Random Thoughts

No one is signed up for a post this week. Since I have missed several of mine, I thought it would be a good time to catch up. Here are two brief pieces created during our Tuesday morning writing prompts.

For those of you attending reunions this summer:

Thread

Thread--so fragile and seemingly insignificant. "Just a thread..."

"Just a thread" can be holding something together. Many threads can be a whole garment.

Our lives are tied together with the threads of relationship, chance meetings, common experiences, and common times. Simply being in the same place at the same time with someone else can form an unexpected life-long thread of connection.

We often try to retrace the threads we've collected over the years. We go to class reunions, family reunions, and write memoirs. In these, we try to pick up the fabric of the past and revisit it.

We may want to return to former comfort and security, or we may want to mend a hole--find something that was missing. One person may hope to bask in the warmth of past esteem. Another person may wonder if people from his past will ever validate him. Will he finally gain their approval? Will they even notice him?

We try to return to relive something we wish we still had, or to change what we didn't like. Neither is likely.

The threads are there just the same. What if we pick up those connections and make something new of them? Then we may breathe new life into them again.

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For those of you that can't fit any writing in because you are too busy attending reunions and other summer activities:

Time to Write

Many of us dream of having stretches of T--I--M--E in which to create a masterpiece. However, the masters, like us, had other responsibilities. They too had to write as they went about their daily tasks of life.

By all means, we should take advantage of every opportunity to carve out blocks of solitude; but if we only write in those times our output will be very meager indeed. We must also make the most of the moments snatched here and there throughout the day: the thought scribbled in haste on a scrap, the idea born in a conversation. Our writing will be much richer if we collect these things as we go and then make use of them in those larger blocks of time.