Feel free to pull any element from this—the colour, mood, place…some utterly random thought that pops into your head as the result of looking at this image! Write and post!
Feb 3, 2022·edited Feb 4, 2022Liked by Alison Acheson
"Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, yeah. Make you wanna move your dancing feet now", sing it, Uncle Bob!
Let me tame my terrible falsetto. We don't want passengers shooting complaints to this already vexed fare attendant, do we? She can't stand my lush voice. Pardon me for being a little joyous this noonday, ahem!
Sunny to my mind's eye, paying no attention to the hail and fluffy drops of the snow outside. Nonetheless, it is one's duty to get the passengers safely to Franz Josef.
Franz Josef is where I live. This tram driver is nearing the close of his day and will be retiring into his habitat.
Cook up a storm for wifey Sujata and our twins, Armah and Amaah. Let's see, grilled salmon with pepper soup, some baby potatoes, ah, I can't wait.
Hang on, let me stop daydreaming, and turn up this track "pon de" radio.
Hums in the background, the passengers join in the chorus with Uncle Bob, "Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, yeah."
Days like these, suns our beings like the spot of light shining the tracks.
This makes me day! Love the energy here. The voice just picks me up and carries.
As soon as I read the lyrics, I started to hear... could hear the tram sound under the music--reggae rhythm chills me out. Makes me smile. Can hear the splat of the fluffy snow meeting the glass (the bass?)... feel the cooking storm to meet the one outside--how we meet the craziness and get on. The juxtaposition of sun and snow. Pepper soup--heat for cold. The anticipatory thoughts of a man about to go home and cook for his family--beautiful. Lots of love in that.
Your closing line made me want to shout out! So glad you posted this. Thank you!
A sweet chunk of marshmallow melts into foamy clouds in my mouth as the thick chocolate juice trickles down my throat. A black cat is sitting on the windowpane of a grey building where perhaps, a family of four or five would be waiting for their holiday visitors. The still image soon gets drained into my memory lane as I take the final sip of fire from the cup.
Feb 6, 2022·edited Feb 6, 2022Liked by Alison Acheson
Thank you (always!!) for the wonderful lectures. Moving around, whether on the bus or walking, always brings new ideas and imaginations! I would love to read your transit stories in the future!
I am currently in love with your book, "Dance Me to the End." It is a very heartwarming story and makes me think a lot about my mom... It's teaching me what it means to be a family member. Thank you Alison, for helping me grow as a writer, a daughter, and a person!
Dawna, I am truly touched by your words here about the memoir, and am so heartened to see its usefulness for you and for your family. That's been my motivation in writing it and getting it out into the world...so it means a lot that you have shared. Thank you.
My body may be buried today in the last sands of July, but my mind shivers with the frigid winds whistling their way to the depths of the kettle that January eve. My legs were listless, flinching only during intermittent intervals as the baseboard coils clicked in the night, the temperature outside dropping every half hour.
Tomorrow I would be on the tram into town, the mere thought of which made me fill the kettle again and place the spoon back inside the blue and brown mug on the bedside table. These excursions always required a week’s worth of solitude in the work shed afterward, sometimes two.
Magnus and Lucas are the only reason I endure the trip along number 8’s winding road; taking this twice a year journey, I earn myself the bargaining power to hole myself away again until after the winter’s thaw.
You've captured introvert pain here! And make me so curious about Magnus and Lucas--if they can draw out the narrator out six months, I'd like to meet them... (But the curiosity is good.)
I paused at the tenses: legs "were" listless, and Tomorrow I "would"... I wonder if you want it all in present and "Tomorrow I will" - future?
You've evoked so much on three short paragraphs! I so like how the alliteration of July/January connect these two can't-be-more-different months!
Feb 10, 2022·edited Mar 4, 2022Liked by Alison Acheson
This was not Sergei Purzelbaum's little car.
He just stole it from The Winifreds.
There were three of them, and they were all named Winifred. When Sergei moved in with them in 2002, the Winifreds told him their theory about how they were distant relatives of Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni people who made her own little army and attacked the invading Romans.
One of the walls of the dining room was covered in a floor-to-ceiling family tree that dated back to AD 61, that some scribbly ninety-four year old hand had drawn with a black fine liner Sharpie. Before they showed him the rest of the house, Winifred the Twelfth pointed her cane at the family tree and said in a scratchy sort of way, "in three weeks, we will have an epic game of Trivia where Winifred the Eleventh and Winifred the Eighth and I will sit around on the three-seater rocking chair and find out if you have learned our family tree by heart or not."
Sergei did not know if Winifred the Twelfth was serious about that or not, but he spent the next month hiding in the upstairs crawl space. The upstairs crawl space was the only part of the house where he was safe from the Winifreds, because they didn't like climbing up ladders.
* * *
Strapped into the back seat of the little trolley car was the JELL-O. Winifred the Eighth finally found the packet of 1793-dated JELL-O that the Winifreds had been saving since they inherited the house in 1941. They were always eating JELL-O, because they didn't have any actual teeth, but Sergei Purzelbaum had a sickening feeling in his rib cage that they had finally uncovered THE JELL-O. "THE JELL-O --1793" was scribbled on the family tree, somewhere in between AD 62 and AD 68, with a question mark and a big, thick arrow pointing to it. You could always tell if things were important if there were big, serious looking arrows pointing at them, and if the word "JELL-O" had been underlined four times.
On Wednesday night the Winifreds made the ancient strawberry JELL-O. They made it in a mold that was shaped like the most obnoxious Valentine in the world, with swirls of dead mayonnaise and 21 of those horrid little green maraschino cherries suspended in it.
Sergei Purzelbaum was hiding underneath a winter hat that looked like an oversized sock, with just his pointy nose peeking out for safety. Snow flicked against the window shield. The evil JELL-O pulsed in the back seat, like it was some living cell that he would never, ever escape.
Sergei was taking the back roads through this little town because he was pretty certain he wasn't allowed to drive this thing on the highway. He was going to take THE JELL-O as far away from the Winifreds as possible, even if it meant throwing it into a volcano or the grand canyon. Sergei Purzelbaum did not get the Winifreds at all, but he was convinced that if they kept the JELL-O, then something terrible would probably happen to civilization.
Kathryn! Sorry for the slow response. I've had to savour this several times. And the past week has been a bit much, for many reasons. But this is so filled with flavour and whimsy. Mostly, I'm delighted that this old tram car in the snow led you HERE! And then the Valentine's tie-in... good!
When we packed up my mother-in-law's home, there was grocery pieces that would have made a movie-set-decorator swoon with happiness! Not to mention an ancient unopened Toni perm... Hot chocolate, ancient instant coffee, yes--jello!--and so much more. It was rubber-glove time, yes. And I kept hearing old television commercial jingles playing through my head the whole time!
Other readers here haven't had the privilege of being familiar with your drawing... but I can imagine your visuals here, oh yes!
One note: unless you want a sense of possessive for "the Winifreds," consider cutting out the apostrophe. Small thing, but for me it takes away from the (fun) plurality of them... but you might want that possessive for some reason. Just thinking...
To Alison, thank you for this! This was a most exciting experiment. A long time ago Carson Ellis did this drawing challenge thing on the internet where she picked three different nouns/adjective type things like "is eating breakfast. Is wearing a hat. Is a lizard" and then you would see all these different drawings people made of lizards wearing hats and eating breakfast. This reminded me of that, except the opposite, as it is making words from a picture.
I have never seen an ancient Toni Perm before, though it sounds like a most exciting thing to uncover in a house! Last week me and my mum went to clean out my 86 year old Oma's Eimuchkeller (this dark place under her stairs) and then we had to clear out a lot of various expired home canned things. The oldest was some blackberry juice from 1989. It was canned in a glass Coke bottle, and the blackberry juice was so old that when you turned the bottle upside down it stayed stuck in one spot, like it had gelled itself there for the past thirty-something years.
And, thank you for the apostrophe note! I was uncertain about that, but suspected that you would notice if something were amiss as I remembered that you have a bunch of grammar wisdom. Yes, I had intended it to mean that there is more than one person named Winifred! With that, is there anyway to edit comments? I might also change the date of The JELL-O, as if they moved into the house in 1941 and The JELL-O is best before 1989, than that might not really make sense (unless The JELL-O is seriously ancient, but it lasts a very long time, or if it is magic / has something to do with quantum physics).
Right next to "reply" on the bottom are three little dots. Click on them and you'll find "edit comment"--and that should allow you to do that! Ooooo, a dark place under the stairs. I so understand why J.K. Rowling made that H.P.'s home...
Thank you, and sorry for taking all these days to edit this! I have found those sneaky dots and have been fiddling with the Winifred grammar just now--hooray!
"Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, yeah. Make you wanna move your dancing feet now", sing it, Uncle Bob!
Let me tame my terrible falsetto. We don't want passengers shooting complaints to this already vexed fare attendant, do we? She can't stand my lush voice. Pardon me for being a little joyous this noonday, ahem!
Sunny to my mind's eye, paying no attention to the hail and fluffy drops of the snow outside. Nonetheless, it is one's duty to get the passengers safely to Franz Josef.
Franz Josef is where I live. This tram driver is nearing the close of his day and will be retiring into his habitat.
Cook up a storm for wifey Sujata and our twins, Armah and Amaah. Let's see, grilled salmon with pepper soup, some baby potatoes, ah, I can't wait.
Hang on, let me stop daydreaming, and turn up this track "pon de" radio.
Hums in the background, the passengers join in the chorus with Uncle Bob, "Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, yeah."
Days like these, suns our beings like the spot of light shining the tracks.
This makes me day! Love the energy here. The voice just picks me up and carries.
As soon as I read the lyrics, I started to hear... could hear the tram sound under the music--reggae rhythm chills me out. Makes me smile. Can hear the splat of the fluffy snow meeting the glass (the bass?)... feel the cooking storm to meet the one outside--how we meet the craziness and get on. The juxtaposition of sun and snow. Pepper soup--heat for cold. The anticipatory thoughts of a man about to go home and cook for his family--beautiful. Lots of love in that.
Your closing line made me want to shout out! So glad you posted this. Thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilj9hnALkmM
Thank you for this writing prompt to take us out of our funks, just for a moment. You started it, we continue it. Thanks!
A sweet chunk of marshmallow melts into foamy clouds in my mouth as the thick chocolate juice trickles down my throat. A black cat is sitting on the windowpane of a grey building where perhaps, a family of four or five would be waiting for their holiday visitors. The still image soon gets drained into my memory lane as I take the final sip of fire from the cup.
The combining of image and sensory! The possibilities. "Drained into memory"... yes.
Brings to mind so many vignettes that flow through the mind while on transit. There was a time when I regularly wrote transit stories and poems.
I'm honestly sorry I haven't posted an image-as-prompt before now!
Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you (always!!) for the wonderful lectures. Moving around, whether on the bus or walking, always brings new ideas and imaginations! I would love to read your transit stories in the future!
I am currently in love with your book, "Dance Me to the End." It is a very heartwarming story and makes me think a lot about my mom... It's teaching me what it means to be a family member. Thank you Alison, for helping me grow as a writer, a daughter, and a person!
Dawna, I am truly touched by your words here about the memoir, and am so heartened to see its usefulness for you and for your family. That's been my motivation in writing it and getting it out into the world...so it means a lot that you have shared. Thank you.
My body may be buried today in the last sands of July, but my mind shivers with the frigid winds whistling their way to the depths of the kettle that January eve. My legs were listless, flinching only during intermittent intervals as the baseboard coils clicked in the night, the temperature outside dropping every half hour.
Tomorrow I would be on the tram into town, the mere thought of which made me fill the kettle again and place the spoon back inside the blue and brown mug on the bedside table. These excursions always required a week’s worth of solitude in the work shed afterward, sometimes two.
Magnus and Lucas are the only reason I endure the trip along number 8’s winding road; taking this twice a year journey, I earn myself the bargaining power to hole myself away again until after the winter’s thaw.
You've captured introvert pain here! And make me so curious about Magnus and Lucas--if they can draw out the narrator out six months, I'd like to meet them... (But the curiosity is good.)
I paused at the tenses: legs "were" listless, and Tomorrow I "would"... I wonder if you want it all in present and "Tomorrow I will" - future?
You've evoked so much on three short paragraphs! I so like how the alliteration of July/January connect these two can't-be-more-different months!
This was not Sergei Purzelbaum's little car.
He just stole it from The Winifreds.
There were three of them, and they were all named Winifred. When Sergei moved in with them in 2002, the Winifreds told him their theory about how they were distant relatives of Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni people who made her own little army and attacked the invading Romans.
One of the walls of the dining room was covered in a floor-to-ceiling family tree that dated back to AD 61, that some scribbly ninety-four year old hand had drawn with a black fine liner Sharpie. Before they showed him the rest of the house, Winifred the Twelfth pointed her cane at the family tree and said in a scratchy sort of way, "in three weeks, we will have an epic game of Trivia where Winifred the Eleventh and Winifred the Eighth and I will sit around on the three-seater rocking chair and find out if you have learned our family tree by heart or not."
Sergei did not know if Winifred the Twelfth was serious about that or not, but he spent the next month hiding in the upstairs crawl space. The upstairs crawl space was the only part of the house where he was safe from the Winifreds, because they didn't like climbing up ladders.
* * *
Strapped into the back seat of the little trolley car was the JELL-O. Winifred the Eighth finally found the packet of 1793-dated JELL-O that the Winifreds had been saving since they inherited the house in 1941. They were always eating JELL-O, because they didn't have any actual teeth, but Sergei Purzelbaum had a sickening feeling in his rib cage that they had finally uncovered THE JELL-O. "THE JELL-O --1793" was scribbled on the family tree, somewhere in between AD 62 and AD 68, with a question mark and a big, thick arrow pointing to it. You could always tell if things were important if there were big, serious looking arrows pointing at them, and if the word "JELL-O" had been underlined four times.
On Wednesday night the Winifreds made the ancient strawberry JELL-O. They made it in a mold that was shaped like the most obnoxious Valentine in the world, with swirls of dead mayonnaise and 21 of those horrid little green maraschino cherries suspended in it.
Sergei Purzelbaum was hiding underneath a winter hat that looked like an oversized sock, with just his pointy nose peeking out for safety. Snow flicked against the window shield. The evil JELL-O pulsed in the back seat, like it was some living cell that he would never, ever escape.
Sergei was taking the back roads through this little town because he was pretty certain he wasn't allowed to drive this thing on the highway. He was going to take THE JELL-O as far away from the Winifreds as possible, even if it meant throwing it into a volcano or the grand canyon. Sergei Purzelbaum did not get the Winifreds at all, but he was convinced that if they kept the JELL-O, then something terrible would probably happen to civilization.
Kathryn! Sorry for the slow response. I've had to savour this several times. And the past week has been a bit much, for many reasons. But this is so filled with flavour and whimsy. Mostly, I'm delighted that this old tram car in the snow led you HERE! And then the Valentine's tie-in... good!
When we packed up my mother-in-law's home, there was grocery pieces that would have made a movie-set-decorator swoon with happiness! Not to mention an ancient unopened Toni perm... Hot chocolate, ancient instant coffee, yes--jello!--and so much more. It was rubber-glove time, yes. And I kept hearing old television commercial jingles playing through my head the whole time!
Other readers here haven't had the privilege of being familiar with your drawing... but I can imagine your visuals here, oh yes!
One note: unless you want a sense of possessive for "the Winifreds," consider cutting out the apostrophe. Small thing, but for me it takes away from the (fun) plurality of them... but you might want that possessive for some reason. Just thinking...
Thanks for sharing this!
To Alison, thank you for this! This was a most exciting experiment. A long time ago Carson Ellis did this drawing challenge thing on the internet where she picked three different nouns/adjective type things like "is eating breakfast. Is wearing a hat. Is a lizard" and then you would see all these different drawings people made of lizards wearing hats and eating breakfast. This reminded me of that, except the opposite, as it is making words from a picture.
I have never seen an ancient Toni Perm before, though it sounds like a most exciting thing to uncover in a house! Last week me and my mum went to clean out my 86 year old Oma's Eimuchkeller (this dark place under her stairs) and then we had to clear out a lot of various expired home canned things. The oldest was some blackberry juice from 1989. It was canned in a glass Coke bottle, and the blackberry juice was so old that when you turned the bottle upside down it stayed stuck in one spot, like it had gelled itself there for the past thirty-something years.
And, thank you for the apostrophe note! I was uncertain about that, but suspected that you would notice if something were amiss as I remembered that you have a bunch of grammar wisdom. Yes, I had intended it to mean that there is more than one person named Winifred! With that, is there anyway to edit comments? I might also change the date of The JELL-O, as if they moved into the house in 1941 and The JELL-O is best before 1989, than that might not really make sense (unless The JELL-O is seriously ancient, but it lasts a very long time, or if it is magic / has something to do with quantum physics).
Right next to "reply" on the bottom are three little dots. Click on them and you'll find "edit comment"--and that should allow you to do that! Ooooo, a dark place under the stairs. I so understand why J.K. Rowling made that H.P.'s home...
Thank you, and sorry for taking all these days to edit this! I have found those sneaky dots and have been fiddling with the Winifred grammar just now--hooray!