Ten Minute Writing Adventure
I’ve decided to restart my blog, yes - about time I agree.
It’s doing Natalie Goldberg’s ‘Writing Down The Bones’ course online that has kicked my arse into gear and last week one of the facilitators, Dorotea Mendoza, gave us a 10-minute writing prompt.
I was surprised by what I wrote and it has opened my eyes and lightened my heart. Give it a go and see what you come up with.
This is mine, unedited, straight from the heart to the page.
“Tell us a place you need to return to”
The safety of your arms, the comfort of your smile, the warmth of your body, the touch of your skin, the smell of your flesh, the weight of your love.
But this cannot be, but at least now I can write about it.
After 22 years.
I never realised it would take this long, I imagined a shorter journey, a smoother extraction, a braver admittance. But no, it turns out I’m not ready ‘till I’m ready.
Was it the Tarot card reader, that evening in Rome? God Elaine, what an old hippie-gypsy I sound - but yes, I am a gypsy. I wander, I have wandered, I will wander. But in the end it seems, despite my drunken ramblings and fumblings, I return to you.
But this is a fruitless journey, a fruitless and pointless direction to take. I turn on the spot, I dig a hole, I dig my grave, I prepare the ground. Is this what this is all about? Returning to you? In death?
‘I am an atheist,’ you declared in the convent today, gazing judgementally at the gold and glory, the effigies, the statues, the relics, the pews, the altar.
‘I am an atheist,’ you say, like a line from a Sex Pistols rant against the moon.
Returning to you? Not yet. I have more wandering to do, more gypsying to do until that happens, until that comes to pass.
What country where? What town? What house? What apartment?
I have no answers to that, which is why I wander and why I am unable to return.