Prompt progress, week 3

One more catch-up post of previous pieces written during Prompt, with two more pieces from the third week’s workshop to share. Remember that the prompt I chose for each round is bolded.

Before we started the second round from this session, the facilitator played a few minutes of a soundscape type of thing of the sound of rain running down a window and plinking on the roof, with the distant rumble of thunder. As with the index card from the previous week, it served as inspiration to go with the prompts that we were then given.

Prompts:  outside the window                     in the air

I live in a tree fort. Well, technically, I sleep in a tree fort. Well technically, technically, I don’t live in a tree fort at all, but when I’m snuggled in the downy deliciousness of my bed, tucked into the attic eaves of my quaint little house, way up high on its hill, sheltered by trees, and the rain burbles down the glass of my window like a Zen garden fountain, I pretend I’m in the tree fort I never had as a kid.

My husband and I bought this house, bought it and renovated it. Reclaimed it, really, from the well-meant neglect of its previous owners. A house that we saw not as it was, but as it could be. A place that we could make into our sanctuary from the world.

We’ve fixed it up a room at a time, slowly as we could save up the money, as we could fit in a project between competing work schedules, as we could acquire the knowledge we needed to turn us from clueless newbies to expert renovators. Knowledge like: “dry wall is not ‘mostly the same’ as concrete backerboard”, and “a compound miter saw is your friend”.

The attic was the biggest project, although we tackled it far too soon in our acquisition of knowledge. It’s how we learned about the miter saw, actually. Although looking at the interiors of the closets,  clearly not soon enough.

But it’s done and it’s ours, and when I fall asleep at night in my pretend tree fort, I know I am home.

After the second round, the facilitator brought out four spice jars wrapped in paper so we couldn’t see the contents. We passed them around, carefully sniffing each as we opened ourselves to inspiration. After the round was over, we found out that the four bottles contained coffee, allspice (which everyone thought was cloves), mint, and scented detergent.

We only had a few minutes for this one. As with the last prompt, this prompt showed up more indirectly in my piece.

Prompts:  blue smells like                         on the table

She hates coffee. Always has. Hates not just the taste, but the smell. Sacreligious in a city so reverent about its coffee roasts. Almost tragic, since he is a connoisseur of such things, and it’s a pleasure they can’t share.

But on the rainy mornings when the clouds sit so low that it’s hard to tell whether it’s the beginning of the day or the end, she loves the smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen the most.

It means he will be there, singing tunes from old musicals while he makes oatmeal — or perhaps, if she’s lucky the pancake recipe he created just for her — and their day will start slow and lazy and comforting. She will pad through the rain darkened house, all blue and gray, heading for that cheery yellow rectangle cast through the kitchen door, moving toward that light from death to life. Guided by the light, by the sound of his voice, and by the smell of coffee.