Stumble It!
On Dying
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 10:42AM 3ww prompt: Earnest, Layer, Reactive
title: This Use To Be My Living Room, photo from On Dying Series by marisol diaz
I was born in the pandemonium of urban blood clots, but somehow I escaped. I've traveled much since then, through the arteries and veins of this rural heartland and I have to tell you that I've seen the decay. Sometimes its slow and benign, yet too often its malignant and devastating. Like the rings around a cut tree's trunk I can see the years of this state's life spiraling before me. And I am but an earnest microcosm of its day. I sit around your brittle, chafing, chipping brick and peel a layer of a earthy flesh back to see the ache. I wonder why all political repairs have been cosmetic when cosmetics are the most short-lived, insignificant aspects of living, to the blind.
"yeah" you say "but it's the seeing who are misled, who are ingenuinely reactive, who are truly blind."
I sit and contemplate your words. All I know is the saddest thing about all those homes dying and business's closing are that new hearts, dreams and passions are not moving in their place, instead those structures are sitting there, rotting, leaving the land marred with memories that like stains are impenetrably residual.
3ww, On Dying, marisol diaz in Writing
Reader Comments (12)
well written but difficult to take it all in, especially with such a gripping photo as well. I love the window to an empty field even more than the fireplace and bookshelves. It is tough to put things in perspective when everything is shifted to such a lack of everything including hope. thank-you for your honesty.
Well written, powerful and carrying a strong contemporary message. Excellently done.
To answer your question on my blog, I mention SS on Fri. I do 3 of those posts a week. And thanks for the lovely comment.
Very well done and such an interesting idea. You've captured the hurt so well. Timely and insightful.
(And thanks for your very, very kind comments over on The Tension.)
Good thinking, I love the picture too and the way the sun seems to be melting the snow, belting!
Raw. Timely. A fine piece of reality in a wordsmithed post! Great job!
This was a well written piece and straight from the heart. My favorite kind to read.
Nice place you have here!
This was powerful and speaks so poignantly of our problems today...the picture also packed a powerful punch. Loved both your words and the photo!
One fallacy of "job creation" is that frequently the jobs that are "created" are simply moving one group of people to another location, leaving behind the emptiness that becomes blight. Meanwhile, the underpinnings of our society are eroding away along with graduation rates. I read that this year, Detroit will graduate less than 50% of the high school seniors that started four years ago as freshmen. How can we accept that?
That was wonderful. I love you descriptions, and the pic is very cool.
There is always something haunting about an empty building or even the rembrants of one. I used to love to explore old farmhouses. I wish their walls could talk and tell the stories of the lives that inhabited them at one time. It is like trying to grasp the past from so little that still remains. i sometimes go to estate auctions to see what has been left behind. Reading old letters or receipts is sad and informative. One day it will be our own homes someone else will try to piece the past together to discover our lives.
A apt post. Very reflective and thoughtful. Just the thought of my home being empty and haunted scares me.
A Climb Through Altered Landscapes
"I was born in the pandemonium of urban blood clots, but somehow I escaped." Wow. WHAT an opening line! Fantastic take on the prompt!