Flash Club March Flash Club 2021 - guest hosted by Emily

[Barbara]

Hi all and happy March.

This month is a little different. I'm going to hand you over to the artistic hands of @Emily who is taking you onto an art challenge. The challenge will take place in this thread and participation is pretty much the same as always: simply follow her guidance and prompt, be artistic, then post your results below. We hope this makes a nice change and that you will enjoy something new.

Emily will explain more below.

I'll be back in April.

Over to you, my arty chick: ....

 

[Emily]

Our **Daily Challenge** March Flash Club starts today! This is a timely way to challenge and kickstart any lethargic creativity…. To put a spring in your creative step

This is The Plan:​

Below, I’m posting thirty-one words, one for each day of the month. I challenge you to stretch your creative muscles -in words, photography, painting, cakes, interpretive dance; whatever your chosen medium- and allow that prompt of the day to inspire you artistically.

NOTE: it has to be your own work, created by you.

To participate, use the prompt of the day, then post below to make your entry using the “Word of the Day” as the title of your work or at least refer to it in your entry, so everyone sees which one it relates to. Please make your entry anonymous by clicking the anonymous button, but if you forget, don't worry, that's okay too. (Note: Guardians can see who posts.) So take a risk and try something new. .

To make the Flash Club the special place it is, we need your votes. You can vote by clicking 'like' or 'love'. If a piece grabs you, please hit the 'like' button. If a piece sweeps you off your seat, please hit 'love'. At the end of the month, I will count up the votes. In a tie, 'Love' will trump 'like'. The entry with the most votes will be the winner. Please don't vote for your own. The Flash Club isn't about winning. It's about trying something new.

The competition is open to all members. Feel free to enter more than one. The main rule here: we ask you not to critique.


And never fear: should you need it, know that I shall be here, daily, with my whip words of encouragement and large slices of virtual Litopicake.

I’m so looking forward to this

(Thanks @Barbara for handing over the reins )

The Word Of The Day is also here below:

1. Distil
2. Melody
3. Sacred
4. Breathe
5. Witness
6. Nourish
7. Walk
8. Yellow
9. Fish
10. Gold
11. Bright
12. Water
13. New Moon
14. Dawn
15. Morning
16. Portal
17. Green
18. Sky
19. Dusk
20. Equinox
21. Bud
22. Leaves
23. Happiness
24. Lines
25. Magic
26. Spring
27. Triangles
28. Super moon
29. Ramble
30. Constellation
31. Soul

 

[Anonymous]

Distil

Had I been there at the end
It might be different now.
At first I didn't see it that way.
20 years passed, then gnawing guilt
crept through a crack in my soul; taking root.

Alone; a mercy dash outside of time
Last hours in my mind; not to blame.
No malice; no careless intentions.
Yet now I would take those memories.
Distil them; save their essence in a jar.

 

[Anonymous]

Distil
"It's a steam distillation unit, not a still." The woman grabbed the 25L stainless steel contraption and turned it around. "See that?" She pointed to the protrusion that looked like an aneurism. "That's what cools the steam back to condensation and the contents of the steam flow into a container for collection."
"I'll take it," the hipster said.
"You won't use it to make alcohol," she said, holding it back. "I won't sell unless you promise."
"I promise," he said and slapped the dosh on the table. A hundred dollars more than the price on the sticky label.
"Done!" she put it in his arms. "And don't tell anyone you have it. They're still illegal."
"That's okay, ma'am," he said. "My partner will deal with that issue." He flipped his wallet open to show the identification card.
The fist flew. He ducked behind the still, but the pain landed in his hands, both hands. He dropped the still and reached under his shirt for the weapon, fumbled.
"Step away," he said, as he raised the weapon, "Or I'll distil your brains."
She didn't move, stared at the double-shot stun gun, raised her eyes to his. "I'll deny all knowledge," she said, sliding her short leather whip behind the money-belt.
"We already have recordings and witness statements from seven previous customers," he said, "and every one of them praised the quality of the workman ship." He smiled, and slid his money off the table. "So, is it time to deal, or do you want time in the grey house to think about it?"
"That's what this is? A bloody shake-down." She leaned under the table and pulled out a sawn-off shotgun. "I see your threat, and raise your bet, prick."

 

[Anonymous]

MELODY

The quiet man sits down, begins to play
and sings my deep emotions' endless sway.
His fingers plucking strings in harmony
embracing all the thoughts I long to say.

My courage cries; my heart beats disarray
and holds his tune, his wishful words at bay.
He softens, drifts to tender melody.
a chord, a cadence whispering me to stay.

Immersed in song, my soul begins to pray
to eyes and mind too scared to let me stray.
The quiet man looks up and smiles at me;
I smile one more goodbye and walk away.

 

[Anonymous]

Melody

 

[Anonymous]

Day 3: Sacred


Starlings

Coding Twilight
Ink mark
Massing
Calligraphic
Wing beat
Sacred Prose
And Mind
As One
Alive, aloft
In Symphony
Of Sonic Flight

 

[Anonymous]

Sacred

 

[Steve C]

View attachment 8415

Our **Daily Challenge** March Flash Club starts today! This is a timely way to challenge and kickstart any lethargic creativity…. To put a spring in your creative step

This is The Plan:​

Below, I’m posting thirty-one words, one for each day of the month. I challenge you to stretch your creative muscles -in words, photography, painting, cakes, interpretive dance; whatever your chosen medium- and allow that prompt of the day to inspire you artistically.

NOTE: it has to be your own work, created by you.

To participate, use the prompt of the day, then post below to make your entry using the “Word of the Day” as the title of your work or at least refer to it in your entry, so everyone sees which one it relates to. Please make your entry anonymous by clicking the anonymous button, but if you forget, don't worry, that's okay too. (Note: Guardians can see who posts.) So take a risk and try something new. .

To make the Flash Club the special place it is, we need your votes. You can vote by clicking 'like' or 'love'. If a piece grabs you, please hit the 'like' button. If a piece sweeps you off your seat, please hit 'love'. At the end of the month, I will count up the votes. In a tie, 'Love' will trump 'like'. The entry with the most votes will be the winner. Please don't vote for your own. The Flash Club isn't about winning. It's about trying something new.

The competition is open to all members. Feel free to enter more than one. The main rule here: we ask you not to critique.


And never fear: should you need it, know that I shall be here, daily, with my whip words of encouragement and large slices of virtual Litopicake.

I’m so looking forward to this

(Thanks @Barbara for handing over the reins )

The Word Of The Day is also here below:

1. Distil
2. Melody
3. Sacred
4. Breathe
5. Witness
6. Nourish
7. Walk
8. Yellow
9. Fish
10. Gold
11. Bright
12. Water
13. New Moon
14. Dawn
15. Morning
16. Portal
17. Green
18. Sky
19. Dusk
20. Equinox
21. Bud
22. Leaves
23. Happiness
24. Lines
25. Magic
26. Spring
27. Triangles
28. Super moon
29. Ramble
30. Constellation
31. Soul

Just seen this. Do you have to reply on the day of the prompt or can we go back and revisit? Little confused

 

[Emily]

You can go back, absolutely! Just put the prompt word you are using in the title so we know what day

 

[Anonymous]

Breathe

 

[Anonymous]

Day 6 - nourish

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

Taking a line for a Walk

 

[Anonymous]

Yellow

 

[Anonymous]

Yellow

 

[Anonymous]

Fish

(the background image is not mine; hope that's okay)

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

31 Days

“Shh . . . listen”, she says. “Distil.”

“Distil?” I say. “Be still,” she clarifies. We stand, listening for the melody she promised, but I can’t hear anything, just the distant hum of a road somewhere.

“What is this place?” I ask. “Is it sacred?” I try not sound like I’m taking the piss, because I like her, but it seems every time she breathes I have to witness the birth of a profound feeling, a depth for which I have absolutely no aptitude . All I want to do is chat idly, whilst she wants to nourish her spirit, tap into her inner wellbeing, and bring me blissfully with her. She wants to make me understand, and I want to understand so that she knows I am with her, but I just can’t. I simply can’t.

We walk on. More accurately, she walks on, yellow skirt trailing through the grass and I’m flapping along behind her like a fish caught in the golden sun.

Over at the lake, the low light catches in the water. She points to a new moon up above and smiles, mouthing isn’t it wonderful? But all I can muster is mild indifference.

“Dawn”, I call, as she wanders down to the lake. “Dawn, can’t we come back in the morning?”

She turns and glances back at me. Behind her the lake seems to stretch like a portal, a shadowy green, the sky almost forgotten in its reflection.

And, like a slowly descending dusk, she steps into the water, fully clothed. I want to be home, in the city. I want to be where I know and am known, where I’m comfortable. I want to be in the Equinox drinking a bud, sweaty with the music and the noisy crush of other people, not out here with all the leaves. She said to me once, back when we asked each other these sorts of questions, she said, “Nature brings me happiness, there is joy in the lines between the trees, magic in the spring, the rebirth. Don’t you agree?” she said. And of course I said yes, yes I agree, because of course I am going to agree, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to complete the triangles of a new relationship, when everything shines with possibility like a super moon in the darkness. When she said come for a walk with me, I thought ramble, she thought a deeper connection.

I look at the lake. Her head is under water, her hair spread like a constellation. I take off my shoes and socks, as the wind whispers through the trees. I take out my keys, wallet and phone, as the grass between my toes triggers a memory of something lost long ago. I run down to the lake, splashing into the water, big watery splashes, like a dog. I swim, swim out into the empty lake. I take a gulp of air and dive down into the mysterious darkness, where, finally, she takes my hand and we surface together, into the bright blue spring evening, into a world which, for all its indifference, all its nastiness, its disappointments, can still surprise, shock and wonder us all. I say to her. “I know your soul.”

“Yes,” she says. “And we know yours.”

 

[Anonymous]

Fish:

My double portrait of WHIZZ whom my sister won at the fair and who lived to be 17.

 

[Jonny]

Gone phishing - beware...

 

[Anonymous]

Yesterday's fish.

 

[Anonymous]

Breathe
On the Day of the Kings
They laid you down in cold earth
January earth
Winter cold
Twenty-three years old.

I cradled your name within my soul
Wailed silently down decades
Waiting for the grief to pass.

I learned
What we all must learn
Stumbling through memories
Like paper-cuts.
Though we don’t want to,
The trick is to remember
To breathe.

 

[Anonymous]

Water

The Watcher

She sits alone
She is casting stones
Consulting glyphs
On graven runes
Wyrd runs Water
She must deal
In whisperings
of Fates unsealed
Winds of fortune
Shape and shatter
Time, disposing of
All matters
An ouroboros
Water serpent
Coiling sinuous

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Breathe
On the Day of the Kings
They laid you down in cold earth
January earth
Winter cold
Twenty-three years old.

I cradled your name within my soul
Wailed silently down decades
Waiting for the grief to pass.

I learned
What we all must learn
Stumbling through memories
Like paper-cuts.
Though we don’t want to,
The trick is to remember
To breathe.

So sad. So sorry.

 

[Anonymous]

Day 13: New Moon

 

[Anonymous]

DAWN

21 June 1993

Little boy blue
Midsummer's birth
We'll tuck you to sleep
In the quiet crib earth
Your face in the photo
Shut tight, so tiny-fine
Daisy in a dawn that's dusk
While light lasts, is mine

 

[Anonymous]

Portal