Revisiting: Temperature Variations, Creativity, and Weather Words

This time of year, this image is wishful thinking!

I wrote this little treatise on weather words a long time back. Since everyone is currently suffering weather extremes, it seemed a good idea to 'revisit' the issue. Just for fun...

Somewhere in the infinite gyrating cornucopia of song and story, tale and account, saga and romance that is the substance of myth, it was bandied/broadcast/broached about that Dragons love heat. Hot. Burning, boiling, sizzling, searing Heat! I don't know who first claimed this to be a fact/truth/non-lie, but I can attest as to the accuracy of the belief: NOT! 

Some Dragons, to be sure, do enjoy basking in sunshine, baking in warm sand, sprawling in the ebullient effervescent whirl of a hot tub...well, OK, even I enjoy such endeavors. But true heat--the blazing, baking oppressive heat of a Texas summer--ouch! 

S'not to say that I prefer cold. Should the temperature drop below 60 my toes freeze. Literally makes my great claws tremble. I prefer temperatures in the 70's, a nice middle/ central/in-between warmth. A centric mercury measure of sun tickled molecules. Makes for happy scales, happy toes, and a happy, more creative brain. When the temperature bumps up into the 80's, the brain and body still manage to perform, but not with quite the same alacrity as it does when it's 10 degrees cooler. Into the 90's... everything smolders, and I don't mean just my gullets and internal juices. S'hard to think, create, motivate when heat depletes ye olde energy! Once the silver, scintillating mercury blob bubbles into the three digits, it's all over. Tail drags, wings droop, ears sag, everything shuts down in protest. Not a creative spark in sight!

Which is why this olde Dragon worships conditioned air. Bless the HVAC. My cave is completely habituated to appease my humongous but sensitive self. Dries sweat, lets blood flow normally, perks up the heartbeat, invigorates the brain cells and the creative spark re-energizes. Flares, sparkles, gleams. At such times one can write or paint or craft or count their treasure trove. A great chance to imagine, think, apply, react, DO! 

If you're a writer/ speaker/teller of stories, the words associated with the vagaries of weather can be a succulent wealth of, well--Words! Here's a bit of Dragon advice: use that wealth to enrich your tales with most excellent/ marvelous/wondrous and varied descriptions. 

Rain is not just rain, but a roiling storm. A wind whipped tempest. A cloud stampede. An innervating inundation. A streaming squall, a horrific, harried hurricane, a galloping gale. Light rain is a shimmering mist, a cooling sprinkle, a dusting of moisture...dreamy, sleepy, refreshing. One can reach into the cloud shower and capture droplets, fling them in a shining spray, glitter the drops on metal and wood and leaves and fur... 

Heat turns the droplets to vapor, fog, shifting haze, miasma, murk. 

Winter Ice Crystals by yeimaya

Cold turns the droplets to frost, ice, rime, flakes, silvery and white and pale and pallid, with blue shadows, deep ice glow and variegated undulations of light on frozen surfaces. 

Don't you love/adore/ admire the flights of fancy so readily available in the mere serendipitous spew of weather relative verbiage?

If hot, stay cool. If cold, hug a heater. Once comfortable, savor the flavor of the elements, suck them in, spit them out, color and texture the visual display of your thoughts/ imagination/dreams as you place them on paper, papyrus, clay tablets or whatever writing paraphernalia you choose. Enjoy the summer wherever you are, but remain creative! Write!  Or Paint! Or Sing a Song...s'all in the joy of the doing.

The Dragon has spoken...

Writing the Molecules--The Joy is in the Details

This morning I shall discourse about Writing the Molecules...those tiny aspects of our perceptions that flesh the bones of the written word. First, I shall explain why these nuances/gradations of physical awareness are so important to a Dragon. Ah, I mean a writing Dragon.

As a Dragon I have remarkable, extraordinary, notable senses. No eyesight is keener. I can detect a gnat fluttering/flickering/flitting 'mid blossoms and bumblebees a mile away. Indeed. Five thousand two hundred and eighty feet. Twice one thousand three hundred and twenty feet. Ha! Did I say keen? A telescope cannot match me for optical acuity. 'Nough said.

My auditory organs are without peer. I am an acoustical wizard. I not only see the gnat, I hear it release the end result of its digestive process. Intestinal gases. Fart. And a tiny toot it is, little more than a minuscule gut groan. A sigh. A whimper. Yet my ears absorb the passing molecular tremble as if it were the great rage of St. Helens coughing pyroclastic chunks like hairballs. I hear everything. Dew dripping resounds like continental rifting in my notable ears. 'Nough said.

And my nostrils--! Have ever a more admirable set of olfactory sensors deigned to exist? Not merely large, as befits a beast of my size and mass, but responsively receptive. Scent sympathetic. Sinus scrupulous. In less delicate terms--merely for the sake of clarification, you understand--I smell that tiny toot. 'Nough said.

Not to mention, sense of touch. Tactile perception. You thought I had no keen sense of touch because my body is armor plated, my toe-tips clawed? Short of stripping off my scales, I do have my accessible spots, dear friends.

This confession is not to be shared with Gryphons or their detestable ilk! Thankfully, Gryphons cannot read. They've the brain-capacity of a kumquat, but you must not tell the stinkers. They've good memories, for all that a walnut would fill what passes for a cranial cavity. So...now that you have promised no loose lips, I will share this truth--there are four spots on my anatomy that are very sensitive to contact: my muzzle, that velvety area of prehensile upper lip and the soft spot between my nostrils; the tip of my tail; my forefoot pads (same as your palms), and my leg pits. You would call them arm pits, but even though I use my front legs with much the flexibility of the human arm, biologically speaking they must be referred to as 'legs'. Ergo--leg pits. Front and back. Because this is--more or less--a 'family friendly' site, I exclude discussion of my--ahem--reproductive region. The details of that section remain under the sole proprietorship of my mate, Riastor.

However, back to tactile perception--did that gnat sit upon my muzzle, I could feel its gas pass. Assess its tiny legs tracking over my skin. My upper lip, foot-pads, and tail tip can detect soft, rough, smooth, irregular--well, you name it, I can feel it, with no less keenness than your own human fingertips.

Why do I list my sensory capabilities, you may ask? To point out that as a Writing Dragon, I have the same aptitude (superior, actually) as a human does to absorb/suck up/take in my surroundings. Therefore, I am well able to decipher the world with my body parts and describe/discuss/expound on it with gleeful intensity. I love what I see, hear, smell, and touch. So should the characters of whatever tale/story/yarn I pen. (Oh, very well. Excuse me! What my scribe pens for my clumsy claws.) In any case, All writers, I believe, should love these aspects of their characters. After all, are their characters not intended to be alive. Breathing, existing in the magical but viable realm of the imagination? Doesn't a reader (you may correct me here if I am wrong...but a Dragon seldom is) want to read the reality? The reactive senses of the character moving through his/her/its story?

The details, my fellow writers--and readers who enjoy what we produce--I reiterate, are the fleshy draping upon the bones of the work. Would you have your character(s) perceived as mere skeletons stiffly sauntering about his/her/its world? Nay. Naynaynay! Mobilization requires muscles (I mention this my first book, The Dragons' Veil). Muscles would wither without flesh to encase and succor them. And flesh reflects the world--is it not the aspect of the body most in contact with the world?

You see the wisdom? Insight? Acumen? If you would enrich your words, my fellow writers, and in turn enrich your imaginary worlds, then utilize every facet of the real world in which you dwell. Sight, sound, smell, touch--the north, east, south, and west of the compass of by which you guide yourself through whatever tale you are inspired to pen/type/dictate.

Drat! Speak of the devil/imp/mischievous sprite! What is that gnat doing on my muzzle? Off, annoying speck of insectal indolence, and take your tiny tootings with you.