The power of reframing lies in a technique that, like a good editor, takes initial thoughts and transforms them into bestsellers. Instead of negatively reacting to rolling garbage bins down a long gravel road on Tuesday evening try on an “Oh goodie” attitude. If that’s too much too fast, how about a nonchalant shoulder shrug instead?
As I grapple with a perceived lack of content for tonight’s blog and doubt my writing chops, still I will persist.
Even before words materialize from my fingertips an ashtray-smelling figure redlines and Zorro slashes my thoughts. And try as I might not to eavesdrop on his mutterings, I can’t help it!
But what if I could? What if – like a juggler – I could skillfully maneuver words onto a page like a flame thrower with swords? Or what if transformed this piece into a whimsical element, like with a squirrel tightrope walking with rainbow-colored tiptoes?
But whom I’m drawn to and who I tune into is the figure by the hot spring, a man extending outstretched arms and indulging in a forever-lit doobie. He beckons for us to sit with him in the pool. He’s mid-sentence, “-a woman with cocoa-colored skin, ruby-red lipstick glistening like a freshly applied top coat.”
He stands, his nude body hanging on his bones like rubber on a toy chicken. He picks up a worn leather drum, “A gift from my nomadic friend,” and nods to us before slipping in the rest of his body back in, and placing the drum on his damp legs.
An unnoticed side act unfolds as on a serrated leaf a coin-sized spider marches on toothpick-tip legs.
Only after a long draw off his hand-rolled joint he starts suddenly and intensely, something resembling a Native American tribes war chant. The shrill yell triggers a fight/flight/freeze response from anything with a heartbeat in a 100-yard range.
The shake of his head is as feverish as a maraca, and its hard to tell whether this act is a smoky handshake with madness or genius. And then it’s over. Silence. The hum of an idling car with its headlights shone over a tumbleweed. There’s the tinny sound of his Altoid container opening once again, pressing a brown rolling paper to his thick dark tongue.
I’ll leave the man the way his momma birthed him and say this; that was fun. No, I don’t know the man, No, nothing like that has ever happened to me. But yes, creativity is a muscle; and we should keep flexing it!
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 