the Wakefield Doctrine

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

This is the weekend. There is a little blue rectangle at Josie Two Shoes‘s blog where you can add your own TToT post. Go ahead. That way, when you have a minute in the course of the weekend you can click on one (or the other) and read a list of Ten Things of Thankful (or two or five) created by another person from somewhere on the planet. It’s enjoyable and it’s useful and, for those among us who make the effort to cultivate the gratitudinous view of life, it pretty darn beneficial.

Josie provides the common ground, everyone contributes to the attitude. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

1) Phyllis and her ancient friend (See Item 8)

‘Phyllis and the reptile’
Phyllis in blue tee shirt and black shorts crouches behind the turtle, forearms on bended knees. Like an origami, ‘motion-in-still-life’
The turtle is all about pointing to the place he (or she) is not and dragging his ungainly body behind.
To offset any hint of species chauvinism, his people been here for 220 million years. Probably will have the last laugh.

2) Reptilian Cam (“ruunn Forest…Runn!”)

Set free, transported by heavenly two-legged gods to a place like home.
(Shouldn’t require ingesting any hallucinogens to shift the perspective in this photo from: brown-with-rounded-square-patches-on-domed-shell turtle stepping into a shallow pond to: turtle walking over narrow bridge suspended across abyss.) 
what hallucinogens?!! lol

3) Youtube still is such a wonderful resource. (video at bottom of post)

4) ‘Home and Heart‘ it’s on jukepop and it’s a fun diversion as we enter the ‘do you really want to go outside’ season.

5) Life, death and defiance. Specifically as demonstrated (or would that be illustrated?) by the lone sunflower that survived the ravages of the ‘Appetites of the Deers!’. A single plant lived long enough to make adulthood, only to be brought down by a weakness that was in part inherent and, at the same time, a lack in a sufficiently nurturing and supportive environment. It grew too tall, too thin. And as a result, the combination of wind and rain caused it to fall to the earth.

6) Grat Item Five (slight reprise) …and though we were saddened by the demise of the “Tallest flower in this whole damn yard”, what do we see, a day or two later, than…. (hey! here’s a cultural reference that is, hold on to your hats, less than 20 years old)… baby Groot.

7) Una. Because, well..duh.

8) So, Phyllis is in the house minding her own business and Una starts yelling, (aka barking like crazy). Loosely translated she was saying, “Hey!! Hey!!! There’s something really strange in the yard. Don’t you smell it??!! No?!?! Then come here and look!” So Phyllis looked and, from my post in the woods, I hear, “Hey Clark! Come here.” I forward-fell up the path and through the woods and there, in the driveway, was an upside-down, painted tree stump. I stared. It ignored me. It moved. I smiled. The pieces of light and texture reassembled themselves, like in a cartoon where Wile E Coyote gets blown up by that fricken roadrunner and then all the parts draw together and the cartoon continues. So we did what any modern Jim Fowler and Marlin Perkins would do. (Cultural reference more than 10 years old. The universe does not suffer deviance.) We wrestled it to the ground, (which wasn’t difficult) and threw it in the air (aka carried it, while wearing welder’s gloves) down to the pond and lectured it on the advisability of staying doing what it knows, as opposed to exploring strange new worlds and driveways and roads. (Boy, have we turned old).

9) Sunday Supplement  Well, from a species point of view (or a rogerian point of view) Phyllis’s visitor is kinda pre-historic.

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (From the Book of Secret Rules, aka the Secret Book of Rules. Considered by many to be the Solomon Stone for the most anemic of Lists of Ten things or any other endeavor, here in the land of consensual make-believe. The internet is, of course, full of advice. And, not surprisingly, a very common topic is writer’s block. The BoSR/SBoR is both proof of the cause and surefire cure for ‘I-can’t-think-of-anything-to-write’/ ‘I’m out of ideas-itis’. In fact, it’s rumored that the preface of the original Secret Book, (in -6.66 font), it was written: “You have every word you had before being gripped by writer’s block, therefore, barring any significant blow to the head, they are all still available. Stop writing ‘to a standard’ and go back to writing for yourself.”

Hey! Come on, why don’cha join us! You know you want to! Nervous about what might be expected of you? Don’t worry ’bout nothin Tell ’em the Doctrine sent ya.

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

Miami Children’s Home, Maumee OH
Courtesy of the Troy Historical Society (www.thetroyhistoricalsociety.org)

Holy smoke!* So I was wandering the halls of the imaginary universe, aka the internet, looking for the trail that continues up through what remains of ‘Home and Heart‘ late last night. One part of writing that I really get a kick from is when I find I need a location or a cultural reference or just maybe just a detail in a character’s personal history. Rather than make it all up, I search the virtual world for it. (The assumption, a subset of the Doctrine’s ‘Everything Rule’ holds that if you look in enough places, long enough, you will find it.)

Example: Sister Catherine. She is a character in both Sister Margaret books. In the current book, ‘Home and Heart’ her character gets to play a larger role. Subsequently we learn more about her. Fine. All the books on writing say, ‘it’s essential that you come to know your characters better than you know your friends.’ I realized that Sister Catherine grew up an orphan. So I went out looking for orphanages. I backed her age off to bracket her childhood. She was born in 1967. In the course of my searching, I came across a reference to the Miami Ohio Children’s Home. A very real place, an orphanage. But that’s not what inspired me to write, ‘holy smoke’ What did inspire me to write ‘hole smoke’ was a page from the Troy (OH) Historical Society’s website titled: Miami County Ohio Children’s Home Index (1879-1930). On the page are links to entries that, presumably, account for all the residents of the Miami Children’s Home between those years. Alphabetically. And, as often happens with alphabetical listings, before the list starts in earnest (Addams, Addams, …Addington etc), there is, at the head of the list, the most outside of Outsiders, those generic entries. ‘no-name baby, last name**’

So I clicked on the last of these unknowns (‘no-name-baby, Ruth -?-) and this is what I found:

baby, Ruth (surname unknown)
Book #1, Page #290 
Inmate # 0579 
Date admitted:19 July 1894
Date discharged: died 21 Feb 1895 
Age: believed to be about 6 weeks
Sex: Female 
Comments: Baby found in basket in front of Home. Believed to be about six weeks old. She died.
“The one that we all loved. But Heaven claims it’s own”

‘She died’ ….’holy smoke!’

A part of me, at this moment, is itching to stay here at the keyboard. There seems to be so much that can, (and in the curiously poignant way of clarks), that should be said. This last is less the endless flow of information that is the foundation of the social contract of clarks, as it’s a need to mark the existence of those belonging to this particular set of outsiders. As such, this clarklike impulse is both sad and heartening.

*  an approximation of my two-word expression of… not sure what the word is, not shock, not surprise, more like finding yourself in the kitchen at 2:00 am for a glass of water and finding a full-sized car tire on the counter.

** presumably the last name of the adopting parents

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

Running behind. Gotta catch up.

zoe

prompt word: ‘JOINT’

Six Sentences (per) Story

Joint.

‘Time is surely the slyest of gods,’ he smoothed the ridiculous paper gown flat with hands the backs of which were even more wrinkled.

‘How so?’ he thought she looked younger than yesterday, himself vaccinated against irony by his analytical mind.

‘It takes our world and changes things in such a subtle manner, not only do we not notice, we approve, even embrace it’s deviltry’, he sat up straighter, the sound of footsteps approached the closed-door but continued on, hounds of an unknown hunter following a fresher scent.

‘Now you’re being overly romantic, as usual‘, she smiled with the love and confidence that anchored his soul.

‘How then, did it come to be, that I distinctly recall, when asking, ‘What kind of a joint is this?’ the person I expected the answer from was a man in a stained apron, a cigarette and a battered smile, rather than someone who’s first name I can’t pronounce in a spotless white coat and too young a face.

He turned, the soft avalanche of her laughter beginning as it had through the years, soothing his self-inflicted turmoil; but the only chair in the doctor’s examining room remained empty, unable to shield him from the sounds of busy strangers passing, back and forth, just beyond the door.