We’d been looking for weeks. We knew where we wanted to live, but most communities just didn’t feel right, houses too far apart, others lined up like soldiers all wearing the same uniform. So when we pulled into this neighborhood, something in the way the houses gathered, friendly and welcoming, each with its own personality, and the way the streets meandered through ponds and trees, inviting us to choose this place, we knew we had found our home.
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Day 1
Memory of my first morning in Nepal. The year was 2009. I remember waking up early and hurrying upstairs into the hotel’s balcony. It was supposed to be a highlight of my stay. When I arrived and looked up, I frozed. The Himalayas in its full glory. For the first time, I understood what the word ‘majestic’ mean. Filled with awe and wonder, I felt wanting to bow down. Strange, I never was a submissive type. But the beauty, the grandeur, simply took my breath away. I gazed at the majestic mountain like being enchanted. I did not know for how long. Time stood still. Happiness and peace came together.
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A RETURN TO INNOCENCE
A fast fading fall cushioned the ground
we hid beneath the bare boughs
as our breath coalesced into soft incense.
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I cannot see what flowers are at my feet as we walk along in the meadows of beautiful Switzerland. The autumn colours are shining through all around me. The trees in all their red and orange splendour mirror themselves in the mountain lake. The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild, fast fading violets covered up with leaves. I look at you and all I see is kindness and beauty.
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The rural setting was foreign to my city led life. The restaurant, reminscent of the '50’s, authentic in booths and counter, not contrived to emulate an older time, exsisted unchanged since it’s beginning so many decades before, had no need to change for the sake of change. The waitress with gray hair and arthritic hands, offered the menu, as I wondered if she too, began on the opening day of the restraunt, and aged in place just as the furniture aged with no need to to be refurbished or exchanged for a newer model.
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Day Two:
So many times I’d passed this spot: the hillock with the lone tree, full of foliage in summer, a crackle of twigs and barren boughs like now, in the frostier months. Just as many times I’d wondered what lay beyond that rude crest of low brambles and rough earth chucked up by the seasonal cycles.
No gate, or sign, nor even an inconvenient threshold forbade my passing. A well-worn track, guttered, and verged against the frequent rains led my way to the mound. In and around, gullies and swales and ridges bereft of much more that scrubby bushes and twigglings of unknown origins, it was both desolate and fraught with beauty. I wound my way up to what, if anything, neither sure nor uncertain of expectation along the meager summit. And when I did get there, all I found was a view. The view was one of such epic proportions, I had to stay and wait. [you did say about 15-min.]
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The month of January moved slowly, like the eternity of waiting for Christmas when you are a child. The babe growing in me was strong, letting me know my eldest child eagerly awaited his arrival with kicks, punches, and stretches. How was I to know, thinking I knew what it would feel like to hold my firstborn that no one can describe that feeling, a second in time and space when a new soul announces its arrival with a lusty cry? How was I to know what it would feel like to have an amazingly perfect, wee boy child placed on my chest, to touch his pink cheeks, softer than the finest silk, dewy, and demanding I place it up to my face and plant the first of thousands of kisses there? How was I to know my world would shift on its axis and never be the same again? How was I to know?
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Barking dogs, clanging metal trash cans, foreboding alleyways, something furry racing across the deserted street and stopping at a pile of garbage against the curb for brunch, I must leave, but cannot. The ad for a room in the discarded newspaper I found promised a price I could afford. The overhead trolley screeched its way past. I was sorry to flick the stub of my last cigarette onto the street because it helped distract me from the odors that abounded. I held onto my half-empty bag of possessions and entered the apartment building with a flashing vacancy sign that had no light in the blackened letter c.
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Day One Prompt
Slick ice crunched under our cleats in rhythm with our meandering feet—a gaggle of middle-aged women forming an unintentional wall against the flow of walkers heading our way as we lost ourselves in animated conversation.
“It was totally covered up in leaves,” Marlene said, knocking a low hanging bough out of her way.
“Oof,” I grunted as the branch caught me on the rebound, embalming me in a shower of snow crystals.
“Sorry—I’m sorry,” Marlene giggled, brushing me off with short, brisk strokes.
A young mother shuffled past with three youngsters in tow, apologizing when the four of us were forced to press up against the thicket bordering the narrow trail. The eldest child clung tightly to the hand of a chubby toddler, pulling him forward when he would rather have stopped to regard us with wide eyes.
“The fact it survived all winter in the backyard like that—who would have thought,” Marlene continued with her story as we surged forward in group formation once again.
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My feet point in pink ballet slippers. I work through the high arch of my feet. I extend to the tips of my toes. “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet.”
I am strong with lipstick and pearl earrings. My too long hair swirls into a bun on top of my head, above my elongated neck.
I stand tall. “The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-trees wild.”
I pose in first, second, and fifth position. My arms grow East to West encompassing my Manifest Destiny. I sweep them like the willow tree grounded but free.
I squeeze my tush. I lift my head onto my spine. North to South, I jump like a spring and land, a forest mushroom.
I twirled for the first time at the age of sixty, my first pirouette. A complete turn after months of point, plieè, toe to knee, releveé, arm in, eyes front and spin. I landed a tipsy top, my bun askew. “The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”
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Hi everyone. I’m sorry. I think I went a bit overboard with this.
Even if I am, most of the time, a melancholic person, I always look back with absolute joy to all the great, happy memories I have. Most of them date back to my childhood.
My family and I used to spend two weeks every summer in this beautiful rural village in Tuscany. The house we rented for that period was small, surrounded by the grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; the scent of nature with all its nuances, fruity and floral all mixed together to create that peculiar aroma cam to become to me the aroma of summer. I can still smell it if I close my eyes and if I let my mind go back to that time.
And as I go back in time, I’m still there. The warm sun shining above me, I’m running trying to catch my sister, and I’m so mesmerized by the trees and their branches that seem to climb to the sky us I cannot see what flowers are at my feet.
My laughs mix with my sister’s laughs and with the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
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I think I was eight years old when we took that trip, my dad and I. We went to the big city on a rainy day, I dressed in my bellbottoms with a polka dot umbrella, my dad with a camera. “Smile,” he said. I smiled brilliantly. Looking back at the photo, I could not see what flowers were at my feet nor what soft incense hung upon the boughs of time. He died young, but that day is still as fresh as fast fading violets covered up in leaves.
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Very nicely done. I like it.
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I like this. Welcome to the group!
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Day Two:
(I had quite a few different ideas for this one, but somehow stuck with the below)
“First thing in the morning, I go on foot. Today’s site is closer to my home, and it’s much easier to walk than to go to the office and drive back with the company car. I take the main road then turn left into the road that runs by the river. The street lamps are still on; it’s not quite light yet. The guys on site would be just starting their shift. Two more turns and I arrive at a street lined with tall birch trees. I pass old townhouses with green neat lawns. Just like ours used to be. The houses seem quiet, but listen hard enough, and above the chirping of birds you’ll hear a dog’s bark, a baby’s cry, a closing of a patio door. Families living here. Like we used to live. I think of somebody waking up to hear the soft thudding of my safety boots on their sidewalk. I think of you and our long gone mornings and how your eyes used to be a most striking green. I pass the houses, hurrying up. What gives me right to be here? I reach the park at the end of the street, the grass, the swings, the big green slide, and there at the edge, beside the ivy-covered wall, the toyhouse, small and wooden and painted dark green. Finally the footpath ahead, the rev of a pickup, the morning shouts of the foreman, the barricade of the construction site. I take a moment to exhale, to dry up my eyes. I put on my high viz and my safety helmet, and I let myself through the gate. My hand slightly brushes the green netting around the fence, a different kind of green.”
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I remember a time I felt truly happy. I was playing football, ‘happy football.’ The happiness might have been the laughs when my fellow players and I tripped over the wet grass. At first, it was the morning dew that made us slip, then came the rain. As the raindrops fell, more or less so did we, one by one we laughed our hearts out, not caring about the final score. And I remember thinking to myself, “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, the grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild, White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine are all new to me for I am lost in play, I am lost in a world of bliss. What is this world? I want to live here forever.”
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Rippling breeze, two adults and two children climb the trail with spritely steps. The first of spring’s sun flashes through mountain ash, heaven bound. Golden beads of wattle dot the grey-green thicket. I cannot see what flowers will be at my feet, but my mind inhales the coming nectared wild. Blue Pincushion, Scented Sundew, Creamy Candle, Leopard Orchid. Then the kids tumble over rocks. Volcanic, cool. Voices follow bodies, fast fading in and out down caves and crevices. I drape myself over a boulder and receive the sun’s tincture, blue-tongue lizard like. A murmurous giggle haunts the morning. Nothing lasts forever, not even the paper-petalled Sticky Everlasting.
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Day Two
Daniel: I appreciate how brutal this was! I spent my fifteen minutes reading and rereading Wharton’s first sentence, trying to understand a sentence that was so far out of my league it dazed me. Anyway, I went with a too-close and faithful imitation. Thank you for this.
It was surely a hot burst to have met coming out. Sinuous air-ripples, oozey-tar and “stewards who expedite” were the airport’s hallmarks; and with each step on the tacky tarmac I became a wilted anemic follower, following last in a linear procession, in which the goal and target named Nairobi International Airport, which used to be serengeti before pasture, had derived into a concrete haven. Officials did not motion us into their queues; but they often screeched out to travelers in the middle of an earnest perusal, and the vagabonds had answered themselves, with dripping sweat, if the name on the passport were not easily read on page two.
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Day One: (Sorry I’m behind on this. I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s posts in this thread.)
Wild violets brush my ankles as I wander through the gate and across the dewy, unkempt lawn dotted with the delicate purple blooms, along with clover, dandelions, and other wildflowers I can’t identify. A wall of hedges, twice my height, surrounds the property like evergreen guardians, shutting out the harsh city noises and enclosing this serene expanse of wild nature. I can feel its peace seeping into my soul with each step. I close my eyes, breathing in the fresh fragrance of new-green foliage, the sun warming my cheeks, and know, deep in my heart, I have found my home.
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We lived on Third Street in Millville until I was about four. To the east of our white, lapped-board siding house with a wide front porch, typical for most coastal dwellings in northwest Florida, a few businesses stretched the length of the next block, remnants of the papermill boom around the turn of the century. To the west and down a slight hill lay Watson Bayou, but not before a rarely used section of railroad track, an empty lot used by local kids for a baseball field, a natural gas company with it shiny bright tanks waiting patiently for new owners, and finally on the bayou’s edge, a sewage treatment plant. Humble is the best descriptor. Yet, residing there a different spirit existed, a time when children could be children, and time moved at a slower pace.
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