Tuesday 30 December 2014

Carnival: Part Two

Hello everyone, this is the second part of the short story I'd started writing.  For Part One of Carnival, please click here.





Part Two



Robin chuckled to himself as he remembered his plan; he'd almost forgotten it for a few minutes there.  He'd left the painting in his studio in plain sight: heck, you could even see it from the roof of the Carnival Tower if you wanted to. Of course, she hadn't known that. She probably thought she'd stolen it.

He wondered if she herself would recognize the signs she kept talking about: signs someone is lying to you, signs someone is feeling uncomfortable, signs someone is in love with you--he smiled and grabbed her diary off of his desk, and turned to the last story.

It was called “Carnival".

Nice story--I've read it once, he thought, but I'd still like to read it again.  It was about two people, Jason and Rita, and each was madly in love with the other, but neither could work up the courage to share the way they felt.

Kind of like us, he thought--and corrected himself-- like me.  He still didn't know if she loved him.  He read on.

Rita was a writer, and Jason was a painter. Rita liked rainbows and starry nights and dreamed of falling in love one day (with one particular person), while Jason loved watching the sunsets, and generally busied himself with thoughts about weaving the things she liked into one of his own paintings: nothing too conspicuous, just a faint rainbow with daisies in the foreground, the sun still hiding behind the puffy white clouds.

They had met on a park bench on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and just when neither of them had felt the day could get any better, it did.  


And after that, of course, there was the usual exchange of phone numbers and the phone calls that went long into the starry nights, and secret meeting places, too.  The rocky patch near the creek in the forest was their favourite.  After Jason finished art school and Rita, her degree in English Literature, they would spend a large part of their days together, him painting, and her conjuring a story out of what she saw and believed.  




Robin sighed.  Jason and Rita--although they were characters in a story--had found happiness in each other, a kind of happiness he would, possibly, never find, and he didn't know if it--


That's it, he thought, and stopped himself.


To hell with this 'what if she doesn't love me' nonsense!  If she does, excellent, and if she doesn't, I can always move on.  No big deal.


He carefully placed the diary back on the table, wrote out a note for Laura, and grabbed his bike and sped off to the candy store.



*




(To be continued...)

Sunday 7 December 2014

Carnival: Part One

Part One


 



“If you have even one solitary light guiding you, remember, you are not alone in the tunnel of darkness. But even if you have no candles to light your path, look skyward, and rebehold the stars.  They will be your companions."



He remembered the words Laura had written in her little black book. 

Laura.

The girl with hair as dark as black coffee, who wore the same shirt every morning she opened the candy store at eight in the morning. 
Laura, with her beautiful stories and her pretty, sad smile.

“Believe in yourself!" the sea-blue coloured shirt read. A powerful message worn by a not-so-powerful woman.

But now, he had not seen her in a week. He wondered where she was--he missed her, and although they hadn't talked much, he had guessed everything about her, because of the little black book she'd left on the counter by mistake--or had it been intentional? As far as he knew from the book, Laura was not the kind of person who'd leave her things lying around, unless, of course, she had wanted someone to see them. Maybe she had left it for someone else? Mr. Marlon, perhaps?  The idea puzzled him. Mr. Marlon was reserved, unwilling to share his thoughts with even the closest of his acquaintances. Were Laura and Marlon friends of some sort? No, they couldn't be.



Could she have left it for a customer? He discarded the idea, it had too many variables.


She must have left it for him.

He shook his head, not wanting to distract himself from his painting of the end of a dark tunnel. He would have time to think about it later.

He looked around the room, feeling something was amiss, but maybe it was just because he'd been thinking of Laura.
                                                                       
   *

She sat on the hard, wooden chair she had got from the old lady across the street.  Stealing the painting had been easy--(what kind of artist keeps his studio unlocked when he's going to be outside for the whole day?)--the hard part was looking at it. She examined the masterpiece in her hands. Every stroke, every colour was perfect, just as she had imagined it. The snow, a grayish pearly white, the trees, bare, the sun, nonexistent within the painting, and her heart, broken.

No, he doesn't know about that.... Or does he? He could have found out from Mr. Marlon, for all she knew. 

But then he never talked to the old man except if he wanted him to pose for a portrait. Even then, the exchanges had been minimal.



The only question now was if he'd been clever enough to take her diary off the counter that day.




She noticed he had signed his name--Robin--in the corner of the painting, in black.



Every story she had ever written was about him, every last one. He was not mentioned in the most obvious of ways--by his name--but she had made sure all of them included things he liked-- the sunset, snow, children ice skating, shafts of sunlight cutting through the gaps in the leaves in autumn. She had been daring enough to make two of her characters, Jason and Rita--very similar to herself and Robin--fall in love.  That was the last story she'd written in the book.



She'd called it "Carnival".









To be continued....

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Sunlight.

So here is my first diamante poem:



Image Credits: Tanya Kukade (instagram.com/kukadetanya)

Sunlight.
Bright, white
Shining, sparkling, fuming
Fire, flame, night, shiver
Quieting, calming, glowing
Cold, silent
Moonlight.


Image Credits: www.wildretina.com 


See you on my next post!

~Vruta Gupte.

Sunday 23 November 2014

How To Write A Diamante Poem

I Googled 'types of poems' and I found all kinds of unusual names for all sorts of unusual poem structures--the most symmetrical and awe-inspiring of which I found the diamante poem.

Diamante (pronounced dee-uh-MAHN-tay) poems are in the shape of a diamond, and have seven lines; the first and seventh lines have one word each, the second and sixth lines have two, the third and fifth lines have three words each, and the fourth line has four words. 
Lines one, four, and seven have nouns.
Lines two and six have adjectives.
Lines three and five have verbs.

The writer Kenn Nesbitt, on his website, has provided a very useful way to remember all these rules:


Noun
Adjective, Adjective
Verb, Verb, Verb
Noun, Noun, Noun, Noun
Verb, Verb, Verb
Adjective, Adjective
Noun

There are two kinds of diamantes: synonym diamantes and antonym diamantes.
Synonym diamantes talk about two things of the same kind; for example:


Monsters
Evil, Spooky
Howling, Shrieking, Wailing
Ghosts, Vampires, Goblins, Witches
Flying, Scaring, Terrifying
Creepy, Crawly
Creatures


Antonym diamantes talk about two opposite or different things:

Cat
Gentle, Sleepy
Purring, Meowing, Scratching
Whiskers, Fur, Collar, Leash
Barking, Licking, Digging
Slobbery, Playful
Dog

In the fourth line, the first two nouns describe the noun in the first line and the last two nouns describe the noun in the last line.


Personally, I think diamante poems would be easier to write if we just made sure that the poem ended up looking like a diamond, instead of having to write nouns, or adjectives, or verbs in a particular line; but then, I suppose the pleasure is in sticking to the rules as much as possible, and churning out a masterpiece anyway.  

Semper gratiam habebo, lector! (I hope Google Translate's right.) Good bye, and good night!  See you on the next post! (Coming soon.)


The Hope Diamond, The Museum of Natural History


References:

Poetry4Kids: http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-a-diamante-poem/

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Slaves.

Slaves

We are all slaves, such slaves!
Slaves of the people we love,
And who act a certain way,
Not knowing they hurt us,
Because they don't care.
We are slaves, for we do not see any good
In trying to right their wrongs,
For we know their plates are full
With sin,
And if we make them aware
They will say something worse
Than what they already had,
And we are slaves, we are afraid
That we might bring upon them misfortune
And so we keep quiet
Not daring to utter a word
Held back by fear, helplessness,
And love.
Such slaves!

~Vruta Gupte.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Follow Your Heart.

So this guy got one of the top two places in a short story writing contest last year!  Hope y'all like it!
 
 
FOLLOW YOUR HEART
 
WHAM!
 
Amelia slammed on her brakes with a screech; her blue Honda Fit swerved violently before it finally came to a stop in front of the green traffic light. People honked behind her as she got out of the car. She ran to the spot where the cyclist she had just hit sat rubbing his forehead. A police officer stood next to him with a bottle of water.
 
“We’re letting you off this time, ma’am, but if it happens again, you’re gonna get a sure trip to jail,” the officer said, handing her a speeding ticket. Amelia fumbled in her purse for her wallet.
 
She frowned; she’d left it on the dresser. Again. She looked apologetically at the officer, who shook his head and turned away. She glanced at her watch: half past ten already?! She bolted to her car (which was pretty difficult considering her attire consisted of a floral skirt and a purple-and-green plaid coat), slammed the door, and stepped on the gas. Her boss was going to get really angry. She was certain he was going to fire her.
 
Over the past year, Amelia had been trying her hand at writing. One of her articles, titled ‘The Bush Effect', which was about the problems the former U.S. President’s ‘trickle-down’ policy had on the economy, had gone absolutely viral. It was so popular she even thought about leaving her job and devoting all of her time to writing. After that, she wrote a particularly provocative article about the White House travel office controversy; it was not well received, and editor after editor turned it down. Not one magazine wanted to publish her articles because they were afraid of getting kicked out of business. Gradually, she lost interest in writing, and after a few months she stopped altogether. Amelia was devastated.
She’d lit a matchstick in the fireplace and torn and burnt all of her manuscripts one by one—she could still remember the crackling sound that had ensued as they were reduced to ashes. Her brain told her to pay attention to her work, but her heart told her to get back to writing.
 
She had listened to her brain, and she regretted it, even now.
 
Amelia turned left. She could hear a cardinal whistling and the rustling of leaves. She stopped and looked long at the majestic red bird strutting across the branch of the tree, and suddenly in her heart she knew that what she had been doing all these days was simply out of fear. She’d stuck to what she was comfortable with, even though she knew it wasn’t right—for her. And now the universe was making her pay for it.
 
She parked her car in the lot and got out. She knew what she had to do. She walked
towards her boss’s office and waited until he opened the door for her.
 
“Amelia—”
 
“I know; I’m resigning.”
 
“What?” he looked shocked; he’d wanted to do the honours. “Why?”
 
“It’s too stressful in here for me....especially after last year. I’ve just realized I like writing more than sitting around worrying about money and credit. I’m not into this anymore.”
 
“Well, it’s your choice. Good luck.”
 
Two weeks later, Amelia was driving her Honda with the windows rolled down and the sun on her cheeks. She was finally back on track.
 
She smiled. She just had the coolest idea for an article!
*
 
Thank you for reading!  Please comment/ like/ share if you liked it.
Hasta la vista, amigos!
 


Saturday 27 September 2014

The Ostrich Who Could Fly

Hello, everyone!  I'm writing a blog post after an unusually long time.
I wrote a poem; I hope y'all like it! 


The Ostrich Who Could Fly





Once as I was walking
Across a barren land,
I chanced upon an ostrich
With his head half in the sand.

I stopped awhile, listened closely,
The ostrich was now weeping
I asked him what was wrong;
He didn't answer; silence creeping.

He straightened his long neck,
And pointed to the sky
I craned my neck to see and I saw
Ostriches that could fly.

Tears were running down his cheeks,
I asked him,"Didn't you try?"
"I did," he said, his voice cracking,
"I s'pose I'm not meant to fly."

"Try a thousand times," I said,
"You'll fly eventually, you'll see,
Just because you couldn't fly then
Doesn't mean that's all you can be."

The ostrich nodded, wiped his tears,
I left him to his devices,
Life's too short to be bogged down
By these insignificant crises.

A few months later, I walked again
Across that barren land,
I'd forgotten all about
The ostrich in the sand.

But then I saw a shadow
On the ground ahead of me
And I remembered the ostrich
Who had wanted to be free.

I looked up, and there he was
Soaring gracefully through the air
I smiled to myself, and realized
Life really isn't unfair.

~Vruta Gupte.






P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here (only people who are viewing this on their computers will be able to see it, but if you're using a cellphone, you can still comment using the default Blogger comment box.)  

If you want to check out more of my writing, please click hereThank you! 

Monday 8 September 2014

Two-Word Poem #2

My second two-word poem. I'm a fan of these; so much can be said in just two words.
It's what you don't say that matters in this kind of poetry more than what you do say. The rest is up to the imagination of the reader.

She laughed."

Two-Word Poem #1

Two-word poems are actually quite elegant.
Here's my first one.


“If Only."


If you liked it, please leave a comment below or go to the “My Own Writing" for more of my poems. Thank you!

Sunday 24 August 2014

Modern Breakup Story.

The Perks Of A Not-So-Smart Phone

Still waiting.
Ping, ping.
Unlocked screen.
I saw another name.
I locked it again.
I sent a message five minutes ago.
You'd replied to the message I sent before that.
But you'd read this one.
And you hadn't replied yet.
You kept me waiting.
I shouldn't have enabled the ‘send read report' option.
But now it's grayed out and I can't do anything but wait.
Such a calamity.
Still waiting.

~ Vruta Gupte.

Saturday 9 August 2014

The Plight of the Underling

An original poem in two pictures.  Pretty neat, eh?  (This is the original and only copy of the poem.  Please comment or notify me if the pictures aren't clear--thank you!)






P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here (only people who are viewing this on their computers will be able to see it, but if you're using a cellphone, you can still comment using the default Blogger comment box.)  Thank you! 

~ Vruta Gupte.

Thursday 31 July 2014

Walks.

Walks

Why do I have to walk as fast as you do?
Why do you want me to walk with you?
Why can't we just walk in silence?
Why should I walk behind you if a bike's in our way, looking to avoid a speed breaker?
Why can't the bike just go over it instead?
Why am I the one who gets out of the way every time?
Why am I walking so fast?
Slow down....
You're walking, for Pete's sake.
You say brisk walking is good for your health, but brisk walking is just going to elevate your blood pressure,
Compared to slow walking.
Since when did walking have to be an exercise?
Couldn't it be just....another time to get to know yourself?
Couldn't it be just walking?
Why do you seek to complicate even the simplest of things?
It's just walking.
Just walk.

~Vruta Gupte.

Wednesday 23 July 2014

Being Lost.

I've given myself a challenge.

It's called 'The Write a Free-verse Poem in Three Minutes Challenge'.

So here goes.  (I'm writing this poem like I wrote 'Stars in the Sky': spontaneously.)





Being Lost.

The little girl
Wearing a red dress
With yellow polka-dots
And blue ribbons
Went for a walk 
On the dirt road
Leading into the forest
Where she saw a lake
That she couldn't cross
So she sat there on the shore
She sat there for a thousand years
The immortal girl cries immortal tears
Her tears flow into the lake
The lake gets bigger and bigger
And scarier and darker
Until it goes full circle around the girl
Immortal girl with immortal curls
Swirling violently
To sink a ship
To sink a ship of immortality
She shudders and takes a deep breath
And falls asleep on the small island
The small island that is now her land
Two hundred years later
The lake has dried up
But the immortal girl
With her immortal tears
With her immortal curls
And her immortal fears
Is nowhere to be found.

~Vruta Gupte.

Wednesday 16 July 2014

The Candy Seller--Part Two

Hello, everyone!  I'd said that the second part of my story called 'The Candy Seller' would be out soon, and here it is!

Hope you like it.



*

“Hello there, young lady, what can I do for you?” he had asked, smiling.

“Oh, well,” she hesitated, but fought off the fear of being reprimanded and breathed, “Could-you-please-give-me-a-rabbit-shaped-chocolate?”

“Of course,” he had said as he produced one (seemingly) out of nowhere, wrapped in shimmering gold paper and a sparkling red bow tied on top, dead centre.

The girl grinned and fumbled around in her pocket, her ears straining to hear the characteristic ‘clank’ of metal upon metal.

It was empty.

Apparently the candy seller had realized the enormity of her situation: “You can have it anyway, child.”

The girl frowned—she did not like being pitied.  Her love for chocolates—or rabbit-shaped chocolates, in particular—eventually won the ensuing internal battle.  The old man placed the box into her hand gingerly.

“Thank you, mister!” the girl exclaimed happily, her eyes twinkling—the world was a beautiful place, she said to herself.

She looked up to see the candy seller still standing there, smiling at her. 
She grinned back.

And that was how a young girl who had no home to live in and an old man who was a candy seller became friends.


*


Want to read more of my writing? Click here!

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Friday 11 July 2014

Extra Short Poems #1

Hey guys,

This is one of my extra short poems (as is evident from the title, heh).

Drawing

And I couldn't draw a straight line for the life of me,
Even if you'd pinned me up against a tree
And I don't know what to do now,
Maybe I'll eat mein Chow.

~ Vruta Gupte.

P.S. If you set this to jazz music, it'll sound better, because that's how I imagined it.

I'm kidding; imagine it however you like.

P.P.S. Is the semicolon obsolete yet? Oh, no, it isn't; good.

P.P.P.S Want to read more of my writing? Click here!
I've added Disqus comments on here.  Please click on the time-stamp near the end of the post to comment.  (If you don't have a Disqus account, you can still comment as a guest with a custom name.) Thank you!


Wednesday 25 June 2014

Cocoon (Or 'How To Become A Butterfly')



Cocoon

There once was a caterpillar;
He lived in a cocoon
He used to wonder if he would ever see the sun
Or the moon, 
Or the stars shining brilliantly in the sky.
He wondered
What he would look like
When he would become a butterfly.
He'd only heard about all these
In poems or in stories
He waited, and waited, 
And waited to be free--
To be free, and to fly
From the cocoon in the tree.
He ate and he slept 
And he laughed and he wept
And he wondered, how he wondered!
Would he ever get out of the cocoon in the tree?
He remembered his mother telling him,
"You'll only be a butterfly
If you really, really want to try."
And so he tried.
He tried, he tried, and he
Tried to be a butterfly,
But he couldn't.
He couldn't be a butterfly--
He cried.
He thought of living 
Forever in the cocoon in the tree
He thought of giving
Up his fanatical fantasy.
But he didn't--
And he tried, he tried, he tried,
He cried, he cried, he tried
And finally he made a hole in the silk of his cocoon
(It wasn't a hole, but he called it one.)
And he cried tears of joy as he saw the starlight,
And he cried tears of joy as he saw the moon
And he broke out and flew away from his little cocoon.

 - Vruta Gupte.




Want to read more of my writing? Click here!
P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here.  Please click on the time-stamp near the end of the post to comment.  (If you don't have a Disqus account, you can still comment as a guest with a custom name.) Thank you!

Thursday 19 June 2014

Ad Occursum Futurum

Hello everyone,

This is just to tell you I will not be posting as frequently as I have these past couple of months.  (I'm preparing for the IIT entrance exam, and that doesn't leave me with too much time to update this blog with good writing.)

Maybe I'll find time to write, maybe I won't, but I'll still come back whenever I can!

Thank you for reading; ad occursum futurum!

~ Vruta.


P.S. The Candy Seller: Part Two will be published when I finish it: maybe a few weeks later.  I think I'm running a little low on imagination.
You can read some of my other writing here.  Thank you!

Monday 16 June 2014

Monday Morning Blues





People who can eat breakfast outside in their gardens are very lucky.  
Have a good day, everyone!



Want to read some of my writing? Click here!
P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here.  Please click on the time-stamp near the end of the post to comment.  (If you don't have a Disqus account, you can still comment as a guest with a custom name.) Thank you!


Thursday 12 June 2014

Pot Of Gold

I wrote this yesterday.  Hope y'all like it!

Pot of Gold

I met a traveler, he told me
To journey where no one has ever gone before--
To the end.
I asked him,“ The end of what?"
And he replied, with glinting eye,
"The end of the rainbow."
I asked him why, and he said
That people go there to get their pot of gold,
But they do not realize
That the pot of gold cannot be found there--
Instead if they look within themselves,
They will find all the gold they need.

~ Vruta Gupte.



Want to read more of my writing? Click here!
P.S. I've added Disqus comments on here.  Please click on the time-stamp near the end of the post to comment.  (If you don't have a Disqus account, you can still comment as a guest with a custom name.) Thank you!

Saturday 31 May 2014

The Candy Seller--Part One

Hello everyone!  I've been working on a new story--a new short story.  It's called 'The Candy Seller' (I think you might've gathered that much from the title--if not, you're free to read anyway.) This is what I've finished 'til now.  Hope you like it!
*

THE CANDY SELLER

It was dark.  The moonlight danced its way to fill the gaps between the few trees that stood wearily in the middle of the road.  The air was heavy with unwelcome dust and smoke, and if you stood still long enough, you could hear the trees groaning, and the female birds silently comforting their children, who were complaining about how hard it was to breathe in the foul breeze that blew.

None of this, however, was noticed by the girl who roamed the streets at night, looking for a place to sleep or a half-eaten sandwich carelessly tossed into one of the bins on the sidewalk.  The world had been like this—smelly, dirty, foul—ever since she had been born, and so she never questioned the absence of fresh air—she didn’t know what it was.

The girl had blue eyes, and if you looked closely enough, you would see the starlight reflected in them.  Her mother, before she had died of illness, had told her to look at the stars whenever she felt abandoned, or alone; she had told her the stars would be her friends, ready to lift her out of any darkness that was unfortunate enough to have crossed her path.  No, she was never unfortunate.  It was always the darkness that was unfortunate, her mother would say.  For soon her inner light would vanquish the darkness, and the world would shine and sparkle once more, as it always had.  But she also reminded her that without darkness, light would not have existed.  And so one must also allow a little sadness into one’s life. 

She now sat in front of a shop she had found the other day.  The sweet, stuffy smell of golden-brown caramel filled the air.  The old bearded man would come out any moment now.  She remembered how he had talked to her the other day when she had asked him for a rabbit-shaped chocolate. 

*

This is only the first installment, Part Two's coming soon (if I don't leave this story midway like all the others.  I really do hope I don't, because that says a thousand words about my...perseverance, you could say.)  Anyway, thank you for reading, and see you soon!  

Oh, and check out Melissa Chelsey's blog, I just found it, and she's awesome!
She's got a book coming out soon, I think, I don't know.  
Cheers!


Want to check out more of my writing?  Click here! (I've never quite got this bit right in my posts.  I'm still unsure how to phrase this part correctly....and without sounding like a troll.)

P.S. Disqus comments are enabled.  Feel free to leave your thoughts about this piece below; thank you! (So that went well.)

Tuesday 27 May 2014

How To Write A Haiku Poem

Moleskine is a notebook company, if I'm not mistaken.

So it's been a while since I've published a 'how-to' post out here, so I'm going to do just that.

A few days ago, I was browsing through a poetry website, and these beautiful haikus caught my attention:



Blowing from the west
Fallen leaves gather
In the east.
- Buson

I kill an ant
and realize my three children
have been watching.
- Kato Shuson

Cool air--
the evening mountain
becomes itself.
 - Issa

(Issa was actually a very prolific haiku poet, and one of the most famous.  Many haiku poets draw inspiration from his haikus.)
Haikus are normally used to represent natural phenomena and happenings, but they can also be used to describe certain mundane or everyday situations.  For example:

Tired cat sleeps all night.
He needs lots of rest for a
Long day of napping.
 - Kenn Nesbitt

This was just to give you an example of how haiku poems are generally written.  Haikus are mostly easy to write, but capturing a whole scene in three lines, conforming to a set standard of syllable counts in each line, can sometimes be more difficult than most poets think (at first glance).
Anyway, here is how I write all my haiku poems (although I haven't written many):
Step One: Decide What You Want to Write.
This is often the easiest step in the process of writing a haiku.  You could write about flowers blooming in spring, leaves falling in autumn, the sun melting a snowman, snow on the sidewalk, a full moon, anything!  Haikus are very diverse in that respect.

Step Two: Condense It.
Decide what exactly you want to depict in your poem.  Describe what you want to write about in four or five lines.
What will the haiku sound like?  Will be happy, or sad?  Will the ending be unprecedented, or predictable?  You choose.

Step Three: Give It Structure.
So now that you've decided what to write in your haiku, you have to structure your idea according to the 'rules' for a haiku.
The first line usually contains five syllables, the second line has seven, and the third line has five again, sorta like this:


My homework is late.
My dog ate it this morning.
I sure like my dog.
 - Kenn Nesbitt
(You have to admit that's funny!)

There!  You have a haiku poem!  
The syllable count isn't always five-seven-five, I've seen haikus (mostly Issa's) that have only two syllables in the first line, six in the second, and three in the third. 

Here are some I wrote:

An apple cries out
In pain, in grief, slices, tortured--
No stains on the knife.
 - Vruta Gupte.
(Poor apple.)

Silence at sunrise
No birds cooing softly;
Concrete everywhere.

 - Vruta Gupte.

Feel free to write some of your own haikus in the comment section below!  (Click on the timestamp or on the post title.  Disqus comments are enabled.) 

~ migration.

Dear Reader, (If anyone has happened to chance upon this rather not-so-very-secret diary of mine) it is my simultaneous pleasure and occa...