(from Writing Down the Bones, chapter six, A List of Topics for Writing Practice:)4. Choose a color---for instance, pink---and take a fifteen-minute walk. On your walk notice wherever there is pink. Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.
chair
flowers
diaper
buses
shadows
sticker
FedEx truck
violet gum wrapper
Ray's shirt
house trim
car tinting
on my morning walk i looked for the color purple. my first thought was to look for green or blue, but that's just silly; i wouldn't get off my block! i live in a new house (well, new for me)* in a new old neighborhood, funky and delightful; i've met a few of my neighbors. Ashley and her boyfriend have a purple stuffed chair on their porch. is it really purple or more burgundy? i was picturing a violet or lavender when i came up with purple, but i got nervous that i wouldn't see anything purple.
ah, but across the street, down on the corner, at the cemetery end of the block, an old house FOR SALE TO BE MOVED has a yard full of pale purple flowers. growing like weeds in every yard actually. i never know the names of flowers. i have a garden tilled and waiting to be seeded in my front yard; surely i'll know the names of flowers after growing season, at least the names of the kinds of flowers that i buy. the flower in the yard is shaped like a five-pointed star with a yellow center. is it a stamen? it pokes out and has some pollen dust on it. i know so little about flora and fauna.
oh, and there's a diaper in the yard, too. tab holding it closed into a triangle shape like a carefully folded american flag. a memorial to baby's last bowel movement. lovely.
a couple of bright colored buses with CIRCUS on the side of one have some purple accents. deep purple. the black guy with dreadlocks is working under the hood of one. he is kind of purple in color, and his dirty white coveralls must've been a costume at one time; they have purple bones painted on them and now they're fading.
shadows look kind of purple in the morning light, especially shadows around cement. cement in shadow puts off a purplish light. i pick a 5-pointed star flower from another yard and a truck turns off the main street onto the side street where i'm stooped over. the window is open slightly. the man inside leans up to peek at me through the dark purple shadow of inside the cab of the truck.
i turn on to the main street (12th). a band sticker has some purple on it, then a FedEx truck with its purple Fed and red Ex passes.
i like the side streets; i turn back toward my house, my neighborhood on Waller. there's a plastic wrapper discarded from a single piece of violet gum.
nearer the house, i find the remodeled house with the yellow, green and lavender trim. the neon green Geo out front matches.
and i'm on my way home again, but can't help spotting the purple tinting of a car's windows. not so rare afterall.
*This is an old exercise I came across while going through old journals (looking for some help for novel writing). We have a friend visiting from out of town and I just thought it would be fun to put this writing exercise in from when I first moved into this house instead of doing an exercise (but she's taking a nap right now and I have a little time). So much has changed! The HOUSE was bought and moved and mo-dern living quarters are being built there now. S. and I have a nice garden out there now, tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers and zinnias and watermelon and meyer lemon and peas and climbing spinach, lots of herbs, and another flower which I don't know the name of (I still am not too good at that).
