I’ve been doing a series of writing prompts and I’d thought I’d share this one. The prompt was Outise the Window: What’s the weather outside your window doing right now? If that’s not inspiring, what’s the weather like somewhere you wish you could be? If you’d like to try them yourself, you can find them here: http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but that’s plagiarism. And it’s not really that frightful….yet. It’ll get there. Maybe. This is Texas, so who knows? Words do that to me though. I hear things all the time, every day that remind me of quotes. From a song or a book, a poem or a movie. I’m a walking fount of trivia that way. When my father in law lived with us, I had to walk past where he watched tv to get to the laundry room. I prided myself on calling out the title of the movie between the time I walked in one side of the room and out the other. Several times I correctly identified a movie I hadn’t even watched. Either from previews and extrapolation or because plot lines or actual lines or even characters that had become part of the pop culture lexicon. I hear things and I absorb them. I read and I know things. People ask me random questions all the time because they think I’ll know the answer. I often do.

I do this too. Deviate, wander. The prompt said write about the weather and I immediately go to quoting movie lines. My best friend and I use to go back and trace our conversations and I do this now with my kids. “momma, how did we go from a question about a song to nazi germany?” and we’ll go back to the beginning and trace it. This topic led to this one which led to that one and so on. It’s amazing sometimes to draw the lines between the dots. A friend in high school once asked me if the song Rambling Man meant anything to me. He was hilarious.

But the answer to the question is yes, there is a place I wish I could be, weather wise. Ireland. Mild and temperate.  When it’s too hot or too cold, I hear those words in my head and see the Emerald Isle. Even the term Emerald Isle feels like a cool breeze, doesn’t it? Mild and temperate. Green and lush. The heart of the world some believe. My ancient home, my roots. At least some of my ancestors hail from there and I’ve always felt a strong pull to all things Celtic. To the Pagan traditions, to the art, to Stonehenge and Easter Island, to the Arthurian legends. I feel like there are answers there. I’m not sure what the questions are. I feel like it’s home, though I’ve never been there. I feel its pull. Mild and temperate, that’s where I belong.