On Green & Using Prompts
Week of June 23rd- 29th, 2024.
I’m having a hard time writing today. I walked around my block and thought too hard about how behind I feel. Behind in everything. Which is not true, but I think it’s easy to feel this way. I have to remind myself that everyone probably feels this way. I’ve also read a lot of very good writing this week and sometimes it makes me want to write and sometimes it makes me want to give up. So, I’m going to use a prompt this week, which I love to do. This prompt comes from the reason I created a substack in the first place, Suleika Jaoud’s ‘Isolation Journals’.
Anyway, here is the prompt, which is taken from Maggie Nelson’s ‘Bluets’ which I just read a couple of weeks ago;
‘Compose an ode to your favorite color as a numbered list. Free associate; see what stories, images, or memories the color evokes. If you can, try to stretch your list to thirteen.’
When I was a child I told people that my favorite color was blue. Now when I get asked this question, I internally cringe, What a boring thing to ask. This is the sort of question that feels like it's coming out of the mouth of a terrible first date that you’ve convinced yourself you should go on but are now severely regretting. But how can color be boring?
I find it hard to describe what my favorite color is, I don’t think the shade I’m looking for can be picked out on a Pantone swatch book at Home Depot. I think it is more alive. Less opaque and more translucent.
I would tell you that it is the color of the light through the trees.
So green, yes.
It is the color of the light through the trees, in the morning when I’m riding my bike to work. The way green almost turns golden when it's being soaked by the sun in the woods. Moss-lined tree trunks. Soft places to put your hands and your face.
My Mom has green eyes. I’ve always been jealous of people with green eyes.
I’ve been thinking a lot about eyes lately. I don’t think I notice the color of people’s eyes very much unless I am also sleeping with them. I should pay more attention to their shades; my friend’s, my mom’s, my dog’s, even my own.
Perhaps one of my favorite things about having someone is the eye contact. I find it so intuitive, yet so brave. To look. To look deeply. I feel as if I could read their mind if we look long enough and deep enough.
In acting school, we often spent time making intense eye contact with each other and pretending that it didn’t feel exposing and strange.
I have never fucked someone with green eyes.
When I think of green, I think of God. Or maybe it isn’t God that I am thinking of but the Earth, which is God enough for me.
My dog’s toy on the floor in front of me is an unnatural, neon green. My shorts are a dark green, stained with jam from work today. My weighted blanket is the same color. Looking at green, a good green, is almost a weighted blanket in and of itself. I feel calm, I feel grounded, I feel connected.
My relationship with my apartment is fraught, I have too many good memories in this space and too many bad ones. The walls are holding onto something and I feel the absence of others too strongly in this apartment. Yet, the way my living room looks in the evening makes me want to stay here forever. The leftover plants, getting hit by the sun, my grandmother's old couch, and the view I have of my favorite tree off the back porch.
All variations of green.
I thought about this a lot last night, and I’ll share it here so that you can witness me attempting to be nice to myself: I didn’t take a writing class until literally last spring. It’s been a little over a year since then. I hadn’t let anyone read anything that I wrote until about a year ago. A year later, I’ve taken three workshops and found a beautiful community of friends/ writers through those classes, I firmly claim the title ‘Writer’ because that is what I am, I’ve started submitting work, and I’m set to start a poetry workshop tomorrow (which is terrifying because what even is poetry?)
And yesterday, I got my first lit mag rejection and I weirdly felt good about it. The first of many rejections but it was the FIRST. Yay for that!
“soft places to put your hands and your face” 🥹💚🍀🌿🐢🌱🧤🦎 love this & you’re inspiring me to perhaps write a purple manifesto
how lucky are we that allison billmeyer's words are on substack?