Friday, November 2, 2012

Five Minute Friday - Roots

Here's my weekly link up to The Gypsy Mama for her Five Minute Friday prompt.  Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking




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Topic: Roots


I have nothing profound to say about roots.  I want to do my 5 Minute Friday today, but really,  I've just spent 10 minutes staring at the wall and thinking that it should be easy to think profoundly about roots.  

I've got nuthin'.

Instead of profundity I keep thinking, "Roots are sort of ugly.  They're dirty and lumpy and a little hairy.  And they're dirty.  I know, they are nourishing and stabilizing and oh-so-symbolic. But they're just not pretty.  I prefer them covered up."

Tree trunks I like.  Oh, Oregon has the most amazing trees with the most unbelievable trunks.  Blog worthy trunks.  You may see pictures in the future.

And I like when the roots of really old trees aren't even in the ground any more but are all covered in normal looking bark and are winding their way across the ground like wiggly little benches to sit on.

Maybe my root-ambiguity is because we just uprooted ourselves and moved to a new place.  But somehow it doesn't feel like uprooting.  We left  friends, but there's email and telephones.  We left a home but it was a rental, so was never truely ours.  And we still have each other in the house.  There is still morning rush on frozen waffles, school time peppered with distractions and adventures, naps, shopping, life.

So my roots don't really feel uprooted.  Maybe my roots are just intertwined with the people that I live with here instead of a place.  People often talk about "putting down your roots" where you live, but mine don't seem to go into any particular place.  They just wind around people.  (Which means they're always exposed and ugly, so maybe I need more dirt around me.  Nevermind, just glanced at my floor.  We're good on dirt  here.)

See?  Nothing profound about roots, but I do have dirt.  So there's that.

Happy Friday, everybody.  If you want profound root posts, head over to Five Minute Friday and read some of the lovely links there.




3 comments:

  1. I loved this. I so often don't like the word of the week and so choose not to participate (like this week!) but I found your post so refreshing. It's not supposed to be about whether I like the word of the week or not -- it's about taking the 5 minutes to think about something and write about it.

    And it doesn't have to be profound! How inspiring!

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  2. You don't need more dirt (not because of your floor, either.) Exposed roots are my favorite kind. That vulnerability is beautiful. And I think I hadn't thought about it in those terms before--about roots wrapping around people instead of being set into a particular place, but it describes my feelings, as well. Thank you for this, Janice.

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  3. PS--I'm reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg right now, and she talks about how sometimes you have to spend 10 minutes just writing about how you don't want to write before you can come up with anything else. You demonstrated that beautifully!

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