writing snippets
I’ve never been very good at taking one small bite at a time. When it comes to both food and life, I tend to gobble it up too fast. I want to do it all. Experience it all. Express it all. Right now.
Perhaps that is in part due to a sense of urgency brought on by the state of a world in which people are disappearing, voices are being hushed, rights are being banished, normalcy is being taken over by the national guard, rainbow sidewalks are being scrubbed away.
And likely it is also in part due to my father’s passing and the uptick in awareness of my own mortality. My own temporariness. My own understanding that I could drop dead at any moment.
But the trouble with feeling like I want to do it all right now is that I simply can’t. Trying to is futile and overwhelming, and makes life less about living and more about never feeling as though I’m doing enough. What ever happened to wellness coaching? I ask myself as yet another deadline for the national board exam passes me by and I wonder how past clients are doing. Am I still an artist? I question while staring at the same blank wooden canvas that’s been sitting on my easel for months. Is writing a worthy pursuit? I ponder, while trying to juggle two or three big writing projects that may or may not ever be published.
It’s clear that I need to slow down and take out my proverbial fork and knife and carve it all down into manageable nibbles.
This must be why I’ve been so drawn to small microbursts of writing lately. It began when I learned about
and her Memoir in 65 Postcards, which came to fruition when she took on a daily practice of writing short spontaneous pieces that would take only a minute or so to read and posting them on Substack. And then I challenged myself to write my own short but sweet snippets when I entered a couple of ’s monthly flash competitions of 250 words or less. And now I’m excited to be signed up for ’s and ’s memoir workshop in October, around writing short controlled bursts.It’s going to take some time to learn how to stop swallowing things whole. To chew on each morsel of inspiration, each taste of longing I stumble upon, each grain of clarity I discover about my writing and about my life. But I think it might be worth playing and experimenting with as summer fades into autumn and there’s a natural shift toward slowing down.
Here’s my latest attempt, my last submission to a flash competition with the theme of Dogs…
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My knees were like sandpaper due to all the crawling around I did at the heels of my parents in a dogged effort to express my inner canine.
When I wasn’t crawling, I was sloppily lapping water out of a ceramic bowl, tapping my foot on the floor as if it were a wagging tail, dozing in patches of sun, and sticking my nose in the air, claiming the ability to detect every smell within a twelve-mile radius.
At the age of four, I was a loyal pup, getting my father’s attention by gently nudging my head underneath his hand when was he was in the middle of a New York Times crossword puzzle, and begging for scraps at my mother’s feet while she was cooking.
Perhaps pretending to be a dog was the product of a wild imagination or a weird form of escape from the rules and complexities that came along with being human. I suspect it was both.
I wanted to be Lassie. To embody her bravery, stand up to mountain lions, rescue kidnapped children, and befriend lost kittens.
I wanted to be able to predict the weather, interpret body language, and forgive easily.
I wanted to sweep up a mess of crumbs and prop my chin on the knee of whoever was hurting and make it all better again with a simple endearing look.
To be guided by raw instinct and a generous heart, along with an occasional itch for an adoring scratch behind the ears.