knife in the upper right corner of the photo. (We’re guessing steak knife because it’s a dark wood oblong with a contour to it’s right edge and equally spaced on the vertical axis are two lightly colored circles. These circles are reflective (as the dark wood surely is not) and so would seem to be metal rivets in the traditional design of a knife with a wood handle. It this is not enough evidence, to the left of the book and to the upper right (of the book) are squares of material different from the overall background. These two are colorful patterns as well, but more …<em>self-possessed</em>, no ambition to claim territory beyond their edges. Clearly we got ourselves a couple of cloth placemats.
The Book! Very colorful. A green background (not a bright, shiny green, more of a solid, bluish green.) The left edge of the book, the ‘spine’ of the book, is purple from top to bottom. At the top of the cover, in yellow, flowing script, in a deliberate two rows: ‘The Wonderful’ (and continuing directly beneath the ‘The’) ‘Wizard’…and beneath that is the ‘Of’. The expected word, ‘OZ’ in both much larger and has the characters of the story sitting on and among the two letters. Dorothy sits on the lower, internal curve of the ‘O’ wearing her famous blue tablecloth dress, holding a basket. The Scarecrow is above and to Dorothy’s right. The ‘Z’ overlaps and extends to the right of the ‘O; and he is sitting on the top arm of the ‘Z’. His right leg extend along the top, his left leg bent at the knee and hanging down and for reasons not in any way that I can divine, he has his hat in his hand. His expression is the ‘bemused’ look most often associated with clarks. (I mean, seriously! OK, he’s a clark and is looking for a brain and shy and all, but he is totally in the dominant (graphically and socially) position. Ain’t no ignoring this guy. (The Doctrine tells us about clarks: they do not enjoy being the focus of attention, yet they will not tolerate being ignored). The Tin Man is standing to the lower right. His right foot is on the lower arm of the ‘Z’ and he has both arms at his hips ‘akimbo’. His face reflects the nearly insufferable sell-satisfaction of a roger. Finally the Cowardly Lion. He is in the left foreground and is the largest of the four figures (Toto is there but he is sitting in front of the Lion, much, much smaller in size). The Cowardly Lion is sitting up, as lions (and dogs) do, on his haunches, forelegs straight, forming the leaning triangle of the predator class of four legged animals. The artist almost did a good job of drawing a sense of fear and self-doubt in the face of the lion.
At the bottom left, under where the lion stands: ‘A Commemorative Pop-Up’**

*I should ask Pat, she is remarkably knowledgeable of such materials
** as opposed to an ‘Accusative Pop-Up’, I suppose…. “Professor Luther! Your Ninety-five Theses are surely going bring the Vatican down on our heads, but the way the Basilica rises from the page! And there! Who would not recognize Pope Leo X standing in front of St Peters.”

F) (v)

Eggplant
Very black teardrop-shaped vegetable in a forest of stems.
The eggplant is held to the plant by green, pointed fingers clutching the top and narrowest end.

G) (vi)

H) all of the above

I) Some of the above

Click on this here icon here and join in the TToT

i)  ‘Phyllis and Una sittin in a Tree’

ii) ‘A Tale of Two Dogs’

iii) ‘An Envelope, a Book, a World’

iv) ‘Plants and Jewels’

v) ‘A Dog, a Woman and a Bridge’

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

Lets get started.

zoe has a blog hop called the Six Sentence Story. The rules are simple: take the week’s prompt word and write a story about it/with it/against it. And make the story have only six periods. Six sentences, no more and no less.

This week’s prompt word is ‘SCRATCH’. The legend of Robert Johnson forms the basis for my Six this week. (Music vid included, being a total clark, how could I not?)

Scratch

The night hung like a funeral shroud over the endless cotton fields; the dull crunch of store-bought shoe heels on the dusty gravel road called the child from the relative safety of his bed. A song that made him feel like crying in sadness and yelling in anger kept the boy at the open window of the tin-roofed shanty, like the frayed rope holding a dinghy against a rising tide.

Stopping in front of the house, the man, a lighter shadow against the midnight dark, set the long leather case on the road and said, “Get back in yo bed little man, ain’t nothin out this time of the night.”

The boy stared and thought about the rabbits out in the back huddled against the chicken wire fence and whispered, ‘There must be something, you out there, ain’t ya?”

The man’s eyes dimmed and seemed to shine and he said, fear and pride riding his words, “Ole Scratch and his hellhound been seen down to the crossroads ’round about midnight ever now and then. I aim to tell ’em I ain’t meant for them fields, I got me a guitar,” a defiant nod down to the case leaned against his leg, “and I aim to have the world know my name.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4x_QBp3S7Y

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

‘Drawing Hands’ by MC Escher*
Being in what appears for all the world to be the writing mood equivalent to walking into the classroom after a night of not studying and waiting for the words “Pick up your pencils and begin…now” I thought it would be best to let the rogers at wikipedia describe the photo.
“ Drawing Hands is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January 1948. It depicts a sheet of paper out of which, from wrists that remain flat on the page, two hands rise, facing each other and in the paradoxical act of drawing one another into existence. Although Escher used paradoxes in his works often, this is one of the most obvious examples.**”
*College Dormitory Decorator’s Guild motto: ‘god, if it weren’t for Escher we would have had to come up with more ‘Hang In there, baby’ cat posters and beautiful scenery photos with sweet, encouraging and totally truncated Fritz Perls quotes. whew!
** whats with the ‘tude!? was it me, or did that last line have a bit of a sneer in it! hey wikipedian! chill… lets see you come up with something as simple, yet original… keep ya sarcasm for reality TV ‘talent’ shows…

Being Saturday, the theme (of Doctrine posts), sheers off from whatever off-the-pavement-through-the-cedar-post-wire-fences-and-straight-damn-across-a-farmer’s-field-of-half-grown-corn trajectory that we enjoy during the week and settles into a more sensible, if not predictable path. The Road to TToT-ville.

Fun metaphor (or allegory, can never keep them straight), the projection of this bloghop into a real, imagined place does allow the intent of our host (and before her, the founder, creatoress, Lizzi O’Ryan*) to manifest in as real a fashion as a hammer dropped on the foot.

Josie Two Shoes provides the place and the atmosphere for all those inclined to submit a post composed of Ten Things of Thankful (or some approximation thereof**) It is a not inconsiderable task, but as is often the case, those who have within, the qualities they encourage, she makes it look easy. And that is a gift in and of itself. And it provides an environment that’s totally comfortable for those of us less able to express the subtler and, to many of us, loftier qualities of the human being.

Enough with the charm. I’ll leave that to the rogers among us. (reminder: clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel)

On with this here post here!

1) Una. 52.4 pounds of Chodský pes  She is currently sitting on the bed in the room where I word-rassle

2) Phyllis (roger with significant clark-like secondary aspect and moderate scottian tertiary), bridge constructor and keeper of the hearth

3) The Graviteers

4) zoe and joules and the Six Sentence crew (now, I am, in fact, going to ask that you take hold of your visual cortex and totally imagine the writers that participate each week in zoe’s bloghop, in total gangster look. thug, to a man (and woman)…. no, I’m totally serious!)

5) the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules). Somebody say, “Hey! There are always exceptions and allowances in any practice, exercise, or bloghop-with-a-theme-thats-innvariably-beneficial-to-all-participants. So what’s the big deal about this Secret Book (aka Secret Rules)?’ Two words: hypograt (from hypogratitudiness, n. hypograt. (a hypograt is an Item (included in a TToT post) that represents something that happened or a person encountered or pretty much anything you think of that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot feel grateful for (or to, or even, at). The BoSR/SBoR allows: ‘…when something simply sucks, but persists in the landscape as one writes a TToT post and no amount of spin or alternate perspective transforms the toad into a beautiful princess/prince, provided it insists on sitting there, like the moisture-ring on the dashboard of your car that nothing seems to remove, it may, with appropriate notation be considered an Item for that week’s TToT.‘

6) the Wakefield Doctrine, my online sine qua non.

7) the writing jones that I so whole-heartedly picked up and strapped to my back. ‘Home and Heart‘ (A Sister Margaret Ryan novel)

8) Sunday Supplement

(Tilted) Primary Colors Sunday
A rose, a dog, sunflowers
Landscape format: the left half is immediate and shows a rose bush (at the top of the left half) and three sunflowers (at the bottom of the left half) The right half of the photo is centered by Una who is sitting with her back to the camera. She is looking to her left enough that we see her snout pointing to the left. The line from the tip of her nose travels up towards the top of her head with slight indent, followed by a small, squared prominence that lets us see her eyes, even though we can’t see them in the black on black coloring.
Where was I?
Una is sitting, which in a dog is a remarkably ‘prepared’ stance. Her back legs are bent and her forelegs are straight. This posture is stable, allows her to relax while still maintaining optimal awareness of her surroundings and, because of the position, (of her legs), she would be in motion a second after detecting the need to move.
Una (and most dogs) are my total (and near-hopelessly out of reach) role models.
The grass is green, ripening into white.
The leaves of the rose bush are totally angular, like the stegosaurus of garden plants, all sideways and pointy. As if the thorns weren’t enough of a ‘you talkin to me?!’ the color is …well, rose colored. (Sort of red sitting alone at the bar after everyone else has paired up and left together).
Now the sunflowers… man! talk about yer scottian flowers…. stem (straight green tubes) middle thing a black cue ball shiny enough to show a little window-pane-shaped light spot where it’s reflecting the light from above) and the petals! Yellow. As in…
‘HEY! Hey!! over here I gotcha nectar right here!’

9) Garden photo (raining out …. hey, lets see if I can find a video to place mark for us here, with the theme of rain. I know just the one, if I can only find it… got it!  at the bottom of the page.)

10) Secret Rule (SR) 1.3

*not, ‘actually’, her real name. Thing is, as fans of SOC (I’m looking at you Kerry) will attest to, sometimes rhythm trumps sense (or correctness). Lizzi O’Ryan has a roll-off-the-tongue-quality, so, I guess we’re stuck with it. At least for the tenure of this post.

** the bottom line requirement for participation is ‘good intent’. Numbers are good, Ten is fine. Less than (or more than) is acceptable, provided the intent is good. Plus…. plus!  there is the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) see number 5 Tell me how anyone out there in the blogosphere has anything that comes anywhere in the general vicinity of being imaginarily close to the TToT.

Click here and join us on the TToT!

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

zoe says the word this week is …pickle. (It’s been rumored that zoe has moments where she likes to mess wit our heads. Exhibit 1, your honor.) lol

What’s the deal? you inquire, all ready for a story that is six and only six sentences in length. How hard can it be, you opine, settling back in your metaphorical easy chair. (hey, where the hell did that expression come from? I know, lets go look it up! 1707, it says! well, that was interesting. is the word still ‘pickle’?)

This is the Six Sentence Story bloghop. (You really need to join us in the fun.)

Pickle

A 21st Century Gulliver, bound by gossamer chains of brightly patterned sheets, Jimmy Gherkin lay in his bed, the glowing sunset in the bedroom window called out for a continuation of the summer’s day. He struggled to appear unable to sleep, despite the model airplanes suspended on now invisible strings, their swooping flight halted in the dark, waiting to approve the letters of transit from a boy’s imagination.

With the unconscious insight for the very young, Jimmy asked, “Daddy, where do we come from?” and with that question discovered the power to stop the adult world, as stopped in the doorway.

As Tim Gherkin turned, an opportune glance at a sports poster on the wall created a smile and he said, “Well, son, imagine you’re at third base and the fielder drops the ball. Naturally you try for home but halfway there, the third baseman gets the ball and he tosses it to the catcher who walks up the baseline directly in your path. Life sometimes puts us on the spot where we can only try for home plate and hope for the best, and it’s called a ‘pickle’.”