Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Stream of Consciousness

February 10, 2015
Day 286

When I'm in a creative mood and at a loss for what to write, I enjoy doing what's called stream-of-consciousness exercises. 

Whether it's poetry or prose or both, I just start writing whatever comes to mind, doing my best to forget about all rules of logic and sense to produce my own brand of crazy fun onto the page. 

So today, if you don't mind, I'd like to try one here with you, and if you have a few minutes, I encourage you to try one of your own too.

First, I write my start time down.  Then I begin writing.  Then I write my end time.  Editing is allowed--in my rulebook--only minimally for corrections to spelling of real words and for minor punctuation corrections.  For the most part though, don't think...at all.  Just write!

Start Time: 10:11 AM

Leafing through pages of frittery little yellow monstrosities of magnanimous eccentricities, I take the plunge forward into the oceans of despair and joy--their waves move within me and outside of me in congruous movements of movings.

I eat them, I drink them, and in turn, they swallow me whole, ripe like a pineapple, crusty like an overdrawn bank account, lost like a diamond in the sands of green.

Utterly terrific and terrified at once, kites flying sideways in the soft breeze of autumn hatred, coloring books filled with nightmares of burnt orange and plum, petrified by their own reality.

Secretly delivering the milk by day's break, she watches for the cat, the only friend she has in the whole wide world, the only one who knows her secret: the whole wide world is lactose intolerant but her.  She smiles, and then she cries, and then rainbows burst forth from her station wagon just as they always do at half past 5 in the morning.  She hates that about the thing.

Wisps of wafers spill across the ice of the July sidewalk, and gullible wanderers take note in the least curious of ways.  They wonder why, and then they lose interest before they have it, lost in the moment of the May Day midnight. 

End Time: 10:16 AM

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