Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
‘A long-ago photo showing Ola indicating where we should bury her.’
This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. Our current host, Kristi, invites you to join in our weekly event. Its really quite a simple concept. Write a post sharing Ten Things for which you are thankful/grateful and link it to her blog. Although most of us live in a decidedly decimacious* culture, the Ten in ‘Ten Things of Thankful’ is open to personal interpretation. It’s fun, it’s interesting and its been known to have a positive effect on those that participate.
Hey, speaking of bloghops and learning to write, I also participate in the Six Sentence Story bloghop. (Six Sentence Story motto, ‘as long as you gots one more semicolon that you have periods, you’re in business!’). The question forming in my mind, ‘Could one write a TToT as a Six Sentences Story?’**
Lets find out.
Thankful
Sunday morning was overcast, the woods surrounding the house1 teetered on the edge of autumn2; like a drunk mistaking a lamppost for sobriety, the cold lurked just beneath the grass, which being closest to the earth, had already given up hope. Ola’s3 grave, echoing the tale of Avalon, becomes more visible as the leaves on the trees die and carpet the earth; Una4, more patient than her predecessors, sits and waits for breakfast, a black-on-black-with-eyes-of-brown reminder that family is more about connections with the past, than one particular individual.
In this virtual world5, we share Tales of our lives and, lost on the uninitiate confined to the world of brick and mortar, this includes memories, fear and ambitions, things that cannot be taken from a drive-up window or cast upon front doorsteps, like messages in clear plastic wrapping.
Sunday, despite the assurance of certain versions of the Bible to be a day of rest, rarely is in the 21st Century and so Open Houses6 are scheduled; the time to edit the next chapter of Almira7 or write the next installment of Interlude8 awaits, welcome company as I sit in a client’s home, waiting on opportunity. While Una and Phyllis9 spend the afternoon search familiar forests for new trails and interesting lifeforms, my Guest Sign-in Sheet awaits those who would buy a home in a seaside community or, reading this, take part in this admittedly odd TToT, by sending in their single Thankful to be incorporated, like a long-lost uncle mysteriously appearing on the doorstep of the house overlooking the ocean, into our story.
All good things come to an end, is a lesson at the heart of this bloghop; for many it serves as a reminder to appreciate what is good and, for a fortunate few, it offers the key to experiencing life as a gift, rather than a burden.10
* not a ‘real’ word. It refers, of course, to our ‘base 10’ system of mathematics which permeates our culture (and therefore reality, at least for some), except, of course, for measuring cups and record-player turntables
** those new(er) to the TToT, one of the ‘beauty parts’, (as Lou Collins would say), of this here bloghop here is the… liberality encouraged in format, style and general flights of creativity. While there are participants who excel at writing orderly and coherent lists of Ten Things that relate directly to the writer’s past week (or month or life-to-date), the rest of us are given a box or crayons and a sheet of construction and invited to sit at the empty desk in the back of the room. Which, as we come to appreciate only after too long a time, is perfect for us.
For those of a mind more comfortable with order and sequence, this week’s Ten Things of Thankful are, as follows, (Ed.):
1. comfortable home; 2. hypograt: end of summer; 3. Ola; 4. Una; 5. access to the internet and those who have become friends; 6. work that I enjoy; 7. my primary WIP; 8. my flash-fiction serial; 9. well, Phyllis. 10. Secret Rule 1.3
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Though I do tend toward a list format when composing my posts, I really liked your Six Sentence Story take on the TToT. Very well done, poetic entry! (Don’t forget to link up)
Your SSS motto made me laugh! Thank goodness for semi-colons!
Thank you, Kristi.
someday… I will write a Six Sentence Story comprised of six sentences, each of which has one noun, one verb and one object (and perhaps an adjective or an adverb… but not both!)
Clever TToT! And alas, I missed the call-in last evening. So…I got myself a biz coach, cuz I have this big, ol’ huge background in business. (HAHAHA…HA!) and I’ve been tasked with as much homework as I had when I was getting my teaching certification. So…reading books, editing the website (maybe I don’t need a new one), researching what in tarnation to DO as a teacher to set myself apart so I can actually make a living doing this stuff…that sort of thing.
You said something about Open Houses up there. Yeah, I imagine that before the winter chill sets in (because moving in winter seems like it would be nothing short of awful…here! Lemme carry that big heavy box through six feet of snow, load it into the box truck and try not to get things muddy!) there would be plenty of Open Houses.
That said, this year I haven’t enjoyed my outdoor time as much as in years past…funny how starting and running a business will make you work more than you ever worked for anyone else…so that you don’t ever have to work for anyone else again…
yeah well…I’m not quite to the “not work for anyone else” part, yet, but you know…all in good time. That makes me wonder about clarks as entrepreneurs. Starting from scratch. Learning the trade. I I think it would be a delightful intellectual challenge. And even more of a challenge to “sell the product” without actually selling. Because if I can actually hang on to “my why” then it might just be that I can become a guru without actually becoming an ass…
HAHA. Just some Sunday thoughts betwixt all the other goings-on that have become part of my life lately…
Muchas gracias, señora Cynthia.
Surely the most critical ability necessary to any business owner is to be able to identify and secure resources. (This is the very general use of the word ‘resources’ meant to include skill enhancement/acquisition. While it’s very helpful for an owner (of a business) to ‘know how to do’ virtually any task involved in the operation of that business, there are very few ‘Masters of All’ in the world. And the key, imo, is the ability to see from as many perspectives as possible, a skill that I know you possess. Being able to see, not so much as ‘beyond’ ones viewpoint, as it is from a ‘different angle’ we can recognize weaknesses and deficiencies in the tools we gather.
That ‘working for yourself’ is a tough gig, especially starting out. I’ve read over the years books that, among other things difficult to do, recommend that you schedule your own free time and not wait for it to happen on its own. Obviously, in the beginning there is much to do and little time to do it, but the principle is totally sound. The time not engaged in work is a valued added. Especially, I would think, in the intensely personal business (or so it seems to me) you are engaging in.
betcha you do excellent.
very nice TToT six sentence, thank you!
I concur with Phyllis.
There are no limits to creativity. None.
this is true
Very well done, bravo!
Thank you, M
I kind of like your box of crayons and some construction paper type posts. What can I say? I came searching to see if you had written a TToT because I didn’t see that you had linked up at Kristi’s site. I was about to give up on linking my post at her site, because it wasn’t letting me link. After googling I learned, “click history.” It was as simple as that and I was able to link. Mind you, I spent more aggravated time than I should have before using google.
The photo of Ola would make a beautiful painting!
She (Ola) was totally the most photogenic of all of our dogs.
Funny, though I was late posting (Sunday rather than Saturday) I also had trouble finding her site, the first time looking.