Yesterday was a day of settling back in at home after two weeks with family in Oakland—unpacking and grocery shopping and organizing and making lists—all accompanied by sudden, electric squalls of wind and rain. And of celebration. Even with the storm, optimism lightened the air, and people gathered on street corners with signs and cheers, all of us driving by and honking and cheering, too.
Category Archives: General
Of Dreams and Figs and Great Pyrenees
Probably any piece of writing that begins with “I had a dream last night…” should best be left in the dreamer’s journal. But the dream I had a few nights ago stayed with me and, in writing about it in my journal the next morning, reawakened something I’ve been missing in my daily life.
In the dream, we were wandering around a small town like Asheville or Idyllwild or another artsy community made up of sweet boutiques, cool cafes, and at least one small, well-stocked bookstore, and I noticed no one was wearing a mask. Suddenly guilt-stricken, I covered my nose and mouth with one hand, ducked my head and exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry. I forgot my mask.”
“Never mind” a fellow said. “We don’t need masks here. There’s no disease. We’re all safe.”
Falling in Love All Over Again
A couple of Thursday Writers* ago, my co-facilitator, Steve Montgomery gave us writers this prompt: “We fell in love again.” It’s taken from a poem by Ted Kooser, the first US Poet Laureate.
The idea of Thursday Writers is to write to the prompt, writing practice style—that is, go where the prompt takes you, write for a given amount of time (in this case, thirteen minutes) and when time’s up, read your writing aloud if you want to; no critique is given.
This is what I wrote from the prompt (some light editing for grammar, punctuation, etc):