I may be getting older, but I’m not old enough to concede to an “all-time” anything.
PROMPT: Favorite Automobile
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Tag Archives: Youth
PROMPT: Subject in School
Depends upon my age and phase [as in whether I wanted to be a cowboy, a doctor, a race car driver, Batman, or a misanthrope / rapscallion at that particular time.]
Generally speaking, I had the strange (not to mention unproductive) tendency for science to top of the list while mathematics was usually dead last.
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PROMPT: Five
Daily writing prompt
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I think that would have been “race car driver,” between my “cowboy” and “independently-wealthy-masked-vigilante” phases. (I did NOT know how jobs worked.)
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PROMPT: Gifts
Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.
As a kid, my first non-hand me down bike, a bright yellow and blue trimmed BMX bike.
Now the really interesting question is whether there was anything special about this gift, or – rather – it came at the height of the appeal of gifts for me, an appeal that faded into adulthood and is virtually nonexistent in the present day. (no pun intended)
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Nostalgia [Free Verse]
Eight thousand miles
from my childhood home,
I'm pulled into a nostalgic
reverie
by the scent of straw
and cow shit.
This place,
on the other side of the world,
looks nothing like where I
grew up,
but that smell...
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Young & Old [Kyōka]
roadside saplings
take Fall colors for a time,
before going bare;
the envy of humans:
at once young & old.
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PROMPT: Nostalgia Food
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
Probably Fair food would (as in County Fair.) Provided they haven’t all changed since I was a kid. (Having not been to a Fair since childhood, I wouldn’t know. Hence, its validity as an answer.) So, anything inappropriately breaded and deep-fried.
I’ve never run across home-cooking or home style cooking that was close enough to my mother’s to trigger nostalgia. (Though I guess tuna-mac recalls undergrad years lean on time and money, but with a youthful propensity to not worry over the waistline.)
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“My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth [w/ Audio]
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
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BOOKS: “A Child’s Garden of Verses” by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Child’s Garden Of Verses by Robert Louis StevensonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Until recently, I was only acquainted with Stevenson as a novelist, but I had a powerful experience with his poem “The Hayloft” (included in this collection.) I was intrigued by how a poem written by a nineteenth century Scot could prove so nostalgia-inducing for me, having been a 20th century American farm-boy. So, I read the collection, and found that “The Hayloft” was only one of many examples that had such an effect. Others include: “Land of Counterpane,” “Block City,” and “Land of Nod.” The nostalgic power of the poems derives from the fact that Stevenson does a phenomenal job of capturing a child’s enthusiasm for play, and in that regard I’m sure the collection will resonate more broadly than just I, or even than just farm kids.
Afterall, there’s a lot of Stevenson’s experience that is dissimilar to mine. Besides his era and his nationality, his mentions of nurses, gardeners, and cooks is surely much different from my own upbringing, being devoid of household staff. But the book only needs to draw upon that love of play and imagination to take one back.
For a work from the nineteenth century, this collection of 50+ lyric poems has aged well. There is the occasional word like “gabies” or “whin” to send one to a dictionary, but those archaic or obsolete terms are rarities. Furthermore, the lyricism of the poems makes them easily read or sung.
I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers, particularly children or those looking to reexperience childhood.
View all my reviews
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PROMPT: Five-Year-Old
Daily writing prompt
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I suspect that was my early Racecar Driver period (possibly late-Cowboy.) But I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday…
Tiger Riding for Beginners 