Prompt Tuesday..... on Wednesday

The blogosphere is an interactive space. That's what I was trying to get at with yesterday's post. Comment on the ideas of a newspaper columnist, and you have to get your letter through the editor before others can share in your brilliance. Commenting on the inanities in the blogosphere requires only the confidence to type in your thoughts. This unmediated medium, as I've written before, demands the participation of the reader to fully maximize its potential.

I could write my thoughts in a diary, but I don't. Keeping a record of myself for myself always seemed self-indulgent. Talking to you through the Burrow is more connected, and more rewarding, than Dear Me, could ever be.

In doing so, I'm trying to take on my piece of the process in other places in the 'sphere. I've been commenting and reading the other blogs posted by Blogher in my sidebar (except for the cat people..... sorry, but even I have my limits.....) and following my favorites. And that's how I found PROMPTuesday. If you don't want to click through and read about her (of course) adorable children before you get to the point I'm trying to make, just read this: Compose approximately 150 words in 10 minutes using the following prompt. Post it or link it to your blog.

Victoria, my business manager/daughter/Little Cuter's pseudonymous alter-ego, submitted a post to Five Star Friday last month, and it was selected as one of the 23 best entries of the week. After basking in the glory, I began to realize that I had not sumitted a paper for review in 35 or so years. Not bad, I thought, getting an "A" on my first try! I lived on that for a while, but the itch kept growing.

Then I stumbled upon this. And I decided to try it. It's probably a bit over the top, but it's supposed to be "top-of-mind, primal thinking before the ego and judgmental brain kicks in."

Anyway, the goal is "to make writing fun again" and I enjoyed doing it. Why don't you try it, too?? What do you have to lose??
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PROMPT: Please tell a story about this cave :





They sat enraptured, enthralled, engrossed, engaged, dancing in their minds with the shadows. Leaping, lurking, lounging, laughing the images moved in a steady stream. Seeing themselves or others or no one at all doing something or nothing or everything and they watched. Imagined and projected and ruminated and looked but never thought. Never examined. Never gazed within.


Didn't wonder about the source of the light. Or what it might mean. There was no meaning. There were only shadows, misty murky ephemera wandering in and out of their consciousness.

Without wanting or needing or deciding that participation might be possible, they looked forward, at the prancing dancing silhouettes on the wall of the cave around them. And they sat.

Knowing that they were alive. Unaware that they were merely sitting, while living was just a few feet away. If they would only turn around.
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(With thanks to Plato and Socrates for the idea.... and to the Big Cuter for explaining it to me so well. It's nice when those dollars for an undergraduate education come back to wrap their arms around you and give you a great big hug.)