This word [itself] is a challenge.

“Put up yer dukes,” it says. “What have you got?”

I sit, stunned, silent, blank.

“You’d better be good,” it says.

Or what? I’ll prove that I’m not?

Not worthy, not talented, not impressive, not lovable?

Balderdash!

I accept your challenge, Challenge! Who cares if I suck?

This isn’t a duel with bullets. It’s ball point pen scribbled on a flimsy 3×5 card.

It’s a fight against shadows & smoke, not fists.

Just standing up & walking = a win.

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<img style=”border: 0pt none;” title=”xo, Melissa &lt;3″ alt=”xo, Melissa &lt;3″ src=”https://melissadinwiddie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/lacl_signature_150x159.jpg” width=”150″ height=”159″ />

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Once we ordered jumping beans from a catalog, and put them on the windowsill

so the sun would warm them into action. My brother & I watch them,

our heads not much higher than the sill on which they rested,

so quiet, so still.

We waited for an eternity there, & were rewarded — maybe? —

only by the slightest of quivers. So disappointing.

The instructions said the beans jumped because a tiny worm (or bug?) lived inside,

so I grieved for the hidden creatures, who must have died before they could jump.

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A fee for instruction, says Webster. (What does that make intuition?)

Back when I went to school, tuition was about $600 a semester. Room and board cost more than what I paid to learn

Didn’t I learn just as much from the dorms in those years?

From my first romances,

first true love,

from getting drunk too much, then realizing — hello! — I didn’t want to get drunk anymore.

From friendships made & lost,

jealousies,

my first date at a nice restaurant,

my first massage.

From growing up.

Life charges its own tuition.

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You are such a lover, And.

A joiner of things.

A yente of words, ideas, thoughts.

Would that we all were like you — so positive!

Always implying “Yes!”

Never striking down, even if you’re subtlely offering an alternative.

It’s always an addition with you, an optimistic offering of opportunities.

An infinite linking, chaining everything you touch, making partners out of previously lonely words, magically, with three little letters.

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Have you ever noticed how,

when you long for something for ages,

saving up for it,

plotting & scheming how you’re going to get it,

once you finally have it,

it’s not as sparkly as you imagined it would be?

The colors not as vivid,

flavors not as intense.

My first marriage was like that.

Graduating from college.

The Gloria Vanderbilt jeans I ached for for months in 8th grade.

Is this it?

Really?

Just a little man behind a curtain?

The Emerald City glows so much brighter from a distance.

Process Notes:

As this project progresses, I notice myself getting more and more critical of what comes out on those little index cards, more self-conscious that — sh*t — this stuff is going to be public! What was I thinking???

Confession: today is not the first day I’ve filled up more than one 3×5 card, because the first was just too embarrassing to post. Ahem.

In keeping with the original intention of the project, then, here is a pic of all three of today’s cards, not just the one that was “least cringeworthy” enough to officially post.

My goal of freely writing, unhampered by the inner critic, and my goal of writing things I’m actually pleased with, seem so often to be at odds with one another.

But then, that’s exactly why I’m doing this in the first place.

Onward!

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