Writing with Rox WEEKLY—When several travel prompts are requested

 First of all, I hope you have an amazing trip and I look forward to hearing all about it ! And feel free to try these prompts at home! It's 100% safe!

There are so many prompts that I can only imagine will show up every moment of your travels; if you stay open to prompts, you will see them everywhere. Notice what energizes you/charges you--for better or worse and all in between--and there you have a loaded prompt. Is it pinwheels? Elevators? Hotel rooms? Hotel lounges or pools? Is is the lone person? The happy couple on their honeymoon? Is it a know-it-all-therapist? Is it jealousy or joy? Cocktail hour? Feeling left out? Feeling acceptance? The jacuzzi? The memories of being here before? The sensory array of blooming things? THe not blooming things? Can a face bloom or not bloom?  Notice what's happening inside and write from there and you cannot go wrong.

Sit. Check in. Look around. Check in. Write. Oh, and what about "checking in"? That there is a great prompt. Especially in therapy-land. Many stories there.

Ditto walking. 

Ditto sitting in a conference hall.

Ditto the carpeting in the hotel conference hall. Oh, the memories and infinite possibilities that live in hotel carpeting.

Which has so many shades and patterns and colors, and really, can take you to drapes, which have many stories you've forgotten you've forgotten, and of course, windows and views outside of windows and.... do you prefer your shades up or down? Is your favorite color blue or red or both? And what are your memories of that color and associations with it? And what if you just write for an hour about lemon yellow? Or lemons? Or table cloth white? Or table cloths? You've got to just trust that when you give it space and time, something magic will show up and have lots to say. Will move through you and thank you dearly.  For that matter, you could write about gratitude. Or grumpiness. Yours. Hers. Theirs. The righteousness you feel when it's some unenlightened else's. 

What you hear at the pool. Or smell. What does chlorine do to you?

And of course the food. What you love. Fear. Won't eat. Can't eat. How you judge what others eat. How you hold back. How you count calories or splurge or compile recipes or tell yourself "well, I'm on vacation..." and what about all that? Or maybe you have a daquiri which you haven't had since you were 21? Or whipped cream? Or try eel sushi? Or skip a meal and write about your hunger. Hunger moves words in a myriad of acrobatic and architectural ways.

And of course... it goes without saying... what you're learning and how it moves you because most of all I think it's good and energizing to attune to what moves you, what works that incredibly receptive life giving muscle to tears, laughter, to happiness, to release, to insight, to friendship, to new beginnings, and possibly new endings... 

and before I say 'write about beginnings or endings' or meetings of all kinds or reunions, I'd better quit now before this gets completely out of hand, but for now, I'll just say "thank YOU for the prompt."

Have a ball! (oh gosh... and who doesn't have ball stories? My first ball was a soccer ball...)

Rox 

Writing with Rox WEEKLY—A simple dream realized

What dreams have you realized lately?

For as long as I can remember, I've watched those wide push brooms with the smiling mouthful of teeth sweep through large vacant spaces either before or after the event or perhaps during sparse attendance—dance halls, cafeterias, bars, yoga studios, lobbies, elementary school hallways, etc— across hardwood floors of all shades; likewise linoleum, marble, 50's style checkered, peel and stick modern, faux wood, etc, always deriving the same pleasure I would, say while watching the big ice machine clear the scuff at the ice rink on Santa Monica Boulevard by the beach, where we cooled off many days of the year, lost in the magic of so much ice in one place, starring trancelike, almost hopeful, into the milky eye of the North. 

So today, I finally got a wide push broom at Home Depot. So inexpensive. So easy. Why had it taken me so long? And I was so excited, even though it's still cold in here, I took out even more tropical colored rugs (one-by-one) from the living room floor and wondered what else I could get rid of in order to waltz this widening open room-broom dance into the night and for the rest of my life. For what could be more gratifying than sweeping an empty space down to its skeleton, raking the debris from its belly and then lying on your back in the soft, open, shine as a newborn ?

Wish I had more time to write about this. Or more time to sweep. Darn. Never enough time to push the broom across the floor or sweep the hand across the page. Someday, perhaps when I am very old, I will realize the dream of endless time to write and sweep. But in the meantime, I've wanted one of those brooms forever. Lucky me.