Writing Prompt:
The last straw . . .
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Winter Solstice 2021
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.
Winter Solstice 2021
By M.A. Dooley
This blessed day when the light returns,
I stand on the mountain of my home
Grounded at 7:59 AM and look up.
The round moon wanes floating over
Saucer clouds docked in the west.
A soft haze hangs between me and my Shire,
Layered hillocks of veiled emerald,
Taste wet and lush as if the drought is over.
The sun rises behind a filter of grey
Cotton balls connected at fluffy centers like
Fat caterpillars in the sky.
When the time rings for a celestial split,
A tear in the cotton,
A thin sliver of blue blinks open
And the sun sears my eyes
Carving the womb of awakening.
I am the field of green softened by one ray,
I am the strong back of the moon,
Light as the wind that whips my tassels
Reverent as a child witnessing a miracle
I welcome life and light this Solstice sunrise.
M.A. Dooley is an architect and writer from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sonoma County, and the Sierra Nevadas. Dooley has been published in “The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings in a Pandemic Year” and in “Poems of a Modern Day Architect,” Archhive Books, 2020.
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A Little Louder, Please
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.
A Little Louder, Please
Susan Zahl Bono
Christmas 2005
I must be going deaf. It’s the season when yuletide TV ads are louder and brighter than the shows they’re interrupting, but I don’t seem to be hearing their message. December is swinging into its second week and I haven’t bought any presents. Last weekend, my husband wrestled the fake tree into the living room and wrapped it with lights, but if that’s as far as we get, I’m not going to be heartbroken about it. At night with those little lights glowing, I can almost forget the ornaments are missing.
These are my dark ages. My kids are too old to believe in Santa and too young to make grandchildren. They stopped caring about trees and holiday trappings about the time we gave in to their dad’s allergies and went artificial. As far as their gifts are concerned, there are only so many ways you can wrap money. My husband likes to order his own gifts, and all I really want are my closets emptied and my left eyelid to stop sagging enough to let me see out of it in the morning. I’m not inspired to do much baking. Everyone my age knows about the dangers of letting Christmas cookies into the house.
A few days ago, a three-year-old took me to lunch. Her mother drove, but the little queen was obviously in charge. Giuliana, dressed like a Victorian monarch in a flouncy skirt and short velvet cape, issued orders from her crash-tested throne in the back seat.
“A little louder, please,” she said, indicating the car stereo. The queen’s mum, like any good mother, pretended to comply by touching the volume knob.
“A little louder, please,” our sovereign commanded, with only a trace of irritation in her voice. Soon, such seasonal favorites as “All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” and “Frosty the Snowman” engulfed us.
I suspect Giuliana’s mother was afraid I would condemn her daughter’s musical tastes as well as her own lack of parental control. On the contrary. The sappy rendition of “Jingle Bells” took me back to yuletides past when my own kids demanded the volume cranked on Dr. Demento’s Christmas Novelties, payback for having tortured my own parents. As a child, my favorite holiday album featured Jack Benny’s halting violin and someone loudly lisping, “I thaw Mommy kith-ing Thanta Cloth.” Little ones really do know what Christmas is all about.
“A little louder, please,” the Good Queen said again, this time for our benefit. She was having no trouble singing along with a relentlessly cheery “Deck the Halls,” and she wanted to make sure we heard the music, too. Any fool could see that her mom and I were so busy dissecting the past and worrying about the future we were completely missing out on the fa la la la la.
A wiser woman would have joined in on a couple of verses of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” or “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I’m sorry, Giuliana. I wasn’t ready to listen. But it’s not too late. Sadly, my own collection of holiday music is heavy on a cappella versions of “The Holly and the Ivy,” “O, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel” and carols played on antique German music boxes. But maybe if I play them loudly enough, I’ll start to remember what the fuss is all about.
Susan Zahl Bono is a California-born mother, teacher, writer, and editor who’s lived more than half her life with the same man in the same house in Petaluma. She published Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative for twenty years. She facilitates writing workshops, including Jumpstart with Marlene Cullen. Her own work has appeared online, on stage, in anthologies, newspapers, on the radio, and in several Write Spot anthologies. Her book, “What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home” was published in 2014.
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When I was a kid . . . Prompt #624
Writing Prompt:
When I was a kid . . .
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Message in a bottle . . . Prompt #623
Writing Prompt:
Walking along the beach, a bottle washes ashore, right at your feet. It has note inside. What does it say? Who is it from?
Or:
You decide to write a message in a bottle. What do you write? What do you do with the bottle? Who do you hope finds it?
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Silence For The Soul
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.
Silence For The Soul
By Sarah Horton
Silence for the Soul is our tradition, created to welcome us into the deeper doorways to the heart. It is timed around the changing of the seasons. We gather in silence for a variety of meditation practices as individual as the people who come: sitting, walking the labyrinth, indoors, outdoors, eyes open, eyes shut, journaling, more sitting. We start with intention and breathing together. We end by coming together in a circle for the breaking of bread, homemade soup, and soft sharing.
I have been doing this on a regular basis with two other friends of the heart since the “2012 ending-of-the-world” or simply an ending. This was our new-beginning-offering and continues as one. There will be anywhere from the three-of-us regulars to fifteen other souls to hold the circle of magic and light for transformation and healing. Gentle in our ways of remembering the solstice seasons as they may change; or a lunar or solar eclipse that may occur; or other celestial event calling to us. Diligent in holding the simple structure of silence and care of the spirits that show up at the metaphorical doorways of change, we are all in our own ways sweet and welcoming, sincere and loving, renewed and refreshed at the closing bell.
We don’t talk about IT much, we just seem to come together at the right times of the year bringing snippets of knowledge and current feelings for what is needed. Our box of candles and signs sits on a shelf in the dark closet awaiting the top to be opened to the light, the candles set around and lit, and the signs strategically placed to welcome all to enter and remain in silence for their time with us in the stillness.
Then the soup is served and the breaking of the bread is done quietly; we slowly eat together returning to peaceful sharing with others. There is no rush to put our box back into the closet or bring our newly polished hearts of gold out into the world. And so it is.
Sarah Horton is an artist living in “the Lost Sierras” with Chris, her beloved, and Lulu, the master Bichon Frise. Sarah is an adventurer into the wilderness of the heart as well as the natural world. She dabbles with paints on large canvases and memoir writings that the nature spirits nearby seem to appear in. Published in several books, paintings shown in galleries, and when called, travels to mystical places in this beautiful world.
I’m working on a series of short memoir stories to put in a Box of Memories for my daughter, her friends, our family, and future friends yet to be met. Similar to finding a box of old photographs with scribbled handwritten notes on the back; our memoir stories of people, places, events of celebration and transformations that are written in the personal may impart timely universal wisdom. Stories that may make a difference, lend support, or sooth a difficult or healing situation in our human family. —Sarah Horton
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Dinner Lines
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.
Dinner Lines
By M.A. Dooley
Empty lines without a script,
Two old lovers sit stiff like bricks
Empty lines planked blue wood top,
Inviting ages of warmth and weight.
Warmth and weight, young bricks cool,
Purpose wanted held at bay.
Warmth and weight, mason’s hands
Stack staggered bonds, build a wall.
Build a wall, the server piles
Flowers, wine, the table splits.
Build a wall to be broken down
With drink, pleasure, taste and texture.
Taste and texture laughter blooms,
Edges soften like molten stone.
Taste and texture spills red wine
Dripping, seeping fills empty lines.
Empty lines, hushed hands held,
Old lovers’ warmth and weight meld.
M.A. Dooley is an architect and writer from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sonoma County, and the Sierra Nevadas. Dooley has been published in The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings in a Pandemic Year and Poems of a Modern Day Architect, Archhive Books, 2020.
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Appositives . . . Prompt #622
Part 1
Finish the sentences:
When I was ten years old, I . . .
As a young adult, I wanted . . .
To get what I wanted, here’s what I did . . .
Here’s what happened . . .
My recurring dream . . .
Part 2
After your freewrite on any or all of the above sentence starts, rewrite, using “add-ons” or “appositives.”
An appositive is a word or group of words that add detail to the original.
They can be in the same sentence, or a new sentence.
For example:
1. I rode my bicycle.
2. I rode my bicycle on a hot summer day. I looked behind me. Sure enough, my sister was following.
Just Write!
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Get past ego to connect
“I think American society alienates us from ourselves, and we have a great need to reconnect. Human beings yearn to connect and to tell our stories before we die.
Sometimes we want to write, but when we get down to it, there’s resistance, because the ego gets scared.” — Natalie Goldberg in an interview with Genie Zeiger, “Keep The Hand Moving,” The Sun November 2003.
Ideas on how to get past ego and Just Write
The Inner Critic Tar Pit of Doom and Despair
Is “Go Big or Go Home” Right for You?
Rachel Macy Stafford: Live Love Now
#amwriting #creativewriting #justwrite #freewrites
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Dust to Dust
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.
Dust to Dust
By Brenda Bellinger
This post happens to fall on what would have been my mother’s 86th birthday if she were still with us. She passed away thirteen years ago, yet I often feel her presence. Recently, I was dusting a small antique genie lamp that belonged to her mother, my grandmother. Made of white china, its glaze bears the spiderwebbing of many tiny cracks. Miraculously, the hurricane glass and original brown paper shade, though faded, are both still intact. As I carefully pushed a corner of the dust cloth through the curled handle, I thought of all the times this had been done before. Both my mother and grandmother were fastidious housekeepers. Myself? Not so much.
I wonder at what point this lamp will cease to hold its significance. A time will come when the sleeping genie will no longer be woken by the caress of a dust cloth and the lamp will find its way to the land of the unwanted and unneeded.
In the 1950s, the Lane Company of East Providence, Rhode Island gave graduating students at the local Catholic school for girls, a miniature hope chest. Mom gave hers to me many years ago and I use it for odd bits of costume jewelry. Amazingly, the cedar scent is still present. As I mentioned in my last post, times have changed. The idea of a hope chest today, though quaint, seems so horse-and-buggy.
When she and my father first married, they struggled financially for a while as many young couples do, trying to get their footing. One Christmas, he bought her a bottle of Joy perfume by Jean Patou. She so treasured this bottle that she rarely used it. I remember how it sat regally in the center of a mirrored tray on her dresser. I have it now. One more thing to dust. It’s still about two-thirds full, the perfume having aged a deep amber color. Writing this, I paused for a moment to go open it; something I’ve never done before. As you might have guessed, it turned a corner a very long time ago. I’m not sure why, but I’ll keep it a bit longer.
Memories. Something else to be thankful for when we gather around the table.
Born in Rhode Island, I spent the first eight years of my life in New England. I can still remember the delight of summer thunderstorms and the fragrance of fall in the air as leaves crunched underfoot. My parents moved to San Francisco and eventually settled in the North Bay Area.
In 1992, a friend asked me to sign up for a writing class with her. I agreed, never anticipating that class would open a new door for me. At that time, my husband and I were raising four boys and I was working as a courtroom clerk. Writing provided a creative outlet I didn’t know I needed..
For the month of November 2009, I cleared my calendar of all commitments other than work and Thanksgiving Day to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) – a challenge to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Fueled by good coffee and dark chocolate covered espresso beans, I zipped past the goal and completed the first (extremely rough) draft of what would eventually become my debut novel, “Taking Root.”
My work has appeared in Small Farmer’s Journal, Mom Egg Review, Persimmon Tree, THEMA, the California Writers Club Literary Review, and in various anthologies, including The Write Spot: Reflections, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.
Note from Marlene: Brenda’s Blog is a collection of thoughtful and entertaining reflections on what matters.
“Dust to Dust” originally posted on Brenda’s Blog, November 16, 2021.