916 Ink!

 

I attended a writer's group on Zoom a while back, and the experience was humbling, to say the least. Everyone seemed to be light years ahead of me. I attempted to follow the prompts and produce cohesive, thoughtful prose, but all I wound up producing was a lot of anxiety and self-doubt. I listened while other people shared what they had written, and made a few comments in the chat box, but otherwise I kept my head down. I was out of my depth.

I never went back. Here's what my mind was able to rummage from the junk drawer that night:

Prompt -- Forgiveness

 

“I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak, and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about forgiveness…” ~ Don Henley

I spent so much time opening up this Word document, and then googling “Don Henley” to make sure I spelled his name correctly, that I pretty much ate up whatever time I had allotted for writing about the actual subject.

This is a hard one for me. I’m not going to try to pontificate, like I know much about this subject. I am a grudgemaster, probably holding a record in some pettiness event for people who can’t let things go. So, for me, forgiveness is something next level, an esoteric concept that I am only vaguely aware of. I should forgive, but I mostly simmer and stew in a vat of my own anger.

I’m getting better, though. I try not to personalize trespasses in the first place, and that way there is less to forgive.

 

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Prompt – Something you feel guilty about but do anyway

 

I am a cannibal. 

Easy, now, don’t get ahead of me. Let me explain: I am a person who eats other living creatures, plants, animals, even the occasional inert mineral. This would technically make me an omnivore, I know. But in my particular belief system, if I can even call it that, all creatures, all matter -- all that exists -- is connected, and everything is divine, including yours truly, believe it or not.

The conflict stems from the fact that I feel a measure of guilt for my place at the top of the food chain. I love animals: those cute eyes that look so innocently at me when I walk by a cow pasture on one of my walks, the self-assured strutting of the parking lot roosters at Winco, with their demure consorts and tiny flocks of refugee chicks.  

I feel like each and every creature is just trying to have their best life, get their groove on, make hay while the sun is shining and get a good night’s sleep. And here I am, the grim reaper, the harvester, death in a pair of Wranglers, come to snuff out their life’s energy and consume their bodies without so much as a “thank you.”

I don’t actually kill anything, which makes it even worse. I am a coward, an executioner by proxy. I let the factory farming Nazis perpetrate the carrot holocaust, and I am complicit in Jennie-O’s poultry apocalypse. They do my dirty work, and I sit back, conscienceless, munching my salad and microwaved turkey.

I don’t know where to draw the line, though, since I know that in order to survive, all life must consume other life. The law of the jungle. I didn’t set up this hierarchy, but I am a willing participant, and I’m just not sure how much pain a vegetable feels when you ruthlessly pluck it from the garden.

 

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