Woohoo

I'm completely new to this, and I'm happy that I figured out how everything works. So...welcome to me!

After the Flood -- Swimming to Fly (an explanation)

This is the Sumerian sign for Ziasudra/Utnapishtim, the Sumerian equivalent of Noah in the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh. The story is similar to the Noah account in Genesis: lots of rain, eradication of earth's population, lone survival...with everything dependent on the wrath and mercy of God.

I'm a bit like Ziasudra. I survived the flood that is my adolescent search for self. But after the flood -- after I learn to appreciate the life that I have -- lies reconstruction. My life may have a semblance of order, but much work needs to be done:

Who am I? Why am I here? Where will I go?

I will spend the rest of my life answering these questions.
For now, I'll swim in the post-flood chaos. One day I shall fly.


ETA: Want to know what my "Stats" mean?
- HP: age
- CP: spiritual age, so to speak
- Int: years of schooling I've had
- Def: years I've lived in America
- Speed: for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I'd orignally meant this to be :\
- Sp. Attk: years of paid work/professional experience (including part-time jobs)
- Sp. Def: years of working at any job, paid or unpaid

Advice On Writing

Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter By: Ernest Hemingway
Esquire, October, 1935

"Real seriousness in regard to writing [is] one of the two absolute necessities. The other...is talent."

( click for writng advice )

More Hemingway

Refugees from Thrace, Ernest Hemingway
The Toronto Daily Star, November 14, 1922

Setting: Sofia, Bulgaria.
Event: Grego-Turkish War, 1919-1922. The Thracian evacuation, shortly after Turkish victory.
Characters: Ernest Hemingway, Madame Marie, Shorty (and Company), soldiers.

Notable Quotes:
"...the same ghastly, shambling procession of people being driven from their homes is filing in unbroken line along the muddy road to Macedonia. A quarter of a million people take a long time to move."
~ Vivid imagery, connoting continual evacuation.
~ Literary device -- summary sentence at the end of paragraph, Hemingway's commentary: a quarter of a million people take a long time to move.

"I found the station a mud-hole crowded with soldiers, bundles, bed-springs, bedding, sewing machines, babies, broken carts, all in the mud and the drizzling rain."
~ Literary device -- alliteration: bundles, bed-springs, bedding, etc.
~ Repeated theme -- mud. Here and throughout the piece.

"Got some swell shots of a burning village to-day." Shorty pulled off a boot. "Good show—a burning village. Like kickin' over an ant hill."
~ Shorty is a moving picture operator. His speech is like a movie script.
~ Ant hill: imagery used in A Farewell to Arms symbolizing soldiers heading towards their death.

( More quotes... )