Category: “Prompt”ed Posts

Song Stream-Of-Consciousness

~ Sahara ~ 2 Comments

Three songs that are the most important to me

An exercise in the WordPress writing 101 exercises, just type and go for 15 minutes without stopping or editing or fixing or crossing out. So here we go.

It’s hard to pick three. The first one that comes to mind is Silent Lucidity by Queensreich. That was a big deal for me when I was a kid.  When I was in eigth grade. Dad was abusive and school sucked and I was lost.  That song made me feel like maybe I wasn’t so fucked up as I thought, but maybe everything else was fucked up. Maybe I was a normal reaction to a fucked up situation. I thought it was SOO deep, and I loved the voice of the woman plainly asking, “help me.”  Because no one was helping me at the time.

Continue reading “Song Stream-Of-Consciousness” →

The Morning it Started

~ Sahara ~ 2 Comments

His booted feet covered the dew-covered grass of the empty field until he reached the well-worn wooden bridge. The creek below was slightly swollen and the thick air around him hung low, promising  to entrap anything in its grasp. The smell of mud was strong around him, but the white gravel on the main road protected him from sinking too deep into it.

He continued off the main pebble-covered path to another bridge, this one covered by vines from nearby trees and adorned with plaid red and blue ribbons and bells. Here in the glen the trees were thicker, but so was the mud.

Continue reading “The Morning it Started” →

Remember the time… First kiss?

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

For the fair month of May, I remember my very first kiss. It was magic – the perfect first kiss for any teenage girl.

He was floppy haired and funny, and considered relatively cool among band kids. We’d been “going out” for a week, holding hands in the hallway and leaning on each other after practice.

One afternoon, he walked me home, about a mile, a mile and a half from his house. We hung out in my carpeted kitchen in roller-footed chairs, drinking Cokes. As the evening fell and his time to leave approached, the unspoken expectation rose.

Continue reading “Remember the time… First kiss?” →

Here Comes Sexy Us

~ Sahara ~ 9 Comments

Instead of asking myself what advice I wish someone had given me one, two, five or 10 years ago, as today’s prompt suggests, I am going to speculate about what I’ll look back on in one, two, five or 10 years and wish I had gotten.

Leave the job. To be fair, I get that one now, and have gotten it for a while now. Thanks, mom.

It’s okay to work another job that’s not “higher up” on a career ladder. Is it getting you closer to what you what to do? Then okay. Actually, I don’t know if this is true. And, unfortunately, I won’t know until after I do it and fuck up. I hate those kinds of lessons.

Write. You want to write. Don’t deny it, Sahara. Do it. Write. Here is it, 10 years later, and you still want to write.  Look back on 10 years of stories and novels. Do it.

 

Good tips here

A Coffee Enema – Different things work for different people. As a marathoner, I appreciate the analogy given here.

My Advice if you are starting out – Success comes after a lot of not success. Do it. Have that “not success.”  And if you say it right, “success” sounds like “sexy us.”

 

Favorite Rituals (and Nothing Gets Slaughtered)

~ Sahara ~ 1 Comment

Sacred: “means revered due to association with (with something) considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspiring are or reverence”

I believe that all rituals, religious or otherwise, are sacred. Rituals connect us to a deeper current within humanity, something we are all connected to, and I think that current is God, or part of God. So I love rituals, though I don’t often focus or think about their place in my life. Therefore, I’m glad to think about them in this (albeit late) response to a daily prompt.

Continue reading “Favorite Rituals (and Nothing Gets Slaughtered)” →

I think, therefore I exercise

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

One of the blogs I follow, The Seekers Dungeon, posted this exercise (I’ve taken some editing liberties):

Simply sit still with your spine as straight as possible.  Close your eyes and slowly count backwards from 10 to 1 while following your breath.  After you reach 1, continue to watch your breath.  You will notice thoughts coming and going but try not to be bothered by them, just keep coming back to the breath. If you are like 99% of the population,  after sometime you will have forgotten that you are meditating at all as you become lost in thought on some specific matter.  tell us about the thought that you got lost in.  What is the story behind it?  The person behind it?  The emotion behind it.

After you are finished writing, don’t hit publish right away.  Take your post as a continuation of your meditation and breathe through it.  Is every word correct?  Are you clear in what you are trying to say? When you feel that you’ve completely fleshed out your ideas then hit publish, sit back, and relax.  Good job!

Continue reading “I think, therefore I exercise” →

Don’t be scurred

~ Sahara ~ 4 Comments

When I do something scary or stressful, as was asked by today’s Daily Prompt, I like to do it alone.   I love my family and friends, of course, and I like knowing that they’re supporting me, but beyond that, I’d prefer to be alone.

In a tense or stressful moment, I am building up as much strength inside me as I can and I don’t want to be distracted by other people. Like, if I’m upset, I want to be alone to cry ugly without worrying about bring judged (which I would and do – it’s called cry ugly for a reason.)

Continue reading “Don’t be scurred” →

Squeezing My Arms Around… Flash Fiction

~ Sahara ~ 4 Comments

This is my first attempt – ever – at writing flash fiction.

“Oh, shut up! You wouldn’t know a fucking thing about how to beat these guys, pretty boy.” Lorali snarled to the boy on the stairs – I still didn’t know his name.  He looked at his friends and laughed. “I don’t owe you shit, boy,” she continued, “and I’m never gonna finish squeezin’ my arms around the truth.”

I was struck by the last expression as I remembered where I’d heard it before.

I moved closer to Lorali and whispered to her, the first time I’d dared get so close. “He’s the one that did that to you.” She looked at me in surprise and didn’t have time to cover the pain in her eyes. Suddenly her cruel features were made soft.

How did I do?

A way of keeping my wedding memories

~ Sahara ~ 4 Comments

As I talked about in my 36/36 challenge, one of the things I wanted to do this year was scrapbook my wedding memory stuff.  Not the photographs, per se, but the cards and other little odds and ends we had gotten over the course of the (barely) year that we spent planning it. So really, it’s a memory book, not a scrapbook in the traditional sense.

DSC03220

Continue reading “A way of keeping my wedding memories” →