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Today is Monday, which means a drabble series for my words of the day for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday!
Feeling a little cheeky, actually, I've decided to try something new: drabbles within a drabble.
I am going to start with a drabble. Within that drabble will be my three drabbles based on the words of the days.
Because we have drubbles and tribbles and quibbles, I was trying to think of a name for this kind of drabble. Perhaps it already has a name, somewhere, but I've yet to encounter it. Anyway. I am dubbing this drabble form the "drabunculus."
This, of course, is based of the word "homunculus," after my favorite of the primitive theories of thought (and, actually, reproduction too!), which stated that within the brain was a miniature version of you, and this miniature you was responsible for your thoughts and perceptions.
So, being as the inner-drabbles are responsible for the content of the outer-drabble: drabunculus!
Okay, I'll stop rambling about my made-up words and give you the three words of the days and my drabunculus.
effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.
Examples
"The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues."
-Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington, 1799
"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra."
-Washington Irving, The Alhambra
"Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures."
-Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia," Time, November 17, 1986
Etymology
From Latin ex- "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.
nadir \NAY-dir; nay-DIR\, noun:
1. [Astronomy]. The point of the celestial sphere directly opposite the zenith and directly below the observer.
2. The lowest point; the time of greatest depression or adversity.
Examples
"Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor."
-Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full
"At the nadir of every recession, business pages fill up with stories of belt-tightening families who move to Vermont and buy their food in bulk."
-Peter T. Kilborn, "Splurge," New York Times, June 21, 1998
Etymology
Nadir is derived from Arabic nazir, "opposite."
puerile \PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\, adjective:
Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.
Examples
"And, in one of the most puerile episodes of his adult career, he punishes his old schoolmates for being rich and vulgar by breaking into their houses to soak the labels off their boasted wine collections."
-Thomas R. Edwards, "Mordecai Richler Then and Now," New York Times, June 22, 1980
"Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral... doing battle with the immoral."
-George F. Will, "The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism," Washington Post, April 15, 2001
Etymology
Puerile comes from Latin puerilis, from puer, "child, boy."
Maedhros.
I am the only one here, when you awaken.
How I call to you! Maitimo! Maitimo!
Despite the scars, the missing hand, you are still Maitimo to me.
~oOo~
With a yelp and a splendid crash, the glass broke upon the floor.
Damn your puerility! Sneaky hands tickling me beneath my ribs! I whirled and pushed you—I had labored for hours to make that stupid ornament that was now reduced to a glittering spray amid the dust!
As I heard our father enter--to judge us--you jammed something into my trembling hand and turned to express your regret to Atar for the mess on the floor, to accept his disappointment with head held high.
And Atar lifted the glass sparrow from my hand and proclaimed it perfect.
~oOo~
Your waking begins as a glimmer beneath eyelashes. Your hand in mine tightens, almost imperceptibly. But I’ve held that hand for three weeks now, and I know.
~oOo~
I paced my chambers on my wedding day, sick with bitter envy.
For you would stand beside me, your effortless effulgence giving me the significance of dust. Yet I loved you--and so hated myself.
Even when my betrothed spoke to you, her attention was reluctantly lured back to me.
No one would look at me this day; they would be consumed by you, Maitimo.
There was a rap on my door, and you entered. You: in gray robes, unadorned, your hair tied starkly from your face.
Still, they would look at you, despite your efforts. Still, I loved you.
~oOo~
You try to lift your right hand to me--Macalaurë--but it's bound to your chest. Good, I think, that you need not see--
Maitimo!
~oOo~
Formenos was bleak. Even when the birds warbled in jewel-bright trees, beneath cloudless skies, I walked with heartsick loneliness, seeing none of it, listlessly evading the attempts of my brothers to cheer me.
Some days, I did not make it from bed and let dirges haunt me.
Once, I awoke, and you were beside me. You’d made chocolate biscuits. Since our mother had left, we had biscuits no longer. Eat. For me, you told me, pressing a still-warm biscuit into my hand.
To please you, I did.
It tasted like dirt.
I laughed at the horror on your crumb-spattered face.
~oOo~
The healer drops her bandages when she sees you’ve awakened.
“Do you remember your name?” she asks.
Maedhros.
I'm not sure how well this works....
I do know that I am through with inventing new drabble-forms for a while!
That was hard!
As always, I value everyone's opinion :)
Feeling a little cheeky, actually, I've decided to try something new: drabbles within a drabble.
I am going to start with a drabble. Within that drabble will be my three drabbles based on the words of the days.
Because we have drubbles and tribbles and quibbles, I was trying to think of a name for this kind of drabble. Perhaps it already has a name, somewhere, but I've yet to encounter it. Anyway. I am dubbing this drabble form the "drabunculus."
This, of course, is based of the word "homunculus," after my favorite of the primitive theories of thought (and, actually, reproduction too!), which stated that within the brain was a miniature version of you, and this miniature you was responsible for your thoughts and perceptions.
So, being as the inner-drabbles are responsible for the content of the outer-drabble: drabunculus!
Okay, I'll stop rambling about my made-up words and give you the three words of the days and my drabunculus.
effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:
The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.
Examples
"The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues."
-Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington, 1799
"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra."
-Washington Irving, The Alhambra
"Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures."
-Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia," Time, November 17, 1986
Etymology
From Latin ex- "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.
nadir \NAY-dir; nay-DIR\, noun:
1. [Astronomy]. The point of the celestial sphere directly opposite the zenith and directly below the observer.
2. The lowest point; the time of greatest depression or adversity.
Examples
"Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor."
-Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full
"At the nadir of every recession, business pages fill up with stories of belt-tightening families who move to Vermont and buy their food in bulk."
-Peter T. Kilborn, "Splurge," New York Times, June 21, 1998
Etymology
Nadir is derived from Arabic nazir, "opposite."
puerile \PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\, adjective:
Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.
Examples
"And, in one of the most puerile episodes of his adult career, he punishes his old schoolmates for being rich and vulgar by breaking into their houses to soak the labels off their boasted wine collections."
-Thomas R. Edwards, "Mordecai Richler Then and Now," New York Times, June 22, 1980
"Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral... doing battle with the immoral."
-George F. Will, "The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism," Washington Post, April 15, 2001
Etymology
Puerile comes from Latin puerilis, from puer, "child, boy."
Maedhros.
I am the only one here, when you awaken.
How I call to you! Maitimo! Maitimo!
Despite the scars, the missing hand, you are still Maitimo to me.
With a yelp and a splendid crash, the glass broke upon the floor.
Damn your puerility! Sneaky hands tickling me beneath my ribs! I whirled and pushed you—I had labored for hours to make that stupid ornament that was now reduced to a glittering spray amid the dust!
As I heard our father enter--to judge us--you jammed something into my trembling hand and turned to express your regret to Atar for the mess on the floor, to accept his disappointment with head held high.
And Atar lifted the glass sparrow from my hand and proclaimed it perfect.
Your waking begins as a glimmer beneath eyelashes. Your hand in mine tightens, almost imperceptibly. But I’ve held that hand for three weeks now, and I know.
I paced my chambers on my wedding day, sick with bitter envy.
For you would stand beside me, your effortless effulgence giving me the significance of dust. Yet I loved you--and so hated myself.
Even when my betrothed spoke to you, her attention was reluctantly lured back to me.
No one would look at me this day; they would be consumed by you, Maitimo.
There was a rap on my door, and you entered. You: in gray robes, unadorned, your hair tied starkly from your face.
Still, they would look at you, despite your efforts. Still, I loved you.
You try to lift your right hand to me--Macalaurë--but it's bound to your chest. Good, I think, that you need not see--
Maitimo!
Formenos was bleak. Even when the birds warbled in jewel-bright trees, beneath cloudless skies, I walked with heartsick loneliness, seeing none of it, listlessly evading the attempts of my brothers to cheer me.
Some days, I did not make it from bed and let dirges haunt me.
Once, I awoke, and you were beside me. You’d made chocolate biscuits. Since our mother had left, we had biscuits no longer. Eat. For me, you told me, pressing a still-warm biscuit into my hand.
To please you, I did.
It tasted like dirt.
I laughed at the horror on your crumb-spattered face.
The healer drops her bandages when she sees you’ve awakened.
“Do you remember your name?” she asks.
Maedhros.
I'm not sure how well this works....
I do know that I am through with inventing new drabble-forms for a while!
That was hard!
As always, I value everyone's opinion :)
Tags:
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 04:54 pm (UTC)It's a nice little story, and the drabbles within it show Maglor's insecurity and hero-worship of Maedhros very well.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 05:51 pm (UTC)I'd say its more that I am afraid of getting bored with ordinary drabbles! While I force myself to write 100 words on some days (because one of the points of drabbling is to master minimalism), I can't help but to be intrigued by the thought of longer works with the same strict structure expected of drabbling!
Drabbles are actually quite difficult for me, as I tend to be a bit...erm...long-winded? As I'm sure you've noticed! :D This piece was really hard to do and left me feeling all head-spinny. But I need a little discipline every now and then!
I'm glad that the structure works for you, as I was not quite sure of it myself (given the head-spinniness, I suppose). Plus, I had the text in different formats to distinguish in my original in Word, so it all looked a little plain when I pasted it into LJ. I even thought about having different fonts for the past and the present...and then decided that was cheating ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 05:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 06:02 pm (UTC)The problem is how to change the font. The original (Word) version had Macalaure's present, beside Maitimo's bed, in bold, to keep it straight from the rest. (Because the ~oOo~ messes up my word count!)
But then, I incorporated the title into the drabble, in bold, for a reason, so I don't know how to off-set that, short of underlining (which I oppose on the grounds that it is really ugly and my boss uses the heck out of it, so I'm just sick of underlining! ;D)
So I don't know how else to set off the text. Italics? But then how to set off the italic text? (Which I use liberally in drabbles, for some reason, feeling more apt to bend the rules of punctuation!)
And so we're back to underlining....
*sigh*
I'm spoiled by Word, growing up in an MS-geek family, and the flexibility it offers compared to stodgy old html....
*longs for smallcaps*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 01:07 am (UTC)Some fonts also have a small caps variant that you can code in CSS (which should be possible if you're writing straight HTML). If you need tips on how to do this, email me. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 02:12 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that I even want to change the fonts at all. If the piece is unclear, even if written in a single font, with space breaks, then there is a problem with the writing, and changing the fonts seems a lazy way to solve the problem.
Oh, and I'm working on a webpage for the WAU.... :-/
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-04 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 08:07 pm (UTC)I particularly liked the "nadir" drabble. It reminded me of a Composition exercise in which we had to describe a scene conveying "nervousness" without mentioning the word "nervous" ;).
Right ho!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-03 11:24 pm (UTC)(But then I don't know much about the characters.)
LoL! Hang around in my journal long enough and you will! ;D Maedhros (Maitimo) and Maglor (Macalaure) are two of my favorite subjects in writing.
I particularly liked the "nadir" drabble.
Sometimes, words just don't fit well in writing. I couldn't envision "nadir" sounding natural in that piece, so I made it a "theme" drabble instead, based around the theme of the word.
Nadir was a new word for me too. It's kind of awkward-sounding, though, so I don't see myself using it anytime soon.
Thanks for reading! :D
homunculus
Date: 2005-10-03 11:14 pm (UTC)"The term appears to have been first used by the alchemist Paracelsus. He once claimed that he had created a false human being that he referred to as the homunculus. The creature was to have stood no more than 12 inches tall, and did the work usually associated with a golem. However, after a short time, the homunculus turned on its creator and ran away. The recipe consisted of a bag of bones, sperm, skin fragments and hair from any animal of which the homunculus would be a hybrid. This was to be laid in the ground surrounded by horse manure for forty days, at which point the embryo would form."
Re: homunculus
Date: 2005-10-03 11:28 pm (UTC)It shouldn't surprise you that there is such a creature in the D&D Monster Manual! >8-B <--Ye Geek
I learned the word in Physiological Psychology, as part of an antiquated theory of cognition and perception.
(Oh, you might like to know: I just finished your French vanilla for tomorrow! :D)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-05 06:46 am (UTC)Aww... that's just sweet. Especially 1 and 2. I didn't really understand 3...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-05 06:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-05 01:45 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed them! The third one is set in Formenos, after Feanor's exile. Nerdanel has just left her family and (depending on your opinions on Macalaure's marriage) perhaps his wife too. So he is decidedly depressed.
Maitimo tries to make his favorite biscuits, to cheer him. Unfortunately, males Elves don't usually bake, so Macalaure chokes on the dryness of them and well....
The rest you can surmise from the drabble :)