On, In, and Around Mondays: Feel Your Way Through Words
Write the details, I say.
And it's not just a passing writer's tip. It is advice for me. So I stand here and begin, with no sense of where I might go...
Blue notebook with thin-penciled Algebra; red doors near the sidewalk, with wild paint scrawls; sun coming through rippled-glass window... and the maple barely moving today, its leaves like hands probing a tenuous sky.
Test tubes on the table, experiments in cobalt glass, eye droppers and staining solutions, blue gloves and distilled water. A clear plastic funnel on its side.
How long will I have to write before I reach the subtext and the feelings?
Someone left the lights on in the dining room. Brass chandelier with faux candles burning through bare glass. A blue napkin, and a red one, tossed on the dark wood chair.
Anna Akhmatova in a mauve book, speaks of lilies and light through the window. Sugar maples don't grow in Russia; she could not make the same list I am making today. And her children, did they leave the lights on? And was there a study of osmosis near the piano? (Test tubes are everywhere, did I say that? And thin, impossibly thin, dialysis tubing.)
Now I take a cup of tea in the white Princeton set with the dark blue band, and the gold, near the rim. The tea is Japanese. Ban-cha. I am going around the world. Russia, Japan. Soon I will join my husband somewhere in Italy. Is he drinking tea? It seems more like a place for coffee, black and strong.
Out the back window, I see white shells broken in the little garden. Begonias, fragile pink, lean away. Do the shells still hear the sea, though they are in pieces? How deep does the hearing of the sea enter into bone?
The sea is between me and Italy. Between me and Russia. Japan.
Red oak beneath my feet separates me by a continent—from Anna's earth and where she wrote her poetry, from misty mountains that grow tea high above the sea, from Italy.
And I wonder, is this my subtext?
________
On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.
If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)
This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...
Labels: On in and Around Mondays, writer's block
posted by L.L. Barkat at 4:55 PM
8 Comments:
I don't know if it's your subtext. It is a lovely verse of text to ready. Lovely.
Absolutely beautiful. It's all in the details, isn't it? Beauty is. If I would only look deeper more often...then I could catch beauty by the thin tail.
Do the shells still hear the sea?
Oh, my, how I hope that they do. I lean in, even to my busted and broken-up bits of shell held in bowls throughout my house, and pretend. Sometimes I think I hear its whisper, though I might just be my sigh.
The details. Sometimes I want to skip those and just get to the meat of the matter.
But the details are aroma that draw us to the meat and the details make it taste juicier and the details entice us to come eat again. A beautiful post.
" Do the shells still hear the sea, though they are in pieces? How deep does the hearing of the sea enter into bone?" I may have to quote you on this someday--profound thoughts ring through it!
this. was. beautiful, soothing, restful. that's good writing, that it makes the reader stop, take a deep breath, and reflect, and then the reader finds a sense of place, as you say. simply divine. i loved this. the sea...the tea growing high on mountains...beauty.
and this is my first entry here today...i found you in a round-about way. but im so glad i did. i hope my entry will do. i am not sure...exactly how long the entries should be or what is allowed to be included...so i chose a shorter piece, but i have longer ones.
blessings in His grace,
Nacole
As Ann & Shaunie, I am stunned by,"Do the shells still hear the sea, though they are in pieces? How deep does the hearing of the sea enter into bone?" Tears in the pondering of this...
Wow-very descriptive and something I need a lot more practice doing. I have a problem giving enough detail-I kind of like getting right to the point. I really enjoyed this one.
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