Prompt: Traditional Japanese Rules of Food Preparation

(fragments)

Many years ago when I was just beginning my life, I lived in a city of mysteries, shrouded often in fog, or alternately bathed in a golden light. I walked constantly there, intent on enrobing myself in its velvety essence, because I must somehow have known how fleeting my stay would be.

The city's streets were a tangle of exquisite treasure boxes balancing upon spectacularly steep hills, all set against the scumble of a blue gray sea. Every day and then again in the night, I wandered, entranced, bewitched, rapt. It wasn't that I wanted to unravel mysteries or have them yielded or revealed to me in any way. Instead, it was that I found myself, suddenly, the recipient of a gorgeous new existence. Things I hadn't even known I'd been dreaming of previously appeared to me now, as gifts, beautifully wrapped, waiting just for me to stumble upon them. I felt, for the first time in my life, as if I were the beloved, and the feeling was intoxicating to me.

Prompt: The sound of a garden hose

The sound of a garden hose can be hissing, gurgling, gushing, drip drip dripping, trickling, bubbling, fountainous. But the sound of the sprinklers starts with the timer. First, there's the sudden clank, that generally puts one on guard. Then, a dull quickening pulse, as if the walls themselves have started and the heart of the house is now beating fast. Around its perimeter, various stations get in line. A is at the back, where the windows must be closed lest the spray from the pop-ups enters through the screens. Following A is B, two minutes later. You can hear the roses sigh, as the bubblers cool their thorny trunks. Station C is more remote, but does its duty for an allotted pair of moments, rejuvenating and plumping, keeping brittleness at bay. By the time D has its say, the clanking pulse has dimmed a bit, the house now remembering what all this fuss is about and settling back into its verdant nest. E is more patient, but just as relentless as the cohort before it. Tasked with the final responsibility of ending the cycle, it finishes with a sigh near where the hose lies coiled, quietly watching with its one dry eye.

Prompt: The smell of fresh mint

I walked along the deer path, the smell of fresh mint enveloping me. It was early spring and early morning, crisp, clean, cold. Where was I headed? Into the world after a long winter's hibernation. As I walked, trying so hard to feel each breath with every one of my senses and each and every deliberate step on the pebbled path, I thought about these random things: the oil that had to be changed, the vacuuming to be done, hairs to be coiffed, lawns badly in need of a mow and the endless rows of candies that would not crush themselves. And then, just at the brink of being overwhelmed with thoughts of ceaseless responsibility, the mint, always the smell of fresh mint, tugged me back to the present with its sharp, pungent call.

Prompt: My life as a pretender

(from 11/3/15)

Pretender: fake, faux, phony (I wonder if phony is the diminutive for faux), inauthentic, liar, fibber. Fake it till you make it. Let's play pretend. Make Believe Land. Fantasy Island, The Love Boat. Which of these things doesn't belong? Is it the pretender or everyone else? Or is everyone pretending to some extent, or less? Shakespeare famously claimed that all the world's a stage and that we are merely players, actors, pretenders.

Why do we pretend? What if we don't pretend, what then? Are we too boring or scared or sad or angry or lonely?

Just today on the radio, Sandra Cisneros said stories are like medicine and the stories we go to again and again are the ones that have the ability to heal us. In storytelling we pretend. We make up exotic characters, fantastical beasts, catapulting them into wondrous worlds, to clamber over obstacles unknown. Might victory be hidden in pretending?