Tag: 10minwri

Loafing

April 11th, 2015

I never loaf anymore. I remember the days of loafing: childhood, college. Spending afternoons lounging on boats, on beaches, on sun-warmed boulders on mountains, on my bed on a rainy day with a book, on the porch while the green trees whispered in the wind.

I don’t know how to loaf anymore. I’m always doing. Always going. I tried to cut back on work to make time with my family and for our home. The first day I logged off after my eight hour workday, I folded five loads of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, wiped down the kitchen, vacuumed, organized doctor and financial appointments, and did two ten-minute free writes.

I exhaust myself just thinking about it.

But I don’t know if I even want to loaf. If I did want to, I would, right? I’m trying to think if I know anyone who loafs anymore. Do grownups loaf? Grownups in their 30s and 40s, with partners or families or jobs or any and all of those things?

Maybe loafing these days is watching TV. That’s not how I think of loafing though. Loafing to me is lounging outside or with friends. Reclining like a loaf of bread, horizontal with some parts upright — maybe your head and shoulders, maybe your knees.

Characters loaf in Cannery Row. They’re active, too, but there’s a lot of sitting around shooting the shit. I wonder what the definition of loafing is. It’s aimless, I’m sure. And sedentary. Maybe. Does it have negative connotations? Like, the creatives in Mad Men who lie around on sofas — would that be considered loafing? The lying around is part of their creative process. They empty themselves so they can be filled. It looks like loafing, but is it?

Loaf looks like a sofa to me. Someone who loafs takes that shape, at least internally if not physically. The shape of relaxation and comfort and idleness. I could probably do with more loafing in my life.

loaf v. – 1. to idle away time. 2. to lounge or saunter lazily and idly.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Sunbrowned

April 10th, 2015

She watched his hands as he adjusted the sails. They were strong hands, capable hands, with veins that flexed as he untied a cleat, let out some line, then wrapped a figure eight again. She’d always loved his hands, had always loved how masculine they were.

He leaned against the transom, his legs extended on the bench with his ankles crossed. He squinted into the afternoon light to check the trim of the sail. His skin was sunbrowned and his hair sun-bleached. The crinkles around his eyes had deepened in their months at sea, travelling from island to island in their empty-nest years. His face was weathered now, and it suited him. He looked very alive. She watched him from beneath her sun hat. Sunlight glinted off his eyebrows and arm hairs. They shone gold, like they did all those years ago when she had first met him in the Florida Keys. She had told her girlfriend, “He’s the kind of man who is handsome now, and will become even moreso as he ages.”

She studied him and decided this prediction had been true. Age hardened him. Made him more rugged. As did being at sea. He was in his element here.

He glanced up at her and smiled his half smile. The one that said, I love you.

Photo credit: Sailboat by Scott Akerman

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. This is the second time fiction happened. I’ve always been afraid to write fiction – I like that it’s happening on its own.
Knees

April 9th, 2015

Knees are a funny thing, bendy and angular, like when a person is long and lanky, and his knees come up above his shoulders when he sits on the ground.

Cypresses have knees too. I’ve always loved that term — cypress knees. They stick up out of the ground, gnarled with bark and knobs, while the remainder of the cypress roots are submerged. The knees protrude above the land — and the water — breaking the surface so the tree can breathe in lowlands prone to flooding.

This is a boring prompt. What else about knees?

Elephants have fat knees. Knees like tree stumps, except they bend.

Deer have thin knees on toothpick legs that look like you could snap them in half like a twig.

Do squirrels have knees? Bees have knees, according to the saying. Something must be wonderful about bees’ knees, though I don’t know what it might be. Is it because they are knee deep in nectar, or maybe in honey, making their knees sweet? Or maybe it’s just because bees rhymes with knees.

Actually, it’s neither, according to Oxford Dictionaries:

The phrase was first recorded in the late 18th century, when it was used to mean ‘something very small and insignificant’. Its current meaning dates from the 1920s, at which time a whole collection of American slang expressions were coined with the meaning ‘an outstanding person or thing’. Examples included the flea’s eyebrows, the canary’s tusks, and one that still survives – the cat’s whiskers. The switch in meaning for the bee’s knees probably emerged because it was so similar in structure and pattern to these other phrases.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
A receipt for flowers

April 8th, 2015

He emptied her pockets, searching for a handkerchief, a lipstick, a hair band. Anything she had handled. Anything he could carry that would transmit her fragrance, her person. He found nothing. For all the times she’d shoved her hands in the jacket’s warm pouches, her face sad as the wind blew her hair into her eyelashes, for all those silent walks on cold days, there was nothing there.

He turned to the jacket’s lining. It was a pewter color. Silky. He imagined it against her skin. Imagined her slipping bare arms into it on a day warm enough for short sleeves in the afternoon, but cool enough for a jacket in the evening. Her soft brown hairs soft against the silvery smooth lining.

There was one more pocket. Its lip was piped with a strip of fuschia that reminded him of cyclamen. The pink piping was the only color on the garment, and it was hidden away inside. Only she knew its vibrance was there.

He reached into the slim pocket with his first first two fingers and touched paper. The paper was smooth and folded, and it fit snugly in the pink lipped pouch. He slipped his fingers on either side of it, pinched, and pulled it out. He unfolded it.

It was a receipt for flowers. $138. Not a small sum. $138 for peonies: her favorite. The date was from four months ago. It would have been spring. Just the right time for peonies.

Peonies he did not purchase. Peonies he had never seen. So many things he did not see in those months. He held the receipt against his lips and inhaled its papery scent, hoping he might smell flowers. Unlike others who have no regrets, who love their lives and do not grieve a single choice, even poor ones because those bad choices led them to this perfect moment — unlike those people, his regret was a stone in his throat.

Photo credit: Peony by Yoko Nekonomania

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. This is the first fiction that happened. Thank you to Jay E for the prompt, “A receipt for flowers.”
Rubies and Pearls

April 7th, 2015

I wanted to name our daughter Ruby. The word is beautiful to me: vital, vibrant. Deep. I had an Aunt Ruby, whom I don’t remember, but I always loved her name. I also love the name Pearl. Both are elegant, refined, rich. Precious. They evoke rare beauty, luster, shine, value. They are natural. Earth and sea made.

My husband wasn’t sold on Ruby. He wavered. He was close — really close — until happy hour with coworkers one night.

“Have y’all thought of names?”

“Yeah,” my husband replied. “We’re thinking about Chloe. Or Ruby.” Testing the waters.

His coworker said, “When I think of Ruby, I think of a prostitute. Skinny and scraggly, leaning against a lamppost. Bright red lips.”

My husband came home that night and said, “We’re not naming her Ruby.”

My mother’s engagement ring is a ruby. I always admired that — that she had a non-diamond. The red is deep and beautiful. It pops. It is unexpected.

My mother also has pearls. Had pearls. She gave them to me, and they are stunning. I never knew how lovely pearls are until I held a strand in my hand and felt the weight of them. Rubbed the lustrous luminescent rounds between my fingers. I wear them sometimes for no reason. I like beautiful things. I wore them one day “to work,” which is a desk in my basement. I just felt like wearing pearls that day. So I doubled the strand and clasped it behind my neck. I wore a baby blue sweater and jeans. Nothing special. I touched the pearls absently all day, their slow perfection formed beneath the sea. When I signed on for a team video hangout, the first thing my teammate said was, “You’re wearing pearls!” And she smiled, as if the unexpectedness of the pearls brightened her day. I had forgotten I was wearing them, though my fingers were constantly on them, and I was embarrassed, but also pleased. I don’t get out much in my job, and it felt nice to bring some pretty into the day.

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Humic

April 6th, 2015

Humic is moist and earthy. Soil. Dirt. Decomposition. It is rich and fertile, the adjective form of humus, which is a favorite word of mine. It’s in my lexicon.

Humic is forest floors, especially when they are damp. Humic is the way the air smelled in New Orleans in the Garden District: resurrection ferns, cemeteries, life and decay, moisture just below the surface of the earth.

Humic. Humus. Human. I wonder what the roots of these words are. Earth? Humans from the earth? From Genesis, yes, we were made from earth. I’m going to have to look up the origins of the word human. When and where, what its root is. It seems coincidental for it to be so similar to humic and humus.

In evolutionary terms, it would make more sense for the name of life to come from the sea. For the name of us to come from the sea. Except I guess that would be the origin of all life, not just humans. We walk on land, so there’s the earth part, but lots of animals walk the earth. Am I’m even getting my evolutionary biology right? Surely the first life was in water, the first single-celled organisms?

My brain has lost so much.

Back to humic. I can’t wait to move to our new house and dig in the dirt again. I want a butterfly garden. Our garden in Florida was my daily delight after cultivating it for three or four or however many years. Searching for caterpillars and chrysalises, watching butterflies emerge. The way they perch on a leaf and dry their sticky wings before flying away. I know Florida butterflies but not Virginia ones. I’ve no idea the native host plants, the nectar plants. I can’t wait to start learning.

————

From Online Etymology Dictionary, Human (emphasis is mine):

(12c.), from Latin humanus “of man, human,” also “humane, philanthropic, kind, gentle, polite; learned, refined, civilized,” probably related to homo (genitive hominis) “man” (see homunculus ) and to humus “earth,” on notion of “earthly beings,” as opposed to the gods (cf. Hebrew adam “man,” from adamah “ground”).

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.

Tag: 10minwri

Loafing

Sunbrowned

Knees

A receipt for flowers

Rubies and Pearls

Humic