Rain
It rained. It rained and rained. It rained so hard the windows cried. It rained so hard the roof thundered. It rained for so many days the girl no long believed in the sun, no longer believed in the light. The rain came down so hard, it knocked leaves off of trees. It splattered dirt out of flowerbeds. It even took blooms off of branches, leaving red and yellow memories on the slick pavement.
And so she went out into it. All around her people scurried for doorways and bus stops. Some held umbrellas turned inside out in the wind. Some held newspapers over their heads. But she did none of these things. Instead, she stood perfectly still. She waited while the water soaked her clothes, her hair, her skin. She felt the weight of all that water, as if she might become rooted there on that city street.
Tagged with: connection, discovery, fiction, imagination, story
Passageway
“The brain has corridors”
—Emily Dickinson
She moved from street to street, from building to building, from floor to floor. She had done this for more years than she cared to count. In fact, she had grown tired of counting: one year became five became fifteen and twenty as fast as fists could unfold. The passage of time exhausted her, felt like running in place, eyes blinking, clouds covering the sun.
Tagged with: audience, discovery, fiction, imagination, narrative, story, words
Enough
“You are not enough.”
She said it out loud.
Tagged with: fiction, imagination, moments, narrative, poem
Mirror
She noticed a big house reflected in the pond: an exact upside down replica with windows, a front door, and faded red paint. She could even see the half-closed curtains. It was as if the house were built inside the water.
She sat on the pond’s edge and took off her shoes and socks. She let her feet plop right between the curtains. She slid down further over the edge and then down into the watery window.
Tagged with: imagination, narrative, story, struggle, truth, words
Waiting
The little girl sat on the stoop and looked out across the flat land to the place where the sun sat half circle on the horizon. She waited. She wanted to feel the earth turn.
She heard yesterday that the sun did not really rise in the sky. “The sun neither rises nor sets,” her teacher said. “It stays still, and the earth rolls around it.”
Tagged with: fiction, imagination, story, struggle, truth
Wish
It was enough to make her crazy—the constant yearning for something she could not name. She saw glimpses of it—in the smile of a new friend, in the tree limbs scraping the sky, in the lone crocus on her lawn—glimpses that just made her want it more.
The wind picked up, and the clouds crawled in. And when the rain began, she listened to its steady beat on the roof. She watched it cry down the windowpanes. She imagined herself on an old raft, a dog at her side, letting the water take her down the river of her street and out into some new adventure.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, why write, words
Watercolor
The man sits on the subway. His elbow rests on the small ridge of window. His chin rests on his hand. Outside his window, tunnel gray and underground blurs rush by. He is Watercolor on Newsprint, 1962. I stand in a gallery watching him through a wooden frame; he is my window. I feel as if I know him—his tan coat, his brown boots, his deep eyes resting and open.
I leave the gallery. I step out onto wet pavement. I walk through the puzzle of parked cars. My ears fill with horns and the steady swish of tires on slick roads. I walk down stairs and under the city. I wait for the E Train, and when it comes, the doors slap open. I feel the breeze and bump of other riders—the dance of step off, step on. I find a seat. My elbow finds its place. My face leans into my hand. Outside is tunnel gray—underground blurs rush by. I am watercolor. I am fading.
Tagged with: fiction, imagination, painting, story, struggle
Heart
I heard the tiniest of heartbeats. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. It wasn’t a Tell-Tale heartbeat, nothing frightening like that. This heartbeat had a soothing rhythm. From what I could tell, the beat came from the trunk of an old tree just off the path where I had been walking. I approached the trunk and put my ear up to its grooves. I listened. No heartbeat. I waited, and then I heard it again—faint, in the distance. A little faster now. Badumpbadumpbadump. I followed the sound and ended up at another tree—this one full of crows and their caw caw cawing. “Shhhh,” I called out. “I am listening for a heart.” One of the crows looked down at me and laughed, or that’s how I perceived it. The crows flew off one by one, and I waited for the heartbeat. When it finally started up again, it seemed to be coming from underneath the snow. So I dug down with my mittened hands. No heart. I sat completely still. Me. The snow. The tree. The crows cawing in the distance. And then I heard it again. But this time, I did not go searching. I sat still. I did nothing. I just listened.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, struggle, words
Jules reached inside for a quarter or a tissue or a chapstick. Anything. Her pockets were empty. Not even a lucky rock. As a rule, Jules never left home with empty pockets. It was a thing she had. Pockets were meant to hold stuff. To make up for their emptiness, she put her hands there. A passerby kept his head down, his own hands lost inside his overcoat. In fact, all the passersby, men and women, looked just the same: sad, drawn, a bit lost. Jules could barely stand the gloom of it all—the gray sidewalk, the overcast sky, the cold air. Her empty pockets seemed even emptier. And so she dug deeper and deeper. She wanted to find something—anything. And finally, there it was, in the deepest recess of her pocket: a clear marble, the tiniest of crystal balls. Jules stood there, in the middle of the crowded city sidewalk and held the transparent orb in the palm of her hand. And people stopped to see what was there, what might be in store, what the future might hold. People needed something, however small, that was clear and round and easy to carry. Something to keep forever in their pockets.
Tagged with: center, discovery, fairy tale, fiction, imagination, narrative, story, words
One Morning Between Seasons
“If we don’t change the direction we are headed,
we will end up where we are going.”
—Chinese Proverb (found on the inside of a bottle cap)
For weeks, the leaves glittered on the trees. Now and then, an overcast sky made everything like a dream. She had this idea—that maybe, just once, autumn would stay. The leaves would hang on in that in between world—winter might happen somewhere, but not here. The trees would not have to go bare. But then one morning as usual, she took the dog out. His paws rattled through dry leaves, gone brown and dry. She did not want to look up and see the bare limbs. So she kept her head down. The dog, accustomed to his daily route up the street, aimed his nose there. But she tugged at his leash, said, “This way today.” She pointed down the hill. The dog resisted, pulled hard against the leash—even sat down, stubborn and sure of his habits. He cocked his head the way dogs do. “C’mon,” she tugged playfully at the leash. And then, also the way dogs do, he looked up at some invisible noise. Her eyes followed his gaze. And there it was—one last red leaf twirling down toward them. She reached out to catch it, but the dog was faster. He leapt, and he caught it in his mouth. The way dogs do.
Tagged with: discovery, imagination, story
In Process
Rita is still in intensive care, but there are indications that she is on the upswing. Thank you, readers, for thinking of her. I miss her very much.
My students and I are experimenting with building a collaborative class website through pbwiki. It’s fun. I created a main page that introduces the course theme: imagination. That page also includes links to assignments and to students. Branching out from that main page, students are building their own “homes” from which they can link their individual work. On each page, there is a comment function, so that students and I can go in and converse.
Tagged with: audience, connection, imagination, learning, students
The Scope of Imagination
I heard the tail end of an interview about the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables. I had never read the book, so I found it at the library, and I am reading it now. The young orphan Anne cares a great deal about the “scope of imagination”—as she relates in this early scene:
Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everyting, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there?
Tagged with: discovery, imagination, learning, quotation, students