Getting My Write On and Proud of It

This week's RemembeRED was to write about something that you're proud of.


I've got to say, the things that I've done on this blog - my little bits of writing and art - are things I am proud of. 


In college, I had an abusive boyfriend that I stuck with for way too long. I developed severe depression and went almost two years before I sought any professional help (which didn't really help, but there you are). I had always been a writer, just as I had always been a reader. I really started coming into some better poetry just as I got into college, but then the depression and the suppressing of emotions and experiences. It was all I could do to hang on for the ride.


Needless to say, my writing dried up. Even when I tried to use it as a creative and therapeutic outlet, nothing came. I used to joke with my (genius, novel-writing) roommate that I had the longest bout of writer's block in the history of man: four years. 


It hasn't been until recently that I've found my way back to writing. Two years ago, I started kicking around an idea for a novel, but nothing much has come of it - a little world building and some random notes and doodles. It wasn't until March, after reading the writing/literary blog of a friend of mine that I started really pushing myself to write and express. I may have started the ball rolling a few months earlier, but pushing myself to write everyday and post to the blog a few times a week has really gotten me expressing in a way I haven't in years. Not only that, but it's taken me back to a way of seeing the world that I haven't in a long time. It's nice to start to see things with an artist's eye again. Pushing to express and finding new creativity where I suspected that it might have dried up forever is something I am proud of. I am proud to have pushed and found myself capable of getting there again. 


Fruits of my labors:
Found in the Sea off Cape Artemision, ca. 1920
Thai Fare
Vapid Aphrodite
Heaven Bent
Orphic Mission

From a Jester to his Queen

Today I am posting a poem that I started working on yesterday. I am not usually one to write a whole bunch of drafts with my poetry (unless prompted  to do so), but this poem started in the completely wrong way (wrong tone, wrong perspective, going in the wrong direction). So I took a few hints from the P&W prompts I have completed in the past and changed it up. I took the original writing, reversed the order of the lines, picked out the phrases that I liked the best and redrafted twice.


I didn't originally intend for this to be a RemembeRED post, but it was inspired by a memory, and I can't think of jesters without imagining red, so this will also serve as my Red Dress Club post for the week.


This is what I came up with:

From a Jester to his Queen

Here my resignation lies, my queen, at your feet. I must away -

but do not sorrow, for another fool will take my place.

Perhaps he will mock you appropriately, where I have faltered.

I must go my separate way, but worry not! For your court

is greatly populated with those ready to serve your will;

your childhood bed filled with stuffed animals to bow to your whim.

I, too, once populated your little kingdom, running amok at your will.

You would run and I would give chase, bound to my duties.

We two were fools together: myself licensed, you a natural

taking up the parts of the players: you the hero, myself

the distressed damsel, though my beard often gave me away.

The animals would whisper behind their paws, but you affected

not to notice. It was all a part of your elaborate façade,

but your excitements quickly became thin, your meanings

were not meaningful and the animals smiled vapidly for you.

You sat upon your throne and doled out judgments, all around –

no one could be missed. Your fluffy subjects trembled and quaked.

With a vengeful eye, you were willing to cry until ill to get your way.

You confided in me your worry that the leopard would not

give up his spots to you, nor the elephant share his wrinkles.

You gathered your many whims into you and snuggled them close,

your stuffed subjects laying asunder and neglected.

But it is not my place to say, though I am the kind who says

when it is not my place. I must only say that playing the fool

for a fool is no fun and is not something I will to do any longer.

Again I say this: do not despair, my queen, for someone else will come

who will be confided in and called upon, with motley hat and gloves.

I am no loss, for I did not amuse you enough to hold your attention

and you did not amuse me enough to continue. 

Comments welcome, as always.

For fun information on jesters, check out this link. This image was pulled from Wikipedia Commons, here.

Filling Water Balloons

So this weekend's RemembeRED prompt is up:


This week, we're giving you a photo to take you back in time.
In 700 or fewer words, show us where your memory takes you. 

Remember that this image is merely inspiration. Your piece needn't have a hose in your piece, but we need to easily see how you were inspired by it.

 I don't so much have a hose story as a brief memory about water balloons. The hose makes little appearance.

Filling Water Balloons

The water was cold on my toes as I tried to fit an empty water balloon over the end of the leaky hose nozzle. It was my birthday and we were a good half an hour into a water fight.

“We always take my car ‘cause it’s never been beat,                                                                                                  and we never miss IT with the girls we meet.”

It was Dan singing. I was only 8 and had yet to discover the meaning behind the lines, but there was something about the way he sang it that made it stick in my mind. He was a few years older and had a much more worldly view of that song that I. He helped me fill up my balloons – it was so much easier with four hands – and we jumped back into the crowd of kids running around the front yard.

Carefully avoiding the red ant piles, I ducked around the Dogwood branches and nailed James right in the chest with a wobbly balloon.

“Arhh! I’m gonna get you for that!” he yelled. The fresh balloons were cold.

Comments welcome.

A family recipe

Today's post is another prompt a la The Red Dress Club RemembeRED series: 

"I once told a friend that i love her posts because I read with my nose, and she has the unique ability to describe the olfactory sense perfectly.

Sounds can do the same thing. Have you ever heard a song and suddenly you were swept back to a time in your life you had pushed to the back of your memory?

For many of us a scent or a sound can bring back a rush of remembraces.

This week, your memoir prompt assignment is to think of a sound or a smell that reminds you of something from your past and write a post about that memory. Don't forget to incorporate the sound/smell of your choosing!"

So here's my response - just a quick short one today!

A Family Recipe

I stood at the unfamiliar stove, sifting through the available spices and ingredients.

All dried and they're not all here... why can't I find normal spices in Hong Kong?

Chopped onions already making my eyes water with their acrid odor, I cracked the tinned tomatoes and a sharp tinny smell assaulted my nose. Not like at home...

Cool granite with a warm wooden cutting board hold the trophies of my horn of plenty. Mason jars full of bright, sweet-smelling Romas with their bite of once-fresh basil, intensified by the canning salt that touches the palette when tasted. 

My husband stands with a fragrant glass of Merlot in hand, breathing in the barrel from which it was delivered, philosophizing with my father and sneaking a tomato from the jar. I rap his hand with the back of a wooden spoon before turning back to the stove.

The sharpness of the onions fade from the air as they fold together with the spicy tang of the garlic in the searing pan. Olive oil takes on a new bouquet as the sauteing root vegetables are brightened with a dash of Riesling - the cloying sweetness steaming into my face with the alcohol that leaves me heady.

My mother and grandmother move about the kitchen, making some sweet-concoction of their own for dessert - delicate breezes of sugar and vanilla waft by as they pass.

Adding tomatoes from jars, a crackling of fresh ground pepper gives the sweet-smelling sauce a sudden savory scent that is augmented by the pungently grassy aroma of fresh cut parsley. 

Adding fresh, doughy pasta to the boiling water to my left lets off yeasty, floury bubbles as it begins to simmer. 

The longer the sauce cooks and the less we can all find something to occupy our hands, the closer we all drift to the stove, eventually becoming the people who watch the water boil and sneaking a spoon into the sauce when possible. 

I woke up from the daydream to the smell of tinny tomatoes and onions, sharp as knives in my eyes now.

And this is why it’s so hard to produce a family recipe.

The gift of insomnia

Since I could not sleep and I've been wanting to try a red dress prompt, I tackled one this evening and decided to post it. It's not very good and the only real memory from kindergarten that appears accurately is the first paragraph of my response. There doesn't seem to be any narrative theme that's developed here either. I just wrote what came until it stopped.

from the red dress club:

For this week's RemembeRED prompt, we're asking you to remember kindergarten. If, after thinking about it for a while, you can't recall anything, move on to first grade.

Mine your memories and write about the earliest grade you can recall. What was special? What was ordinary? What did you feel? Hear? See? Smell?

Don't underestimate the power of your memory. If you have a difficult time remembering, sit down and freewrite...you'll be surprised what comes to the surface.

Immerse yourself in crayons, chalk dust, and those tiny milk cartons and then come back on Tuesday, March 29th and link up.

Mrs. Yashinski’s black hair stood up in a tall column of tight curls, not unlike those of Marge Simpson, though it would be many years before I could ever make that simile. She didn’t look Polish, but she could have been married to one of the many in town. Her eyes seemed to slant and she always painted her lips on large in red. Her large rectangular teeth showed en masse when she laughed and she liked me, which seemed important.

She taught us and we learned our alphabet, to write them and read them. It was what you did in pre-school. And then the next year in kindergarten she taught us to put the words together and began to read. She seemed to do everything in steps, just like we did. She drew her letters in the proper stroke order, step by step. Just like counting and adding, step by step. Just like sitting and taking out your lunch in a polite and gentle manner, step by step.

I sometimes wonder if she went home and cooked dinner step by step, and walked her dog, step by step, or even did the gardening with her husband, step by step. Could a person’s life be so broken into bite-size pieces and never flow together? Could one pause between those pieces for the rest of their lives?

The only time her steps lost their individuality and her person became a seamless current was when she would read aloud. She did not do as the other teachers and read, the pause and share the picture, then pause and ask the question, then pause and respond to the reply. No. She would hold the book in view and read, sometimes from the pages that she turned in the single breath between sentences and other times it seemed from the memory itself. How could this be the same woman? The one thing I really learned from this woman was how to get drawn into the story. The words would drip from her lips like honey, drawing me in as a bee. She shared that secret moment with us, helping us find it, in which the story became real until we could think of nothing but seeking that moment to relish.

Mrs. Yashinski taught everything step by step, broken down, living life in a piecemeal puzzle. She taught us letters and words, but never reading. Reading she did not teach. Reading she gave as a gift.