Author’s note: This is from a series based on my journal. Unconventional and idiosyncratic punctuation and formatting are intentional.
This morning I posted the next piece in my journal series. It’s about my time at the shelter on Thanksgiving. It is so out of date. Thanksgiving was over three months ago. I feel as if I should skip ahead to be more current but there is no way I could keep up with myself since I am posting just twice a week and writing something new almost every day. It does not feel possible to write less or at least not much less. It also does not feel possible to post more often. I still would like time to make sure every piece is as good as it can be and not feel the pressure of more deadlines even if they are self-imposed. Managing was among Spelling Bee’s answers today.
Among the day’s notifications was one that someone named The New Unhinged liked the Note I posted yesterday. Her profile says she studies patterns and interprets what they mean and shows people where they stand inside them. She has over 3,000 subscribers. FLUKE was the answer for Wordle today. Fish or unlikely occurrence? Meg posted a prompt to write about a picture of a woman whose face has been cut out in the shape of a heart. Much more than the woman’s face is missing. The picture shows just the lower half of her body leaning against the fender of a car and her right forearm and hand. The cut-out piece may be in the shape of a heart but it left jagged, ragged edges as if it were done carelessly or hastily. Meg suggests beginning the story with, It had something to do with. Prompt words include fire, dog, press, wrinkled, and mauve. I wonder why anyone would save a picture missing so much. Maybe that is the story instead of why someone would cut it. It had something to do with why he kept the picture. It was wrinkled, sooty around the edges from some kind of burning.
Last night I revised some of the series I want to post over the next few weeks. That was a mistake. I woke up this morning two hours before my alarm with all of that floating around in my mind like feathers puffed from a pillow even though I went to bed unbothered by revising. Before I woke up I dreamed about having breakfast with the queen in the dining room at Granny’s house except I never saw the queen. She overslept. A miniature dinosaur egg started to hatch from the back of a waxed Barbour field jacket with a dark-brown corduroy collar. The queen loved Barbour. The egg began to shake and dimple around the middle. I covered the egg with my hand to warm it to encourage its hatching. I left to get some tea and look through the Brisker for some crackers. When I returned the dinosaur had hatched and crawled away. Only the ivory shell remained, cracked in two on the dining room table next to the base of the bronze and glass centerpiece bowl Granny used to have on top of her table. Each leg of the bowl ended in a talon grasping a ball.
In this month’s issue of the The Sun the prompt for Readers Write was pockets. The section opens with a contribution from a hospital social worker. The first piece of advice I give the new hospital social workers is to wear clothes with lots of pockets, she begins. Mine hold what you might expect, she continues,
a phone to contact services that clients need, a pen and paper to jot down notes, and tissues for patients whose stories break them (and me) open.
But I also need room for the less obvious tools of my trade. A hard candy works as a prop to teach a calming sensory exercise to an anxious woman waiting for news from the trauma room. A fifty-cent piece is an unobtrusive worry stone. A piece of string looped around my fingers reminds me of humanity’s interconnectedness while I wait on hold for the child-welfare worker. I can’t tell you how many bus passes, business cards for the domestic-violence shelter, packets of crackers, and other items make their way into and out of my pockets over a twelve-hour shift.
I pat myself down before I leave the hospital, looking for anything containing protected health information, unloading all the stories I hear each day to make room for more.
To read my previous post, “Sure: 158,” please click here.
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Pockets. Wow. I’d give anything to see a fifty cents coin again. I got one weekly as an allowance growing up. Saved them in a blue purse hanging on a hook —just inside my sliding closet door. I realize I am writing like you now. Recording images and thoughts I have never said aloud before. But there are images from our lives’ movies that are never put to word but are solidly there in memory time . Pockets. Did u ever read Franny and Zooey by Salinger ? A classic. I teach it in world religions class . Franny who is going bonkers reading the Way of the Pilgrim is being bothered by her mother Mrs Glass who has numerous pockets- in a kind of houseboat-with everything in them like screwdrivers etc thank you polly for bringing me back to a treasured passage
The pressure to be current is a trap. 3 months ago is as true as 3 minutes ago and as true as 3 years ago. Don't drive yourself mad trying to keep up with nyt!