Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Water By Susie Moses All summer long I yearn to be in water. First choice – A freshwater lake, cool and clear, minerally, soothing to the skin. Quiet, still. Maybe at times a whitecap or two, but no big waves, just gentle undulations, giving the swimmer a sense of massage. A tickle of weedy underwater growth against a foot, a small fish swishing by a shin. Avoiding the mucky bottom. Second choice – An East Coast ocean, edged by wide white sandy beach stretching for miles along the shoreline. Sweet breezes, bright white pelicans in formation against the stunningly azure sky. Watching them drop like stones into the waves to spear a fish each had been keeping an eye out for. Venturing into the water as it laps onto the hard sand, toes tickled by the…
Category: Sparks
Memorable writing that sparks imagination.
What energizes you?
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. What Energizes You? By Bonnie Koagedal Energy is everywhere. We are made of life energy. A person can influence their life, health and others by sending energy through thought. I call these thoughts: prayers without movement. Still mindfulness is a prayer. Thoughts are energy similar to words. They carry power and pain. These teachings came to me recently as the pandemic shutdown escorted me into quiet times in one place called home. These teachings were told to me years and years ago. I did not grasp the fullness or capacity of energy through thought until the shutdown. This time was my vision quest. When we can become no thing, no place, no thought as Joe Dispenza teaches we can affect our energy above and beyond our bodies. I was fascinated and obsessed for several months about…
Mycorrhiza
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Mycorrhiza* by Patricia Morris I live under the canopy of a grandmother valley oak. It grows in what is now called “my neighbor’s yard,” due to the way we white settlers swept through this what-is-now-called a nation over the past 300 years and took over everything. Massacred people who were living here, infected them with deadly diseases, tried to re-make them in our image. Declared that we “owned” the land, bought and sold it; built structures to live in, structures that got bigger and more permanent as time passed; built fences to delineate MINE. But before all this, there was the valley oak. Like all oaks, it began as an acorn, scrunched into the dirt next to a small seasonal creek. Its roots sank deeper each year, reaching for the water. Its mycorrhizal fungi spread wide,…
An Exercise in Barbecuing
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. This Sparks page on my website, The Write Spot, is, hopefully, a place for entertaining, fun, and enlightening reading. “An Exercise in Barbecuing” by DS Briggs is one of the funnier stories in Discoveries. The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing Discoveries is for sale for a limited time for $6.99 An Exercise in Barbecuing DS Briggs Very recently I leapt into the world of backyard barbecuing. For years I have secretly wanted to learn to barbecue. In my family it was always my Dad’s domain. However, I love grilled foods and got tired of waiting for Mr. WeberRight to BBQ for me. I proudly acquired a very big, shiny new Weber BBQ. It came with a grown-up sized grill width of twenty-two and a half inches. I dubbed my new friend “Big Boy.” Unfortunately, for me,…
The Bachelors
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. The Bachelors By Nicole R. Zimmerman My father migrated from Cleveland to San Francisco in the mid-1960s with several boyhood friends. A decade later, my parents played occasional weekend tennis with my “uncle” Vic and his wife at Mountain Lake Park. Uncle Vic would bring us piroshki in thin paper bags, purchased from Russian bakers in the foggy avenues where they lived with their son in an Edwardian walk-up. The smell of the ground beef and onions wafting through the steam always made my mouth water, and the doughy pocket left a greasy stain. While our parents remained on the courts, we climbed rooftops and ran—just my older brother, our young friend, and me. There was a rope swing that swept over the lake from a muddy bank, but nobody jumped in or swam; it wasn’t…
All Summer Long
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. All Summer Long By Deb Fenwick All summer long, busy house sparrows flit in the eaves of our house. Each morning, they collect tiny twigs and things I rarely notice from the ground and end up making a life with them. Seedlings sprout and reach toward a warm, welcoming sky. Children ride bikes and screech with delight. No hands! Look at me! Watch! When the sun sets at nine o’clock, those same children, liberated from the rigidity of school night routines, line up for ice cream with wide, wild eyes as fireflies send signals across the garden. The crickets just keep chirping. All summer long, there’s lake swimming in midwestern waters that have been warmed by the sun. And better still, there’s night swimming where a body, unfettered by the weight of gravity, gets its chance…
Los Padres Lope
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Los Padres Lope By DS Briggs They hit the trailhead of the Lone Condor Trail in Los Padres National Forest. After last night’s party complete with hot tub and paper umbrella drinks, Michelle was in a fragile state. Hungover was not how she envisioned starting a ten-day backpack. The trail started gently. The meadows still full of flowers and new greenery. The transformation from scrub and madrone to wild grasses and wild flowers was amazing and spoke to the renewal of life. The vigil she stood last April seemed long, long ago. For days they had wondered if anything would be left of the forest. The fire capriciously jumped here and there. Michelle’s Go Bag was packed and stowed safely in her red convertible. While the ashy gray skies rained over the hillside community, in the…
Memories
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Memories By Frank Hulse Confession is good for the soul. So here goes: Something I’ve been gnawing on, off and on all day like a dog bone with just a little more flavor. I can remember my combination lock from my freshman year in college. I can remember what the locker room smelled like. It was directly adjacent to the indoor swimming pool so it was primarily chlorine—but there were more than a few other smells I won’t describe here. If I see a post or a picture from a high school classmate, I can immediately hear her/his voice. I can remember church camp out at Osage Hills State Park when I was in 8th grade and showing off in the swimming pool, more or less like a peacock when it fans out its train. I…
Ode To A Table
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. Ode to a Table By Julie Wilder-Sherman Lined with age, scratched without intent, indentations of mountain ranges from 7th grade homework reside in her second panel. Rings of white from overly hot cups and larger spheres from sizzling casserole dishes placed upon hot pads too thin. Dents on corners from swift, careless movement, black pen lines etched through paper, bleeding into the wood. The long, suffering life of my dining room table, surviving, still standing with the family that unthinkingly scarred her. Julie Wilder-Sherman began reading books at an early age, encouraged by her mother who would allow her to take books to bed when she was as young as two years old. Raised in a family of readers, writers, performers, musicians, and political activists, Julie followed her dream of singing professionally and met her husband, bassist…
I Scream, You Scream
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. I Scream, You Scream By Nona Smith It’s been well over a year since I’ve done any grocery shopping at Safeway. Early on in the pandemic, it was Harvest, our other local supermarket, who quickly adopted safety precautions: it made mask-wearing mandatory, limited the number of shoppers inside the store at any given time, provided handwashing stations outside, and offered free Latex gloves. Safeway was slow to adopt protective measures, making me feel unsafe in Safeway. Fast forward eighteen months, and I’m fully vaccinated and in need of a cake mix Harvest doesn’t carry. Being as health conscious as it is, the shelves in the baking section at Harvest are laden with organic, gluten-free, paleo, KETO, dairy-free cake mixes. There are only a handful of non-organic, full-on gluten, white sugar mixes on the very bottom shelf….