Gotcha, didn’t I? You thought you were going to see something really strange! The power of words…

See, I was tying up the last ends of Christmas shopping over at Amazon’s site. The site suggested I employ a special phrase to make my online buying easier. The suggested phrase was:

Amber’s Unusual Apparatus

Now, perhaps it’s because I see the world through the writer’s lens (which is a bit like peering through Alice’s Looking Glass) but I can’t get this wonderful, provocative phrase out of my head! I feel a picture book taking shape — but only because I refuse to write for an adult audience. Adult. You knowatimean.

Anyway, if the hustle and bustle of the holidays gets you down, just think of this magical phrase and everything will seem a little more interesting.

Amber’s Unusual Apparatus

Perhaps we’re fantasy writers — it could be this magical gadget:

Or if we’re talking sci-fi — how about this?

If we’re literary writers, maybe this?

Or if, as my daughter would have it, the apparatus was for animals?

That’s my gift to you, fellow bloggers, just a spark for the imagination. I think there’s nothing better.

Merry Christmas!

Over at the Market My Words blog, Shelli said it: how I’m feeling today. Just reading the list of mom’s responsibilities makes me tired.

At the center of a busy life >>

And I used to be so good at enjoying the moments…

There are things I miss.

I miss Ultima III, the one that came on 5 1/4″ floppies. The one where you were just a tiny figure moving about the landscape, talking in the towns and fighting in the woods. I loved saying “join me” to people and delighted when they said they would join my motley crew. I liked it better than Ultima IV because you could travel all night without the darkness swallowing you. I never knew what was lurking in that darkness.

Way back, I remember being frightened of the dark greenish pages and pale green pants with nobody inside them. My imagination created a horror movie-worthy villain out of those pants. I was most alarmed when they began to cry. It only made them more horrible when they shook like that.

I even miss Hunt the Wumpus, a text-only game played on the Wang computer that sat on our dryer in the laundry room. I imagined the Wumpus — big, hairy, many-legged, dripping with yuck, lurking in the semi-darkness of one of the rooms as I played Russian roulette with the doors.

What I’m saying is, I miss imagination, even in its darkest form. But also in its most wondrous! Now, everything is visual, three-dimensional, surround-sound, neon-sign. We’ve lost the subtle shades of emotion that imagination creates.

So, I decided to make my own world for my imagination to play in. It is made up of nothing but the twenty-six western letters and ten numbers. Eventually there may be a few line drawings and a glossy cover illustration, but it’s mainly just a world in my mind.

I used to have more vivid dreams. Perhaps I’m just too tired now to have many of them. Or too grown-up. I actually miss the terror that jerked me from the dream where I’m running from “bad guys” down my dark neighborhood streets. I’m running in slow-motion, of course, screaming at my legs to MOVE, C’MON MOVE!

So I knew that it would be endlessly fun to have my imaginary playground to be a dream. A shared dream.