Today’s prompt is inspired by Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox.
“We love the present tense. Be here now. Yesterday is gone and best forgotten: our tradition is to have no tradition. We aren’t Europeans buried in ancient tombs and cathedrals and medieval ruins. We were born yesterday and we will be young forever. Over thirty is over the bridge. Age embarrasses us; remembrance is a function of senility. We exile the aged to Sun City leper colonies so they won’t impair our illusion of endless summer.
But history is not so easily dismissed. Repressed memories, national or personal won’t stay down. To be alive is to have a past. Our only choice is whether we will repress or re-create the past. Childhood may be distant, but it is never quite lost; as full-gown men and women we carry tiny laughing and whimpering children around inside us. We either repress the past and continue to fight its wars with new personnel or we invite it into awareness so that we may see how it has shaped the present.
The moment you begin to tell your stories you may find that memory is a trickster who picks and chooses scenes. What happened to you in the past has yet to be determined. Ninety-nine times you tell the story of the way you were whipped for stealing apples you didn’t steal. Then in the hundredth telling, you remember that you did steal them and the whole scene changes. Your memories of what happened to you in 1953 will be different in 1975, and again in the year 2000.”
Getting ready to write
Get comfortable. Rotate your head in a circle. Now rotate the other direction. Roll your shoulders. Now the other direction. Take a deep breath in. Hold. Whoosh it out. Take deep breaths as you write.
Go back to a time when you were little… 6 or 7 or 9.
A time when the world was still fresh to you. Filled with new sights, adventures and exploring.
Think of a first time experience, whether it was the first time you sat on cool grass, or sat on Santa’s lap, or splashed in a river, or decorated a tree, sat on a warm rock, or ate watermelon, or candy.
Think of a first time experience.
What do you see?
What do you hear?
What do you smell?
How do you feel?
Prompt: Write about a first time experience.
And when you’re ready, here’s another prompt. Write whatever comes up for you.
Prompt: This is what really happened . . .
