Daily Nourishment for March 1: Places and Their Stories with Toni Morrison and Megan Dohm
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 13 minutes
How many stories does this place hold?
Pause.
Take deep breaths with a six-count inhale and six-count exhale while reading this quote from Beloved by Toni Morrison:
“Some things you forget. Other things you never do… Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.”
Prompt.
Here’s an excerpt from “The Lost Midwives of Ocracoke” by Megan Dohm:
“Ocracoke is a small slip of an island off the North Carolina coast. It’s a place where some of the houses were built with timber stripped from shipwrecks, a place with countless stories of lost sailors, of German U-boats dangerously close to shore, of a beheaded pirate swimming laps around the wreckage of his ship. The memory of storms has soaked into the roots of trees, into people, and into the low tide silt — the kind of storms that demolish two churches, two schools, and 30 houses in less than a day, and leave drowned chickens up in the trees.”
Practice.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and begin writing about a familiar place. Using the quotes above as guides, describe the place with unique and specific details. Maybe some of these questions will help you determine what to include:
What sets this place apart?
Which stories does this place hold?
What does this place remember?
What has this place forgotten?
What do you see in this place that others might not see?
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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