Month: February 2024 | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 3 Month: February 2024 | the Wakefield Doctrine - Part 3

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop. Foundered in 1767 by a charwoman’s daughter, her first effort to spin the gold from the dross was met with skepticism. Which, in rural England in the mid-1700s, was not attitude anyone sought to elicit from Readers. With the help of a defrocked monk by the name of Percival (no, no relation to the other, equally clueless Percival), L.R. found her way down to the coast and settled in Manchester. Under an assumed name, total makeover and a renewed determination to, (paraphrasing a descendent, ‘not get fooled again‘), she continued her efforts to point others in a better direction.

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop. This week’s Six of the Week comes from Frank Hubney with his way-fun storyette, ‘Heart‘.

5) the Unicorn Challenge (ceayr and jenne‘s no-it-doesn’t-look-like-two-starfish-gettin’-frisky-lets-go-to-the-next-card) photo-prompt ‘hop. This week’s Pick of the ‘corn comes from Doug Jacquire with his ‘My Station is Here, After’.

6) We were spared excessive frozen water accumulation this week. But, as Mimi, (our senpai in all matters gratacious), would remind us, ‘Never mind that! Be thankful you have a glass’.

7) Speaking of graduate-level gratitudining… the photo at the top? Ayiiee! One of the two carrying beams of the bridge has broken. (Did someone just say, ‘High Risk Wooden Bridge Repair… ordeal!!!!” lol) stay tuned. Open to suggestions as to cool mods to make. (P has already suggested ‘Rope Bridge’ Will spare you the meme-level icon movie scenes. But, prob-not.)

8) something, something

9) continuing project at work, wading through uncertainty is such a gift, i.e. ‘It’s right there. You define the character of the future, not ‘them, it, or those’.

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (’cause what good is it to be in a club/association/gathering/pack/herd/random-concurrence if’n some of the rules aren’t, like, hidden from view?)

 

music vids

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(this one? ‘You’re welcome’)

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Frieturday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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

We join them crazy-gifted fictioneers over at ceayr and jenne‘s place, the Unicorn Challenge. As a mixed social gathering, it’s less intimidating than Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven, but given the skills exhibited in their two-hundred-fifty-word stories (based on the photo-prompt below), we’re surprised we work up the nerve to join in even every-other-Friday.

Wish us luck.

 

The Number 9 (Direct Express to Liverpool-Hertfordshire-Manchester) blurred past those waiting on the platform with no more warning than a brief Doppler’d shriek of its horn. A negative-tunnel of air passing the station; all confetti-litter and iron-rattles blurred by it’s quantum state of permanent indeterminacy.

The quiet it left behind was one of the few insights into the world God intended, after the fiasco in the Garden. The only certainty He intended his flawed, if not prolific, Race of Man to have was simple: Loud/Not Loud. The Unified Theory of Getting Through Life.

For the most part, those on the platform were not there by choice. Comprised almost entirely of Commuters waiting to leave Home to Go To Work, the essential itinerary of capitalism.

The only free humans that morning were a young couple and a child.

The remainder of the people, (standing in for Heisenberg’s mythical ‘Observers), wore the shackles of Adulthood (tastefully accessorized by his slutty half-sister, Sophistication) affected not to notice these three societal outliers.

The child, in the forest of adults, stood with eyes wide in wonder. Being young he perceived the world as but forces and temporary objects, leaving little behind other than emotion solidified into hope and fear.

The couple had each other. They were at the peak experience of this relationship because they were parting. Why is inconsequential. When was all that matter to them.

Like the child, but unlike everyone else, they felt the incidental gift of a certain Garden, loss.

 

 

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [a Café Six]

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise (insisting only on the number of sentences be Six). No more. No less.

We left the tall, thin man and the Sophomore in the Manager’s office locked in a meta-adversarial contest of Will. (Click Here).

Prompt Word:

HEART

“What’s that noise

The tall, thin man was at the door of the Manager’s office before the Sophomore could laugh at the older man’s total inability to resist the urge to find the obscurely weird in the common everyday; but, before the younger man could justify his own love of the eccentric, the volume reached a level sufficient to permit comprehension.

Standing in the hallway where it opened into the Six Sentence Café and Bistro proper, the collective conversation of the crowded room, of which all but four were strangers, was enhanced by the visual: people smiling at the young waiters and waitrae serving drinks to those seated at the room full of small, round tables; the well-dressed (ok, well, over-dressed) man’s eyes were drawn to a woman sitting in an alcove facing the stage, her face awash with the richly-hued light of a laptop as she watched the celebration of her return.

The Sophomore, a little further in the dark of the hallway, slightly behind the manager, awed, “No way, thats…”; without turning the old man man replied, “Way.”

“We would do well to let her tale stand as a reminder of true inner strength; I hope to have half the heart and a quarter of the will that Chris has exhibited over the last months;” glancing at the crowd, the Proprietor spotted Nick and Denise sitting nearby with what they hoped was not concerned-hovering as regular customers greeted the Raconteur with quiet deference; Mimi, at the end of the bar rose and held the swinging doors as Tom stepped out of the kitchen, a food tray the size of a Hula Hoop® balanced over his head.

“You go, I’ll hang back and get into character,” the tall, thin man stepped further into the darkness of the hall as the shouts of, “Yo, T-Traveler dude!’ burst from a cloud of cigar smoke like a message from a sky-writer in the anti-matter universe.

 

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Six Sentence Story -the Wakefield Doctrine- [‘…of Heroes and the Misunderstood’ a Rue DeNite Serial Six]

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

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise (insisting only on the number of sentences be Six). No more. No less.

Back in May of last year, Tom, (The Mansionic Perspective) he comes up and says, ‘Hey clark,” he says, “I’m thinking my bunch of superheroes might have an interest in some of them characters what frequent the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge.” The beginning of the Doctrine’s contribution to the serial mashup can be read: Here

Well, our friend (and chef at the Six Sentence Cafe and Bistro) is at it again. Last week he wrote a Six that took place at Rue DeNite’s house. Totally un-expected. (Thanks! FrankMimi!)

Previously on (as yet named)… Serial Six we find Moonbeam feeling surprised

 

Prompt Word:

HEART

“Shit! Turn the car around.”

Like luminescent dominoes, the halogen street lights illuminated both speaker and driver through the car’s moonroof;  the driver was male, (Exhibit 1: early-stage male pattern baldness), confident, (Exhibit 2: right-hand on the wheel, left-elbow on armrest) and possessed of a certain serenity: (Exhibit 3: an easy smile of affectionate curiosity despite the volume/intensity from his passenger); who, with the additional  light from oncoming traffic, was unabashedly female, (Exhibit 4: eclipse-dark shadows rising and falling across her upper chest), athletic, (Exhibit 5: in an activity not so much focused on defying gravity as it was conspiring with it, i.e. willowy yet providing her provocative clothing with every parry and feint considered important to women’s fashion designers) and possessed of an intellect that searched for traps even as she baited her own, (Exhibit 6: shaded by her short, blue-veined blonde hair were two tattoos, below her right ear: Non serviam and, starting beneath her left ear trailing downwards: Vincit quae se vincit.)

The neighborhood was as quiet as a non-gated community gets, the architecture was tasteful, every house had three car garages and sited a discrete distance from the street, a taste not a meal, in terms of privacy; Rocco pulled the black-on-black DB12 into the driveway nearest the front entrance.

“I’ll be right back,” Rue’s shadow flowed across the front of the garage door, slowing as she approached the half-open front door; a glance back at the car confirmed that her friend had not abandoned his side gig as her bodyguard as he turned up the car’s sound system, letting Jacques Loussier’s jazz-Bach mask any sound of approach and eased out of the drivers side, siccing his own silhouette on hers.

“Well, far be it for me to forget a superhero,” stepping over the threshold into the living room, Rue DeNite smiled, “Oh wait, this isn’t one of those ambush reality shows, where they hide video cameras hoping to catch the homeowner doing the horizontal mambo with the hot neighbor, or in this case, maybe just sending a burglar in tights off to the ER.”

Ignoring the young woman with the rifle, Rue waited until Rocco closed the door and turned to the strange man in her living room, “Good Golly Mr. Moonbeam, who’s your cute little friend with all the weaponry; I gotta tell you, this supervillain action is turning my thermostat way up, poor Rocco’s heart might not be up to the demands I expect to be putting on him once we get back to our vacation, you hear what I’m sayin?”

 

 

 

 

 

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QuintPrint -the Wakefield Doctrine-

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

Quick post. Saint V theme. Semi-reflective of the effect of the Wakefield Doctrine on it’s curator.

First the QuintPrint1

“No, it’s ok. I’m a saint.”

 

St Valentines is the worst, most contrived and cynical, gyno-centric guy-bait(ing), toy-with-the-emotions-of-innocent-bystanders, holiday on the whole damn calendar.  Of course we are all familiar with the origin of the holiday and the internet is positively turgid with countless blogs, and stories and articles that tell us all about Hallmark and the candy industry and the rest of the sordid tale of this day in February. I will not try to compete with these other more skilled and capable Commentators ( and -torinis), as I do not have the time or the ‘writing chops’ to do such a ripe topic justice. Instead, let me tell you about my most lasting memory of Valentines Day.

Third grade, parochial school (St. Imelda*) and a classroom of 25 students. The boys were required to wear blue shirts and blue ties with OLM printed on the front, fortunately ‘clip-on ties’ had been invented by this time, so easy-peasy; the girls wore the catholic school uniform, i.e. plaid skirts white shirt, socks.  damn, little did I realize at that pre-pubescent time of my life how potent that little Roman Catholic Church fashion dictates would become for me and countless other men at a later stage of life.  (In fact, I am feeling the tug on the cynical side of my writing-self, there is something about the whole, church-sexual-abuse-dress-the-children in outfits destined to become so hawt… lol sorry, again I lack the time or the writing skill to do justice to a topic like this… back to the story.)
So with much fanfare, Valentine’s Day arrives and we  9  year old boys and girls are told that in the afternoon, before the end of the school day, we would have time to deliver our Valentine cards to each other. ( The day before we spent ‘Art Period’ making little baskets out of construction paper and taping them to the front of our desks. These would serve as ‘mailboxes’ for the cards we would receive the next day).
The thing was, the horrible twist to this introduction to the world of love, relationships and rejection was that, the time when class stopped and we were allowed to get up and deliver our little cards was not the end of the school day! It was right after lunch… and it lasted 15 or 20 minutes…as in ‘ now return to your desks and we will continue with the afternoon’ classes’. To sit for 90 minutes staring at the contents of the container on the front of my desk… I will leave it to the Reader to decide the emotional landscape of that afternoon on a February 14th.

Anyone out there not comfortable with finishing the story, or satisfied with their conclusion of this little tale, write us a Comment! Regular Readers know that the rogers gave the biggest cards, the scotts received the most cards and the clarks delivered the most cards….secretly without the recipient ever knowing who the really fun card came from…

Now I better get back to work, before I get in trouble.

Now the refraction*

Let’s make this quick. (Yeah, like that’s ever been a problem**)

How efficacious is this here self-improvement tool, here? We wrote this, way back, in, like 2012. Told a story on our selfs. Am a clark. ok, with a significant secondary scottian aspect. Even still, given how the existential fear (and, we would maintain, the single most powerful ratio-emotional drive) is scrutiny. We read this post, even today and can’t help but say, ‘Damn!’

ok that’s all you get

[New Reader’s? while we all have but one predominant worldview, we have the potential of (a significant) secondary and tertiary aspects. They serve as … as the italics of life. Doctrinistically-speaking of course.]

 

1) next to Thanksgiving, this has gots to be the most reprinted of posts

* ha ha a little joke2

2) don’t tell anyone, but it remains a constant source of frustration that my current writing style is so limited

** ba rum bump!

 

 

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