First word: Imogen Mark: Time has left me alone

 It no longer runs, ticking behind me, peering over my shoulder, tickling my ear, breathing heavily, sometimes even sighing, a catch in its throat, a sob.

What has Time to cry about? How does it live its own passing? What can it use for markers, if its own seconds, minutes, hours, days, are silent or muffled in its own intestines? Can it even exist if has no-one to worry at, to make them worry? Does Time need humans, or sentient beings to make it conscious, to exist, even?

What is Time without a watch? It could measure itself in the seasons, the changing weather, the flowers and fallings from trees. Leisurely time.

How long is eternity? the king asked the wise shepherd boy. Well, the boy answered, far, far, far away, further than you can ever imagine, is a high, high mountain, higher than you can ever imagine, and harder than you can know, harder than the hardest diamond.

And once in every ten thousand years comes a tiny hummingbird and in just one movement it sharpens its bill against the hard, brilliant surface of the high mountain, and flies away. Well, when the bird has worn down the mountain to nothing with its touch, then, when there is no more mountain, the first second of eternity will have passed.

The description of eternity is my version of the story, The Shepherd Boy, from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.   

First word: Pamela Yorston: Time has left me alone

 Does Time take us by the hand at birth and plod along next to us to the grave?  Or does she let go our hand and let us run free, to and fro, lagging behind and then catching up and running ahead?  So that at any one time we are not chronologically where you might expect.

There was a gas leak in the building, and the concierge came up to see if the problem was in our flat.

“It must be in the 701,” I said. “It’s where that elderly couple live.”  I could see hi looking at me and added quickly, “More elderly than I am, at least.”

But they’re probably not.  They are likely a good five years younger than me, nut it just doesn’t feel that way.  I watch my friends hobble around holding on to the furniture, or using a walking stick and think to myself…what’s happened to everyone? I remember my mother saying something similar, feeling so much younger than her friends. 

Three-score year and ten is all we are promised, and every year after that is a gift, when we can let go the hand of Time and take a detour, stay out after dark and wander into the woods.  Until Time crossly calls us to heel, and we obediently take her hand again and march onward.

First word: Suzanne Roberts: Time has left me alone

 Time left me alone, when I left it alone.

I leave it alone almost every day for a while when I “lose” my telephone around the house or in the pocket of a bag. And I can’t call the phone because I always forget to put the ringer on.

The kitchen clock helps me hold time at arm’s length. It’s set ahead a seemingly unknown number of minutes, and I always undercalculate them to my advantage. The clock meant to help me be early, makes me late. Still, there’s a pleasing condescension in leaving it inaccurate: a clock out of time is somewhat pathetic, a clock keeping precise time is intimidating.

Sometimes time plays with me. Washing the dishes takes seven minutes, when I expect it to take 20. Typing up my writing takes 45 minutes, when I expect it to take 10. I can drive to work in eight minutes on a Sunday, but it takes an hour and a quarter on a weekday afternoon.

Time is like a tiger breathing down my neck at the back, making it sweaty and sticky, forcing me to clench my jaw and curl my fingers.

“Leave me alone, Time,” I cry.

“Fine, if that’s what you really want,” it says. So, I alone become unaffected by it and life as I knew becomes impossible. There is no growing up, passing through stages, living with the same group of friends and lovers. Children grow old. No relationship can last longer than a few years without my turning to paranoia, suspecting they are onto me. Once again time is bothering me again, simply by not being there.

No, time won’t leave anyone alone. Anyone or anything – the wine and cheese get better until they become drastically worse.

Who can make peace with time and how do they do it?

 

First word - Danette Beavers: Cream

The haze sat like a furry cap on the bowl of the city, like the mold that had been on her cream that morning. She wished she could take a spoon and skim them both off, but she had been told by an old lover that the rot penetrates, even if you can’t see it, so she’d thrown the lot away–the cream, and the city, too.

She wondered, looking down through the plane window what she would do about her part in the pollution. “How many trees do I have to plant,” she asked herself, “to undo what’s been done?”

May 2, 2024

 

Suzanne Adam: Ellen

 Ellen – home for my late-in-life writer’s persona. Under her direction I found inspiration, motivation, skills and discipline. Thursdays were sacred, and I didn’t dare arrive late to her and Victor’s apartment.

Her stream-of-consciousness takes on the “first word” were often humorous, even wild, showing me how to loosen up the pen in hand and take off in flights of fancy. Ellen’s fanciful flights led to stories about Claude, the elephant with a pink scarf, and Agnes, the dissatisfied housewife who grew wings, turning into a liberated chicken.

Encouraging yet disciplined. She inspired and urged us to write and publish two anthologies, one a prize winner. Generous. She gave her time to help struggling writers. We were honored to help edit her memoir, “Jinxed” about her years in Indonesia.

I once joined her hiking group for a trek in the hills of Lo Barnechea. She hiked like she wrote – determined, disciplined. I would stop to check out the vegetation and the birds, then had to scurry to catch up.

I don’t know if she finished “Lest I Forget”, about her early years in Canada. Those stories left me wanting to hear more. Ellen’s memory continues to be the motor of the Santiago Writers, still churning out stories and songs after twenty plus years.

Thank you, Ellen. Writing is always on my mind, my bookshelves overflowing with “first word” scribbles, travel journals, copies of two published memoirs and my blog, “Tarweed Spirit”.

Judith Ress: To Ellen

 Dear Ellen,

Now that you have crossed the threshold, you can be our muse twice over. Your spirit has always hovered above the table as we write—demanding discipline, an economy of words, precise, bare-boned. You will allow the poetic venture, even the occasional mystical flaring- forth—but it must be austere, untainted with ego, capable of being recognized by a kindred soul.

I owe my ability to write Sonnets of the Heart to you! Ever since I received a 99 percent in my freshman English class at Central Catholic High, I knew I wanted to be a writer. But life got in the way as I tried to make the world a better place for us who are but “common, pale flesh”. 

I heard about Santiago Writers from a friend. You interviewed me: I told you I had been working on a manuscript forever—a fictionalized version about two nuns killed in El Salvador in 1980. They were my friends: “there but for you, go I”. Clearly you thought I had potential, and I was allowed to join. Then the steep learning curve began—What a midwife you became! I wonder if you ever finished your Memoir, “Lest I Forget” which gave us such tender glimpses into your own soul.

Be assured we Santiago Writers will not forget you, Ellen. You are present in every “jot and tittle” we set down upon the page.

Judith Ress

Santiago, May 13, 2024

First Word: Suzanne Adam: Isolation

 Isolation

 

Meditation while in isolation

In silence…

Just the whisper of wind teasing

The leaves in the trees

Now

The rustle of Judy turning pages

Danette clearing her throat

Outside

Construction machinery

Beep-beep, bang-bang

The distant swoosh of traffic

 

Last month

At the lake

Almost perfect silence

At night only

Country dogs barking

 

Early morning

Long-legged ibis honking

The crested elaenias whistling

Distant voices of fishermen

Trolling on the lake

Their motors purring

 

For meditation I step outside

Breathe in the air

Perfumed by boldo trees and native grasses

The cool on my face is calming

I drink in the lake scene

That liquid bowl

A gift

Always there

 

Then

Down by the lake

The soft sound

Of tiny wavelets

Licking and lapping the shore.