Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About the Body in Extremity

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

Perhaps you know the feeling of adult hands upon your slight, pre-school shoulders, firmly guiding you in the direction of the recess line or nap room. The weight of their palms is clear and determined. Not violent, but not negotiable.

Such is the feeling, at age 30, as the contractions build, and my labor is imminent. Yes, there is the tightening of muscles tensing my pelvis like a balloon being blown to capacity. But there is also something else. It is not physical, more like a chemical omnipresence, and it courses through my veins to reach my brain with a inarguable decree. You are no longer in charge here. This is bigger than you. Invisible hands are upon me, moving me along a course with no turnaround.

Eventually, there is an irrepressible urge to push. Everything in this vessel of sinew, bones, and nerves, wants to move this baby down, and out. I give it everything I’ve got with each instruction from my mid-wife. My face and head pulse with the strain of bearing down from crown to root. My partner behind me, wraps his arms around to grip my knees, pulling me open to the sear of nearly splitting.

In the low-lit room, a headlamp illuminates the gateway, ever-widening, but not yet allowing full passage. I’m told to reach my fingers down to feel the real-live, actual baby hair of my child, pressed wet into the world, his head still stuck inside. Our first touch. He is so close, but not coming.

The mid-wife grabs my hazy gaze with alerting eyes. “I want you to call on whatever it is you need to call upon to help you deliver this baby. This is it. He needs to come out now…You can do this.”

courtesy of Chuck Heston
courtesy of Chuck Heston
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About the Most Interesting Person You’ve Ever Met

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

He was why I’d come. And now, he is here in a wheelchair before me.

I squat down to be eye level, taking his soft, outreached hand between my palms. His joyful eyes and his broad smile beam from behind his white beard, seeming to welcome, not only me, but everything. His entire countenance emits ‘yes’ to each particle in existence.

I mention having seen the movie about his life, “Fierce Grace,” and when I reference a deeply moving scene, I find myself starting to cry unexpectedly. Ram Dass tears right along with me, the water rolling from his eyes, a short sob catching in his chest. Yet, these movements seem inconsequential to him, as typical and natural as a breath or a heart beat.

courtesy of Zeitgeist Films
courtesy of Zeitgeist Films

After our short, yet deep, exchange, I feel a profound tranquility that I can only attribute to having been in the presence of a highly awakened human being. Steeping in that peacefulness, I find a place in the auditorium where Ram Dass will offer his talk.

Having suffered a stroke years before (an incident he refers to as having “been stroked”), Ram Dass’s speech is slow and deliberate. His face often moves, as though about to utter a word, but then stalls, as he breathes, pausing longer, just waiting. Never afraid, a roomful of hundreds of people hushed to hear his next utterance, and he waits. Sometimes there are minutes between words.

It’s as though his heart’s been cracked open, revealing to him some secret beauty. As if he now sees something so precious, it is nearly beyond words.

I want to know what he knows. See what he sees. I want to tell him about the dream I had of the two of us riding tandem on a bicycle, while he showed me all the signposts along the way.

So I find him after the talk, sitting in the passenger seat of a minivan. As I appear at his open car door, he looks at me without surprise or judgment. He knows what I have come for, even if I do not. Before I can speak, he’s pulling me close with his one moving arm, enveloping me in a full hug.

I feel the depth of his heart. Become acutely aware of my own. Am surprised when I hit a wall. Only able to let the Love in, so far.

courtesy of www.found-my-light.com
courtesy of http://www.found-my-light.com
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Write About a Place

Maybe it’s foolish (it is April 1st). But I’ll be foolhardy. Maybe it’s cheating. But I’m the one making the rules here, anyway.

After completing the first week of my online writing course, I’ve found myself both inspired and challenged with my daily assignments of 300 words in response to a prompt provided by our instructor. I’m not used to reigning in my topic, and I’ve grown accustomed to writing as many, or as little, words as I like.

What’s arisen from the framework of these assignments has been curious to me. Enough so, that I feel I might as well share the work, here on the Archives. If the premise of For the Archives is to chronicle the everyday, then these pieces are reflective of what I’ve been crafting these past days.

Below is prose in response to the prompt to write about a place.

I stepped off the ferry, with a fresh scar, one ovary, and a backpack. I was twenty-three years old, and seeking healing, in my lace up boots and floor-length, velvet skirt.

I arrived in winter to an island that was just a speck in a smattering of islands in British Columbia’s Georgia Strait. It was the sleepy season. Days were cold and misty in the quiet village, slowing to the simmer of borscht soup.

The Raven’s Nest coffee shop was warm with locals in knee-high gumboots, huddling in worn chairs, and swapping stories over steaming mugs. Next door, the post office was just large enough to fit a counter and a shelf of recycled magazines, while the postmistress listened to Blues in the back.

 Morningside road led away from the village, tracing the edge of an ocean that lapped lake-like, no waves. The sea, so clear and still, reflected bright purple starfish sucking to rocks on the bottom.

Further up the lane, black crows squawked atop thick tree branches in filtered sunlight. Shingled cottages with smoking chimneys leaned in to old growth Cedar trunks. In the air, was the warm scent of burning wood. In the earth, the rich loam of humus releasing beneath my boots. Smoke and salt air. Moss and mushrooms.

If a fairyland existed, this was it. And as if to prove the point, a waterfall poured forth from under Morningside road, spilling into the ocean in storybook perfection. White swans, gathered at the gush in graceful groups, floating in the blue-gray sea.

I spent a winter walking that curative path, gazing long into the water beside me. On a lucky day, I may have seen the shining obsidian of an Orca’s tail, slicing straight up through the surface. Maybe even hear the bellow of whale breath, exhaling a puff into the cold air. Ancient and humongous. Humbling.

courtesy of David Stanley
courtesy of David Stanley