Returning
A prompt about internal and external settings
Hello, dear readers.
It’s been a minute.
I’ve missed sharing writing prompts with you, but I took some time off for some much needed rest: a little retreat, as it were. I’ve also been busy planning and promoting my upcoming week-long writing retreat in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island (WA). If you’re interested in this September retreat, please let me know, because it looks like I only have one spot left! And if you can’t join us, consider a weekly writing workshop, online or in person!)
Now I’m returning, restored and ready to write with you again. So it seems fitting that this week, the writing prompt is about setting: both internal and external.
My mentor, Pat Schneider, used to say that going on a writing retreat wasn’t just about getting to work, but about taking time away to reflect and to dream. Getting away, in this sense, is about returning, not escaping. Getting away is sometimes about getting closer to your self, and to your own writing.
Pat addresses this directly in today’s writing quote, from her book, Writing Alone and With Others:
You need to be where you can go in and out of sleep, waking, dreaming, floating half between sleep and consciousness. . .with a very specific journey in mind: to get from where you are to the secret that lies at the heart of your writing.
In the first three days [of a retreat]. . .I read, sleep, walk along the shore or in the woods. I sleep, daydream, sleep, all the while knowing I am gently, gently, going toward my writing.
This week, I’m inviting you to write about a specific place, and to use sensory details and description to transport yourselves back to a location (and an internal experience). To return to a place where you felt permission to daydream, to sleep, to imagine your life in the future. Maybe it was a place where could step back from the hustle and bustle and stop thinking for awhile. Maybe it was a place you imagined living. For me, it was Spain, which is why I chose the poem, “Corrida,” by Elizabeth Haukass for this today’s poem.
No matter what place you write about—or if you decide to write with me online or on that beautiful island of San Juan—I hope the simple act of writing itself will transport you, will give you the refresher you might need right now.
The Prompt:
Answer these questions:
Where would you wake up tomorrow, if you could wake up anywhere?
And why this place in particular? Start with a short list if you like, but write down whatever comes to mind: don't edit or overthink this.
Now tell us about this place, give us details, make us love this place too.
What I wrote in response:
I didn't get enough time in Sevilla. That might be the most bourgeoisie thing I've ever written, but it's true. Being in El Centro, near the Cathedral was fabulous; I discovered a great vegan restaurant that even my meat eating companion (somewhat) enjoyed, a rooftop bar with a fantastic view of the square, and a gift shop that sold a huge array of orange products: oils, chocolate covered dried fruit, lotions, even candles. Sevilla is crazy about its oranges: the trees grow everywhere and line the streets, large globes nestle in the dark leaves, and litter the ground.
I sat in the square one evening as the sun set, and watched the swallows swoop and chirp just above my head, like aerial acrobats. We bought coconut ice cream from a vendor in a tiny red hut on wheels.
The medieval streets that weave through the buildings, the shopping district near Las Setas: that huge, wild, mushroom shaped building, the largest structure made entirely of wood in Western Europe, with its jazz club downstairs, and its rooftop walkway. We had dinner at 10:30 p.m., like locals: the chewy white bread soaking up the oil from the anchovies and cured tuna, potato and cheese croquettes so light and crispy, a bowl of spicy green olives, a glass of crisp white wine for 3 Euro. A plate of butter cookies for dessert.
We saw a Flamenco show at the dance school, but the real Flamenco happened on a large wooden board laid over one of the mosaic tiled patios in the Plaza de España, with its impressive half-moon courtyard the size of a football field, and blue and white tiled bridges curving over canals.
But there was so much to see that I didn't get to. The modern Calatrava suspension bridge in the distance gleaming and white, the Jewish quarter with its history of endurance and also suffering, all the cafes and shops along the river. I liked waking up there, though, when the city was still asleep, and heat hadn't yet threatened to chase us into the shade. I liked hearing Spanish spoken softly; I liked the feel of the bricks and cobblestones under my feet.
Corrida
by Elizabeth Haukaas
It was for the novilladas, the beginners,
The matador, the flourishes,
And the backs turned on death
That I begged my father to take me to the bullfight
The summer we spent in Ciudad de Mexico
As far from the influences of drugs and sex
As he could remove me when I was seventeen
The last summer before I got pregnant.
He went with me everywhere: to the plaza
Bargaining for the silver trinkets for my sister and mother
To the bodega for the cigarettes
He let me smoke in front of him
To the pool where he sat upright, reading,
In hard shoes in the shade as I sunned myself, bored.
For the corrida we had sombra seats, the best,
Sparsely filled. As the sun's orange deepened
Town boys from the gradas came down,
Sat around us, sometimes reaching out
To touch my gringo hair. In the ring, I expected
The pirouettes with the muleta, color against dust.
Not the other red, cascading down the beast's black flanks —
To see the splattered velvets, matador, and hide,
To smell the pinkish foam, the bull's droplets mixed with sweat
When he shook his enormous neck,
The banderillas sinking deep, lodging in muscle,
fluttering vibrantly — I didn't expect.
One of the boys put an arm around me: No mires, no mires
He whispered into the air. My father stood
Scattering the boys like pigeons.
He smoothed the creases in his pants, appeared to stretch his legs,
Sat again, closer in the swelter,
Draped his arm across my shoulders.
The bull, front legs collapsed, shimmered,
Silenced, as my father and I were,
By the merciful, now, puntilla.
My father refused to let me accept an amputated ear,
Still warm, held up first to me, then to him,
The gesture for bravery, for not looking away banderilla: a decorative dart thrust into the bull's neck during a bullfight puntilla: the sword that kills the bull at the end of a bull fight no mires: “don't look”
