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cloverpunkwrites · 6 years

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March

Challenge: Vibrational Moments

(Write snippets of moments where there is a "vibrational" feeling of oddness around you. Worlds in a moment.)

Day 60 - March 1

In another world, someone is sitting on that bench. Silhouetted by the large, bright, nearly full moon rising over the lake. They are wearing a winter coat, and it protects them from the cold wind. Perhaps they are waiting for someone, who will be arriving any moment from across the street. Or else they are reading a good book, choosing the fresh March air over the library they have been trapped in for the last few months. The clouds hovering around the moon, resting on the darkening lake like wisps of cotton candy, float back and forth across it slow enough that no one can perceive it.

Day 61 - March 2

I heard someone across the hall doing dishes, and suddenly I am back home, sitting upstairs in my room avoiding chores. I hear my grandmother down in the kitchen washing clinking plates and glasses. She always does them by hand. I'm not sure where everyone else is. Papa is probably downstairs, and my parents must be at work, my little sister is at school. I must be on break even though that doesn't start until this afternoon.

Day 62 - March 3

You leave early enough that it is still dark, and something is moving behind the tree out of the corner of your eye. It could be the neighborhood cat, but its too small, maybe a bird then. The part of your brain that likes to write wants to say in another world it would be a faerie, but it is too early and the part of your brain that wants to get to work of time shuts that down before it is fully processed.

Day 63 - March 4

They are talking about how sick their parents are and they don’t know I took out my earbuds. She's been depressed since he died. She tries to hide it but I think I saw her crying in the pots and pans aisle of the kitchenware store. She's forgetting things, and she doesn’t emborder anymore. Her thin hair is falling out in larger clumps than remain. His hands shake. He used to fix things - he trained everyone in the state who fixes microscopes - but now he can't turn the knobs anymore or see the tiny screws. The last time I went home he jokingly confessed that for an entire day he forgot my name.

Day 64 - March 5

Today I wrote nothing.

Day 65 - March 6

It is one a.m. and I suppose it is technically the 6th and a light just went on in the kitchen. It is pitch dark both up and down the stairs. There is a sound of the fridge opening and I hear rather than see as the pitcher of filtered water is pulled out. I don’t hear anything else until it is put back and I wait for at least 5 minutes, but no one comes back up the stairs. The logical solution is grandparents who would be going downstairs instead of up, but my brain is telling me ghosts instead.

Day 66 - March 7

There are diamonds in the snow. Only the dog notices. The teddy bear barks at the beagle next door, who is barking at the orange cat crossing the circle. The cat is digging around for the diamonds. Last summer that cat used to come to the back door and stare at me for hours. I named it dreamsicle, because I thought that’s what the popsicles were called as a child. Perhaps it is a magic cat, and the shiny diamonds belong to it, so it is here to reclaim them.

Day 67 - March 8

She has frizzy auburn hair pulled up in a high ballerina bun and I wonder if she fits the stereotype of waiting tables to get into acting. Some older man nearby is complaining about the setting sun through the window and asks her to close the blinds. When she does he complains that they are too sheer to block any light and her hand is starting to twitch by the time she moves him to a different table. It’s true the blinds are sheer, and the sun is at a point where it shines right in, but the was no light hitting the other side of his table.

Day 68 - March 9

Does anyone actually live in those tiny towns? The ones set intermittently between the farmland. There are farmhouses on the hills in the distance and one or two homes tucked between the diner and the brick store that makes keys, but there never seems to be anyone there. It’s warm enough, and there is no snow on the ground but either everyone is always inside or never really there.

Day 69 - March 10

Today I wrote nothing

Day 70 - March 11

The short one sits on the top bunk, legs crossed and a laptop commuter creating a wall between them and the world. The tall one is on the floor, asking questions. Not difficult questions, but questions with many possible answers, and it is important to pick the right one. She seems unusually small looking down on her, and her roommate looms over her like a guru on a mountain, protected by a wall most dare not cross. Neither of them knows how to speak, only move mouths.

Day 71 - March 12

We can't look each other in the eye, the text says, and her eyes skim over a hand raised in the front row. A student in the second-row doodles stars and eyes on the side of her notes. We go through the same turnstiles at Walmart, but we don’t know each other anymore, she says, and a student tucked in the corner audibly scoffs as she compares the failing health of our souls to an apocalypse. Another is falling asleep and we all watch for his head to hit the table.

Day 72 - March 13

Bird number one is chirping a familiar pattern; two long notes, one high one low. Bird number two replies with a series of short chirps that would be recognizable to someone more skilled in bird languages. They have been communication than some humans. Do different birds sing in different languages? Would a chickadee understand a goose? There are still dried leaves on the ground.

Day 73 - March 14

Looking out a window into the roof of a building: And it's more dizzying than anything should be while sitting on a couch. It's not raining, but there is a puddle on the roof from the last time it rained, Or possibly from melted snow, an indent in the roof itself, And there should not be water dropping into it, But the small rings still appear.

Day 74 - March 15

Today I wrote nothing.

Day 75 - March 16

In the summer grass is green, and sometimes it doesn't die so it stays green through October and November, and that one time in December when it just wouldn't freeze. In the winter there is snow, but the green grass still might show up if it melts or takes to long to fall. In the spring it should be growing back but all we've got are crusty leaves and grass that looks more like hay than anything.

Day 76 - March 17

He walks like he has somewhere to be, but he is dressed like that somewhere is his bed. Not just sweatpants, but pajama pants and a long sleeved tee-shirt I didn't know he owned. If he had any hair, it would stick up in all directions. He's going downstairs but his room is on the fourth floor and I wonder if he knows it's Saturday or if he sees us sitting here. He would use the word somnambulist.

Day 77 - March 18

One side of the lake is shimmering silver. The other is nearly green. The first seems to be moving more than the other, but that’s impossible. Telling yourself something is impossible does not make it easier to process. Telling two parts of the same shoreline they should be the same does not make them so. The dark blue line at the edge of the horizon disappears at some point but it is hidden behind his head and a tree. Well, behind a tree which appears to be beside his head but is actually 20 feet away.

Day 78 - March 19

The wind through a window, open just a few inches: Louder and colder than outside. A low warbling. Like something is out there that does not belong to this world, or any world where people are safe to go outside in the wind. When closed further it changes to a high-pitched whistle of the whining sea. They say the wind howls and that’s true, but it also drones like an alarm. Or maybe a siren of a different variety is calling from the lake.

Day 79 - March 20

Today I wrote nothing

Day 80 - March 21

She'd been standing at the sink already for at least a few moments, looking towards the door I just came through but she barely acknowledges I'm there, looking straight through me. I don’t bother trying to get her attention just walk past into my room. I can hear when she finally turns the water off a few moments later, but no footsteps leading her away. I prefer to assume they exist than to consider the alternative.

Day 81 - March 22

She takes a deep breath in. Loud and shaky. Their hands are trembling at their side and she releases her breath in as slow a huff as she can manage when she can't hold it any longer. Sitting cross-legged on her bed she is higher than the standing figure, but not by much. They clench their fists and it hurts a bit because they haven't clipped their fingernails in a while.

Day 82 - March 23

The halls are empty this time of night, enough that the lights are off now, but they will turn on when I walk past. It's quiet all over the building with the exception of the one room now experiencing a mass Exodus of chatting students heading home after game night. I don’t think they see me turn down a hallway deeper into the building as they amble towards the doors.

Day 83 - March 24

Outside, the wind hits with unexpected force and ferocity. Enough to push a small enough person off the sidewalk if they aren't prepared. The sheer sound nearly drowns out the steady whir of construction and crash of the waves. In the street, dry brown leaves are performing an elaborate ballet. Inside, the silence is nearly as deafening as the sound.

Day 84 - March 27

Today I wrote nothing.

Day 85 - March 26

Can you eat a banana from off the ground? It is fully sealed, the skin- is it called skin?- still intact as it lies on the ground in a ditch. I suppose I wouldn’t want to eat anything out of a ditch, but monkeys will eat bananas that have fallen on the ground. Though they also eat the peel - that’s the word: peel, because we humans always peel it off. Now it feels wrong to have called it skin - we don’t eat the peel so I could peel it off and eat this street banana but I walked past it like 5 minutes ago so now I suppose it is too late.

Day 86 - March 27

It's so still today. Unnerving, it's been so long since the last time it was this calm. No wind. Nothing moves, not the trees, not the leaves, even the lake has never been this still. An involuntary, eerie shiver overtakes their body, but not from cold. It is the warmest it has been in months today. The lack of a wind chill. No one else seems to notice, possibly too caught up in the busyness of mid-terms, but they don’t seem to be in any rush. The calm stillness extends even to the people they pass and they don’t pass many at that.

Day 87 - March 28

Dandelion is an asshole. Write on skin with the ink that nearly caused a breakdown yesterday but today seems to be a savior. Fought with Mauve last night. Can't speak with her today, not for lack of trying. Her bed still smells like lavender and it still gives me migraines but I can't tell her that.

Day 88 - March 29

The fog always serves to blend the lake into the sky. With the absence of a clear horizon line, the only way to tell the difference is the sun peeking out high in the clouds and its broken reflection close to the shore. The smell of grass and the first case of petrichor this year.

Day 89 - March 30

Nearly a month ago I walked this same path and wrote of someone sitting on that bench and tonight there is. On one hand I know that many people probably sit here, but the moon is large in the sky above us and the déjà vu is stronger than it normally is.

Day 90 - March 31

Driving through the middle of the marsh: water on either side less than 15 feet away there are ducks chilling in the marsh. One pops its head up as we drive by. The water level is nearly lined up with the road and there is no clear reason it doesn’t just flow out and cover the street. When it rains this road must flood, but it hasn’t rained up here in over a week.

Days completed:

26/31

#my writing #poetry #prose #short form literature #daily writing #writing challenge

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cloverpunkwrites · 7 years

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February

Challenge: Photobook

(Take a photo and write about it, related photos at instagram: @cazifraz)

32 - Feb 1

Is it stupidly cheesy to take pictures of an eye? They say eyes are the window to the soul. I always figured it was eyebrows. But I worry the exhaustion and anxiety in this eye is obvious. She always said they were my best feature. Called them cornflower and gave me an exasperated look when I said cornflower would be more indigo. Her eyes were lovely, dark and deep, but I had promises to keep, and still have miles to go before I sleep, years to go before I sleep.

33 - Feb 2

He was supposed to guard a campsite. Perhaps his hoard was leaves, or tents, or sleeping campers. There are very few such things in February. Now he seems to hoard leaflets, tables, and camper show visitors who didn’t get enough sleep last night. It's been many, many years since I've been able to call myself a camper.

34 - Feb 3

It was an accident, swinging a drying water bottle. Better than punching it with my hand, no little glass shards. I thought they looked a bit like tears.

35 - Feb 4

"What's the deal with the two different socks?"

"Oh, don't you know? That's the style now."

"I mean, honestly I just lost the companion of each and thought they could be a pair now. But sure, that's the style now."

36 - Feb 5

I took the picture because I thought it looked like a dragon, gliding along the ice, her long wings attached behind her ready to lift her into the sky. Where is she going? Do you think she would let me join her on her grand adventure? Or is she going home too?

38 - Feb 7

I see signs of spring under the smooth sheets of snow and clouds. Not in grass or leaves or flower buds, but in the color of the sky. Soft steel that's more blue than gray. Ice floats on a bright lake and that means more than green could at this point.

Day 39 - Feb 8

There is a special kind of Nostalgia for a time and place you have never actually been. It's different for everyone.

For me, it’s the middle of the country, surrounded by trees and a small mid-century home. It's warm, late summer, and the sun has just gone down, and the fireflies are coming out and I'm not afraid of them, of any part of nature. There is only peace and calm. I'm sitting on a porch reading Emmerson or Hemingway or Elliot. I exist.

Day 40 - Feb 9

The most beautiful moments happen at night, outside when it's dark, lit only by street lamps. Snow falls gently on your hair and coat past wedges of light cast on the ground. Photos cannot capture it. But they pick up the heavy streak of light stretching around you.

Day 41 - Feb 10

We all read Myths under the stars. Many different stories, for many different reasons, and with many different outcomes. Barthes says "One is a writer the way Louis XIV was a king, even on the chaise percée". I think sometimes I'd like not to be because good ideas only come in the shower.

Day 43 - Feb 12

The brightness, whiteness, is blinding from any angle bouncing around unhindered like a bright light shining on a white wall. It cannot be stopped by camera or window or the lens of the human eye, it burns through us as if we were looking directly at the sun, and we are trapped by its unsubtle message.

Day 44 - Feb 13

I am hit with the sudden image of a similar row of trees on the western property line of my parents' house. They are much younger and smaller, the tallest barely talker than me and the rest significantly shorter. But I recall the way they look just lightly dusted with snow, and in my mind I am moving between them with a string of holiday lights my sister and I are helping my father to hang, and a few of them are so close together we have to pass the cord from one side to the other, and we run out of lights half way up the last, tallest tree.

Day 45 - Feb 14

I'm too sick to think of anything clever to say

This is my only view for the day.

The worst part about being sick at college,

Is being sick at college.

Day 47 - Feb 16

It is the many lines that attract us to natural things. A quality of shapes and forms and ideas they have that we cannot replicate alone. Humans are drawn to the horizon because we cannot see beyond it, to the branches because they form shapes we didn't know lines could make, to the shadows because their lines match ours.

Day 48 - Feb 17

The college student's sense of humor is truly a miracle. The ability to joke about things they don't even mean to be funny. Every exam is a personal apocalypse, every day at work 3 hours in hell. A popular joke here is the ease with which any of us could just walk into the lake and not come back. It's a Christian campus, but I wonder how many of them are even participating in lent.

Day 49 - Feb 18

I forgot to turn on my light in my room, and was meet with an indigo sky visible from my dark room. This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if this is all a dream. What kind of physics and brain chemestry could create an effect like this? A bright night with a strange colored sky.

Day 50 - Feb 19

I worry you can tell most of my photos of the outdoors are actually taken through a window. It’s not that I don’t go outside, but I don’t think anyone wants to be out there in the middle of winter. Yes the snow and frost and empty branches are beautiful, but they bring with them a sharp stinging wind I am not brave enough to face often, especially for the amount of time it takes to pull out my camera and take a well framed photo.

Day 52 - Feb 21

Something about this outdoor classroom seems to have Ghibli qualities. It makes me want to pack a small bag and run away into the wilderness, crying nearly gelatinous tears, that look the way crying feels. This is another type of complicated, intangible nostalgia.

Day 54 - Feb 23

We used to have this thing called average adult life goals, things like having an apartment where we could play music without headphones or walls that we could decorate with pictures of our lives. Sometimes it seemed to be implied it would be a shared life. She seemed to think we'd be dinking together as adults. I think an average adult life goal I'm particularly excited for is forgetting your high school best friend.

Day 55 - Feb 24

I've been meaning to take a picture of this chair for days. They have them set out all over the campus. They used to only have a few out on the beach, and they would bring them in the winter. Last fall we all saw these new ones everywhere and it was nice for a while. People would sit outside in the glaringly red chairs and that was nice. I figured they would bring them in for the winter, but they stayed out through November and December even though no one used them anymore. In January it finally snowed, and the chairs were white for a few days. Then the snow melted. Then it fell, and then it melted. Sheets of ice still sit around this chair as it looks out on the lake.

Day 56 - Feb 25

I crave the freedom that stability will grant me. I've convinced myself that I would be ok stuck behind a desk forever if it meant I had the freedom to forget about the desk when I wasn’t there. I crave instability because it is an adventure, but I am scared. I hope that short bursts of stability will give me freedom to attempt instability.

Day 57 - Feb 26

I have what seems to be the opposite of a green thumb. I was supposed to have sprouts by now, but all I have is slightly moldy plastic dinosaurs. This lid that was supposed to keep in moisture has only distorted the view of my failure at plant life.

Day 58 - Feb 27

Derrida was a natty dresser, she says, well put together. She claims she once rode in an elevator with him. She found him lacking in a mustache to twirl. It was she who brought up the idea of coercion, if you will recall.

Day 59 - Feb 28

He tells me there is something sad about a little bit of spinach sticking out of my sandwich. Like a tiny arm reaching out into the cold universe. I think he's overly pretentious.

Days compleated:

23/28

#my writing #poetry #prose #short form literature #daily writing #writing challenge

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cloverpunkwrites · 7 years

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January

Challenge: Royal We

(Replace I with we)

New - 1

We pretend it's impressive, and special, we pretend we don't do this every night anyway. We pretend that this actually means something. We make promises we will forget and resolutions we don’t intend to keep. We keep our neighbors up with noise and lights to hold them to the same goal we expect of ourselves. To be New this year.

Wolf Moon - 2

The January moon is named for the wolf. Perhaps a little joke about Werewolves who would spend more time transformed during these months with longer nights. Or perhaps not. We suppose most people don’t spend as long as us thinking about werewolves.

Merry-Go-Round - 8

Why does home always seem to be wherever one is not? When we are in the house we grew up in, we want to be at school, but the rush of anxiety when we arrive back at school this time is worse than ever. The grass is always greener in some unknown location we have never actually seen, because something has to be better than this endless merry-go-round we are currently stuck on.

Melatonin - 11

We've never been a fan of drugs. Even helpful, prescribed medicine or over-the-counter cough syrup. Our roommate brought a bottle of chewable Melatonin to school, the kind that tastes like strawberries, and let us take one when we couldn’t sleep. No, not one, half of one, one third. The bottle got left behind, almost full. Tonight we take an entire tablet and sleep for a week, until we have to get up for work tomorrow.

Tempest - 12

Prospera is the best thing one can do for the Tempest. If we speak too often of the Tempest, it is because we feel the strongest attachment to it, as 1/4 of Ariel. The Ariel that was mad for freedom. Grant us our liberty from the Tempest, or we shall be as one of the devils released from hell. The most interesting relationship was always that of Prospera and Ariel.

Jewelry - 13

We've had pierced ears since we were 7. We got a jewelry box for our golden birthday. We own bracelets and necklaces and even a few rings. We wear none of them. Until today we wear all of them. No, not all. Earrings of Edgar Poe and a Raven. Three punk bracelets on one hand and two on the other. Our class ring fits on our middle finger in the winter. A necklace filled with gold. It's Punk, we say. It's for her, we think.

Snow - 14

We hate the winter. We hate it with every part of our soul. We hate the cold air and the dark skies and the slippery iced roads. This is what they mean by seasonal depression. But the snow. Oh, Deus de Caelo, the soft fresh snow falling gently past the streetlights at midnight lit from behind and sparkling like frozen glitter. This is what we mean by beauty.

Necklace - 15

They had 7 of them made from the gold they found in Alaska. One for herself, Two for two daughters, One for a future daughter-in-law, One for her mother, One for her brother's wife, One for little baby us - their only niece. Back when we were a niece, and our sister was less than a thought in our parents minds. We think part of the reason she loved them so much was because we knew early on, there would not be one for her. When she came of age, our grandmother took hers off for the first time in 20 years and passed it on. We wonder if she feels as guilty as we do about never wearing it.

Rut - 16

It’s almost strange how easily we fall into a rut, and one day blends into the next and the next and we spend our truly vast amount of free time worrying and being upset about the chunk of the next day that we will have to spend unhappily. And we look at our schedule and say soon we will be done but then we are done and we worry.

Horror - 17

Growing up we were not allowed to watch horror movies. Our parents didn’t like them and our sister was too easily scared. That was fine. We said we didn’t care about horror movies. We didn’t like to be scared, those things didn’t scare us anyway, and besides, they never have a good plot or characters. When we were 20 we saw the new IT movie with friends. We laughed though the entire thing and now we think we are fearless.

Pool - 18

It's like sitting at the edge of a pool with a bunch of others and no one is actually in the water and we really want to go in the pool but we don’t want to be the only one and we don’t know how to ask if anyone else wants to join us.

Fog - 21

Light cuts through the fog in half measures, but the headlights of one's car still try to break through the dense air and we can see the particles dancing like fairies, only in the places the light shines, like when the sun is setting in the evening and streams of light pour through the blinds on our window and the fairie particles get split as well.

Ash - 22

Like ash mistaken for snow, we cannot see the lurking fire making its way through the forest for the trees. One branch is a torch but two is catching, a tree is a bonfire but two are the woods. She burns and we burn and the forest burns, but when the ash starts to fall on the town everyone sees snow. One tries to warm us up. They burn too.

Soft - 23

If snow grew on the side of trees like moss, would we find it as beautiful when the western wind sticks it to them? The contrast of soft white frost brushed on dark bark. The lake moves slower and calmer than it has in months and we wonder if that color should be called slate or ash and we wonder if either of those properly capture the wintery green.

Sunrise - 25

We take extra care to wake early for the sunrise. The pink and orange rising over and reflecting off the white snow. After the long cold night the warm, bright sun makes us feel fresh and clean, and we are more awake than we have been in months, as if this one sun rise has dragged our very soul out of the dark. The sparkles on the lake are like old friends come to welcome us home to the light.

Won't - 26

What if we don't want to? What if we maybe, theoretically could, but it's hard and maybe not actually worth the effort, and so we just don't want to. Nobody listens to can't anyway, and they both lead to won't. What if maybe there was someone who did want to, and could, and would, maybe we should just leave it to them. But we don't want to do that either.

After - 28

There is always the next morning, when we wake up after a mental breakdown the night before, and we are more calm and refreshed than we have felt in months, because we let out something that had been building up, and maybe we can still feel the tears pricking behind our eyes but that comes second to the fact that the sun is shining and we survived another one. Those days after we are at our weakest are the days we most feel strong.

Useful - 29

We have brief moments of productivity, when safe and calm intersect with motivation and necessity. And in those moments we feel like a person again, rather than a soul being dragged through something almost like life. Even one hour of this makes us feel more useful and usefulness makes us feel more human. We know it will end, but the short bursts of ability more than make up for it.

Luck - 31

We missed the rare, beautiful, right up our alley, one night only event. Not that we would have had a great view of it. Everyone told us it would be the 31st, and most people assumed the night of. We assumed the night of. It was the morning of. The wee hours of the morning you can count on one hand. Even if we had known, we would have missed it. It was bad weather. But isn't it just our luck?

Days completed:

19/31

#my writing #poetry #prose #short form literature #daily writing #writing challenge

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