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Karma Free Writing will be offering 27 Days of Karma Free Writing Prompts starting on the 1st day of Spring. These writing prompts are designed to stimulate the creative process for writing your personal story - and beyond.
27 Day Karma Free Writing Prompts - Honorarium
The 1st 14 days are free. To go the whole 27 days there is a $27 honorarium.
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April
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- Stories from the Gathering ...
- Thank You ....
- Day #27. The Last Day. Theme: "I am completely o...
- Day #26 - Theme: Tantrum
- Day #25 - Theme: "Releasing on the Exhale"
- Day #24 - Theme: "That is so me!"
- Day #23 - Theme: "Food."
- Day #22 - Theme: " I would NEVER ... "
- Day #21 - Theme: "What we eat off of ... "
- Day #20 - Theme - "The Liberty Bell"
- Day #19 - Theme: "Get the Picture?"
- No title
- #18 - Theme: "Listen & Follow"
- Day #17 - Theme: Intimacy
- Day #16 - Theme: Lies
- Day #15. Theme: "What connects me in my relations...
- Day #14 - Theme: Time & Space
- Video Support for Prompt #13 - View this FIRST !!!
- Day #13 - Theme: "What did I notice, What did I N...
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April
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About Me
What do I notice I do not notice. I notice I do not notice how really angry I am. I have been in therapy. I have read Eckard Tolle for goodness’ sake. I breathe. I detach. I let things go. And yet I get so fucking angry! It pisses me off that I get angry!
ReplyDeleteRight now I am mad at K. Yes another match dot com “connection”. Connection is the last word I would use. We end up having dinner Saturday. It goes OK. A lot of fencing around. Neither of us wanting to be too committed. It is after all a first encounter. It isn’t even a date.
So playing by the ‘rules’ I learned from my last girlfriend, that she learned from ‘He’s Not Really That Into You’. I call back on Sunday. Late on Sunday. I have been putting it off because, to be honest I’m not really sure. But pickings are slim up here in the foothills and meeting someone who doesn’t think Sarah Palin is the new Messiah is actually pretty rare out here. So I call. Hey we can just be movie buddies. Whatever.
I get voicemail. This is fine. This is perfect. I breathe. I leave my exquisitely crafted thank you message; the product of hundreds of dollars of writing workshops and therapy sessions. I get on my motorbike and ride down to San Francisco, ready to go to work on Monday. I get to the place I rent and look at my phone. A reply message. I listen, or at least I try to. This woman uses a really bad headset to talk into a phone that is forwarded through Skype and another forwarding service. I might as well be at the airport.
I have no idea what she said. And the call went on and on and on and on and on. Is this a good sign? Equivocal as I am, I really want her to like me. I want everyone to like me. I work so hard at being detached, at letting the universe bring the people that like me to me that I don’t notice it when it actually happens. I descend into my personal co-dependent hell. And I hate myself for it.
I breathe. Do I enable her dysfunctional technical ineptitude by calling her back or do I just wait for eighteen months until she finally gets a phone that people can hear her on?
I finish work and go to the climbing gym. There I hook up with a random climber and we climb like crazy until pretty late. I have not done my grocery shopping. I stop by Whole Paycheck on the way home only to find I was a minute too late and they are closed. I back my motorbike out of the parking lot into oncoming traffic; darkness and drizzle making me feel alive. For now. I breathe. The universe has a reason for making those assholes close the store two minutes before they are supposed to. Who the fuck are they to think they can go home to bed when I don’t have anything to eat for breakfast?
I breathe. Ho’s. Ho’s Fast and Hot. Surely the best tagline for a Chinese Restaurant ever. Van Ness and Green. Thank you God. I gun the bike and head over. Parking is a bitch and it is starting to rain hard. I go in and order. I sit at the bar and wait. I fish out my phone and call K. “What are you doing, she says” “Getting Chinese – I was too late for Whole Paycheck”. “ I hate Chinese” She says.
How can you fucking hate Chinese? You don’t even know this place! The Chinese eat more different kinds of food prepared in more different kinds of ways than anyone else on the planet! How can you hate the culinary diversity of a billion people figuring out all kinds of different ways to eat all kinds of different stuff over thousands of years? Hello!”
I don’t even listen to the rest of what she says. I still have no idea if she likes me or not. Or if I like her. Or if I even like myself. I am bugged that I even respond to this stupidity. You are as big or as small as the things that bug you, little Chris. I tell myself.
Thank you, Eckhard.
And thank you, Chris. I love the questions you ask yourself. Even when you're angry you seem to find the humor in things!
ReplyDeleteThis stood out for me: "But pickings are slim up here in the foothills and meeting someone who doesn’t think Sarah Palin is the new Messiah is actually pretty rare out here."
I wanted to see something new.
ReplyDeleteMy world has become pretty small. I live a few blocks from where I work. My kids go to school nearby. My grocery stores and coffee shops and movie store are all within walking distance.
It's hard to see something with fresh eyes.
I lost my wallet so I went to get a new driver's license. Across the street from the license office is the Corner Shoppe Mall.
It's been here since I've been here....at least twenty years. I've never been inside.
I whipped in the parking lot.
It's a delapidated building. It needs a paint job. A ratty window unit hangs off the front of the grey windowless shack. Faded and peeling paper mache walrus and bear hang over the door.
I went in. It was dark. There was a smell. It was slight but penetrating. Hide, skin, nails, hair. That was the smell.
Can I help you?
I couldn't see who was talking. My eyes hadn't adjusted. Finally I see right beside me a woman as old as dirt.
I'm just looking about. Thank you.
Well I'm glad you're here. Let me know if I can help you.
Jewelry met my gaze. Lots of silver and tourguoise and black onyx and coral.
I couldn't tell where the store ended. Stuff was piled upon stuff.
At the end of the jewelry counter I looked up and was eye-to-eye with a stuffed armadillo on its back guzzling a Lone Star. He sat beside a raccoon playing a drum, who stood next to several roosters posed in various cocky attitudes.
I followed the tiny path between animal heads and hides. Water buffalos, foxes, moose, deer, zebras. Pretty much if you could kill it and stuff it, they had it.
Big cow hides. Fox pelts. Two giant grizzly bear standing and looking ferocious. Their paws were encased in ziplock bags. I think people try to break off their claws.
Chairs made of cow horns and covered with leopard hide.
Sconces made of pierced ostrich eggs.
I didn't know to be in awe or sick. It was the weirdest shop I'd ever seen. I took it all in. I'd seen everything there was to see at this little shop of mammalian horrors.
As I opened the door to leave a reflection caught my eye. I turned around.
Right in front of the entrance, I'd passed it four or five times in the shop, was the giraffe.
Its entire neck and head hung from the ceiling. It was too long to mount on the wall.
i love your thinking chris. you stay above the fray with your humor and genuineness. all these things you are thinking and writing about -- other people can relate in spades! i didn't know others (especially me) thought this way.
ReplyDeleteafter reading your entry i feel the same effect as just having talked to a good friend and had a juicy conversation. i feel better...
thank you
IT IS THE BEST TAG LINE FOR A RESTAURANT EVER!!
ReplyDeleteWhile on my 10-day birthday retreat at the Spiritual Ministry Center in San Diego, I notice that I walk fast. Really fast, with motivation and purpose and a strong sense of direction. Even when I don’t have any idea where I’m going, I never saunter. Sauntering, defined as a leisurely stroll, is for old farts, and I am not an old fart, yet. I just turned 50 and for me, brisk is still where it’s at. But today I notice that when I’m doing my fast-walking, things go by so quickly I can’t possibly take them all in. I can see how slowing down is equated with mindfulness.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, as I sit in my bright flowery bikini on the rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean (yes, even at fifty I’m wearing a bikini) I notice the waves I’ve been watching every day this week and how they’re never the same. Today’s waves are loud and unruly, pushing towards the jagged shore with an energetic rush, a professional track team forcefully approaching the finish line. The early morning rain has churned the waters. Three young girls lie on colorful towels in the distance. I wonder what the one in the middle, with the tiny yellow swim suit, red hair and fair white skin will look like tonight? Is she wearing suntan lotion?
There is another very white couple laying a little ways away from me. They’re practically naked. He’s reading a book, but she’s flat on her back, her firm perky breasts pointing upward, the expression on her face determined to tan. All of these twenty-somethings are soaking up the warm sun. But it’s not warm. When I lay flat, I have goose bumps surfacing on my shoulders, arms and thighs. Even the top of my head and the ends of my toes are cold. Brrrr. I sit up while reaching for warmth, shimmying into my charcoal gray yoga pants and zipping up my grape yoga jacket, both from Lululemon. I pull my cheerful beach towel around me, wrapping it around my shoulders and legs, but it is still cold. How are these kids able to lay here without shivering? I almost long for the hot flashes I keep hearing about, but not quite. Those will come soon enough, and when they’re least expected, from what I hear. I'm still too cold and now I have to pee. It’s time to go. I pull on my white socks and running shoes, lacing them securely around my feet, knowing full well, they are partly to blame for my fast pace. They’re running shoes, after all.
I'm aware of my rapid pace once again, as my running shoes race forward, propelling me to my destination. I'm not in a hurry but I know where I'm going. I want to get back. All this energy bursting out of me. Like today’s waves. Pushing forward & pulling back. In constant motion. And so loud! Be still, I shout to the waves below me as I walk briskly back to my room at the retreat center. But the waves cannot be contained. And neither my friends, can I.
What I notice I notice is that I notice too much at times. I look at something; say a tree and I see the leaves, the bark, the newly sprouting twigs, small insects crawling on it, the sunlight dancing through it, birds on branches, in nests. I look and think deeper about photosynthesis, the rings in the trunk of the tree, the roots in the ground, the earth feeding and give the tree nutrients, small cells multiplying later to become branches, bark or leaves. Then the changing of the season does the tree flower, bear fruit, nuts or just an abundance of shade from the summer sun. I am so engrossed in the tree I notice that I notice nothing else. I forget about the people passing by, clouds in the sky, cars, planes, trucks, dogs, cats, children laughing.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes pick things apart so thoroughly that I forget what they look like all put together. I take me time to step out of the analytical realm and step back and see the big picture, not the minutia, while relevant, that sometimes spoil the enjoyment of a tree as a tree.
The same thing applies to people in my life. I try so hard not to pick apart their physiological and psychological makeup. I see them in terms of beating hearts, life events turned into sometimes twisted emotion, over-bearing, under whelming, synaptic transmitters and flying neurons. I want to know what makes them tick and sometimes I think I break the watch, come across as cold and insensitive when I am just curious about how they became who they are, chose to be what they are. I only hope I can help put the pieces back if I look too deeply into the machine of human anatomy, human psyche.
Inkydink - I love stores like that!
ReplyDeleteTo all I am humbled to be in your company thank you
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHe said very little, maybe something to the effect, “Let’s just hit some balls, and see what’s going on.” And that’s what we did. I was swinging wild, trying to find my forehand, running like a gazelle, letting out my usual yelps and yahoos, an occasional, “Fucking cock sucking cockfucks, fuck you!” We picked up some balls and he asked me how I was doing. He had me do the ol’, “say, “bounce,” when the ball bounces and “hit,” when you hit the ball,” trick. And then later asked, “On a scale from 1-10 what kind of fun are you having today?” I lied and said, “I don’t know, maybe a 7 or 8.” I had never been asked to observe myself in the process before. One of my special instinctual features is to get defensive and lie. He said, “That’s funny, your face really isn’t showing that.” We hit a little while longer and then picked up the balls. There was no instruction. There was only silence. I remember at one point he asked me to just let my body go and swing and hit, he told me not to think, let my body do it’s thing.
ReplyDeleteBy the end of the lesson I was a mad as hell. I saw no method to his madness at all. He asked me to come over and meet his master. This guy was about 5’4” and 67 years old. He was one of those lifer court trolls, slightly hunchbacked, leather skin, crab-claw hands that when you shook you knew that’s how he gripped his racquet. He was walking off the court with Adam Arkin. Adam walked off and my pal and his master, after introductions, just kind of sat there and stared at me. “Well, thanks for the lesson, I have an appointment,” I said and began to humbly back out of the awkwardness. “Oh, really?” My pal asked. “Yep.” They watched me walk away. Later I found out the master said to my pal, “He may not get it right now. Maybe it’ll hit him later.”
I got in my car and dialed my wife, roared about what a horrible lesson it was, what a waste of time, waste of money….she said, “Maybe you should take 6 more lessons?” I was angry now. Talked to my father who said, “Ah, that book is for people who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.” I returned home and somehow threw myself into the computer to learn more. I could not dismiss the lesson or my instructor, a tried and true process for me in the past. “Fuck you and fuck whatever you’re selling…I mean, look at your shirt and haircut for fucksakes!”
After spending time reading about Inner Tennis, I found that it’s really about awareness and the practice of non-judgment. Then somehow, without provocation or intuition, (maybe I was just at the perfect place of pain or openness), I started daydreaming to find correlation from the principles in the book to my recent past experience on the court. I was able to see with a new clarity how I was restricting my playing because I was so intent on winning, or hitting the ball perfectly or making adjustments or being critical of everything on the court…etc. This placed an early seed, and soon after, through this one single tennis lesson of suffering, I became willing and able to see what in my life I had not been giving myself, what I was not willing to explore, what I was not willing to change. I now play golf.
Chris...if you come to Austin I'll take you!
ReplyDeleteSkullswinger, You expressed your anger well and moved from anger to a deeper understanding of self. Nice transistion. Would like to know how your first golf lesson went.
ReplyDeleteActress/Artist/Activist
ReplyDeleteExcellent use of language to describe the scenes at the beach. Very nice how you tie your fast paced momentum forward with the waves upon the rocks.
Would like to know more about what you may have missed, if anything, by being caught up in the fast paced movement forward.
The gift of a few moments.
ReplyDeleteOn a cool, sunny day in Santa Monica, a woman in brown polyester slacks and a black boat-neck top walks herself from the garden into the inside of the 18th Street Coffeehouse.(I feel a slight pulling away from her in my shoulders and chin in pride at my ability to recognize that her slacks are polyester.) She drags herself in really, legs too heavy to lift their feet off the ground in a more lively step, and asks for her cup to be refilled with hot water. She is leaning her hips against the arterial-blood-red half-wall that supports the counter where brushed steel coffee urns (brushed aluminum being verboten in these Alzheimer days) shine as they wait patiently to be emptied of their offerings. I notice wrinkles in the brown polyester that covers her buttocks and think, she’s wearing underpants under those slacks, I am not seeing the suppleness of flesh there. She turns to the cream and sugar bar and pours cream from a shorter and narrower silver-colored container into her newly refurbished paper cup, at the end of the pour making little counter-clockwise circles with the cream container. And I think: fillip. The word for what she is doing might be fillip. It’s a word I’ve never written before. I feel myself mouthing it -- fillip -- and liking the way it feels in my mouth. Holding the cup up and slightly away from her, the woman pulls open one of the two screen doors to the garden and stops, switching to the other door. This one doesn’t have a glass door behind it stopping her and now she has free access back to the garden. But she doesn’t open the door wide enough to make room for her to exit fully. So the door hits her, albeit softly, in the back of her legs and over her buttocks. “Don’t let the door hit you,“ I think, recognizing in myself some annoyance at the lethargy I have been watching in her. Which leads to a heaviness of shame and sorrow around my mouth, side by side with a knife-edge of righteousness that raises the shoulder that was closest to her. I shake my head at all this complexity of thought and feeling and behavior and how it came almost instantaneously with my judgement of this woman who, I noticed when she was pouring the cream, is younger than I, though more willingly gray-haired, and now I wonder, in a wave of compassion, what is the story behind the heaviness she carries in her thighs and, in what ways does the playfulness of that fillip in pouring the cream show up in the rest of her life -- that almost hidden, maybe even to her as it could have so easily been to me, capacity for gracefulness, that memory of dancing, light on her feet once more.
I happened to be in a gun store the other day, yes a gun store in L.A., in West L.A. and what I noticed was that it was not a good looking crowd who shopped there. Now this was Westside, but it wasn’t exactly the Yoga Works crew. I mean, “Wow”, if these people took half as good of care of themselves as they probably took of their guns, we might have something to talk about. I guess the Second Amendment also covers the right to eat and wear whatever the hell you want. Fat guys who accessorize with firearms, this is a peculiarly American phenomenon, I would guess. Not a pretty picture. Neither is the bleach blond mullet, but if that “look” goes with anything, I guess it is a rifle. “Where are you from?” I heard one gunnie ask another. Now you know these are isolated and whacked out folk when the description of their neighborhood is from the last big fire they had there. “I’m from the Box Canyon Fire area” one said. “No Kidding,” said the other. “My wife grew up in that burn zone. I’m from the Big Tujunga Fire area myself”. My head was whirling, guns and fires and fat guys with mullets. Only in the U.S.A.
ReplyDelete