Wednesday, October 7, 2015

#55 Suitcase

55
Write about a suitcase. Is it a brand new thing from a department store, a charming vintage or a ragged old thing that saw the world? Describe its smell, shape, feel…
OPTIONAL: Work on your fiction and share.

Two suitcases, not pretty ones, not even plain traditional ones, rather two duffle bags - one enormous bag and one reasonably medium sized, were my luggage on my way to a new continent. How to explain to someone whose furthermost move was from one house to another house, or even from one city to another city? How to explain that you have to fit your whole life, short or long one, or a reasonably medium sized one like mine was, in a couple of suitcases, not necessarily pretty ones or traditional ones, or two duffle bags, such as mine? How to explain that whatever you chose to bring with you, you'd better truly love and cherish, if it fits your bag, and whatever does not fit, will stay out of your life from now on? A few items of clothing, a few most beloved books, a few photographs of your childhood and people you love... A few items that won't mean anything to anybody else, but mean so much to you, as those items you won't be able to buy in Walmart where you'll be taken on the second day of your new life to replenish a few practical things that you left behind - a hair dryer, a nail polish remover, those important little things that you won't bring with you to cross the ocean, but can't live without when you're in your 20s. The duffle bags looked enormous and weighed enormously when you were in the first airport where your father saw you off and you both tried very hard to not shed a tear, and in the second airport, a bigger one, where they still spoke your mother tongue, and in the third airport where everything looked like out of the movie and people spoke a language you've never heard before, and in the forth airport, after the longest flight of your life, where people had a skin color that you've never seen before. The duffle bags, looking so enormous in all those airports, suddenly looked tiny at home, in a small room where the one with whom you chose to continue your life journey brought you. In the little room where you unpacked all the things carefully chosen to stay with you on the new continent, the duffle bags were emptied, folded and tucked away, and all you had left were those few items of clothing, few most beloved books and few photographs of your previous life. The enormous duffle bags rapidly became a little pile of familiar things which traveled with you from your childhood home to a new world. Everything else in the tiny room and beyond it, in the house, on the street, in the town and the whole new continent, was unknown.

Rise and Write 50-56. Week 8


4 comments:

  1. Just wonderful!
    You had an adventure for sure!
    I have a suitcase poem. Too late for this linkup so will link to the next.
    Xo Jazzy Jack

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    1. I'm happy that you were inspired! Thank you for linking!

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  2. You really transported me to a bit of what it must have felt like to know that everything that was yours fit in two bags and everything that wasn't was the whole world around you. Powerful.

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    1. Thank you, it was a fun piece to write, and I definitely felt on fire! It did not take more than just a few minutes (I completed 3 or 4 pieces in less than an hour, including a poem - another writing marathon...).

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