Reclamation

These are my responses to the Writober prompt post Fear of Abandonment.

I really enjoyed how the prompts came together today. Like my experience with my photo-walk yesterday, looking for fear of abandonment made me think about its opposite, reclamation. When a building is abandoned, nature reclaims it. When objects are abandoned, they may later bring great joy to collectors or recyclers when they reclaim them, as my family’s old record albums have done for me.

OctPoWriMo

Today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is to choose an old album cover and use it as inspiration for your poem. I lost most of my records to hurricane Katrina, but I now have an eclectic collection of records that belonged to my grandparents, my parents, and my sister. So today, I looked through my collection looking for album covers that made me think of fear of abandonment (or were just really creepy). Here’s what I picked out:

The two on the left made me think of creepy old cults and why they are abandoned. “Disco Inferno” made me think about how music and dance eras take over, are a huge part of people’s lives, and then are abandoned for the next one. The two snow covers have to do with my answer to “What is the texture of abandonment?” I said, “cold snow up your sleeves and down your neck.” The polk-a-dot bear costume made me wonder where it went when it was abandoned: If that man still has it somewhere: What it looks like now.

A Disco Inferno Leaves an Indelible Stain

Ivy vines reclaiming, leave an indelible stain
on crumbling bricks of abandoned mansions; the indelible stain
of changing fortunes and attitudes; the indelible stain
of life enduring and moving on, like disco.

Saturday Night Fever left an indelible stain
on my psyche. The macho of the disco inferno an indelible stain
on the sexual revolution, and yet the indelible stain
of sparkling disco balls and skating rinks makes me smile.

Now that my blouse fits again, reclaimed, there’s the indelible stain
I can’t wish it away, abandon it like disco. An indelible stain
isn’t snow inside a ski-jacket: it stays. The indelible stain
tells me to throw away this shirt, but I don’t, do I.

Writober Flash Fiction

For today’s story, I chose the “Jungle ruin” image.

Visiting the Abandoned Temple

I no longer remembered why we had trusted this man, an Australian who said he traveled here all the time, and he knew a spot that would blow our minds. We had been hiking through this thick, starving-bug jungle since dawn. I was a swamp of sweat and biting my tongue to stop from whining, “Are we there yet.” My tongue hurt almost as badly as my feet.

I was thinking, “If one more branch hits me in the face, I’m going to sit down and never move again” when I heard Calvin say, “Whoa, man. Totally worth it.”

I hurried to catch up, barely catching myself from falling on my face when I tripped over a thick vine. I hoped it was a thick vine. And there it was, taking up the entire cliff wall, the entrance to an ancient abandoned temple.

“Who built it?” Calvin was asking our new friend.

“The locals say it was built by the most ancient, as a portal from their dimension to ours,” he said.

The statues of men hanging by their fingertips on either side of the stone-blocked entrance gave me a bad feeling. “Calvin, we’ve seen it. Let’s go.” I said. I couldn’t believe I had said it myself. This place was amazing, usually I would want to explore, find a way in, but every cell of me was screaming, Run!

“What are you talking about? We just got here,” said Calvin starting up the broken, uneven steps. Then the tentacle was around his waist, his arms his ankles. He folded backward and his head cracked on the stone steps. Then I was running back the way we had come as fast as I could, never looking back, not once.

“Oh don’t go,” our guide yelled after me. “The fun is just beginning.”

He no longer had an Australian accent. His booming voice floated and echoed as if from a great distance with overtones and undertones like the chords of a multi-dimensional throat singer weaving through time. At least, that’s how I describe it to the doctors in our sessions.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s images I was inspired by my answers to the “More Sensory Imagery” questions. Because I answered that abandonment was black, white, red, and gray, I used the fun filter in my camera that turns everything grayscale except the color red.

One of my symbols for abandonment was an ivy vine, so I went outside and pulled an ivy vine then sketched and cut it for a bokeh shape filter. I really like how the overall shape in the image I chose above, looks like an ivy leaf made of ivy leaves and vines.

Happy Writober!

See you tomorrow!