Towards more picuresque language

[gauchecritic]

Yeah yeah I know it's a Reader's Digest thing.

We all come across a phrase or sentence when reading (even here at Lit) that isn't necessarily a bon motte or a philosophy for life but simply something that strikes us as charming or feeling glad that we had a chance to read it.

Some of us (accidentally perhaps) write them ourselves.

This is the place to place them. Your own or what you've read. Give others a chance to read it.

So you get the idea of what I mean:

Posted by me in another thread earlier today.

The second button revealed a butterfly pinned by a tattooist's needle to her collar bone.

Gauche

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Great idea Gauche, I often come across a phrase or paragraph that moves me. I often think of people I want to share it with, now it can have a home.
Thanks.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Okay, it's more than just a turn of phrase, but I just wrote it and I like it:

She stopped at the door and willed herself to calm down. She knew what it felt like to need sex, and she knew what it felt like to feel sexy, but the way she felt now was something different: she felt entirely sexual and female in a way that went beyond politics and beyond apologies, and it felt terribly exciting and powerful. She was ready to be devastated.

---dr.M.

 

[English Lady]

Oh baby devastate me right now!!!



(not one of them picturesque lines but just a response to the Dr M masterpiece above!)

 

[shereads]

"With you, I have known peace, Lida. And now you say you're going crazy?"

~ James Thurber

 

[Guest]

My heart's garden had begun to flourish, and there was no stopping its growth, but I felt a sorrow blooming in parallel and thought of Blake's sick rose and its worm.

Perdita

 

[gauchecritic]

she felt entirely sexual and female in a way that went beyond politics and beyond apologies,

---dr.M. [/B]

Female, beyond politics and beyond apologies.

Love it. That sums up everything about the dichotomy of equality.

Gauche

 

[Alex De Kok]

There is nothing so incredibly potent as being wanted in return.

Dick Francis, from the novel, 'Flying Finish'

She laughed. Almost naturally.

Me, but for the life of me I can't remember which story!

Alex

 

[gauchecritic]

My heart's garden had begun to flourish, and there was no stopping its growth, but I felt a sorrow blooming in parallel and thought of Blake's sick rose and its worm.

Perdita

There's always a but.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

The stiffness and almost arthritic pain that rendered my hands useles only a scant few hours ago is gone. Replaced now by an odd numbness. But they are limber again. I flex my fingers, extending them to thier limits, then clenching them tightly again. My knuckles crack of their own volition. Not in protest. Oh, no. But as if in their own roll call exlaiming, "I am here and ready to do your bidding!" They fall to their positions. Standing at ease, but ready.

My eyes, once tired and bleary snap into focus once more. Singling out the monitor a scant three feet away. Yet, fully aware of its commrades to either side. Each contains a single page of text. Each page but one of many in their respective tales.

My mind awash with seemingly random images, flesh against flesh, soft, warm lips, unmarked erogenous zones, sweat and yes passions own life blood. The images coalesce into three frames. like films on a theater screens they begin to play.

The images flowfluidly from my mind to my hands a refreshing chill left in their wake. And reaching my fingertips they halt, waiting there for their command, that single word that will release them to the digital paper that will be their new home.

Waiting to hear......

Begin.



Sometimes I wax poetic and I like it. So sue me.

 

[gauchecritic]

She laughed. Almost naturally.

Me, but for the life of me I can't remember which story!

Alex

That's excruciating to behold. Been there and never commented once.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

RIGHT

SAID

FRED

 

[matriarch]

A Mat-excerpt......

This time, like many others
My tears are held forcibly in
.................
They gather like molten metal
In my throat
Behind my eyes
And finally,
Deprived of life,
Seek out refuge as a solid, cold mass
In my heart.

Extracts from a rambling, excruciatingly painful diatribe, written many years ago during a 'bad' spell.

Excessive maybe, but I have become very fond of it.

Mat

 

[CharleyH]

I will keep myself out of it. There are many things that I write that I later think, 'jesus, that's awesome' but today I am thinking of a short story by Colette, 'Nuits Blanches' (1934). The story is relatively short, but it's one of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read. The whole thing fills me with inspiration and awe, but these first few sentences, the first paragraph, speaks so much to me and about the story:

"In our house there is only one bed, too big for you, a little narrow for us both. It is chaste, white, completely exposed; no drapery veils its honest candour in the light of day. People who come to see us survey it calmly and do not tactfully look aside, for it is marked, in the middle, with but one soft valley, like the bed of a young girl who sleeps alone. "

 

[English Lady]

"Breathing became more ragged and secret body parts oozed more erotic bodily fluids."


English Lady "Taken By Surprise"


"We both knew it was a fling so we flung it for all it was worth."

English Lady "Till the End"

 

[Alex De Kok]

That's excruciating to behold. Been there and never commented once.

Gauche

Ouch!

Alex

 

[Guest]

Ok, gonna go and search through my stuff now, to see if there is anything to parallel what has been written above. Picturesque language has never been my strong point, but I'll dreg the old mind and see what I can find...

Well, this is the best I can come up with right now. It's from my novel, Skin Deep:

The kiss started off soft and gentle, almost tentative, but rapidly grew in energy and passion. Their lips opened and melded together, as if one. Their muscular tongues played with its partner and hungrily worked together, as if needing to taste the inner core of the other. Their formerly static hands moved in perfect sync with the kiss, exploring the undulations of the other’s body. They stayed that way for minutes; kissing deep; kissing hard; caressing lovingly. Any onlookers would have mistaken them for one person writhing within the body of two.

The last sentence there is one of my favourite I've ever written. It says so much, while saying little.

Lou

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Something I posted on another thread:

They are part of the shadows,wanting to be known but not really seen.
They live somewhere between Heaven and Hell. A travesty of an existence once breathing, touching, feeling, living in the hopes of being curiously noticed but unable to join in with metaphysical world. An expiate unable to make up for what was lost in another time.
I can relate to them lately. Living on the edge of life watching others go about their daily routines. Wanting to reach out and grasp at that desired thing, to touch it, to be part of it, to experience it. To breathe in the colors, to feel the warm of words, to look into the soul's window and see what others see. To go from a whisper to a scream.

 

[matriarch]

Something I posted on another thread:

They are part of the shadows,wanting to be known but not really seen.
They live somewhere between Heaven and Hell. A travesty of an existence once breathing, touching, feeling, living in the hopes of being curiously noticed but unable to join in with metaphysical world. An expiate unable to make up for what was lost in another time.
I can relate to them lately. Living on the edge of life watching others go about their daily routines. Wanting to reach out and grasp at that desired thing, to touch it, to be part of it, to experience it. To breathe in the colors, to feel the warm of words, to look into the soul's window and see what others see. To go from a whisper to a scream.

 

[tolyk]

Lou, you are right, that last sentance is powerful. But it doesn't have the same effect without the entire paragraph, odd isn't it? Well done though.

Terrific topic Gauche, I'll be sure to add onto it soon enough.

Actually:

"From within the darkness may we truly see the brilliance of the light."

Me, two days ago.. no clue if anyone else has ever said it..

 

[Guest]

Lou, you are right, that last sentance is powerful. But it doesn't have the same effect without the entire paragraph, odd isn't it? Well done though.

Terrific topic Gauche, I'll be sure to add onto it soon enough.

Actually:

"From within the darkness may we truly see the brilliance of the light."

Me, two days ago.. no clue if anyone else has ever said it..

Thanks, Tolyk!

You're right, it just doesn't have anywhere near the same kind of impact without the whole paragraph. That's why I decided against just posting that final sentence.

Aye, 'tis a very good thread.

Loved yours, babe. Perdita's right, you are prfound.

Lou

P.S. Abs! Great to see you are going with that idea! Wonderful paragraph, hon. Maybe one day I'll get around to writing something on that wonderful suggestion of yours.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

P.S. Abs! Great to see you are going with that idea! Wonderful paragraph, hon. Maybe one day I'll get around to writing something on that wonderful suggestion of yours.

You would make it great, if you need more research help, just yell, love to search things like that out.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Okay, it's more than just a turn of phrase, but I just wrote it and I like it:

She stopped at the door and willed herself to calm down. She knew what it felt like to need sex, and she knew what it felt like to feel sexy, but the way she felt now was something different: she felt entirely sexual and female in a way that went beyond politics and beyond apologies, and it felt terribly exciting and powerful. She was ready to be devastated.

---dr.M.

First of all, a big "thumbs up" to Doc for his post. Now for a little comedy relief, here's one of mine and two others I've always wished I'd written.

"He was tired of death; tired of trying to kill unknown men who were trying to kill him. He wanted life and peace and Mary Beth."
RF
"Alive and Going Home"

"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them."
A. A. Milne
Eeyore from, Winnie the Pooh

"...impropriety is the soul of wit..."
W. Somerset Maugham
The Moon and Sixpence

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found a way to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

Alice Sebold, "the Lovely Bones"



Rumple: Glad you quoted Pooh, he is very wise indeed. An uncarved block.

 

[tolyk]

Rumple: Glad you quoted Pooh, he is very wise indeed. An uncarved block.

Ahh, Pooh, the cartoon inspired by a Bear in the great Winnipeg Zoo in Manitoba Canada When a little boy named Christopher named the bear Pooh, and a canadian soldier witnessed it all; thus the start of pooh