#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Dreamy Charles River Morning View
Still, the beautiful warm mugginess. I actually love these September days, letting summer last and leading me to the water to swim for such delicious refreshment, with enthusiasm and energy and growing strength in my strokes and friendship, too, this shared joy with my daughter. But first, there was my morning walk, early with the dogs, and the dreamy river Charles waking into warm fogginess. And then, reuniting with my Farm Pond Writer's Collective - a lovely lunch to reconnect and regather after summer break and talk-talk-talk it out so that when we meet next week to start our writing sessions everyone will be ready to talk less, write more. Over soup and salads, we talked of summer gains and losses, travels and trials, births and deaths, recoveries and rebirths. We begin our fourth year of writing together. And, then, the swim, meeting my daughter on my friend's sunlit raft on the pond, and before swimming, needing to listen to her download, and all the impulses running like electric charges through my veins, to want to fix and fuss, control, but stopping myself, breathing, just listen, Kelly, just listen. And then, sending out the right thread that connects, common ground, and we're friends, friends who can talk and listen and agree on so many things, and understand. So, happily, just swim. We swam to the floating brick house and back, we felt strong and connected and grateful. Cheerful and hopeful and energetic. Tonight, I led my small online group of writers, we meet once a month, and I shared a poem on quilting and an article on writing a braided essay, and then I gave a writing prompt, part of which I share below, my own writing from my own prompt, just this piece of spontaneous writing about a bike ride I took two days ago:
In the past week, describe a moment when you felt “hot” – where are you? where in your body do you feel heat, how is it activated? what are you doing? where are you?
cycling through the neighborhood of my childhood home, a bike ride across town, Maple Street to Harrington Ridge, to Dexter Drive and down Course Brook, the hill, the hill, past the houses of my daughters’ best friends from their childhood, swing right and pedal past the brook running where we got our feet soaked playing pioneers and then god, oh god, they tore down the house, one of the oldest in town, from the 1600’s for god’s sake the Laverack’s house, the old farmhouse, it’s gone, and only it’s tiny shell, stone kitchen stands, the original, and the rest of the ground the house spread itself over the decades and centuries, cleared, now up the hill, around the bend, past my parent’s driveway, 44 Brush Hill, they’re long gone and so am I, except I moved back here, and then back across town, and past the house my brother built and lived in and sold on their front field, you see these trees? where we played house, here on the quiet street, our bikes were cars then, station wagons, full of the kids we’d some day have
