Flash Fiction Prompt Response: The Chat

     What you have heard is true.  It's not gossip.  It's not just a local legend creeping like cloud shadows across the Virgina hills all the way to South Carolina.  I am one-hundred-eight years old.  I know.  I know.  What's my secret?  I tell you I've lived hard.  When I was young I drank and danced and barely slept.  I've smoked for more than eighty years.  Pall Malls.  Filterless.  The brand I started with.  I tell you it's something to count on.  I've outlived my husband and two of my children.  I've gone through a whole kennel of hounds like Rocky, here.  The funny thing is I went gray, early.  I had strands of silver in high school.  Used to think I'd die young, so I lived fast.  I dyed my hair, at first, then I gave up on it.  I don't know if it was the burning or the bother or if I was just plain mad to have to do it.  It felt like a lie.

     I used to make my own clothes, you know.  Still do when my fingers aren't seized up.  This?  No, this is something my daughter picked out.  I like the blue, but the collar is a bit old-fashioned, don't you think?  You're sweating.  Here, I'll turn up the fan.  My husband?  He died young.  Heart attack took him.  Nope.  I never remarried.  One life.  One husband.  Just like I take my coffee: black with a single lump of sugar.  Nothing extra.  It's funny how people always want to put cream in your coffee.  Can I get you some more?   
    

     

Flash Fiction Prompt Response: Stolen

      Chloe wore overalls and was barefoot with chipped, blue-painted toenails.  At five foot three, she was a promising eighteen inches in length when her parents adopted her and took her home.  Now, a freshly-lit cigarette dangled from the side of her mouth.  Her usually loose, long brown hair was bound up in a pseudo-bun.  Renegade tendrils curled about her face and at the back of her neck.  She dug in the drawer in search of a paintbrush and felt something cold in her hand.  Blowing the hair from her eyes, she pulled out a small, metal object: a Craftsman tapemeasurer dated 1904.  It was rusty and round and when she pulled on the tab it crumbled in her fingers.   She had stolen it from the old summer Cape house two years before, slipping it in her pocket and holding it there, firmly pressed against her femoral artery where it throbbed, regularly, like a pacemaker or a watch.  She brought it home and promptly placed it in the junk drawer in the garage with the intention of trying to forget about it.  Chloe had "inherited" a few other unwanted odds and ends from the old house: a black lacquered ashtray, a framed collection of a variety of pressed seaweeds, and a photograph of she and her cousins when they were kids.  First her father told her, then he put the house on the market, then it was sold, then he had a month to move everything out and finally, just a day.   

      The worn tapemeasurer had belonged to Chloe's grandfather.  He used it to measure out a bathroom for his wife in their bedroom so she wouldn't have to walk so far to go at night.  He measured and cut a new cellar door.  Oak.  He measured all the kids' heights and marked them on the yellow wall in the kitchen and then measured them all over again the following year.  He was white-haired and handsome and he was always old.  Chloe and her cousins had grown up in that house with its low ceilings and steep ship stairs and musty, baked ham smell.  Chloe looked around the sparse, well-organized garage.  Tools hung neatly on a pegboard.   Ash from her cigarette fell to the floor and broke like bits of old bee hive.  She pocketed the tape measurer, stepped up the single stair, and disappeared inside the house, forgetting all about the paintbrush.                    

In-Class "Ink Blot" Story Exercise

Tea Stain Images: two poodles, twins reading with flower blossoms, pine tree on bluff with bird

     The dogs were at it again.  This is not to say that they were barking or growling or defecating in the neighbors' yards.  No, these colossal twin white poodles, perfectly coiffed, were nestled together on the front step, heads bowed reverently as though meditating.  One never saw them romp or play--and they are not old, only old souls.  They preferred to lay in repose and contemplate all that zen master canines can think about.  They remind me of Soku and her sister.  The way they were always together--in physical contact with each other, arm in arm.  A picture, aloft, settled in my mind and became a memory.  I recalled them reading, back to back, on the grounds of the university in the grass, flower blossoms falling about them, catching in their hair.  I thought of Soku and our afternoon on the bluff with the tree and the bird and our young bodies warmed by the round sun. 

Creative Autobiography, Part II

As a child, my first successful creative act was writing and directing plays put on by myself, my sister, and my cousins for the amusement of our adult relatives (who made a very captive audience!)  My second successful creative act took place when I discovered that my teacher had hung up one of my poems for all to read.  It was very validating, but, at a tender age, it also made me feel vulnerable.  Moving through and beyond a mix of intimacy and exposure made it possible for me to compete in and win poetry slams as an adult.

My attitudes toward the listed concepts are as follows:

1.  Money: an unfortunate, but necessary means of negotiating one's way through today's current society/economy
2. Power: Not interested.  Empowerment: Interested.
3. Praise: Productive praise requires explication
4. Rivals: Exciting.  Inspiring.
5. Work: I do not define myself by my vocation.
6. Play: Creative projects (I am currently designing a chair to be sold at a fund-raising auction), Scrabble, pool, museums, art galleries, Pictionary, entertaining friends, Karaoke, photoshoots, charades, etc.

I love contemporary art and black and white photography.  I am a huge fan of the DeCordova Museum and am a regular visitor there.  My favorite artists are surrealist/dadaist Man Ray and photographer Sophie Calle.  Both have produced works that are experimental and innovative--characteristics that I admire and that excite me.  To me, a muse is someone or something that inspires me.  It's a bit of a cliche, but some of my early muses have been lovers--that, and fleshing out relationships such as the sociocultural and its relationship with nature.  When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, I am stimulated and celebrate what others have to offer.  When faced with stupidity, intransigence, indifference, etc., I may not agree, but respect others' place on their paths.  Where there is injustice or potential harm, I intervene.  For me, success can only be measured by the self.  It can be validating, but is fleeting.  When faced with failure, I work to redeem myself.  When I work, I enjoy the result, but relish the process.  My ideal creative activity right now is illustrating a children's story I wrote with photographs of clay characters.

I attend church every Sunday and it is here where I am fed, spiritually, but am, at the same time, humbled by what little I know of humans' understanding of God.  This is beyond my current "reach" and I would like to study religion, particularly Buddhism.  My greatest fear is of my own vulnerability--of my sensitivity in such an overly stimulating world.  Also, (and this is a little embarassing) I am both afraid of and fascinated by the paranormal.  Thankfully, I don't anticipate coming into contact with anything paranormal any time soon.  (I am not a big fan of heights, either.)  My idea of mastery is the fulfillment of a vision.  My greatest dream is to live as a writer in the country in a big, old rambling butter yellow farmhouse with dark green shutters and a wrap-around porch.  Oddly, the house would always smell of fresh-baked bread, even though I don't bake.  I would have lots of land with a river in the back where I would paddle my canoe.  My trusty cat, Scout, would have free reign of the property.  I would have a small kitchen garden and several, expansive flower gardens where woodland animals would nibble and frolic, undisturbed.  It sounds a bit Disneyesque, but hey, it's a dream, so I reserve the right to color it with as many chalks as I can...                        

Creative Autobiography Assignment

The first creative moment I remember is dancing with my sister.  Some funky seventies track was playing on the radio.  I was probably about three and a half years old and my sister, Kathy, who towered above me, would have been seven.  Kathy was employing an awkward shuffle step clap approach, while I was getting down, Michael Jackson-style, complete with elaborate spins.  I could dance! 

My best ideas tend to sprout from different situations I'm in where I perceive a need.  When I was in the social work program, I wrote a handbook for clinicians on treating LGBTQ clients that is used by the faculty as a teaching tool.  At the non-profit organization were I volunteer, I devised a more efficient, user-friendly way of dispensing an aspect of our services.  While I learned a lot in the social work program, it was probably my dumbest idea (due to lack of foresight) to pursue an academic track that ended in an internship where I was, ultimately, dissatisfied with the actual clinical work.  I just wanted to write!

My greatest creative ambition is to publish a book.  In order to do this, I have to perfect my vision and write daily.  I start my day with two cups of coffee, four cigarettes, and my computer.  I compose a daily schedule and then set about writing.  My problem is I have multiple writing projects that I bounce back and forth between.  This keeps things fresh and exciting, but I need to pick one project and see it through to completion.

to be continued...