Picture This: Journals on My Bed

 

I've changed morning pages to evening pages, when I do them, because other things have gotten in the way of writing first thing in the morning. I still do sometimes, but mostly the journal writing comes at night. 

Is that a good idea?

I'm not sure. I've written so many volumes over such a long time. They prod me, the comfort me, they process me, they inspire me. It's some little bit annoying to think that no one will ever read them. For goodness sake, I don't even have time (or the inclination) to read them so why would anyone else? Unless there is value in the work and a joy in the treasure hunt. 

That could be fun.

Lately as the ticking of mortality peppers the soundtrack of my psyche, I think about once greatly well known people who you hardly ever hear about any more because they are gone (no, dead not gone. They didn't go to Cleveland for the week and they aren't missing.) Bernard Shaw. Gertrude Stein. Salvadore Dali. Ginger Rogers. Hellen Keller. The list is endless. High quality and successful folks now blips in the radar screen of eternity. 

That's life.

Some long gone folks have even passed from fame to loss of favor -- not just forgotten but officially cancelled for non-currently-acceptable ideas. Maybe that makes sense, and maybe its hubris to arbitrate now. But we do that a lot now, don't we? We judge. We criticize. We arbitrate. We decide.

That's premature.

We don't know how it all turns out if it even turns out at all. Believers believe we know how it ends -- but even that's not the ending because there is an entire eternity after that and what happens then hasn't been written about. Yet. Not that we'd have the time, or inclination, to read thru it all. It must be thousands of pages.

Like my journals.

-- doug smith

Picture This (writing prompt)

1. Find a random picture.

2. Write non-stop for 5 minutes and only 5 minutes.

Scene Prompt: The Window

Scene for two people in a public place, like a restaurant, or an office break room, or a place of your choosing.

Prompt:

"I couldn't help but look thru your window, and I saw what you did."

Go.

Scene Prompt: In the Basement

 

You wake up on the floor of a strange basement. You see two doors. Behind one door you hear strange noises. Behind the other door you can see a person or body of a person on the floor.

Go.

Make It Easier

 

Learn to improvise and a thousand other important things suddenly become much easier to learn.

-- doug smith

Picture This: A Walk In The Park

 "It's not a walk in the park," goes the expression, except that this was. This was an epic walk in the park because of when we did it and where we were in our relationship, a relationship that wound up tighter than it had ever before (because this was a second time around) and then unwound in front of us only to weave itself into a cozy, loving, shared understanding.

I don't understand it. But there you have it, it seems to be a shared understanding.

We don't say everything that's on our minds these days, but those days, in that walk around Allaire State park, we said everything. We said it with our voices. We said it with our smiles. We said it with our bodies. We talked it all thru and it felt exactly right.

What do you do with perfection when the threads come loose? What do you do with the magic when the trick is discovered? What do you do with the walls that rebuild and double?

"Would you change anything about this?"

"No. Because then it wouldn't be this, and this is nice."

"Do you regret anything about the big changes we made?"

"What good do regrets do?"

"Exactly."

I'd drink to that, but my liver seems to object. Just one more aging crumbling falling leaf in a beautiful forest.

Cheers.

-- doug smith

Written using the prompt Picture This: 

1. Select a random picture

2. Write nonstop for five minutes only and then stop.

Scene Prompt: Versa Vice

Scene Prompt:

Six adults must fit into a car better suited for fewer, smaller people. Your mission: sell the car to the world's most reluctant world leader.

Some Place I Used to Live

 

In the end we left because the bathroom was about to collapse into the garage. That wouldn't be good, and it wasn't my garage. It was the neighbor's garage and one day he showed me how the ceiling of his garage showed clear signs of imminently falling on his car, his bike, or his head. He was concerned.

Other than that, we liked the apartment on Wedgewood, even though it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Even though the steps up to the second floor were rickety. Even though the kitchen appliances were right out of the 1980's and small. It was our place and that mattered.

We weren't exactly chased out of the previous place -- a beautiful and spacious home in Gunbarrel. But we had to do something. In the end, after living thru the whole move, I know that I should have talked about it more. There were options to discuss. Maybe it wasn't necessary for both of us to move. Maybe I could have subsidized the rent for a while (afterall, I did pay double rent for about six months to ease my guilt about leaving, guilt that should have told me I shouldn't be going, but I did...)

My office was set up in the back of the living room. I had my books, a desk, and my laptop. It got me started (again) in my business of delivering training and eventually I was able to leave my job at the grocery store.

It was some place that I used to live, when I lived thru the second biggest change of my life.

-- doug smith

Picture This:

1. Find a random picture

2. Write without stopping for five minutes only.