wrioting prompt

Glimmer

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Early mornings on the balcony of the rented condo.  I have, quietly so others can sleep, made a pot of coffee, and poured a cup.

The cool morning air ruffles the hem of my nightgown and I sip coffee as the sun rises.  Its warmth matching the colors of the sky – red and orange and gold – glimmers of light bouncing off the water.

My skin is tight and pink from yesterday’s sun and my hair is wild from restful sleep to the rhythm of the tide. I smell like coconuts and vanilla.

I get up for a second cup of coffee and my phone.  I want a photo of this sunrise, just like yesterday and just like tomorrow.  Each seems a mystery just for me.  From darkness comes light and then color and then awe.  I try to capture it never quite succeeding.  I should get the good camera, but I’m too lazy to fool with lenses and aperture and fstops.  The morning is too easy, too wrapped in zen for doing.

Every day, on the balcony, bearing witness to the glimmers of peace.  Of hope.  Of tranquility. Steeped in a cup of good coffee, its warmth echoing the sun. Every year the journey to the beach with good friends.  Laughter and good food and strong sun.  The occasional storm in which the mysteries of the universe ramp up the glimmer and it explodes, wiping the sand clean of footprints.

Witnessed from the balcony – my place in the early morning, my place in the evening.  I begin and end my days with glimmer – sunlight on the water, moonlight on the water, the phosphorescence of breaking waves.

Glimmer.

Bumblebee

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Photo by Carolien van Oijen on Unsplash

Life is tricky baby, stay in your magic.

According to what we know about thermodynamics, bumblebees should not be able to fly.  Tell that to the bee buzzing around your garden.

Be a bumble bee and vibrate to the rhythm of your impossible flight.

My yoga teacher says that our ability to walk is nothing more than beginning to fall and catching ourselves again and again.  All you need is balance. Balance, I believe, is the secret to happiness. If you can offset the mundane with the magic, contentment arises. Being aware that there is both good and bad in the world, that there will be shitty days and shitty experiences followed by those little blessings of magic and miracles not to mention the times of euphoria and joy.  If you can balance and keep from falling, it’s all good.

Sometime during mid-pandemic, I purged from my Facebook all of the chronically angry, sarcastic, more-concerned-with-throwing-sharp-barbs-than-uplifting people from my Facebook.  What a blessing I gave myself to turn off those voices.  I have my own angry, sarcastic, and pointed barbs to mute, I don’t need others broadcasting unfettered into my head.  I believe we have an obligation not just to ourselves, but to others to promote the magic.  Trekking through the mud and the mire slinging it about serves no purpose other than to make one feel bad and inflict that pain on others.  Hurt people hurt people.  Staying in one’s magic can be difficult because we’re all hurt people and there are as many ways to hurt others as to hurt oneself. 

Life is tricky, stay in your magic.  Don’t let the buzzkillers kill your buzz. 

Victim

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The man looked at her for a long time – beginning at her face and traveling down her body to her feet.  His grin was salacious, and she visibly shuddered.

“Whatsa matter, darling?  I’m just admiring you.  Don’t be cruel.”

Glenna did her best to ignore him, but his slurred words and unsteady gate indicated an excess of alcohol that wasn’t about to be deterred. 

Photo by Nicola Fioravanti on Unsplash

“Aw, c’mon.  Smile for me.  You’d be much prettier if you would smile.”

“I have no obligation to be pretty for you or for anyone else,” she erupted.  She knew better than to respond but she was tired of men who behaved as if she owed them something.  And coming from one she didn’t know at all just punched all of her buttons.

“Now sweetheart, I meant no offense.  You are just a fine example of womanhood and I’m just an admirer.”

“Go away.  Now.”

“I can tell when I’m not wanted.”  To her surprise and his credit, he did turn around and begin walking in the opposite direction. He raised his right hand, middle finger extended, without turning around.  Relief surged through her body.  Now that he was gone, she took out her phone and pulled up Maps.  She was well and truly lost.  Thank God for GPS.  Her phone would know where she was even if she didn’t.  She began walking a few steps in one direction and then another to get her bearings on the map.  It looked like she needed to turn left at the next corner to get to her car. 

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The Lyrics Acquisition Stage (Piaget’s Theory Amended)

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The Master, Leonard Cohen, wrote this in 1984.

I’ll be 70 in 7 years and the 70s were my playground. I was 10 going on 11 when they started.  It was then that I discovered the power of music to inspire, soothe, invoke love, and provoke dance.

Piaget’s Theory of the Four Cognitive Periods of childhood development are Sensorimotor stage (0–2 years old) Preoperational stage (2–7 years old) Concrete operational stage (7–11 years old) Formal operational stage (11 years old through adulthood).  Piaget was a famous Swiss child psychologist.  My friend Dale always maintained that the Fourth Stage was The Lyrics Acquisition Phase followed by the Operational Stage as the Fifth.

I agree.

I came of age during the 70s and the early 80s.  Didn’t dive into real adulthood, whatever real might mean, until I was 25.  Before that, I was a party girl.  Party girl in the sense that I was out with friends all the time — all the time — loading lyrics into my brain.  We were dancing, we were at concerts, we were cruising around listening to the car stereo, we were in someone’s basement listening to Pink Floyd until 2, 3, and 4 a.m.

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