Everyday Canvas

August 12, 2021

For "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" 
Prompt: "To feel creative, I need plenty of white space, coffee and good light." Niki Franklin
What do you need to feel creative?

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Recently, words have left me, and forget about being creative. Forget about originality. Even straight sentences are hard to come by. I used to write in my blog at least a couple of paragraphs for each group, and it didn’t take me more than fifteen minutes, either.

Now, days and months pass by and nothing. I can’t even write for my own stinky prompts. I do keep a personal long-hand journal though, but that is private. With that one, my words fall on the page on their own.

When I used to write easily, I needed nothing. I didn’t even need an idea. A single word as a prompt would be enough for me to come up with something or other. Not always good but hopefully passable.

I still haven’t lost heart, either. Somehow, I’ll get over this grief of loss, too, even if I only attempt to write once in a blue moon.

For: "Space Blog" 
Prompt by Megan: From Cappucine ’s "Chez Jean- Luc" 
Write about France in your Blog entry today.

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Synchronicity! I am reading two books concurrently and both have scenes taking place in France. And one of the characters’ name is Jean Luc, the jeune premier in the story to be exact.

I like France, especially the riverside in Paris as there’s always a story happening there, but then there are other places and countries in the world that mesmerize me more.

Yet, coming back to France, although I am not a drinker, I love their wine cellars, some spooky, others dusty, yet still others that show off bottles from decades or even a century ago, lying in their fairy-tale slumber, as some wine makers hid their good vintages from the German occupation during the Second World War. The French wine has a bewitching quality, more of it probably preserved for being legendary like the sleeping-beauty.

I remember those from decades ago, in Bourgogne (Burgundy) among a crisscross of canals, and specifically in Côte d'Or, and I especially still see in full color, in my mind’s eye, a wine maker who called himself a simple farmer, when he took us down to his cellar as a rare reward for my husband who had helped his daughter through a rough patch. He treated his bottles as if they were alive, like people, as the heavy bottles lay on their sides on the wine-racks with corks intact.

This still amazes me, the corks being intact thing, because, much earlier, I had tried to make wine myself in our Long-Island basement. Something nasty happened and the bottle rebelled against me, blowing its top and throwing its cork and spraying an entire wall and ceiling with purplish stuff during my so-called wine-making attempt.

I know now, this was because I didn’t let the wine breathe. But then, sometimes, it is difficult to let those we love breathe. Then, sometimes, I hold my own breath, too, especially when the going gets tough.