My Apologies, Folks
I'm struggling with a new diagnosis
Pema Chodron says, "It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens." I’m feeling unwell. I’m going to bed. It’s been a long week. I’m saying to myself, this is hard, and I deserve kindness. I’ll be posting on Saturdays starting next week instead of Thursdays (which I missed this week as it flew past…)
More Brave Space next week when I’ll let you know about the 2 brain scans I did this week (nothing to do with this diagnosis). And fill you in on my approach to living with chronic illness…
In the meantime, here’s a PROMPT!
Writing Prompt:
Prayers and Prophecies - inspired by Anne Lamott.
HELP! : Write a play/story/scene/poem with a character in need. They try something. They fail. They realize they need help. They have to ask for help. Do not let them get help even when they ask. But you still have to make stuff happen.
THANK YOU! : Write a play/story/scene/poem with a character who has a great need to thank someone who helped them through something enormous. Make the person to be thanked dead or otherwise impossible to thank. (Make the task impossible.) Then what can the grateful character do instead to accomplish this task?
WOW! : Pick a moment of great AWE - from a spectacular sunset to the birth of a child to great sex or the Grand Canyon or some other amazing natural phenomenon, and let it inspire a character to transform.
Bonus Points for using the entire sequence (Help, Thank you, Wow).
Or use an ORACLE : a divine utterance spoken as a response to a request for guidance. Once the character hears from the Oracle, what do they do? Make stuff happen.
BraveSpace Schedule:
Brave Sched for 1/15 - 19/24 Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 12pm w/Poetry Workshop Thursday 10am ET Friday 12pm ET Brave Sched for 1/22 - 26/24 Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 10am ET w/Poetry Workshop Thursday 12pm ET Friday 12pm ET Brave Sharing Salon Brave Sched for 1/29 - 2/2/24 Monday 12pm ET Tuesday 12pm ET w/Poetry Workshop Friday 12pm ET
Send me pics of your pets so I can post them!
Onward,
Emma
Rachel Hadas, my poetry mentor, taught me the value of formalism and wrestling my words into poetic forms. Here is my response to the prompt as a sonnet.
The Oracle in my Palms
I wanted to build a prophesy box
With an open space, a window to you
Without a barrier glass to see through.
To be touching palms on some equinox,
Full moon or half-moon. A paradox
between hands and moonbeams that tell fortunes.
Both lovely. Skin. Light. Only one is true.
Moon beam oracles move like ticking clocks.
But palm fortune tellers dance round circles
Around any light, around any doubt,
And push against misfortune day by day,
Whispering until the world is lulled
Soft, to my prophesy box and about
Their fortunes, your fortune, I tell and pray.
Sending you lucky stars.