Hope (SOC)

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “hope.” Use one, use them both, but try to put one in your first sentence. Bonus points if you use the other in your last sentence.

I met a woman named Hope. This was pre-COVID. I wonder if we didn’t think much about hope back then because we didn’t have to? Unless it was ‘I hope I get that raise’ or ‘I hope I make that light’ or I hope they put a lot of mushrooms on that pizza’. I don’t meet anyone now. She was squirrely. Dodgy. She was other words that end in ‘y’ that I’m not thinking of right now. Where are all the adjectives when you need one? That’s adjectives for you. Flaky. She was, adjectives aren’t. Well, flaky is. Also good looking. I’m not going to describe her because then I’d have to think too much but if you look up and to the right – they say people look up and to the right when they’re thinking – then you can visualize someone that you think is good looking and she looked like that and for purposes of this SOC that’ll be good enough. Unless you’re a woman and you’re thinking of a man. That won’t work because Hope didn’t look like a man. Anyway, she was good looking. And maybe loony. And it’s so easy to get lost in someone’s looks and then say things you don’t want to say and do things you don’t want to do and wind up somewhere you don’t want to be. (Featherbrained just came to mind) So Hope was a wonderful reminder that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Unless you’re a used book appraiser in which case it would be necessary.

I like stream of consciousness writing. I learned about it in a Community Ed writing class I took a long time ago and the instructor recognized it as a valuable tool and encouraged everyone to use it. We all had to do it before each class. This was back when writing was done by holding a narrow tube filled with ink in one’s fingers and then moving it across a sheet of paper to form letters and words and eventually sentences and paragraphs. It was messy but not anymore because if I make a typo now then Word, compulsive little writing cleaner that it is, cleans it up and changes it to the right word. Sometimes. Most of the time it does that. Compulsive little writer that I am I like that.

I also like Railroad Earth. Have you ever listened to them? They play a mix of folk, bluegrass, country, rock and they jam a lot. They’re good. Look for them on Youtube. They took their name from the Jack Kerouac stream of consciousness poem October in the Railroad Earth. Have you ever read the poem? I personally don’t understand it.

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Here’s a song. I thought of it this morning because the word “hope” is in the title. It’s a good song and I love how the story (at least by my interpretation) takes place completely in the writer’s thoughts and it totally imagined.