welcome readers & writers! many thanks to pauline for your photog friday picture contribution, and to FilmGuy for writing with me on friday!
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as you may have noticed, i didn't post this weekend. i've been tracking the traffic patterns for write away every day, and weekends are very slow - which is actually good because it means you're out doing interesting things and seeing the world (either that or washing massive amounts of laundry and standing on the sidelines of your kiddos' soccer games like i am). in fact traffic is a quite a lot slower overall than it has been, and i'm trying to do some guesswork as to why. so i'm going to make a couple of changes to the blog. we'll see how it goes! we can always change back if need be.
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first, i'll only post monday through friday (spoof saturdays will become wacky wednesdays). second, i'm going to allow comments on what i and others post, but only positive comments. i still don't want uninvited negative feedback (for me or for you writers). but i'm thinking that our readers need to feel more invested and engaged in what's going on, and i think creativity is boosted for writers when we hear words of praise and encouragement when it comes in. so let's see how these things feel through the week. feel fee to email me your feedback or leave it as a comment.
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as always, thank you for being part of write away every day, whether you're stopping in to check out the photo, to read the written responses to the day's photo, or to share your written work. so glad you're here!
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Here's my spin on today's photo prompt:
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One of the things Bitsy hates most about doing laundry is emptying pockets. Oh, she's tried getting her boys to do it themselves. She's left them notes and made threats and let piles of things go on through the wash - damn the consequences. But something, one thing, keeps her hanging on... woos her back time and again, daring to plunge her hand into those pockets stuffed with rocks, sticks, acorns, matchbox cars, school papers and food wrappers. It's the occasional marble. She adores marbles and has, over the years, built up quite a collection.
Here's my spin on today's photo prompt:
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One of the things Bitsy hates most about doing laundry is emptying pockets. Oh, she's tried getting her boys to do it themselves. She's left them notes and made threats and let piles of things go on through the wash - damn the consequences. But something, one thing, keeps her hanging on... woos her back time and again, daring to plunge her hand into those pockets stuffed with rocks, sticks, acorns, matchbox cars, school papers and food wrappers. It's the occasional marble. She adores marbles and has, over the years, built up quite a collection.
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This is why she never argues with the boys when they want to buy a new oversized marble at a fancy shop, or a whole pack of traditional marbles at the dollar store. There's just something, she thinks, about holding that glassy sphere in one's hand, lifting it to the light and marveling at the swirls of color and perfectly round tiny bubbles made in glass too quickly cooled.
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She keeps her marbles in a drawstring bag made of pink corduroy. When the kids are out sometimes, she lays belly down on the living room floor and empties the bag on the plush carpet. Pinching her favorite marble between thumb and forefinger, she spends minutes on end gazing at it. Color, light, texture, mystery - how do they make those swirlies? Each one is different, each is beautiful or striking in its own way. Kinda like her boys.
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So, okay. Maybe doing laundry and checking pockets is worth it. Or maybe she should start charging a marble for every load. She smiles to herself... that's the ticket.
This is why she never argues with the boys when they want to buy a new oversized marble at a fancy shop, or a whole pack of traditional marbles at the dollar store. There's just something, she thinks, about holding that glassy sphere in one's hand, lifting it to the light and marveling at the swirls of color and perfectly round tiny bubbles made in glass too quickly cooled.
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She keeps her marbles in a drawstring bag made of pink corduroy. When the kids are out sometimes, she lays belly down on the living room floor and empties the bag on the plush carpet. Pinching her favorite marble between thumb and forefinger, she spends minutes on end gazing at it. Color, light, texture, mystery - how do they make those swirlies? Each one is different, each is beautiful or striking in its own way. Kinda like her boys.
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So, okay. Maybe doing laundry and checking pockets is worth it. Or maybe she should start charging a marble for every load. She smiles to herself... that's the ticket.
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readers, feel free to heap mounds of praise on any of today's creative responses! writers - come write with me: 250(ish) words - story, poem or creative non-fiction. click on comments below to share. have a great day!
readers, feel free to heap mounds of praise on any of today's creative responses! writers - come write with me: 250(ish) words - story, poem or creative non-fiction. click on comments below to share. have a great day!
My mother is a fan of that Robin William's movie HOOK.
ReplyDeleteI've been looking for a birthday present for her for over a year.
I guess I owe her two now.
Or is it 3, or 4.
Today when I was walking down 7th ave the block before my house was closed. There was a street fair raising money for the Children's Hospital.
I started to walk around but on the corner stall there was a sign- Every parent has lost their marbles- help them find some.
I grabbed a handful and laughed. I could hear my mother quoting Tootles. "I've lost them, I've lost my marbles".
I knew I'd find the perfect gift.
Yeah, I never read blogs on the weekends because I'm out making the most of my fantastically interesting social life (ha!). I conserve my blog reading for wasting valuable business hours between Monday and Friday. I also briefly flirted with posting daily or 3x a week. That netted me nothing but a headache -- I seriously have no idea how people blog that often.
ReplyDeleteClearly the way to encourage more blog traffic is to do more posts with violence and nudity. I may resort to that mysefl eventually.
Cheers,
Kristen
MARBLES
ReplyDeleteThe first ones we had, we kids in the neighborhood, were made of clay, I believe. They looked like clay; grayish, rusty, red and small bits chunked out as they were used over and over. You could see how they were made of several layers of material when bits fell out and you could see the flat surface of one layer where the piece had broken out of the next one. In the literature we read references to playing with them that didn't relate to how we played with them. There was an illustration from one of the Penrod books showing boys around a circle of rope, aiming at marbles scattered inside. We dug a hole in the ground, stood back ten or so feet and tossed the tiny balls toward the hole. The person whose aggie was furthest from the hole got to use one finger to flip it rolling either closer or into the hole. The guy who took the least strokes to get his into the hole won all the aggies.
Then the war was over - August, 1945. Hell, even by September the glass aggies began to show up in all the stores. In my village, old Mr. Badger, who ran the little store up the street where we bought penny candy, the kind we learned fractions from by buying mixtures of multiples for a penny, suddenly had the boxes containing twenty real glass marbles - we had never used that word before. Over the next few years they became small works of art, and in later years I saw them in art galleries, hand blown, swirled, twisted, designed almost impossibly, proving, as it always should that art is the making possible of the apparently impossible. I'm sure once they were made of marble, and then, making them perfectly round was near impossible.
I wanted one. Really. Just looking at them she knew I was going to ask. My mom always knew. I think she understood how I thought. She was psychic. Now, that is a running joke for comedians, but seriously, I was walking up to her, and before I could raise a finger and point, she ask me, "Which one do you want?"
ReplyDeleteOh, god. That should have been a good thing, right? But truth is I was all revved up for battle, a challenge of wits, with my mom. And here she had diffused it all and left me at a crossroads I had not actually given any thought to... which one.
Choice is a beautiful thing. And scary. And powerful. I looked back down at the pile of marbles, all multi-colored and glowing with potential. My mom looked down at me the same way. She smiled, and she walked off to do some shopping. Did I mention that besides being psychic I think she also was a bit of a sadist? Seriously, I know she knew it was gonna drive me nuts choosing one. One. A single marble. And now that I had thought about it... what the heck do you do with one marble?! I turned to her in protest... and she was holding up two fingers. Gotta love my mom.
Great ideas on the site... love it and keep going!
ReplyDelete