A writing prompt I was given challenged the group of writers I was with to take something innocuous and play up the subtext. The goal was to learn to write freely and remove my judgment of characters I write about.
Food and Water
A Flight of the
Imagination
Sometimes a person does
not know that they are thirsty so they indulge their need with something else.
Something that may be equally as good for them - like gratifying, nourishing,
delicious food. And the food is wonderful. It may be the best food the person
has ever sampled in their entire life.
As they sit back and nosh on morsel after sumptuous morsel, the person
closes their eyes, slowly savoring each and every bite.
Even so, water
invigorates the cells of the body. Water helps the person to grow. It hydrates.
It clears things up for the person - not just their skin, but also their sight.
Yes, water helps the person to see better and gain perspective on life.
Sometimes the person only wants a sip of the water – just a single, small, sip
would be enough. Just enough.
At other times, though,
the person becomes greedy and sees the water as a pool. No. More accurately,
the water is an ocean. An ocean that the person sometimes only wants to dip the
tip of their toes into or perhaps only wade in as deep as their ankles. But, in
other times - though the person is not able to swim at all - she visualizes
swimming in the ocean. Letting her perfectly coiffed hair get wet as she dives
in deep, deep, deep beneath the raging currents.
And, just when she
feels she can no longer hold her breath a minute longer, she will ascend from
beneath the ocean’s depths and lazily allow her body to float along with the
rise and fall of the ebb and flow of the waves. She cannot believe how,
mentally, she had compartmentalized and pushed to the recesses of her mind the
fact that she loves the ocean.
However, the sun’s
rays, beating down upon the would-be-swimmer in the ocean, are at once warm and
inviting as well as brutally glaring. Suddenly, she remembers that she is not able
to swim and she hurries back to shore so that she does not drown in the
vastness of the waters - beautiful as it is, lovely though it be. The ocean is powerful, mighty, and swift.
And, going too far into its currents is scary and dangerous. And yes, alas,
forbidden to the swimmer who is trespassing along its private,
already-occupied, seaboard.
Mind you, the ocean would never purposefully
cause harm to the swimmer. The ocean is not designed to harm; the swimmer is
aware of that. The ocean was created for
sustenance and is essential to life. The ocean provides and protects for so
many. Yet sometimes, the ocean is not seen for what it is - precious and in
need of care. It is taken for granted as always being there – always just
existing.
But now, no longer a swimmer, she makes her
way back to land and sits on the beach, underneath the huge umbrella staked
next to her picnic basket. With a smile, she slowly eats her delicious food.
She is, in a word, content.
In a perfect world, water and food co-exist.
She is designed to need them both. They both help her to be better than she has
ever been at any point in her life. She realizes that she can eat as much as
she desires. Yet, can only contentedly gaze at the inviting, beautiful, refreshing,
revitalizing body of water.
How she admires the grace and beauty of the
ocean. No matter how far she may wander from the ocean's shore, her heart is
always near. And at times, when she has a moment alone and allows herself
private thoughts , she daydreams about swimming yet again.
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Based on my written assignment above, what is your best guess as to what the subject was supposed to be?
What, if any, are your difficulties with judging real life people or fictional characters?
PS...do not steal, borrow, or plagiarize my stuff. (The guilty party/parties knows who I'm talking to.) ;-) Smooches!
