#prose project

[fleurren]

unfinished thoughts pt. II i think they are pure in their being, soft and existent, soft for you not because they asked to be, but because you showed them how to be. not nature, intent. somewhat nature. they have the capacity for softness. they have the capacity to bond. they feel. they become ours. how often in life can we say, 'mine' when referring to a living thing, and not an object? they become like our children. children that never stop needing us. the animals remind me of dandelions and marigolds and soft touch and timidness. they're so small and vulnerable and light and perfect and temporary.

[flushyfairy]

How I Knew

It was not what you said, it was how you said it. It was how long it took you to reply during the conversations, or how you would spend more time listening and watching rather than doing. It was how you would disappear for hours, or say things that would make everyone confused, and you would act like nothing happened after those instances where you didn’t act like yourself. I knew something was wrong with you, but asking you was not enough. You would pretend nothing was happening and act like the world around you was the one wrong. I knew I had lost you then, not to anyone, but to yourself. And I’m so sorry for not being able to save you. 

[theproseproject]

January 3 | 534 words

How To Love Someone From Far Away: A Field Manual

I.

Collect songs for her. Do not share them with her. The CD with her handwriting on it must stay blank and dusty on your shelf. The guilt you feel when you move it during fevered bursts of cleaning will only bind you to her. This is the plan, at least. Build her a towering monument of music - taller and more precarious than the pile of books and crusted plates and kleenex and one blank CD on your nightstand. Clean your room and think of her in her spaces, rooms full of light and downy fabric, papered with artwork drawn like secrets, dressers populated by baubles she let you touch, tiny things in your fingertips, sanctified with her.

II.

Send him pictures of what you are wearing. Send him pictures when you are beautiful. Send him pictures when are not. Send him pictures of the sunset with palm trees dark against the skyline (look, here is where I am, here is where you are not, is my presence here strange and alien to you?) Send him pictures of your car when it is the last one in the parking lot (I am overwhelmed here when time is slow and terrible, was the day shorter where you are?) Do not caption these photographs. Delete them from your phone as soon as they are sent. This is not a two-sided conversation.

MANUFACTURER'S NOTE: You must love the far-away with a small, enduring love. It must be an ember, not a flame. Flame is too consuming. It will burn out with lack of fuel. You must give the ember just enough to keep it glowing without fanning it into flame. You must tend to the love, but remember the distance it must travel in its poverty. It must be able to survive for weeks on a single word, memory's scraps. Far-away love must be independent and hardy. So must you.

III.

When you arrive at your new home, tell people about her. You must always hold her between yourself and strangers. Assert her reality into a world where she does not exist. Never use her name. The strangers will not know it, and this will only remind you of her absence, of your presence in a world now without her. Say only, "my friend." It should feel wrong to say only this. This wrongness will reassure you. Skeletons haunt us not for fear of bones, but for memory of what moved in their shapes.

IV.

Buy cheap plane tickets, an overnight trip with two layovers ending at 2am. Look out the window at the glowing city and imagine that it is home. Dig yourself into his life for forty-eight hours. Pretend his dog remembers you. Memorize his kitchen cabinets so you don't have to ask, like a guest, where the glasses are. In an emergency, ask the roommate, as if you are here to visit him instead. Do not bring your own pillow. Do the dishes. On the drive to the airport, trace the skyline with your eyes to redirect tears. It is rude to pray for flight cancellations, but your fellow travelers will never know.

[theproseproject]

January 2, 2014 | 303 words

"I don't believe in New Year's resolutions," I always said - and I still don't. Arbitrariness has always been a pet peeve of mine. We celebrate 5, 10, 25, 50 year anniversaries because of the evolutionary accident that gave us ten fingers and toes. I always felt sorry for 12 year anniversaries, or 6 years, passing without fanfare because we don't have six fingers per hand, or three. And now we mark January First as the day on which to start self-improvement projects because the methods we use to mark the Earth's rotation, itself a sort of planetary dice-roll, happen to re-set.

"What if," I always said, "you thought of a way to improve yourself on January second, or third, or fourth? July sixteenth? Why wait?" And in this case, at least, I walked-the-talk - I've always made strong resolutions whenever they struck me. Perhaps a new big purchase: I will take good care of this thing. Or a new school year, a far more significant point to set new goals for students: I will be bolder with boys. I will work harder. I will forget about boys. I won't work as hard. I will keep my desk neat. Or, simply when the mood struck me, when I decided to make a change: I will set a sleep schedule. I will stop biting my lips. I will not engage with my brother. I will stop biting my lips. I will write more letters. I will stop biting my lips. 

Some stick and some don't. I go to bed at ten every night. I still bite my lips. But the freedom to set resolutions with the same - well, resoluteness - as a New Year's resolution at any point in the calendar is a powerful thing. And maybe someday I'll quit biting my lips.

[theproseproject]

January 1, 2014 | 288 words

(I recognize the irony of being a day late for the very first day of a daily writing project - I was flying and shuttling from Chicago to Phoenix to Tucson and at the mercy of free wi-fi. I plan to queue up posts in the future for when I will be without internet.)

It is cold in the Chicago airport, cold enough for two coats, and I am trying not to cry – not from the cold or the stress of travel, both of which are wholly bearable, but because one day before I watched a close friend stand up and pledge to have and to hold and all the tears I held back then (because stoicism is a point of perhaps-misplaced pride, I never cry at things like this; and because my makeup never looks this good, did somebody get a picture) are threatening to pour out in the crowded solitude of air travel, so I tell myself it is only hunger, exhaustion, the ninety-minute flight delay, the unfinished work nagging from inside my backpack, anxiety absorbed by osmosis from the wedding party – all things simple, uncomplicated, solvable and sensible – because it is not yet time to face the tangles and crevices of the truth, these tears being held back as proxies to keep this fact at bay, just for now at least: that the heart must swell to fit more love as a lifetime stretches on; that love grows heavy with memory and affection and risk and need; that this weight must be carried across time and distance until the stars themselves are the only tethers capable of helping to bear up the burden so you must hang onto them and let yourself be pulled upwards into more; that sometimes love demands action so strongly, so desperately, that you have no genuine idea what to do and in your desperation you find that this - this loving, this hanging on, this swelling upward to the stars waiting any second now to burst - is the only thing you can do. 

[theproseproject]

Forget Setting Goals. Focus on Systems Instead.

When it comes to getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things: focus on systems, not goals.

This project rose out of my frustration with NaNoWriMo, which focuses on goals (that magical finish line of a 50,000 word count) rather than systems (and in fact has entire forum boards devoted to "cheats" that can get you to 50,000 words without developing a good system). TPP focuses on developing a system: find a way to write something every day by recognizing the writing you already do daily so you can systematize it with awareness and intention.