French Christmas

Random Lame-O Update

It's lame, I know, putting up a post that's not a real post.

But can I just tell y'all, out there in non-blog land, I'm killing it. Life,that slippery little siren, is throwing me curve balls and I'm pulverizing them left and right, with a chainsaw in one hand and a throwing star in the other. We're sort of at a stalemate today, and I'm just staring her down all dirty and and covered in sweat, asking:

Really? Is that the best you've got?

It almost makes not having time to show up here worht it. Almost, but not quite.

To be continued ...

Ripples on the surface

What are you practicing?

She doesn’t need muscle or brute force to do it. The moon, in her bone-white starkness, sits on her throne in the sky and brings the tides to heel.

I’ve a nasty habit of letting myself fall into someone else’s orbit, but not on this spring evening. My hands are gripping the rope and I’m pulling myself up and out towards my own center of gravity.

I can’t strip the water from the sand, not yet. But I can make tiny cat’s paws on the surface.

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here.

In the Forge

Where do you feel?

Not in the heart. Deeper down than that, someplace less vaulted, someplace made of fire and ash. Where things are sent to be torn apart, broken down, worked on slowly by the blacksmiths. They temper with a strong hand and when it glistens, they sent it up to that lofty place, smiling secretly because they know they did all the work.

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here.

Full Fledged Full Faced

How do you howl at the moon?

At 2:00 a.m. the moon bends down and fills my bathroom like a flood light. I shrug off this human skin, it slips to the floor without a shriek of protest, all the chatter and the whispers and the fretting drip off, tumbling down the stairs and scattering into the cracks.

Barebacked I see the valley of my spine shining like a fin.  Half animal, half something else, I stargaze while this sharp seam holds the hemispheres of my body together.

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here. Also, this post is in honor of last night’s Super Moon.

A little bit of bloodletting

What is flowing through your veins right now?

It was thick like tar and now, now it begins to heat and hiss. I can feel it twist up slow like rising mercury.

Meanwhile little rows of fangs slice at my heels, as if they could snag deep enough to draw it forth. They don’t know my blood has grown thorns. 

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here.

That Which is Moving

What is growing in you? How is it different this Spring than the last?

The rains come and the streams and rivers and the creeks, they begin to talk again, they start to bump against the rocks and tug at the cattails and hurry on down with the general business of getting to the sea. And usually I am there, I can feel them running through me and I am riding and spinning like a water skimmer, laughing and letting them take me wherever it is they want to go.

They say that Daphne, the water nymph, once turned into a laurel tree, and so this year I too am still. The wild rushing freefall has turned to a movement slow and tight and strong, that of roots reaching down to grip the clay, doing their work, that necessary job of providing leverage so the branches can unfurl and arch up against the wind like a spinnaker.

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here.

Last Quarter Moon

What are you dreaming of?

Lately my dreams have been like greyhounds at the track, the sun drops down in the sky and the moon springs up like a hare and they’re off, they’re chasing it, chasing it down with the taste of blood and fur in their mouths.

One is in the lead, and then the next, and then the next, the chaos of the races jumbling everything together, the long tracking shot bounces and sways, and in the night in my sleep I run, I run like a dreaming golden retriever chases squirrel, I run so that when I abruptly awake to the sound of a siren, I find my legs have gone numb.

When I fall back in, there she is, the runt of the litter, trying to catch up.

So what’s up with the random prompt? You can find out here. Sketch via D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths.

Call and Response

What is troubling you?

Scintilla is over. And this holy weekend, I sat in the heavy scents of incense and wax. I thought about the journeys we all took. Us writers, we understand these journeys, their sufferings and revealings, with words. That’s how we tease out the knots – with words.

The Scintilla prompts were the click of the lock, the swing of the handle, the change in cabin pressure. They guide me towards the moment of falling-into-place. They are the catalyst for what is unveiled.

But this is what troubles me. That sometimes, without the authority of these prompts, my voice dulls to a whisper. That I come to this space and cannot hear the questions I need to answer.

Easter is what reminded me. I repeated ancient words. I heard my voice answer. The candle, lit from the Paschal fire, was in my hand. That is what faith is: the call and response. The call of what you know unconsciously. The reply that rises unprompted in your throat.

I have to trust that my response is what I have to give, and that it will be enough.

With that in mind, I’m going to try something new over the next few weeks. I’m going to write my own prompts (a few a week), whatever question is calling from my heart, and let that guide my response. So if you see questions posted here, that’s what’s up. I’m hoping that over time I won’t need them anymore, and I’ll extinguish those lost “I don’t know what to write about” days. Feel free to answer them too if you like, and send me your responses! I’ve already got the first few lined up on my desk like good little soldiers …

The Last Scintilla

Tell a story that you haven't told yet. Give it a different ending than the one that really happened. Don't tell us where you start changing things. Just go.

When you molded me out of clay, what stories did you carve into my bones?

I think I might know. I have been living them over and over just like dirty clothes tumble in the rinse cycle. Underneath a mask or a fancy new costume, they are the the same actor performing the same stupid tragedy.

So tell me this: what kind of thunder will it take to crack those bones into pieces? I want to break them, I want to scatter them and watch the letters rearrange themselves, like rune tablets cast against a parquet floor.

I want a new story. I want a new ending.  

The Scintilla Project: Two More

#Scintilla officially ended last week, but there are two lonely little prompts I haven't had the adequate amount of time to wrap any sort of creative energy around. Here is one of two ...

Talk about the ways in which your body is awesome.

Because my heart, it often wants to pause, and when it does, my body reminds it to start beating again.