Story prompts: Whose shoes?

Something has always bothered me in my wanderings through this world: every time I see an abandoned pair of shoes, or worse a single shoe, on the side of the road, it bothers me for hours thereafter. If it’s a single shoe images of a one-shoed lad, hppping home, go through my mind  - why did he lose one shoe and not two? What happened to him that he did not notice one shoe missing? I actually know the answer to this riddle, at least 90% of the time – my sister was a paramedic and told me the answer – but I’ll leave that to the reader to uncover. As for the pair of Reebok’s or Dunlop’s tied together by the laces, each foot pointing in opposing directions, the mind boggles . . . Any ideas?

Writing exercise: desert notebooks

While I ate a breakfast of homemade pesto, smoked cheese and tomato on toast, I thought about notebooks and how we love to fill them, and on emptying ourselves into them we become somehow fulfilled. Those notebooks are like little treasures that we can mine later. Imagine then, you are to be transported to a desert island and the only personal possession you are allowed is one notebook. This, and only this notebook would accompany you through your remaining life. How would you prepare your notebook for the journey? Would you fill it retrospectively or would you dedicate the next few months before your abandonment to filling the notebook? If so, what would it contain?  Without giving too much away, this is essentially the idea behind my novel The diary of magnificent things. I am curious to know how (dis)similar our notebooks would be.

Here are some things I would include:

• Quotes from favourite authors/books such as Stephen Jay Gould, Jorge Luis Borges, Dickens, Alberto Manguel
• an account of a sunrise from my front veranda
• my best memories
• lyrics to songs and even music sheets (living without music – ouch!)
• Photos pasted into the notebook
• Dried leaves and flowers
• my rusted metal Kokopelli (it’s flat so would fit between the pages nicely)
• a star chart
• pieces of fabric

What would yours include? You can have anything so long as it in the pages of that notebook.

Writing prompt: storytellers

One of my favourite teachers as a child was Graeme Early. Graeme was a primary school teacher, but also a musician. I’d just turned six years old when I met him. I was a frightened little redhead in a new school, with no self-esteem and a terrible fear of adults. But I gravitated towards Graeme as soon as I met him and he to me. He had a sense of who the broken ones were and seemed to have an immediate affinity with us. He didn’t want to fix us, he just wanted us to have different experiences other than the ones we were having. He wanted us to know that not all adults were monsters.

Graeme was one of those rare souls you meet who teaches you without you realising you’re being taught. Much later, both my brother and sister had the pleasure of knowing him outside of school through the youth groups they attended. He helped them both through some rough times and he taught them in ways school cannot. Graeme Early was a storyteller more than he was a teacher. Every afternoon, when the reading, math and science was done, when we’d put everything away, he would gather his students around him and get out his guitar. Twenty pairs of eyes would stare up at him, wide with wonder and anticipation. We forgot about everything in that final hour of the day – the itchy carpet, the expectations of teachers and parents, even what faced us when we went home. During that hour we’d sing and learn new songs while Graeme kept us together with his guitar. We learned Beatles songs, Dylan, John Denver, Cat Stevens, but we also sang about bees and drunken sailors. We sang in Maori, French and sometimes gibberish. We learned the art of storytelling through music. Most importantly, Graeme helped each of us learn who we were, usually inadvertantly. To me he said outright you’re a storyteller, that is your gift. That was the first time I knew who I was.

Do you remember storytellers from your early years? What influence did they have on you? How did you learn you were a storyteller?

Writing prompt: Animation

Strangler fig

By now it should be obvious that I like trees. This strangler fig at Mount Glorious in Queensland reminds me of a hook-nosed old man with gnarled fingers and sleepy eyes. It dominated the scenery, being the largest and clearly one of the oldest specimens in this section of the forest. But this tree has a sinister story. Several hundred years ago an animal, possibly a bird or a possum, dropped a fertilised seed high in the canopy of a mature syzygium. Feeding off rotting vegetation and trace minerals, that seed grew roots, which grew down the syzygium. Over a period of several years roots implanted themselves in the ground. Using the host tree as support, some of the roots eventually fused to create the characteristic buttresses. Soon the host tree began to die, its access to minerals, water and sunlight cut off by the fig. Over decades the host tree roted away leaving a hollow but very strong cathedral-like structure in its place. It’s a slow, but calculated act, and once a host tree has been parasitised by a fig it has little chance of survival. It seems brutal, but there is also some value here – the wood of a strangler tree is good for little other than supporting its branches and they’re horrible to chop down, therefore, loggers didn’t bother and tended to leave these sections of forest alone.  Some of Queensland’s National and State Parks owe their survival to these killers.

This story might have been played out over many decades, but look beyond what you see today and you can find a complex story in almost anything. Take a concept familiar to you and turn it on it’s head. Write about it from a different perspective and see if you come up with anything useful.

Saturday’s word: profligate

Oops, I skipped Friday’s word. So, directly to Saturday’s word: profligate - ad,j meaning wasteful or extravagant. I like the way this word feels rolling off my tongue.

I’ve been profligating my time for the past two days and have enjoyed it enormously. Writer’s need a break too.

Writing prompt: sense of wonder

2000 year old Antarctic beech

From the moment we learned of  these two thousand year old Antarctic beech trees at Springbrook National Park, Queensland, my hubby, Bruce and I decided it would be good for us to see them ourselves. They day we chose for our adventure was raining, windy and 5°C on the mountain, not freezing, but cold enough. We ate our picnic lunch of homemade Moroccan chicken and coffee in the car before braving the frigidity of the mountain air. Though only three hundred metres from the car park, the trek down to the trees was like tramping through an icefield. We were cold, wet and uncomfortable and wondering why it was so important to see these trees. I had been anticipating seeing the trees for over a week, so I was dismayed when I didn’t receive the expected pop that accompanies the experience of being in the presence of something so ancient and wonderful. I was overwhelmed, but it was with a sense of despair. These three elderly forest dwellers, along with a few younger ones nearby, were all that remained of what must have once been a magnificent place. Others like them have been carted away through the centuries to become cabinets or simply to make room for cattle, crops and families. Shivering in the rain I couldn’t escape the sense that they represented a dying world, that this was the final stronghold for their kind. But there was hope there too. Some compassionate soul found them and appreciated their importance, understood that they were irreplaceable. The ancient beeches would have a home for as long as there were people to wonder at them. That was when the pop came. As the forest around them shifted, and contracted, as countless animals made homes among their roots and boughs, these giants held fast to the soil, growing silent and unhurried. I wished them a continued silent life and was gratified that at least something remained from the era before European contact. Death will come to these trees, but with hope and a little human compassion, it will be a natural one well beyond my lifetime.

Describe a moment when you experienced an unexpected sense of wonder.

Thursday’s word: Praxeology

For ten points, and without peaking, what would you be studying if you studied praxeology?

Wednesday’s word: elegiac

Elegiac – adj, mournful, elegy-like

I’m not being deliberately morose with my choice of words this week. It just happened that way.

Use elegiac in a sentence.

Tuesday’s word: aleatory

Aleatory – adj, dependent on an as yet unknown event – depending on chance or luck

Try to use this word in a sentence

Monday’s word: ennui

I have a fairly poor vocabulary, which is why I have a dictionary within arm’s reach no matter where I go. I write down words I need to check on my mobile phone (it does have a dictionary, but it’s not that comprehensive), but almost as soon as I discover the definition I have forgotten it. I will attempt to add a word each day that has caught my attention to help myself and maybe even enlighten a few others. Some words I won’t know, some I will and will include because I like the definition or the way it sounds.

Today’s favourite word is ennui (pronounced on wee) – a noun meaning lack if interest or boredom.

Try and use this one in a sentence. Personally I would not attempt to use this word in fiction.