Perhaps you hear yourself. You talk with a friend. You talk with yourself. You try to sleep at the end of a busybusybusy day, your words aching in your rattling mind. “If only I had…,……………………., then I could write.” Time. Space. Love. Peaceofmind. Enough money. Enough respect for the stories I’ve been given. Enough desperation.
What do you tell yourself is lacking? Give yourself twenty minutes. Write by hand, non-stop. Send us that rough and vital draft. If you need a prompt, imagine sitting in the chair in Lee’s photo. Imagine that you have no phone. Imagine that the owl whispers to you. And so…
***
The winner of the One Hour Mentor Time with Mary Sojourner contest is Cin Norris:
My life is being devoured. I am offering up my life as food for an illusion. Response to prompt on 7/29/17.
What an amazing buffet! They have everything, including stuff I’d only read about and some things I’d never seen before. The red wine punch fountain in the center burbles charmingly and sends thin slices of orange bobbing on tiny wavelets. Is that escargot? What is on that platter over at the end? It looks like pomegranate seeds, except I’ve never seen turquoise ones before. It’s being served with a large fork, which seems vaguely disturbing.
Hiding beneath the leaves of a masterfully crafted Caesar salad I spy a crystal bowl with tiny cats in it. Surely they’re carved of carrots, but they’re so perfect in their minute detail they could almost leap out of the dish at any time. Incredible! Who could have made this buffet, and why?
Near at hand, so close I almost missed it was a clever arrangement of thin cannoli with some kind of tiny stems bunched together to make bristles at the end of a brush. Some of the cannoli have pen nibs made out of God only knows what. All are filled with a deliciously thick blackberry cream. I nearly pick one up and take a bite but somehow I have come by the impression that all of this is for someone else and I am only the caretaker.
I adjust the cannoli pens so they make a more pleasing arrangement and move to another part of the table. On this side, which was previously hidden by the punch fountain (where are the cups?) and cunningly juxtaposed with an elaborate abacus made of Cheerios (Cheerios?) I find the most amazing piece yet.
Iridescent fish scales and translucent squares of eggroll wrappers are crafted to give a very realistic illusion of a computer screen. A keyboard of cubed nuts and a mouse carved from a turnip complete the sight. It almost seems as if, with a few clicks of the finely carved mouse, I could bring up a jellied Google or a seared BreakthroughWriting.net and consume them. No, I sternly tell myself. This is for someone else.
I am the one who created this buffet with its delicately carved carrot cats and thinly sliced despair. My hands know the feel of grating the cheese on the Caesar salad. My heart carefully offers up everything I’ve created on the digital as an expression in the analogue. The brushes and pens are for you, dear reader, to feast upon and understand my struggle. The fountain of joyous wine provides a playful accompaniment to the burning ghost pepper poppers and the sugared ice that takes the sting from the heat.
All I am, all I was and ever shall be is carefully laid out on this table for you, dear reader. For myself, I take nothing but this knowledge: illusion is ever crafted of reality, from which I sip hope like the earth’s most honeyed mead.
***
And here is this week’s BTW writer post: Elizabeth Maginnis: I ran into myself the other day. Not my 64-year-old self, my 16-year-old self, the one looking for answers to life’s mysteries. The one enamoured of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. That girl and her spiritual, Mother Earth, back-to-the-land dreams faded into the background as she earned a degree, married, raised two children, and built an outside career of her own.
Not too long ago, and without much warning or preparation, I realized that I had aged. I was on the cusp of a new act in my life. My quest for those elusive spiritual answers in the early 1970s came knocking hard on the door to my soul.
“George! George Harrison! Is that really you?”
“I heard you got a copy of my album for Christmas. Must be the past is starting to look good to you.”
“Oh, how I loved to blast that record. My parents must’ve gone mad.”
“They’re in a better place now, and they understand what made you, you. That’s why I’m here. It’s time to reconnect with your inner nature, the one that was trying to come out when you were starting to figure out your place in the world. You can finally realize yourself. Nothing stands in your way.”
A slow smile spread across my face as the full force of his words sunk in.
“OK, but first how about a drive? I hear you like speed. The sun is out, the air is warm, I can open the car window and blast your record again. We can chant at the top of our voices and no one will care. How about it?”
It was his turn to smile. Here comes the sun!
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