It’s that time of year when the quality of light changes – more blue during the day, orange in the evening, and a rolling, thick, cold black at night. I could easily say Autumn is my favorite season, but it’s much more than that. This is a time of folding in, a deep personal prayer at the feet of my own soul. Melancholy and sweet, sensual and sharp.
Here are a few photos of how we’ve been celebrating Fall so far.
A few close friends and fellow classmates from my Alma Mater have called together a book club and the book we voted in is Cloud Atlas. We start reading this week so if any of y’all would like to join me, here’s a link to Cloud Atlas
Beyond
Have you noticed the steady trickle of new-comers around these parts? I hope y’all are welcoming them to the 100-Word Army with gusto. I think I’ve made most of my rounds but I’ll be checking to see who I missed right after I get this posted.
We had a busy weekend around the house. A typical kind of “house busy” weekend full of chores and shared moments. The kind of weekend that reminds me that sometimes getting down to the domestic can be lovely, grounding, and refreshing. I looked up quotes about doing dishes because someone, somewhere said something about, “first do the dishes” in relation to wanting to do grand things. The only thing that search turned up were some hip-hop lyrics, and I’m pretty sure I would remember if the quote was, “be a ho, but first do the dishes”.
Yeah, that wasn’t the quote I was looking for. As a side bonus I did find that Agatha Christie said, “The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” Good to take note of if you’re one of those lunatics who plans to participate in NaNoWriMo. And by lunatic, I mean one of those people who manages to stay disciplined and not have hard drives fry up, or have huge life upheavals right in the middle of all the excitement.
This is all just me looking for ways to finesse the domestic parts of life so that those routines don’t feel so…routine. Less routine and more this.
Which? The first time I saw this I thought the cat was blowing bubbles, but alas she is only cleaning her paw, her own domestic chore. I found this illustration last week and fell instantly in love. It’s by the Spanish illustrator Rafael De Penagos, and was commissioned by a perfume company.
This theme of finding the beautiful in the mundane, the twinkle in the routine, the beauty in doing the dishes – well, you probably know by now where this is going. This week write a piece involving doing dishes. Show me just how interesting this chore could be.
Doing the Dishes
They had eaten cinnamon buns that morning. Steaming coffee, morning banter, and sweet, warm, soft cinnamon buns. That’s how it is, isn’t it? Everything so perfectly normal just until that moment it isn’t. Her mother called, shakingly told her to turn on the television. Her brain seized, sparked and found no traction. Later she would fail to find adequate words to describe the emotions that found her in her body before her mind – that dried her mouth, dropped her to her knees. Later she would never be able to smell cinnamon – to her, now, the cloying odor of death.
