One Minute Writer

Today's Writing Prompt: One Minute

If you could have just one perfect minute today, what would it consist of?

...

I hate picking just one thing. Perhaps I have too many facets of my life or I over-analyze too much. I also vassilate between the possible and the impossible, the dreamer in me always wanting what I can't have or an object of fantasy. In my perfect minute I could fly. Or I could talk with my grandmother who has passed away and was a third parent to me. I could pray and have a demonstration simply from the idea that God is love. I could be in a room assembled with all my friends who live away from me, just smiling and hugging and being happy in each others' presence. I could have a crazy minute where I am drinking the best mocha I've ever had from Alaska, I write a few perfect lines of a poem, I tell everyone I love that I love the while having a massage therapist rub the deep tissue knots in my back while sailing on a yacht in an ocean in the caribbean that has that exquisite blue-green water....

But mostly, I think I would rather just hold someone and be held. Not necessarily in a romantic way, just holding. The physical act communicating anything. I could be a family member or a friend or someone I'm romantically involved with but it doesn't really matter WHO. There is no one person in my life who encapsulates all my ideas of love but I would like that one minute to be with someone who can represent all the others.

...

The blog where I find these daily writing prompts is engineered to make people write for literally a minute every day. And while I need help disciplining myself to write every day, once I get going, a minute is not enough.

Beth, Russ, and I were driving to Chick-fil-a on Saturday to get milkshakes in the midst of watching the SEC championship game and bewailing the idea of UF playing in the national championship. The topic came up of what was everyone's favorite movie. And I realized I still don't have one. I can't nail down everything that I love about movies in one movie. Every time I think I've picked one, another one comes to mind. I could maybe pick a top 5. I'm the same way about music and books. Some books appeal to my childhood and childlike ways. Some keep me entertained. Some are so beautifully written they make me cry. But just pick one? I love them all too much....

Top 10 movies (in no particular order)
-What Dreams May Come
-When Harry Met Sally
-Meet Joe Black
-Stranger Than Fiction
-Stargate
-Singing in the Rain
-The Matrix
-Shawshank Redemption
-Amelie
-Bed of Roses

Honorable Mention: Contact, Howl's Moving Castle, Sense and Sensibility, Big, The Godfather

Top 10 Books (in no particular order)
-Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
-The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
-Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
-A Little Princess by Francis Hodges Barnett
-In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
-Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
-The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach
-Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
-The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
-The Small Rain by Madeline L'engle

Honorable Mention: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneggar, A Ring of Endless Light as well as A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle, All 4 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books by Ann Brashares, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

It always seemed a better way to judge people by what they liked than by what they said. When people tell me something is their favorite whatever, I wonder what it is that spoke to them so clearly. Not that I don't understand why that was their favorite, but that I want to know WHY it is their favorite. I'm going around in a circle, I know, but I want to know why it spoke to them so that I know a true part of them as opposed to who they might be pretending to be....

Blah! Way too wordy and sloppily written. If you can determine why something is someone's favorite something, you can help determine who or a part of who they are.

There. Better.