wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Category Archives: Writing


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The Escape Plan

Mandarin #1:    Hey, buddy! You can lower that periscope. I can tell you where we are.

Mandarin #2:   I know where we are. I’m just watching for the predators. You think you’re too sweet to be eaten, but I know different. I see them getting settled in their recliners, looking like they need something sweet and juicy.

Mandarin #1:   What? You don’t think I’m sweet?

Mandarin #2:   No, dummy. It’s because you ARE sweet that you’ll get eaten.

Mandarin #1:   Well, if you think that silly periscope is going to save you, you’d better close the hatch now and “DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!” because here they come – that old couple that’s sick of winter and wants a taste of summertime – that’s US, by the way – the reminder of summertime.

Mandarin #2: So, what should we do?

Mandarin #1:  I don’t know…. Maybe you can scare them off by looking weird when you wiggle your periscope. Maybe they’ll think you have some disease.

Mandarin #2: And what about you?

Mandarin #1:  No diseases here, but I’ve got a plan. When they try to skin me alive, I’ll hold on tight to my skin, naturally, and make it harder for them to do a clean job. Their hands will get sticky, and they’ll get up to get a tissue. While they’re gone I’ll just roll away. Maybe hide under the table.

Mandarin#2:  That won’t work. Haven’t you seen their dog? She’s always hanging around begging for food.

Mandarin #1:  Oh, that. I’ve got that covered. I’ll squeeze a bit of OJ in her eye. She doesn’t like that. Ha ha. I’m looking forward to that.

Mandarin #2:   What about me?

Mandarin #1:  Oh, I think I can spare some juice and squirt you too.

Mandarin #2:   No! Don’t be a smartypants. I mean how will I escape?

Mandarin #1:  Well, like I said, you have that periscope. You can DIVE, DIVE, DIVE.  Then we can roll away into the sunset…well, under the couch, anyway.


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Polar Bear Swim

Anyone for a swim? Actually, some people did go in for a Polar Bear swim on January 1.

But there are crazy people in all parts of the world. This limerick is for all those crazy people who went into the freezing water that day and froze their buns off.

*** I did not post a photo of those “brave”? swimmers here.

 

There once was a man who was dim,

And went for a wintery swim,

He said, “I’m not whiny,

Except that my hiney,

Is paying the price for my whim.”


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Wallaby

 

 

Willoughby Woo was a wallaby

Whose kangaroo friends called him “Wannabe,”

He’d pretend to be cool,

But they called him a fool.

It’s not what a wallaby oughtta be.

 

“Now listen, my friend, Joey Roo,

I’m certain we’re cousins, we two,

Though different in name,

We are clearly the same, 

And you see that I’m handsome like you.”

 

Still, Willoughby Wallaby Woo

Wished he were a fine kangaroo,

His friend Joey Roo,

Said, “I know what to do.

Just say, ‘Bibbity Bobbity, Boo!'”


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Great Reading with a Small Price Tag

 

The 9th annual Smashwords End of Year Sale is on now and runs through the end-of-day January 1st.

All five of my novels are on for half price in all e-reader formats. You can see the cover images of my books in the sidebar of my blog as well as below, in this post.

If you go to smashwords.com

you can type in the title of my books in the Search window at the top right-hand corner of the page.

Or, you can take the easy way, and  type in my name (Anneli Purchase) in the Search window at the top right of the Smashwords page, and all of my books will come up.

All of them are marked down by 50% to only $1.49 US.

This is a really inexpensive way to get all my books for your e-reader.

The three books that are West Coast dramas are best read in order, but are also enjoyable as standalones:

  1. The Wind Weeps
  2. Reckoning Tide
  3. Marlie

 

 

All of my books have a bit of love and a lot of adventure in them, and you’ll come away having learned something about the area that is the setting for the books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are looking for love and drama in Baja California, you may be interested in reading Orion’s Gift.

 

For a love triangle in post-war Europe, Julia’s Violinist is a must-read.

All my books maybe be found on Amazon for the same price of $1.49 until January 1, 2026.

Why not give them a try? It won’t break the bank.


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Jabberwocky

Who lives under that log?

With Halloween just days away, I had a thought about dressing up as a Jabberwock with jaws that bite and claws that catch. I’m studying to speak the Jabberwock language for that special night. I can read it, but I can only guess at its meaning. How about you? Does it makes sense to you?

But if you consider the author of this crazy Jabberwocky, you might better understand why it’s a bit loony, and that he may have indulged in something illegal and mind-enhancing. Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame, had a great imagination.

 

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

 

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought–

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

 

“And hast though slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

 

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.


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When You Are Old

I‘ve always liked this poem by William Butler Yeats, but until today, I knew very little about the author. Having now read a summary of his life, it changed the meaning of the poem for me (not my positive feelings about it), and I’ve decided not to offer my opinion here until I hear what you, my readers, think about this poem.

When You Are Old

by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

 

And bending down beside the glowing bars

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


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Another Great Poem

This is a copy of Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus, a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Icarus and his father Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete, were trying to escape imprisonment. King Minos thought Daedelus had given away the secret of how to escape the labyrinth thus allowing King Theseus of Athens to escape it.  So King Minos imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus.

In an attempt to escape by flying, they put feathers on their arms and stuck them together with wax, but apparently Icarus, in spite of his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax, and without wings he tumbled back to Earth. You can see him falling into the water just below the ship.

 

So in the 1500s, Pieter Brueghel included this event in one of his paintings. About 400 years later, W.H. Auden was inspired by  this painting to write a poem about human indifference to suffering.  Watch for examples of this as you read his famous poem.

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

December 1938

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
*****
Do you ever wonder what is going on in other parts of the world, while you’re doing something routine at home? Are there people being tortured or mistreated elsewhere in the world at that very moment? Or simply suffering while we are enjoying a good time? Or the other way around, perhaps? Someone having a good time while we suffer?


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Irony at its Best

I had a dream about my friend Percy who told me about a guy he met who had just come back from a trip to Egypt.  This traveller went on a desert tour with a group and saw some cool remnants of large monuments.  Rulers of the ancient lands liked to leave their mark with colossal statues of themselves to remind the people who is the boss, and to intimidate any would-be conquerors of his land.

One monument, in particular, left a big impression on him. It must have been spectacular in its day, but you can imagine how a couple of thousand years of weather and blowing sand would erode even the imposing 57 -foot statue of Ramses II who ruled Egypt from 1279 – 1213 BCE.

The tour guide pointed out how, even though only the legs were left standing, you could tell from the broken pieces of the king’s face that the sculptor had a real talent for showing emotion on the statue’s face. It showed the lips wrinkled up, sneering and dominating, as he frowned at any potential intruders.

Even though the whole, humongous monument was broken up (except for the legs left standing), there still remained an inscription on the pedestal that was laughable in view of the condition of the statue of this mighty king.

The whole scene told an ironic story, so Percy thought it would make a good poem.

Here is the poem Percy wrote:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

*** Did you know that Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing mishap in 1822 just before his 30th birthday? Apparently, the boat was not seaworthy and the three people aboard were inexperienced when it was caught in bad weather off the west coast of Italy.


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October – Goldengrove Unleaving

 

Spring and Fall – by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 -1889)

to a young child

This poem is very famous and is taught in all the English classes in high school. Unfortunately, when we were in high school, we were too ignorant to really appreciate it.

Okay, not all of us were ignorant in high school, but I think it’s safe to say that many of us found this old poetry hard to understand with its twisted and jumbled sentence structure.

Here’s an example from Hopkins’ poem:

Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Why couldn’t the poets of that time, especially the English, just “speak English”? In those high school days, I remember thinking, what’s the good of a poem if I need someone to translate it to me (from English to English)? I still feel that way a little bit, but now, decades later, I can appreciate the language of poetry better.

BUT, having suffered through trying to understand this poem as a young adult, I now think of it every year at this time. As soon as our maple tree starts to lose its leaves, I find myself thinking (and my name is not Margaret),

“Margaret, are you grieving,

Over Goldengrove unleaving?”

And I always end up thinking, how incredibly sad it is to see those first leaves fluttering down, and I realize,

“It is Margaret that you mourn for.”

Here is Hopkins’ poem:

Spring and Fall

To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

***** 

I have learned to appreciate good poetry, but I tend to like the kind that is more fun and less serious. Limericks, funny ditties, rhyming fun.

Still, I have my favourite serious poems too, which I hope to share with you sometime soon.

How do you feel about poetry?