Calissa

Last night my partner teasingly challenged me to compose a poem in his honour. He started to get a bit alarmed when my face took on that blank expression which suggests I'm thinking hard about something. This is a *slightly* more polished version than what I originally came up with. I should note that my partner has an inexplicable fondness for camels.

Concrit is always welcome.

A Camel Limerick
There once was a lovely young camel
Whose soulful, dark eyes were untrammelled
His coat was most fine
With a beautiful shine
He was truly the handsomest mammal.





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What are you doing/thinking/wondering/making/reading/etc. that you don't normally post about? I have added a few more categories this time to better reflect some of my interests :)

Doing: jjhunter recently brought to my attention a post from melannen on some exercises on the craft of writing. One of the things recommended in the post is "practice stupid language tricks" which covers things like doing crosswords. I have had a giant book of crosswords gathering dust on my shelf for quite some time now. Almost without meaning to, I picked it up and started working my way through it. I had forgotten how much fun it is. I rarely manage to completely solve them, but find that I don't really care since it is simply a way to exercise my language skills.

Watching: Still waiting for more R&D to be released. In the meantime, I have returned to anime. I got caught up on the most recent episodes of Naruto released on CrunchyRoll and have just started in on a new anime called Log Horizon. I heard about it through the excellent anime review blog of John Samuel, who I had the pleasure of meeting on the anime panel at the Australian Sci-fi Convention last year.

(As an aside, I highly recommend his blog. I find his reviews are always very astute).

The anime is about players who get caught in an MMORPG and can't escape; the virtual world effectively becomes their reality. This is the same premise as Sword Art Online which started out so well and then went terribly, terribly wrong (seriously, don't get me started on what they did to the female lead). I am assured that Log Horizon is much better but I haven't yet warmed to it. To be fair, I am only two episodes in.

Thinking: A conversation with a friend going through a tough time recently made me realise that some part of myself likes to think that I am a fierce warrior at heart. This amuses, baffles and pleases me by turns and I find myself wondering how this relates to my love of fantasy as a genre.

Reading: Weirdly, I am actually between books at the moment. I have been holding off a little on reading while I caught up on writing some reviews, though I think I shall resume again soon. A dear friend recently launched her first e-book and it is next on my list of things to read. It has been years since I first read this story and am excited to see what the final result is. If you like near-future fantasy featuring things with wings, you might be interested in checking it out.

Wondering: I have been pondering starting up a modest poetry practice but have been unsure where to start. There are so many possibilities! I think I am going to start with some of jjhunter's excellent advice and go from there. The sheer fact I am wondering bodes well for the return of my creative energy.

Writing: If you are an Australian writer, you may be interested to know that the CSFG have announced the theme of their next anthology. Despite the dreadful title, I am super excited about this opportunity to write some uniquely Australian speculative fiction--particularly because place is a preoccupation for me. Tonight I sat down and brainstormed some ideas. Tomorrow I shall look them over and try to pick a direction.

Drinking: Yesterday I had the opportunity to swing past my favourite tea shop yesterday and managed to stock up on the following:



The mornings are darker and cooler now, leading me to crave the Russian Caravan. It is very much a sign to me that Autumn is on its way.

Over the last couple of weeks I've seen a number of friends posting about the ways they have not been feeling the Christmas spirit or don't celebrate that particular festival. Some of them have even apologised for this. The other night I was woken up with the beginnings of this new etheree poem. I finished revising it today.

Breathe.
You don't
have to say
you are sorry
for not pretending
to feel any kind of
Christmas spirit. All I want
as my gift is for you to be
not tangled up in tinsel and gilt
but honest and unwrapped--just as you are.

While the poem below was nominally written for wispywillow, I can think of a few other people on my flist to whom it also applies.

( Day 7 poem )

( Day 8 photos )

( Day 9 photo )

We're almost a week into November already and I haven't yet checked in regarding my November project. To be honest, I haven't been quite sure whether I should because I find that I start thinking things have to be up to a certain standard in order to share them here. However, there have been some things that I have wanted to share. I'm also losing track of what I've done and when, so this might help keep things straight for me.

To recap: since I am unable to participate in NaNoWriMo, I decided to create my own challenge. I will engage in some form of creativity every day--at least enough to fill one A6 page. So far, this has tended to be photography because taking photos is relatively quick and I'm still enthralled with the new iPhone lenses my sister gave me for my birthday.

Apologies to those that follow me on Instagram and Facebook since you'll likely have seen most of these before.

( Day 1 photo )

( Day 2 haiku )

( Day 3 photo )

( Day 4 photo )

( Day 5 poetry musing & photo. TW: grief and funerals )

( Day 6 photo )