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Song by Music by Θάνος Μικρούτσικος, Lyrics by Νίκος Καββαδίας

Presented by a member of my family.

How best to learn another language ? Many believe and say that songs and singing helps us learn. We sing the words but do we know what those words mean? Maybe not straight-away, but if we had the translation of those words in our own language we could find meaning.

When listening the sound of the words are musical so we hear it through our musical ear. It transforms our learning into pleasure.  The music helps us remember the words and they can be recalled with the help of hearing the song, or picked up in conversation once we are exposed to the content of meaning. Singing the words helps us with our pronunciation of the words. Our vocabulary of the language builds with each new song sung.

Next year I’m free from study because I’ve finished my degree after eight years of study. I aim to learn Modern Greek to a higher standard than my basic grasp of my husband’s mother’s tongue. To begin this journey I will help organize a singing , music and drama group within the Brisbane Greek Community with AHEPA.

Our first activity will be a karaoke Traverna  Night which we hope will attract attention of those who wish to learn Modern Greek, and to enjoy themselves.  The song list is now being shared among the amateur and professional singers and musicians and it could develop into a live band helping us sing along with the words displayed on screen. Both Greek and English translations of those songs will I believe help us with just a basic or nothing at all learn a few words or even phrases.

More notices of this proposed event will follow this first link and blog post.

Recently, our world was turned into a millisecond economy, with the introduction of all things UBER.  Apps on your mobile phones can give you food, the car, your bank, and now your doctor. Maybe the politicians will be next?  So, if you don’t own a smart phone with all those apps you will be pushed to a fourth world of the unconnected. A place of non-existence, and a life in shadows of those who have it all.  Us slow people who don’t like our lives being available for all to see over the internet, we still exist.  We who still cook our own food and grow some if not all in our gardens.

Who can afford to have take-away food anyway? That is charged with GST.  Does the UBER Company giant pay our country GST? Maybe the poor drive has to pay both taxes. But the faceless owner of this mega multinational, siphons  the cash away.  In mega multi-dollar numbers of a bank balance of an off -shore bank not belonging to the national economy, which doesn’t pay tax.

So who uses UBER?

The ultra-busy people who don’t have time to smell the roses in the garden. (Our politicians who allowed Uber to take away the work of honest people, who pay taxes to the government and support the economy in the country they live.) The Uber company is global and doesn’t pay tax to anyone. The poor drivers will need too, and they are barely earning anything, because they give the big giant global monster the stated share of all earnings. Some poorer drivers also are paying back loans to this monster for the cars they say are share rides.

The drivers break road rules, use the bus stops and the Taxi ranks to pick up their passengers. They don’t pay for that privilege, the use of ranks.

Still, I may as well scream on the soapbox a bit longer here, as I don’t advertise this site, I believe there are still some who prefer cash money or bartering over a digital readout on the internet.  The villagers, who like a slow world, with less stress. Regardless of our wants, we see our world is moving into a digital read of just numbers, where all you need is to tap that phone, or a ring with a chip.  The cashless society where all wealth is numbers on a screen. If this is the new world order of which many fraught hard to stop, will I for one don’t like it at all.  In time the phone will disappear and be replaced by electronic chip inserted into a bar-code tattooed on your skin. One which will over ride our own will. Freewill will no longer be a given for humans on this Planet. The central Artificial Intelligence will over ride your wants and tell you your needs, then we are lost. Democracy gone. The rulers will be the oligarchies of the multinationals and the banks who oversee the numbers on the screen. Are you scared of this? I sure am.

Give me a slow world. Little single pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, all different but when put together they make a masterpiece. The slow society, being more locally based as a village member. More like the city-states of Ancient Greece than the large cities. The many against the one megalopolis of a UBER world driven economy, whitewashed and drained of difference. Please let us have a local understanding, where we help one another and not pour our resources and hard-earned wealth into a faceless multinational behind UBER. I call on my fellow villagers to stop this capacious growth of this multinational swallowing our everyday activities into a Black hole economy, of just one.  We must shop locally and keep our wealth rotating in the self-sustaining economy with our own understandings of multiculturalism and the benefits of many different voices instead of just one.

I do like how the world now connects families. Many communicating with each other over continents, but the business world where human jobs are taken because of this new technology enables the mega economies to swamp the local family businesses gives me nightmares. And leaves me poor.

 

What is the push to make a blog page in the first place? Are we just standing on a soap box screaming out to the world, but not to an audience ? I do share my endless words on many different platforms, but my visitors are every low in number.  I wonder, am I wasting my energy, and precious time  on the white screen?

My stories are floating in cyberspace neglected, as I lost my will to push them on to a higher level of publishable standard. The editing process is so overwhelming. I’ve used pro-write, and grammarly  as the first edit for many of my written works. But, I still missed correcting mistakes that others saw on yet another editing site, scribophille.

Do we have an auto correct button in our brain that gets in the way when we try and correct our own writing? Yes. I believe mine works overtime so I can make sense of my own writing. My brain works differently from most people as I am dyslexic. I’m at University studying to help me relearn and find my strengths. I am now 63 years- old , and still trying to write my stories I know will one day find a publisher. Dyslexia .

So I really am pushing my comfort zone trying to achieve, but that is how my brain works. I am creative. I am adaptable. I use more of my brain to read and write than other people. And if this is sounding like a person trying to find their good points, it is.

What strings together with disabilities such as learning to read, is depression and anxiety. We as children were treated differently as our reading levels were much lower than our peers. The shame of not knowing how to read led to malignant self -esteem.

 

A poem shared is a gift

from one’s inner self

to another’s inner world.

The words formed in belief

Of the treasure that must be left

Well formed to shine out to be bold.

To sing for the receiver as for the giver

Words of power that pluck the strings

Make the music to accompany our feelings

For others to dream in those lines

And sigh in empathy of humanities

Creativity, the art of words leave worlds.

 Committed to memory so can be retold

A poem shared is the gift  not sold

Nor brought, for they hold the poet’s soul

The poem is the  human spirit the fire

 free to grow as a flower, to admire

with each oral telling words take hold.

A poem shared is a gift

from one’s inner self

to another’s inner world. Shared words become our world

Parthenon

P is for all your pieces separated and spread

A is for the Acropolis the mount on which you are built.

R is for the Return of all those pieces still in foreign lands

Still held in foreign hands so the jigsaw of the re-build still is in- complete.

T is for the time you have endured the rape and neglect within powerful minds

Those who wheel the power of keeping your pieces apart.

H is for the hope within our hearts for a truthful conclusion of your story so far.

The one which sees all your pieces returned to the Acropolis museum.

The purpose-built home for all those fragments to be viewed near where you sit.

E is for the energy, endurance, and the exuberance which is evoked at the sight of seeing you

lit up in lights or shining with the sun, that special Attica light.

N is for the names which hold your story aloft and right

O is for your originality which the Western World copied many times.

N is for the never-ending push to bring all your pieces home. Back to the Acropolis

And the Attica light. parthenon

 

What is a flash story? One that is over before it has time to become boring? Or a good piece of concise writing that can give the reader an insight into a world through words. I’ve tried to write like this and found my story couldn’t find a conclusion but had to grow from one episode to the next. Like my crazy queen size blanket.  Each section was only five hundred words in length but the story eventually became lost to my never-ending battle with my own inability to finish anything. But my blanket has a different story. Each crocheted patch was nearly the same size, but when I joined them together they ended up being round and not square. To make it square I had to add on pieces of a different shape so I could edge it with a finish. With my writings all unfinished or in need of the hard edit I turned away from creative writing and played games at the screen just to stop myself from becoming depressed. Things had to change.

So, I stopped writing and took up crocheting and finished a queen size blanket in six weeks. The finishing of that project helped me realize that if only I put in a constant effort into my writings I will finish them.

Time management is the writer’s best friend, as is planning. My blanket was not planned and it also took up the bulk of my waking life much to the detriment of my family life, but at least I was sitting with them and interacting which is more than I was doing when writing. So how do I manage my writing life and still have a family life or a social one?  Time which is structured and a good plan to stick to a working arrangement of at least one hour a day just to write. This is now my goal to only give an hour a day to writing regardless of if it  is just writing, or the endless editing I must achieve to bring my stories to a conclusion.

Now how do I decide to just write or edit or could it be a bit of both?

The next question is: what hour is best for me to do this? In the morning? Or in the afternoon when all the house is at peace before the family arrive home? Night time is totally off the agender as my other half must have his time and my mind is fried from cooking dinner. The morning hours are difficult as I need to do the house work.  After lunch it is then, before three on weekdays. On the weekend I may find it harder to find that hour but if I remain flexible and have my weekends to myself and family I can add on a half an hour on the week day sessions to make up that time.

The answer to all this musing is flexibility and balance to my plan for my writing life.

 

I had a web page mainly to showcase my artwork. In the year 2010 while completing my studies within Visual Arts I opened a website with the advertised amount of $1. That’s right it was a trick to reel in the unexpected  fool that I was, who honestly thought a company would give something away for nothing.  That first dollar ended up as being just the beginning. After a month, I was told if I wished to keep the site I would need to register my domain name which was “therosewriter.com”. I did ,and spent the money they wished for me doing so. I believe it was a monthly payment of at first around $9 per month. Problem was this company was overseas, in Sweden I think or Denmark so with the exchange rate it was more. But because we were encouraged to have a website to showcase our talents , I kept it going.

What I am questioning is, each time I went to add or edit my work my view count was rising, but it was a silent one which is creepy. Having over a 300,000 hit rate on last count I began to wander if this was true as I received very few comments.  I continued to use the site until 2016 when I couldn’t keep the payments up, but sent them a long email of stating how long I had been with the company and they should treat their long term customers with a little more respect.

Well they felt my website in a reduced state with most of my content lost to the delete button. I wasn’t able to re-enter and change things, nor could I fix my account. So now I was left with my domain name lost within this now depleted site. I now am here and just keep my words and rants to this blog page, oh and my facebook page sometimes and my wattpad account for my writing.

My domain name has been taken over by someone else already by changing one letter, the “T” is capitalized and for some reason is now already in operating. even though I still have a week to find if I wish to open a new webpage with another domain. If I was to try and re establish my right to this domain name it would be challenged by the now operating Denmark company who is basically using my name. I really am a silly person to think if anyone cares.

If you do please be kind and leave a comment on what you would do in this situation?

Last month, I escaped away to the mountains to meet up with family, my sisters and my nieces. My sisters live on a hillside within the scenic rim. They are surrounded by nature. And the stars at night are something to remember and hold as a treasured memory the sight of the milky way. I was looking forward to this little get away.  I was picked up half way to their place and driven through Beaudesert and out to Rathdowny. We gathered to make our gifts of beads with  red wine, cranberry and  pomegranate juice. We also drank on our first night together to sat goodbye to an old dog which had died. My niece of course was upset about her four legged companion’s passing and the drinking and talking was all part of the wake for her dog.

Our drinking was also a time to be just sisters and talk. This gathering was to help my niece through her pregnancy of her third child, a boy. The next day was spent making sandwiches then gathering in a every female way over champagne and lunch to tell the expected mother why we had chosen our beads and what strength they will give her. I threaded each gifted bead to make a necklace she could wear on her day of birthing.

He came into the world this day 31st of July. So we now have more celebrations coming in welcoming him into the world. More red wine and cranberry/ pomegranate juice and maybe another night under the stars.  Its a big event for our whole family, this little boy’s birth.  He is the first male born in our family for 21 years.

The first full moon in July

danced in the clouds

turned them to fires

Of silvery light

and translucent shadows.

If I was a wolf this night

I would howl and rejoice

But I’m a woman and I take a photo

trying to capture the moments

of your natural beauty with my iPad.