(sight, sound, taste, touch, smell)
I had towrite two journal observation posts for my Creative writing class utilizing observations of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. We were given our choice of prompts. I did these two.
Journal Entry #1 Describe a coffee mug
My coffee mug is blue; at least it is in the place where the color has not been rubbed clean off. The circular opening where my thumb fits into the loop, a near perfect fit, is raw. Where the blue used to be is now a color hard to describe, it’s a place no longer blue, a place that is simply time worn, smoothness in the place of color.
I choose this imperfect mug each and every time, somehow we connect. Someone else might never choose it on a shelf standing like a soldier in line with the others. The other’s who are my mug’s neighbors standing proudly in their upright perfection. My weak mug always leans against the sidewall for support. It is wobbly but always reports for duty.
This cup has gone to war with me over the past year, as I fight the aftermath of insomnia each morning. I stay up late worried about what the rough edge of divorce has done to my blue eyed son. He made me this mug, when he was too little to know about the fracture that was to come. Bright eyed and full of trust he gave it to me.
In times of frustration and regrettable guilt, I have ironically rubbed the same shade blue of his trusting eyes away from his gift. My rubbing serving to sooth a raw ache within, the kind that only loss can cause. My mug is heavy, making a melodic thwacking sound on the table when it is full of coffee. The sides of my cup are hot against my palms in the chilly mornings. The rim is sturdy between my lips as I slurp my sweet coffee from my mug. My mug is a perfect fit, while everything changes, it remains.
Journal Entry #2 Describe voices down a hall
I am warm. They are cold. They scatter across the walls like the jacks I keep in my toy box. They are a constant splattering of noise, sudden then just as suddenly silent. They should be hushed, singing a lullaby perhaps. They should be intellectual discussing a newspaper headline, with the interruptions of a breath as a cigarette is lit between the lilts of their melodic sing song.
There is a manly one, and there is the tinkling of a feminine one dancing with it. It’s an agitated dance, a sometimes stepping on the other’s toes dance. It’s growing louder and angrier, coming towards me down the hall like heavy footed shoes. This one is big, like the monsters that hide under my bed. It’s coming closer and closer. But wait, the female one is traveling alongside with an insistence, a halting voice, a rush like high heel shoes clattering along a sidewalk fast. The dominant strong one goes silent, and retreats, getting quieter, and a hushed whispering again occurs.
The deep one and the lilting one are hushing and whispering and it is like the rain at my window when I forget to latch it like I am so often told by the authoritative one. Hushing and whispering…a hushing and a whisper… They are still down there and yet I am falling asleep, because they are a back and forth thrum of a heartbeat, consistent yet calm. I am dozing off; they seem to be singing me to sleep now. I am falling and just as I am nodding off, the deep voice is loud and the lilting one screams out a frightening sound. So shrill it could break glass, if my window had been dutifully closed.
Why does Daddy always yell at Mommy so loud?
