in an effort to add content to the collective’s website, work off some of my excess frantic energy, and flex my writing muscles (all too dormant as of late), i found a website today dedicated to assisting creative writing efforts by supplying a writing prompt. i want to eventually work my way through all of them, one per week. i’d say the writing takes about 20 minutes, which isn’t bad at all. and i have an interesting piece of writing left over at the end of it.
1. close your eyes briefly. think of an object that’s in the room and focus on it. without opening your eyes, recall as much detail as you can about it. after three minutes or so, open your eyes and write about the object without looking at it.
i have a tapestry in my room. it’s approximately three feet long on a side, and square in shape. the fabric from which it is made resembles silk, but could easily be some sort of synthetic, such as polyester, since my fingers are relatively untaught in the ways of fabric textures. rest assured it is a smooth, lightweight, and translucent fabric of some sort, with a very tight weave.
the dominant colour of the tapestry is a deep but vibrant blue. perhaps it’s a bit darker than the ‘electric blue’ of which i’m so fond, which one sees while looking up into the sky while being a passenger on a plane.
at the center of the tapestry is a ‘yin yang’ emblem of black and white. for those unfamiliar with this image, imagine a pair of teardrop shapes–one white, one black–that are swirled about one another so closely that they form a circle together. upon the center of the bulbous part of each teardrop is a small circle of the other colour.
whirling away from this center emblem are four multicoloured propellers. a more accurate description of these four shapes would be ’scimitar blades’, as their terminating ends wrap off towards their respective left sides to form a point at their widest ends. along their lengths, these blades–propellers, scimitars, or otherwise…maybe even yataghans–shift from white, to violet, to green, to yellow, and finally red. the effect is very much like a rainbow, where it is stretched straight, while its colour scheme is still forced to go in a perpendicular direction…does that make sense? maybe it’s best to say the bands of colour change as one looks from the center outwards, as opposed to stripes of morphing colours appearing along the blade lengths.
between these blades are streams of four or five ‘thought bubbles’, increasing in size while curving gently away from the center. these bubbles, too, have changing colours within them, radiating from the center point.
the whole effect of this banner is to give one a sense of spinning, of motion, of action, all surrounding the calm, still peaceful center of the yin yang.
this tapestry was a going-away gift from a coworker of mine at my first-ever non-profit job. he and i shared an attraction to east asian cultures and beliefs. i also took him for a 21st century curmudgeon and cynic. his wry, nearly-grumpy sense of exasperated humour countered his kind-hearted dedication to public service. he also introduced me to the poetry of east asian hermit ‘cold mountain’, whose book i would later purchase upon his recognition (and quickly relish).
my other coworkers were (and still are, from what i can tell) fine people, all steadfast in their dedication to public service. but this gift stands out more than the others, as this coworker and i shared similar perspectives not just in terms of public service, but also in personal philosophy.
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below is a picture of the tapestry; it’s amazing to observe how inaccurate i was in my description, but so vivid and detailed in my mind’s eye. such is life; we lose many of the details, but never realize it. click for a larger size pic.
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