Week 6: Microfiction

Microfiction

Author's note:  Mi manchi is an Italian phrase that translates to 'I miss you'. There is a popular song of the same name that I would highly recommend. I like the song and listen to it occasionally. The problem is that I primarily speak English, so the phrase sounds like "Me monkey" in English. I decided to combine the theme of the Italian song with the way I hear the lyrics as an English speaker.

I have included the song here if you want to listen while you read the stories.

Mi manchi

I miss you, my only friend.

Mi manchi

Before my wife had left me we decided to get a pet together. The main reason we decided to get a pet was that we had learned that we could not have kids in the future. We contemplated what kind of animal to adopt, but she wanted something intelligent like a child. This led her to decide on a spider monkey as a pet. That time was nice. Sadly, before many memories were made, she passed. For twenty-something years my sole companion was the monkey. Now with your passing, I am alone. I miss you, my only friend. Mi manchi.

Picture of spider monkey obtained here

Reading Notes: PDE Mahabharata A

Mahabharata A

Read at: http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/mahabharata-online-public-domain-edition.html

When a fisherman caught a fish, he released from it two children, the boy, and the girl, living inside. These children were made by the fish swallowing Indra's sperm. 

The girl, Satyavati grows up giving people rides across the Ganges. She grows up a little before brahmin Parashara comes along. He falls in love with her beauty at first sight and asks her to mother his child. In return, he will remove her fish smell, she will smell like perfume for the rest of her life.

Bhishma forfeited his claim to the throne so that his father could marry again. Bhishma is the son of the king Shantanu and the goddess Ganga. However, in this portion of the Mahabharata, Bhishma goes to kidnap the daughters of the king of Benares, Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika. 

Image depicting Bhishma

A contest is occurring to determine who is fit to marry these women. However, when he decides to steal the daughters he must fend off multiple armies with his skill with the bow. Bhishma takes the daughters back to Hastinapura for his step-brother Vichitravirya, who is currently acting as the city's king.

Amba is the oldest of the princesses that Bhishma kidnapped. She had secretly sworn to marry the King of the Shalwas. She tells Bhishma about her previous arrangement. He sets her free to go marry the King of the Shalwas. 

She goes to the King of the Shalwas. He treats her terribly as he was embarrassed by the kidnapping event when he lost to Bhishma in battle. 

She leaves him to become exceptionally pious. She is so Pious that she attracts the attention of Shiva, who decides to offer her a boon. Amba wants Bhishma dead she is angry and believes that Bhishma had ruined her chance for a happy life. Shiva says that she will reincarnate Amba as a man so that she can kill Bhishma in future life. Amba burns herself alive to be reborn.

Pandu was named as king when he came of age. The two wives each had numerous sons, the two sets of sons came to be known as the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Duryodhana leads the Kauravas and he decides to trick the King Dhritarashtra. 

He asks the king to send the Pandavas away to a wooden palace he's had built, everything in the palace is soaked in oil. He plans to get rid of the Pandavas. The Pandavas are seen as better than the Kauravas in most ways.

Storybook Plan

Storybook Plan

Sources I plan to use:

https://archive.org/stream/relativesbeing00ryderich#page/22/mode/2up

http://ackguide.blogspot.com/2015/05/guide-mahiravana.html

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Rakshasa

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Rakshasa

http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/ramayana-online-public-domain-edition.html

Stories I plan to tell:

• Rama's first interaction with Rakshasas.
• Kumbhakarna's Awakening
• Mahiravana and Hanuman, the sacrifice to Durga. I also want to talk about the underworld, Patala.
• I will also try to sprinkle in some smaller side stories of other Rakshasas.

I am planning on making my storybook from the first-person perspective of a Cryptid/Rakshasa hunter. 

I want to focus on telling the stories of the Rakshasas we see through the Ramayana, but I also want to bring in fun stories of other supernatural beings to make the stories interesting. I want to do these stories from a first-person point of view mainly to try and create a better image of these supernatural creatures. 

Comment Wall

Comments for my Storybook Project

Please feel free to leave comments for my storybook project here on this blog post.

My storybook can be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/hachimurastories/home

Rakshasa art by Peter Mohrbache

Microfiction: Two Stories on Space

Two Stories on Space

Author's Note: I wanted to try to write the same story in two different microfiction formats. To make them noticeably different I went with the six-word story and then did a drabble. My process was to write a six-word story over the first topic I could come up with, and then try to build a drabble from my six-word story.

Morning Routine

Wake up, red dirt, rosy sky.



Morning Routine

In the morning I wake up a little after sunrise. The work I do is usually not time sensitive, but I try to get an early start. For breakfast I fry potatoes and scramble eggs. No matter how much my doctor warns me it is still hard to not oversalt my potatoes. I set my dishes in the basin and stretch just a bit, looking out the window the skyline is dominated by short buildings. The ground is full of red rocks, the sky is a beautiful rosy color, and within view are small patches of man-made blue.


Picture of Mars sunset taken by NASA rover, spirit, showing the rosy sky obtained at npr.org

Topic Research: Supernatural Beings

Supernatural Beings

For my research project I wanted to do a journal of a cryptid hunter that is taking notes on supernatural beings from our stories. This journal I had decided to focus on two supernatural beings from stories I have read. I would want to make a journal entry based on awakening Kumbhakarna, the giant, I can get a lot of info for a journal entry. One of the stories, Pot-Ear's Awakening, is all about waking up the sleeping giant. 

https://archive.org/stream/relativesbeing00ryderich#page/22/mode/2up

I also want to write about the rakshasas, what is cryptid hunting without a man-eating creature. In this part of the journal I would want to talk about what separates this creature from other man-eating creatures from other mythologies. I would want to write about what makes this creature different and key traits of the  rakshasas. I would use the chapters from the ramayana, the public domain edition, as the main information to base my storybook on. 

http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/ramayana-online-public-domain-edition.html

Rakshasa as depicted in Yakshagana, an art form of coastal Karnataka

Rakshasa as portrayed in modern media within D&D on DNDBeyond.com