Soon I will be going back to Door County ,Wisconsin

for a writing workshop. My writing buddy and I love the instructor.

She is a Buddhist, a poet, an environmentalist,

 involved with a group that provides bicycles to poor people 

around the world, providing them a means to get to school or market

and a way to work.

She is quietly powerful

nudging us to see

listen

observe

ask

 

Most times when I get back from workshop

I am exhausted and don't write for weeks afterwards

I have notebooks going back a decade

with writing prompts that I have never looked at again.

 

Well in the process of cleaning things out this week,

I opened a few notebooks and took a look.

Sometimes I found things that I wondered.... who wrote that?

 

Like the prompt below

....Use the words

grain

hopeless

rubbed

slick

Popsicle

river of slime

alien

blindly

......in 500 words or less 

and in class

 

I guess I wrote this story below

..it's my handwriting...

 

  

 

The old grain silo was converted into a silo of prayer. One could go there to be alone

with  God. People were encouraged to step inside and unburden themselves of their sin.

The silo was hollow inside with stark, curved, brick walls. At the top a domed skylight had been installed allowing sunlight to pour down onto the sinner, relieving some from feeling hopeless.

A gravel floor gave a sense of penance if you dropped to your knees and knelt in prayer as the gravel rubbed into your skin.

 

Last week, slick Jake Trumbull sucked on a Popsicle while driving in his pickup truck. He was returning home from a hunting trip,a deer carcass in the truck bed, when he spotted a large silver cylinder that had crashed into a farm field near the silo of prayer. With gun in hand he cautiously approached the downed craft,almost stepping into  a river of lime green slime oozing from under the craft's bent open door. Jake gingerly poked his gun at the door and it popped open and a tiny alien body slipped out of the ship and onto the ground in front of him causing Jake to blindly react and shoot the helpless creature. It looked up at him, and Jake trembled as he saw a tear roll down its clammy cheek.

 

Jake lifted the gray skinned being into his arms, placed it beside the deer carcass  and drove to the silo. He hurriedly carried it inside, knelt down cradling it close to his body and looked up into the light. But it was too late, and even the gravel cutting into his knees was not enough.

 

 

Smokers, where did that come from? Ha ha...green slime and God all in one story.

I love going through my old notebooks.

Somehow those workshop leaders get you to dig into your unconscious

scrap the dark matter and find a story

No matter what the prompt is...somehow the brain goes to work.

Sometimes good stuff comes out, (not sure about the above story)

But whether it's

horror, comedy,mystery,

or a love story

 

 always

 something

pours forth out of my pen.

 

Oh I can't wait.

note:....and in Bailey's Harbor, Wisconsin ..there really is a silo of prayer.