Thursday, November 09, 2006

Now and Then

He sat at the park looking at the Crape Myrtle trees in bloom. The vivid red flowers hung like grapes on the vine; their color complementing the green of the trees' leaves. Spring in North Texas was his favorite time of the year. As a child growing up in a ghetto neighborhood, there were no trees like this. With dingy buildings, iron fences and asphalt streets, the only brilliant color there had been from graffiti paintings on concrete walls by urban artists--or unregulated vandals, depending on your point of view. There were no vibrant trees there such as he enjoyed on this day in his adopted home state. No matter, though, how far he had come and how different his life was now, there was always an invisible ligament connecting his self now to that boy then. Nothing could ever break that tie.



Word Beads is a weekly writing meme. The challenge is to string the week's five chosen "words below with other words of your choosing to fashion a sentence, several sentences, a paragraph, several paragraphs, a poem, or even a short story."

This week's words were:

Steal
Ghetto
Myrtle
Unregulated
Ligament



9 down, 21 to go

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mary,

This is a cool game. I can't play this week .... well ... maybe ... i might could string it into NaNo ... we'll see ... anyway ... where would one go to sign on for this game?

And psst ... I have a secret news flash just for you ... in order to write a blog people want to read, you have to be a writer-writer. And since you are writing a blog I want to read, obviously you are a writer-writer. Now, repeat after me, "when people ask me what I do, I tell them I write. When they ask me what I write, I tell them they can read all about it on my blog ... and I hand them a biz card." The biz card says: "Mary LUE, Writer of Everything"

Have you seen the MOO cards that Lane mentions in her Pink Elephants Blog? I am so getting myself some and I am so going to start telling everybody I write. I am. Just like you. Right?

Sandra said...

Wow that is beautiful and I agree - you are a writer-writer.

Stunning. The photo too!

Terri B. said...

What a very nice piece you wrote! You should turn this into something longer. The paragraph made me want to know more.

Unknown said...

Thanks you guys!

Marilla Anne: There is a link to Word Beads at The Daily Meme and I think I linked it up in under the Word Beads button in this post.

TerriB: Who was it who said, "Always leave them wanting more?" I'll have to think about this to see if there is any more I can add to this story.

Unknown said...

P.S. to Marilla Anne. At The Daily Meme site, click on the Writing section in the list of memes. That is where you will find the Word Beads link.