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Quote #135
Iâm just going to write because I cannot help it.
Charlotte Brontë
Prompt #135
Write about a song.
Set the timer for 10 minutes and start writing. When the timer goes off, give the piece a title, count up the words, and post it below.
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What I Wrote: âProvidence,â Belonging, and the Complexity of Place
On the side of the road near our home on the hill in Waimea, a cluster of perfumed yellow ginger, Hedychium flavescens, also known as cream garland-lily or ʻawapuhi melemele.
I know what this is like, the many names one can be called.
âProvidenceâ (394 words), originally published in The Common
Itâs confusing when you believe you belong to a place and discover that others think otherwise. Thereâs an uncertainty of self when itâs not clear where you belong.
I wrote âProvidenceâ thinking about my children, appreciating this place weâve called home for over 25 years, but also acknowledging that I never quite fit in anywhere. My place of birthâSt. Louis, Missouriâwas a source of disconnect because we moved when I was six months old.
And yet âSt. Louis, MOâ follows me on every legal form, every piece of identification that asks for proof of citizenship. I never knew how to explain this to people who wanted to know where I was âfrom.â Once they established my ethnicity (so satisfying for them to pin that one down, also known as âwhere are you from fromâ), they also wanted to know where I was born, where did I grow up? I had a hard time answering that because we moved frequently for my fatherâs job. No place really felt like home.
When I visited St. Louis last year, my first time back in 55 years, something unlocked within me. I didnât really know this place, yet it felt deeply familiar. I recognized a kind of allegiance.
It was no coincidence when I saw that the two editors for Bloomsburyâs Object Lessons series had moved from their respective universities out-of-state to Washington University in St. Louis. Call it a signâI did. Washington University is also where my father got his PhD. I had received a request for the full book proposal, but I had not been in a rush. But now I knew it was time. I finished the proposal and sent it off.
I pitched my Object Lessons idea in late 2023, submitted the full proposal in fall 2024, and received an offer in early 2025.
But in 2025, our country had changed. There was a new administration. My whimsical book, âa nonfiction narrative exploring the fortune cookie as an immigrant story of adaptation, identity, and the American Dream,â suddenly felt ⊠well, you can figure out the rest.
Would I have pitched this idea back in 2023 if I knew how our world was going to change? I have no idea. As writers, we know itâs impossible to predict how our work will be received, if the timing is right, or if we should be writing at all. The best we can doâand what I have decided to doâis to write first. To see what it is I have to say, then decide how I want to say it.
For my Object Lessons book, Iâll be using short micro sections, separated by fortune cookie fortunes, to talk about how the fortune cookie has come to represent more than a simple Chinese take-out treat. Itâs a symbol of hope and opportunity, of good luck and good fortune.
It represents why all of us get to call America home.
The best we can doâand what I have decided to doâis to write first.
7.29.25 10-minute writing (from 7.28...) Word count: 186
Walking on Broken Glass
Sung by Annie Lennox. Listened to hundreds of times over 18 months when I had a fax romance with a new love since he'd left for a sabbatical.
Mind would wander and go to bad scenarios as I worked and was a single mom to my nine year old son. There was the support of Clarissa Pinkola Estes's book "Running with the Wolves" next to my bed, and I was reading it for the second time.
Then Bonnie Raitt joined Annie as my soulmates while she sang "Love Letter" over and over on the car CD player. My son remembers those songs being played over and over...he never complained though as a grown man he told me he thought I'd gone a bit unhinged.
And he was right. I'd fallen in love on the first date. Knew I would marry him. And he'd left to pursue a dream. He hadn't left me, though I failed to get that through my immature thinking and sore heart.
Thirty-two years later Darien says write about a song. I had two, and they sustained me.
Nothing Compares to You by Sinead O'Connor defines my last months in northern Ghana.
Since my American boyfriend took his love away from me, work had become meaningless. I was stuck in the simple NGO house with water pipes barely covered by dirt so cool showers were like magical thinking. Where dust colored the ceiling fan blades and my brain worked best in the very early morning hours between 5 am to 7 am.
I could do everything I wanted to without him here, but I didn't want to. We had already gone through one heart-wrenching separation period. We had met in Tanzania; electricity sparkled from the moment a mutual friend introduced us. We fell in and out of love. I thought. So I returned to Denmark. He stayed. I got a new job in Ghana. He came with me. The love tale is twisted, funny, adventurous, and the ending?
I was so lonely without him in that dusty, dry, hot village.
I could do everything I wanted to without him there, but I didn't want to.
Since he had taken his love away from me, I was empty.
Every single line Sinead was singing to my heart expressed my feelings. Her voice contained all the sadness, the longing my heart was holding. And it was suffocating me. I wasn't depressed. But I was struggling to make sense of how I would and could move forward.
Nothing compared to him.
Nothing compared to him.
I'd fall asleep with teary eyes, feeling Sinead's words in my body.
Of course I was wrong. Some roots are hard to kill. And so was our attraction for each other. It took another go at our relationship, this time in the US, before we both realized that living with each other was tough. That the love that had planted itself in our hearths had died.
But somehow, he will always be my first fiery lover.