Until Snow - Dixie

Home was Florida, Texas, and California.
White was sand, sunrise, and stucco walls.
Cold was wind, shadows, and waves.
Mountains were dunes, mesas, and hills.
Trees were palms, yuccas, and eucalyptus.
Pathways were shorelines, river beds, and cliffs.
Thrills were swamps, campouts, and sail boats.
Dreams were warm rain, the open road, and bird cries.

I lived in summer and warmth
Until snow


Prompt: snow
Jumpstart 5/26/07

Movie Star Crush - Maya

Prompt: Movie star crush
4/7/07

“Please, please!”

“Come on! You’ve already seen that movie six times. I’ve seen it twice. Enough already!”

“Oh, come on. Who knows when he’s going to make another one? I gotta go see it. Come with me. Please.”

I didn’t want to go. I mean, I liked him and all that, and the movie wasn’t bad. But twice was enough for me.

“Come on! We’ve got to leave or we’ll miss the cheap admission.”

“Oh, all right.”

God, she drives me nuts. But what could I do? She’s my best friend. We’ve been best friends since third grade. She was there for me when Uncle Lou died. I helped her through her mom’s bout with cancer. We knew each others' dreams and fantasies. We worked it out so we’d be sure to go to the same summer camp. People teased us and called us “the twins.” Not that we look alike. We’re just pretty inseparable.

Now she had this unbearable crush on a hunky blonde movie star. God! I didn’t get it. Sure, he’s cute and all, but what is the big deal? I was starting to worry about her. The crush, well, it was starting to feel like an obsession.

“Next thing I know You’ll be starting a stupid fan website or something.”

She looked at me, surprised. No, not surprised, guilty.

“You didn’t!”

“Well, no, I didn’t start one. But I, well, I kind of joined one. Or two.”

“Oh. My. God. How many?”

“Well, only three. And a couple of blogs.”

“This is getting out of control,” I told her. “You are sick. No, really. You are in over your head. How much time are you wasting mooning over some guy you’ll never even get to meet?”

“I know.... I can’t help it. There’s just something about him. The way he looks at you.”

“Looks at you! He doesn’t look at you! He doesn’t even know you exist.”

“I know that. I’m not stupid.”

“Well, you’re acting stupid. I can’t believe I’m going along with this.”

We drove in silence the rest of the way.

When it got dark in the theater and the feature began I stole looks at her. She was entranced. I mean, she was practically drooling. What had happened to her? I didn’t know whether to laugh and hope it would pass or organize some sort of intervention. My best friend was gone, and I was left with this mindless, slobbering idiot. She had a wistful grin of longing and lust on her face. God! Movie star crush!

Wooden Buffalo - Greg

Prompt: This prompt was a physical object. A fist-size carved wooden buffalo.
(12/2/06)


He is a wooden buffalo. Male because the carver, in his art, gave it male genitalia. He has one horn. The other broke off.

His wife gave him the wooden buffalo many years ago. There were many possibilities then. This was a long time ago.

In the native American tradition, the buffalo represents abundance. Abundance of love, of joy, of everything. These things seemed possible at one time. The horn broke off.

When she gave it to him, the fur of polished walnut was deep and rich and fairly glowed, the way one imagined buffalo glowed on the Midwestern plains. But now, after many years, the wood is dusty and faded, a bit gray and worn.

His hair is a bit gray and his joints worn.

He wonders if he polishes it with linseed oil the glow would return. If his knees will stop hurting. If his wife will laugh at one of his jokes.

The horn is gone. That will never return. But what about the other things?

He walks into the garage to find the linseed oil and a rag.

Portrait of A Girl As Someone I Care About - Camden

prompt: boys don't make passes at girls who. . .
(may 12, 2007)

-

She liked to weave flowers into chains and tie them around her friends' arms. Camden got off a with a bracelet, but Andrew had an ornate head piece of daisies, which was placed upon his head like the crowning of the King of England. She walked him to class to make sure he kept it on. Poor guy, but he didn’t complain, just tugged at the chain because he didn’t know what to do with. Camden kept her daisy chain. Andrew threw his away. They never discussed this.

She, with her friends, sometimes including Andrew and Camden, held parties. One-hundred percent sober with 70's french disco and 90's boypop and the occasional indie ballad that had everyone screaming, singing, “you’ve got a nerve to be asking a favor.” She never thought about the lyrics she was singing. She supposed they didn’t mean anything, as lyrics are wont to do.

But the parties weren’t all music and flailing-like-dancing and someone’s mother-cooked salad. She brought out French word games and ornate, involved, roleplaying logic riddles for her guests to solve under the twinkling of the tiny disco ball, bought for five dollars. Andrew liked the abstract thinking because he was a white boy with a new found love for rap. Camden liked dancing better. They never discussed this.

Although she was a drummer, she was a musician. Her rhythm was musical - Camden’s father said so. She was stoic behind the kit, not one of those drummers who moved or smiled. Her and her two friends (not including Andrew and Camden, though they were loyal concert goers; Camden learned all the lyrics and whispered along at every show while Andrew learned every guitar part and played restlessly against the floors, the chairs, the tables, the people of the venues he followed the band to - they never discussed this either) had a band, wrote some songs, more then enough for a decent sized album. The general opinion was that they had written one of the best songs in the universe, but this was only the general opinion of a few select people.

So she was a fan of daisies and parties and drums and abstract thinking and 70's French disco and 90's boypop and bubbles and creeks and picnics and cartwheels and somersaults in the sunshine of high school but she was the biggest fan of her friends, including Camden and Andrew. They never discussed but they should have because if they had, they might have known how to be as big a fan of her. Unfortunately, they didn’t. Now Andrew can’t make daisy chains and Camden has no logic so instead they sit in silence together and wonder what to do for Tessa.

Sunset in a Cup - Dixie

I say to you, sweet lass, away
Now leave my home, this silken web.
Go play among the blossomed fields,
the fleeting clouds, the river's edge.
Engage the creatures of your kind
so tangled in their shouts and tears.
Then fall, and yearn what cannot be
and leave the sunset, dear,
to me.


Prompt: "Bring me the sunset in a cup"
Emily Dickinson

Jumpstart 3/17/07

Control- Cyndi

Prompt: A time someone lost control 4/28/07

Control. What could she control in her life anymore? The elderly woman gingerly stooped down, slowly testing her knees. There was a time when she felt like she was able to have control. When her children were young and she was the primary influence in their lives. Each day she led them in new adventures as they explored the world around them. She picked up her trowel and put on her gardening gloves. But they were grown and gone now. All of them moved away. She couldn’t even control when they talked to each other. They were always busy when she called or they ended up just leaving voice mail, playing phone tag.

She pushed down deep into the soft earth feeling it give way. She loved the feel of the soil as it crept into her gloves through the well worn holes. Her husband was long gone. She used to be in charge of planning their days- from appointments to lunch dates and time away. She had been the schedule keeper. All that is over and done now, she thought. What do I have left to plan for now? She picked up one of the potted plants, turning the container over in her hands and letting it drop out of its confinement. “Here you go”, she said to the young flower. “Welcome to your new home.” She placed it carefully in the space she had carved out for it.

Even her dog had passed on, so she didn’t have a companion to accompany her on walks through the park anymore. Friends came and went but there was no one close enough to count on. This is my life now and she pondered how to spend the rest of her day.

A few more impatience, and maybe some begonias, geraniums, daisies and of course the pansies. Her garden was not a neat orderly array of blooms separated by species or even organized by colors. It was a hodgepodge assortment- all mixed together. That is the way she liked it. The world is not all neat and orderly- but mixtures of people, cultures, class- all thrown together to somehow survive and thrive. And so her garden also reflected this style. A splash of yellow marigold here, the red rose bush on the side, the purple asters mixed in throughout and even some orange cosmos- although not her favorite, they were needed to bring balance.

At least she could still tend lovingly to this plot of land, coaxing bountiful life out of it. This was her gift and she supposed this is what she could still retain control over. It brought joy to her heart each time she walked up the sidewalk or stood looking out her window. And it was also a gift to those who lived nearby. The walkers and joggers would call out to her, offering their compliments. She had also seen the cars slowing down, the drivers taking a small moment out of their hurried lives to point out to their children the wonder in bloom in her yard. Yes, this was the one thing left that was still in her control and she would continue to work in her garden.

-Cyndi

When I Sing - Maya

Prompt: When I Sing


When I sing
My heart opens
The breath moves, relieved
Ah -- at last –-
To be released --
Why do you hold me for so long?
How can you forget so often?

Breath, song,
The great Ha
Sent forth into the world
In praise in gratitude in celebration.

Song opens, then,
Unfolding, like muscles rippling
in Continuum undulate
Like a gift happy to be opened and given.

When I sing
I wander into harmonies
The fun of higher or lower
Contrasting notes
Playing against each other,
Notes in patterns
Like colors printing themselves
Across a page -
The red over the black
The green twining around the purple.

It’s too simple to say
Singing is a joy
Because sometimes
It’s sorrow it’s escape it’s communion-
That singing
That singing together.

I mean, there’s singing alone
In the car with the radio or CD
And that’s fine and I
Can sing really loud because no one
Will hear me
And I can ignore the looks of other drivers
I will never see again.

But then there’s the
Singing together,
The heart-singing fun-singing-
Around-the-campfire kind of singing,
And the group singing
So full of ecstatic voice that
Tears spontaneously fill up the eyes and
Have to spill over.

When I sing –
When I remember to sing –
I love -- I think –-
Why don’t I sing every day?
Even alone.
Why do I forget
The singing?

Warm - Greg

Prompt: Warm Under the Stars 12/9/06


The air was warm, the ground was warm, and even the blades of grass, normally cool to the touch, were warm. He looked over to his honey sleeping next to him under the desert sky, her chest rising and falling with each warm breath. Everything was as warm as his body and the world seemed to extend continuously from the center of his heart, as if he could not tell where his skin ended and everything else–-the ground, the grass, the deserts sounds, the cacti silhouettes began.

He wasn’t naked, but he wished he were. He wanted all of this, the desert, the air, all of creation to touch him without even the thinnest barrier of fabric. He wanted to be wrapped and held by the universe; wondered if this was what they meant by God enfolding you in the palm of his hand.

The stars seemed so bright and beautiful that his eyes hurt. Not from the brightness, but from the utter beauty and miracle of it all. His eyes welled with tears, and he thought of poets who say that one day the stars will fall from the sky, and scientists, explaining further, that entropy will cause them to fade and snuff out to nothing like spent candles. Maybe so, he thought, maybe someday, but not for a long long time.

He stared at a single star. Maybe it was a galaxy–one of a billion stars. He tried to connect to it. Connect to the consciousness, to a being, to a person on that star laying in that desert staring at my star looking at him. “Hello!” he thought smiling. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

His honey stirred and he looked at her delicate face in the starlight. Then he turned back toward his star, then he heard, not a sound, but a felt sense. A voice, a presence, a woman: “Hello,” she said, “I hear you.”

Marshmallows - Camden

Prompt : "marshmallows"

--

Marshmallows are for church.

Or more specifically, marshmallows are for the Walker’s house in the summer at the pool parties filled with children running around and parents not caring too much. Marshmallows are for after we run all over the Walker’s property, and possibly their neighbors’ as well, pretending to be magical and pretending to be special. Marshmallows go at the fire pit, by the side of the pool. Maybe there are some errant kids in the hot tube or hanging off the diving board, but by the time we get to marshmallows, most kids are tucked into towels and squished up against parents or each other.

Marshmallows go after hot dogs and wrapping a towel around my head and telling my pastor that I’m Muslim. Not on my watch, he says. Marshmallows are after we dodge bees with our lunches and leap into the pool for safety. Marshmallows are after sunscreen and belly flops and playing pool in the safety of the Walker’s cabin, dripping all over their carpets. Marshmallows are sometimes with sing-alongs but always with prayers and thanks and good company.

Marshmallows signify the end of the day when we know we must crawl back up that monstrous hill, so easy to run down in the morning but so difficult to climb up in evening. We should be sad to be waving goodbye to our once-a-week friends, but we’re delighted to be standing barefoot on the asphalt, shivering in our towels and still dripping from that one last cannonball because. Because we’ve just had marshmallows.