Today's Writing Prompt: When I consider my writing as purposeful, I will write....
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I noticed something today, something I must have driven past thousands of times, literally thousands or possibly into the hundreds of thousands of times since I moved to Bakersfield twenty years ago this month.
It all started when I was sitting at the intersection of Alta
Vista Drive and Niles Street. My home is on Alta Vista, about
a mile or so from this very spot, and when I drive east toward
home from downtown or the west side of town. I must drive
through this intersection and somehow interact with this
particular set of traffic lights at least eight times weekly.
This morning as I sat there, waiting, I gazed at the lights
and thought, "Wow. These lights are weathered..." and as I
drove through and then drove North on Alta Vista drive I noticed
the beautiful, recently risen sun light as my thoughts
meandered down the, "Someday I want to take photos of those
weathered street lights. They intrigue me in their weathered
state and in the fact I never noticed their weathered state
until today."
That thought hovered all the way to Quincy Drive about five blocks further when I got
one of those undeniable thumps on the head that caused me to
turn my car around to take the photo today that I might miss
if I waited until tomorrow. This light would never be exactly
like this again.
I turned my car and looped around until I found myself moving
through the same intersection yet again.
I parked my car just north of the lights and pulled out my
camera. I clicked on this side and that side. I crossed the
street by foot and noted weathering on the other side, too.
Probably the oddest thing, though, was that on the Northeast
Corner there are a set of traffic lights that seem to watch
the tail lights of the cars as they drive west. No traffic
ever faces those lights on this one way street. All traffic
faces west, just like these particular lights face west.
They were created to be conductors of traffic and instead,
they passively sit day after day after month after month
after year after year after decade after decade.
The metaphor kicked me in the gut, just like a one word
prompt, oubliette, hit me in the gut in the days immediately before that particular day. The word "oubliette" had been brand new to me and it haunted me. Not only did I love saying it, "OUBLIETTE" (pronounced \ˌü-blē-ˈet\) I loved thinking about it. Like the traffic light,
unnoticed, forgotten, was exactly like an oubliette: a place
people were banished to in order to be forgotten. Who
ever looks in a hole for people, in a space that is
virtually inescapable?
I have been driving past this intersection daily - some
times several times daily - and never noticed this poor,
underutilized set of traffic lights. I felt sad for these
inanimate objects. "What is their point?" I said aloud,
wishing the transportation officials would tell me why,
why, why were these lights created only to be facing
no oncoming traffic?
Which brings me to the metaphor.
How many of us are born with a specific purpose within us
that never gets realized because someone else points us
away from it, on a pole, up and apart from our
true purpose?
And then, within that purpose, we are called to write. To create. To bring forth something. For those of us gathered here - we are meant to use our purpose to create something with words: a book, a blog, a poem, a script, a novel - or perhaps just an important letter to someone.
You may be well aware of your purposeful writing assignment.
You may only have the hint of an idea.
I am sure you are here, right now, being a part of this because you know you are supposed to be writing. You are here because perhaps you have felt like the useless traffic light. Perhaps you have felt like your words have fallen into an oubliette and up until now, you didn't see a way out.
Why, why, why, why were we created to write only to be facing away
from our purpose and not heeding the call?
Which way are you facing right now? Are you writing toward your writing purpose or are you still sitting in your oubliette?
I remember now my time working for the County. I was miserable.
It looked like I was facing my purpose. It looked like I was doing what I was supposed to do, but it wasn't. It was close - like
the traffic light was so close to doing what it was meant to do,
it was simply tilted wrong, for a lifetime.
My heart aches to think there are many people in a similar fix,
doomed to years and years and years in workplaces that don't fit,
in volunteer work that doesn't fit, in friendships that don't
fit and they stay because they don't know any differently.
I wonder what sort of conversations that street light would have
with itself if it could have conversations with itself.
"Can't I move?"
"Why don't cars ever face MY direction?"
"Does anybody hear me?"
"Red. Yellow. Green. Red. Yellow. Green. I do it like everyone else,
but no one, not a soul responds."
How did the traffic light feel today, when I pointed my lense her
way and clicked. How did the traffic light feel today, when I
looked at her and said, "How interesting." and "oh mi gawsh,
it is a living, breathing, color changing oubliette!"
How did the traffic light feel to have someone publicly notice
and then have that someone write her into an essay, a lesson,
a conversation piece?
Perhaps that attention spoke to a renewed purpose, perhaps
different from what it originally thought its purpose was,
but a purpose nonetheless.
No matter where you are in your writing life, it time for you to look at your writing purpose with a sense
of renewal.
We have a week to go here at And Now You Write.
A week to re-devote ourselves to improving our craft within the context of our writing purpose.
Today's Writing Prompt: When I consider my writing as purposeful, I will write....
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