What could I do differently? Or what I am going to do differently? The latter. Due to the current prompt being underwhelming, regularly scheduled prompt response is being replaced by a birthday wish for Zora Neale Hurston.

Born on this day in Alabama in 1891, Ms. Hurston was a part of the Harlem Renaissance. She was an author, a filmmaker and an anthropologist.

I first learned of Ms. Hurston in an undergrad American literature class via introduction to my favorite novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I often refer to her as a true wordsmith. I feel as though her words are able to cast spells and almost hypnotize. Sublime words that dance around the reader’s head. I can see her words. They are the color of honey.

I am forever grateful to the graduate student who taught that American literature class years all those years ago.

Happy Birthday, Ms. Hurston.

Some of my favorite quotes by Ms. Hurston:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Goodreads

He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Goodreads

There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still gulf of formless feeling untouched by thought

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?

Zora Neale Hurston, How it Feels to be Colored Me
Goodreads

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.”

daily prompt · Uncategorized · Writing

Time Traveling Up Ahead

January 6, 2024January 7, 2024 Amy15 Comments

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

I read the prompt suggestion today, and my reaction was, “Meh.” I scrunched up my face and was underwhelmed. So I’m going to break the rules a little bit and use the prompt to springboard (similar to billboard, but not at all) to something I wrote a while ago, and which ties into yesterday‘s prompt.

I’ve heard people say energies can inhabit a place long after a person has passed. It’s general knowledge in the paranormal community that ghosts/spirits can remain in a place, their energies reliving a certain time of their lives, for whatever reason, their presences seen in the same place, enacting the same scene for…ever (or until they have made their peace and move on). Perhaps these times were overwhelmingly happy or devastatingly sad.

What I question is this: is it possible for us “living right now” people to ingrain a happy memory onto a time and place so that others see or “feel” a presence when they are in these places?

As of today, living and breathing, I often pass places where I’ve created happy memories and wonder if anyone near or in those places now can feel the happiness that I helped create and lived once upon a time. In other words, do our living energies imprint our feelings just as spirits are able to when they pass?

I find myself searching specific areas with my eyes, curious if something akin to “The Time-Traveler’s Wife” is possible (horrible film, by the way, but compelling story).

For now, I don’t know. I feel no differently in these places, I see no out of the ordinary phenomena; it’s just me and my memories.

And I cherish them.

daily prompt · Writing

Van Halen Said It Best

January 5, 2024January 10, 2024 Amy20 Comments

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

What’s wrong with staying in the moment, in today? It’s the only day in which I can do anything. If I’m thinking about yesterday or tomorrow, what am I getting done today?

There are a few sayings about this topic. One is: “Don’t look back you’re not going that way.” Another is: “The future is a gift, today is the present.”

Many mental health professionals will tell you to think too much of the past may lead to/can be a sign of depression, and to think into the future may lead to/can be a sign of anxiety.

As a writer, I put myself into a zone which has no knowledge of time. The zone sometimes includes the past, as some of the best material for poetry is mined from the past. I’m not interested in writing about the future, unless I’m working on a fictional piece that involves fictional characters. In my every day life my feet are firmly in the day that I was given.

As soon as I saw this prompt, I thought of Van Halen. I started singing the lyrics, in fact. Below is the verse that my mind went to from the song entitled, “Right Now.”

Hey
It’s your tomorrow
(Right now),
C’mon, it’s everything
(Right now),
Catch a magic moment, do it
Right here and now
It means everything
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Alex Van Halen / Edward Van Halen / Michael Anthony / Sammy Hagar
Right Now (2004 Remaster) lyrics © Capitol CMG Publishing, Royalty Network, Songtrust Ave, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

daily prompt · Love · poetry

Love Language

January 4, 2024January 7, 2024 Amy16 Comments

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

Treat me with a kindness

That you would also seek

Understand what the meaning is

In the words that I don’t speak

daily prompt · Humor

Wait. It’s Not Collages?

January 3, 2024January 5, 2024 Amy10 Comments

What colleges have you attended?

I’ve made hundreds of collages. It’s a fun hobby. I would recommend it to everyone. And you should do it the old-school way: posterboard, cut-outs from magazines, glue…

Oh. The word is colleges not collages. Huh.

Nevermind.

daily prompt · Humor · Writing

Every Day is Play Day

January 2, 2024January 4, 2024 Amy9 Comments

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

This prompt question has recently been asked, and you can read my piece on that here.

There was a similar prompt question, which asked how you remain a kid at heart. Read my piece on that here.

I guess it’s pretty obvious from the previous prompts I’ve answered, the fact that Hello Kitty is found throughout my house, and that there was a red nose on my car for Rudolph season, that I am thoroughly invested in play every day.

The key to staying young in mind and heart (and hopefully somewhat in body), is to find the moments of play. And if you can’t find them, create them. Opportunities are all around if you just look.

Below you’ll see photographic evidence of play in every day situations.

What does play look like in your life? Do you make time to play? Do you make the effort to look around you and see the opportunities? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for stopping by!