Do you remember when...?
It's your turn to write for me!
Please leave a comment "remembering" something...
completely fictional...
that connects you and me...
maybe how we met...
even though we've never met...
or some other "memory"...
needn't be long...
in poetic form or not...
have fun making it up...
Thanks to Brenda for this meme:
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or don't really know each other) please post a comment and tell the story of a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory connecting you and me . It can be anything you want - good or bad ("good" is better for me, however) - BUT IT HAS TO BE FICTION. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you!
I'm waiting with bated breath...
But, please, don't take it too seriously!
Update:
Thank you all for the gifts you left here on my front step. Reading these stories and poems has been, and continues to be, an amazing experience, completely humbling and a source of joy.
If you choose to pick up this meme and post it on your own blog, please let me know.
Please leave a comment "remembering" something...
completely fictional...
that connects you and me...
maybe how we met...
even though we've never met...
or some other "memory"...
needn't be long...
in poetic form or not...
have fun making it up...
Thanks to Brenda for this meme:
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or don't really know each other) please post a comment and tell the story of a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory connecting you and me . It can be anything you want - good or bad ("good" is better for me, however) - BUT IT HAS TO BE FICTION. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you!
I'm waiting with bated breath...
But, please, don't take it too seriously!
Update:
Thank you all for the gifts you left here on my front step. Reading these stories and poems has been, and continues to be, an amazing experience, completely humbling and a source of joy.
If you choose to pick up this meme and post it on your own blog, please let me know.
posted by MB at 7:42 AM
35 Comments:
LAUGHING BLUEBIRD WITH BATED BTREATH: NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY
pizzicato feathers
tickle ribs;
taut
splitting sides
vibrate open;
distraught
spaces reveal
chromatic light;
fraught
stringing time
in minor keys;
wrought
darkness hides
between the lines;
caught
staccato breath
resolves the key;
sought
Someday I will learn to spell "Breath." promise.
Forgive the senior moment...puleeze! I just realized I was supposed to post this on my blog! Ohhhhhhh.
No no no, you're not supposed to post it on your blog -- post it here in the comments, just like you did. You can post the paragraph on your blog later if you want for others to write to you.
Wow! Chico! You are amazing! Muchissimas gracias!
Like I said! Senior moment! Ay!
The original title was:LAUGHING BLUEBIRD AND THE BASS PLAYER. ALSO...not to be taken too seriously!
I like that. Very fun, and very thought-provoking, thank you, chico.
You thought I wouldn't remember you, and I almost didn't. But then it came back to me. That motel pool in Idaho, I was the only little girl, my big brothers were playing too rough and diving. And you, a few years older, in a bright red swinsuit with a ruffled skirt, you came over. You had some keys that you dropped to the bottom of the shallow end, and we dove for them. You taught me how to blow air out of my nose, and dared me to keep my eyes open underwater, and turn a sumersault too. It got dark and the lights came on underwater, and our parents called us in. We promised to write, but we had no way to write down addresses. But I remembered.
Oh Zhoen, wonderful!
This conjures it all up so vividly... The motel pool, the suit, the lights... and the promise. And you remembered!
Thank you!
I remember loving seeing that the bluebird had flown by and that she too wrote poetry and left such nice comments on mine.
oh yes and that for awhile I thought moose was a guy.
rdl, yours is short and so sweet. As are all your comments. Thank you so much!
Ha!! I just read your second one. That really made me laugh. Yup, a lot of people did. It created some interesting conversations at times.
A twilight walk
alone with my
thoughts
Through the
dwindling light
another soul
beautiful
magical
treads my path!
Would that
I could speak
for fear
she might vanish!
alan
Ah, Alan, lovely! Yes, the twilight walk is very fitting. Thank you so much! (And don't worry, I have no plans of vanishing any time soon.)
You were entirely the most beautiful woman there, curls framing your face, flushed cheeks, bright eyes, a bodice laced up, the full satin dress like sumptuous fruit, edible. You laughed and sang in the midst of your many admirers; they clung to your every utterance with deep earnestness and the merest smile from you sent them into ecstasies. But I knew, in the midst of such lavish attention, your heart was elsewhere, dancing along the riverbank, beside your love, holding the hand of your beautiful child, singing with the cascading water, the birds, the breeze, the sweet flowers. You suddenly looked at me, watching you with admiration, and got up and came over and took my hand and we left the palace and climbed a hill and gazed at the moon in silence. We understood each other so well there was no need for words. We met as strangers and parted like sisters, like kin.
Goodness, your writing is so luscious, Brenda, like sumptuous fruit itself. What a richly told story!
Thank you!
In the English countryside in high summer, in green fields bordered with frothy banks of cow parsley and by hedges laced with dog-rose.
Mary, oh! The blooming English countryside in high summer, with you... a very lovely thought indeed! Thank you.
I remember when we were both TAs in the lit department at a big university in the midwest. There were a lot of us in the program (like 20), but for some reason, you and I connected right away. We recognized each other on the first day at one of the small cafes off campus, and had a really good laugh about the director of the masters program in lit. He was an older guy that insisted on wearing those sweaters with patches on the sleeves, and his office was morass of papers and books strewn everywhere. He could never remember anyone's name, and kept calling me by your name, and you by mine. We never corrected him either. It was so much fun.
RD, what a fun and mischievous story! The proverbial professor type, eh? And we never corrected him! Thanks for the laugh, my friend.
i remember when i took that walk up a snowy hill just as the sun was rising and suddenly a flock of doves rose up and took flight. the glittering wings and the sparkling snow blinded me for a minute and i closed my eyes against the wild brilliance. when i opened them, there you stood smiling with a bird feather in one hand and a sheet of music in the other. we turned and "meanwhile here in france" stepped out of the woods with her bass fiddle. she began playing something hauntingly beautiful. you and i sat on a log and harmonized from the sheet of music containing the words of a poem you'd just written. michelle came with her camera, porcelian cups and a pot of steaming lattes. we sat and drank and laughed and decided to call frankie in india on somebody's cell phone. then josephine surprised us by bringing each of us a blue eyed turk of our own and we hiked to a magic cabin where we enjoyed every fantasy that heretofore existed miles beyond anything we'd ever imagined. and then we all went our separate ways and lived happily ever after.
I was so excited and a little nervous as I sat in the coffeeshop at Eliott Bay Bookstore near Seattle's waterfront. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had been there almost 2 hours, reading a book of poetry I had brought with me and drinking hot tea spiced with cinnamon and cloves with a hint of orange.
I tried to imagine what your eyes might say, how your hair would frame them, wondering if you were as old as I, if you were the brunette I had seen so often in my mind. I wondered if I would immediately recognize you, if you would seem familiar to me somehow.
I chuckled thinking you might be surprised to find me here. We had written a few letters over the years but interestingly had never shared photographs. Suddenly there you were, being seated behind a table, almost obscured from view for a few moment by the stack of books piled high in front of you. There I was, first in line! Finally I would get my copy of *Find Me a Bluebird* autographed by MB Whitaker! I was so excited.
I walked to the table, and you smiled as you looked up and asked me what name to inscribe. I said "Sky" and returned your smile with a wink. You wrinkled your brow, put down the pen, and looked at me with mounting curiosity. I nodded "yes" as you stood up, and we embraced, laughing loudly about the years we'd spent getting to this place, this moment in time. After you finished your booksigning, I took you to a wonderful seafood restaurant overlooking the bay where we chatted for a couple hours, then off to Sea-Tac you flew en route to another signing in San Francisco.
A spring night reading at the poetry center in the city... People came early to drink tea or coffee and make certain of getting a seat.
There was a sense of belonging in the group people chatting as they waited for the reading to begin.
People began creating line poems
I heard the blue bird
and I knew it was you
I was Living Poetry and clicked a breath upon the Glittering Muse.
There, hovering in the sparkling air a single blue feather weaved its path above the ground.
I seek the bluebird here, following the path of the Owl, with the hope of making the one lost deep inside of me sing.
(Not entirely fiction, though:)
Snowsparkle, what a delightful, fanciful and sparkling vision you have woven together! Thank you!
Sky, your story is wonderful. I love the idea of sitting together chatting for a couple hours, overlooking the bay. Thank you!
Endment, I love that you mention a sense of belonging. And your last lines gave me a big smile. Thank you so much.
TLR, your last line makes me think of the last stanza of a poem I wrote Sept 28 as I was just beginning this blog... in the hopes of helping the one inside me sing and dance again. Oh, thank you.
We’d been running a conference in a big anonymous hotel out near Roissy. Exhausted, we were let out to play on the last day before going home and at once beguiled by the real Paris. We took each other’s photographs in front of the Louvre pyramid - the first time any of us had seen it - then sat for hours in a café, revelling in those suddenly personal and significant conversations that happen when you’re tired and relaxed after a stressful time. After a while American voices penetrated our self-contained circle and we sat back from our own concerns and turned to stare. A nice-looking man sat at the next table with his teenage daughter. She was telling him, intensely, about her music practice. They lived here, then – not tourists. This was confirmed when the waiter came and the girl broke into equally fluent French. How lovely, we agreed in undertones, to live abroad as a child and grow up bilingual. As we lingered on there chatting my eyes kept wandering to the father and daughter: interesting, intellectual, cosmopolitan people. Artistic too. The girl would grow up to be a singer or a poet, perhaps…
Ah, Jean, thanks. You really made me smile and brought back memories for me, for there are grains of truth in this one. My, how my tongue has grown rusty with disuse. (Oh, that's a bad image, isn't it!)
I sat sipping my very strong coffee with a sketchbook in front of me. There was a woman, head tilted over a slender book the way a bird watches to see whether it was a bug or a pebble.
She was so intent, thoughtful, I decided not to sketch her and just commit her gifted, focused attention to memory instead.
Did she see me?
Probably, but I never did see her look up at me.
the way a bird watches to see whether it was a bug or a pebble
Lori, thank you for this simply and deftly rendered story. I really enjoyed it. Reading these contributions has been an amazing experience. I'm still soaking it all in.
I sprawled in a plastic chair by the video-game machine, with a slice of pizza and my stack of new-bought books on the scarred table. I was hiding out for a moment, reading a children's book in French, ostensibly to learn French but really because I wanted an excuse to read the book again. Hiding for twenty minutes between leaving work and going home.
I noticed you, of course, and I glanced up at you occasionally. You were writing in a notebook; writing a few lines and then crossing them out with swift strokes, writing a few more and crossing out a few more. I liked the fact that you did both with the same earnest attentiveness. Not like someone making a mistake and trying to fix it. Like someone doing two necessary parts of a project.
You stood up and went to the window and looked at the sky. That's when I really took notice of you. You weren't glancing at it or checking the weather; you were really watching it, like someone would watch a play.
I struggled up into a more dignified position, but before I was upright you walked past. I watched you go out the door, turn the corner, and vanish. Oh well.
Ten minutes later, when I in turn got up to go home, I saw that you'd left a sweater in the booth. I picked it up and took it to leave with the girl at the counter. It smelled just faintly of cinnamon.
Oh, Dale. Are you sure you didn't keep it? Because that was a pretty good story... and because you always have something up your literary sleeve.
Thank you for the big grin I have on my face now.
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