Letters for Creatives #49: September prompts and sparrows
Stories are what remains
Hello, I am Celeste. If you would like to receive Letters for Creatives, subscribe to receive weekly letters on creativity, mental wellness, mindset and more. Take a look at monthly prompts if you are looking for writing inspiration.
September writing prompts
Sparrows flying from one tree to another
Leaves dancing in the wind
Birds talking to each other
A four-year-old learning Tai Chi
Stay until next summer
The rest of our life
Sacrifice to achieve beyond self
Summer morning walk
Fly without fear
Hold onto change and leap
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Pepperoni
I have not read a story that touches my heart in so long. But Jami Attenberg managed to do it. She wrote about her Los Angeles friend and how she ran into her friend in New Orleans:
Ten years from now we will say do you remember that time we saw each other on a street corner? Do you remember the pepperoni?
The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom
Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.
Think how little depends on us,
Not summer, breath, nor wings;
How all of it, once we leave, will continue:
Mountains and trees, earth’s passengers,
Chekhov, horses on a ridge,
Granite as heavy as years of unfeeling.
Bede tells the story of our brief sparrow,
Frightened, confused by smoke and noise,
Who’d blundered out of the night though the eaves
Where the men debated in the meadhall
Some question of massive consequence.
I can’t recall, can you, what they spoke of?
This “I” we treasure, this capital letter
With feet as flat as its Keaton hat,
This so-called “self” in dread of extinction
Is, face it, nothing and everything,
Whether we contemplate hard matters
Or reach for more passions to tear into tatters.
The sparrow flew out by the opposite eave,
From dark back to dark. “Such is our life,”
A speaker said, bringing silence,
“A short while in the light.” The talk
Took on after that a stranger gentleness…
More than the usual charity.
— Brief Sparrow by Barry Spacks
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Monday Thread: What are you reading?
See you next week,
Celeste