I don’t know where I got this writing prompt from. Maybe it was from the amazing poet, teacher, and adventuress, Maya Stein. (Even if it wasn’t, check out her site and see what she is up to. Her undertakings are inspiring, surprising and fun).

The prompt is this:

Free-write on – Tell me everything you know for sure about your life.

I know for sure that I have to move my body in order to keep from getting lost in my mind.

I know that there is something special about living in this small mountain town.

I get that I can’t go back in time and experience New York in the 90s over again. I realize now that I can’t even imagine living in the city again – although for a few moments a few months ago, I did imagine it with ardor.

I know I need beauty and fresh air and birds singing and to stop looking at the fucking internet.

I want to remember life before the internet, life before wifi. I want old school – I want pay phones, I want paper letters that arrive in the mail. Wait, I don’t miss pay phones – I am forever repulsed by the surprise of picking up a handset covered in an unidentified, thick, sticky substance.

Fuck public phones – but I do love public transportation when it is not rush hour.

What I love more is riding my bicycle where I need to go. I know for sure I love my bicycle. It keeps me moving.

I know I need the earth, to experience my physicality as much as possible everyday. I know that after 20 years of looking hard for beauty, and sometimes only finding it in the smallest cracks in the sidewalk – I don’t want to look that hard anymore.

I know for sure that I want to have fun, but I don’t want to play games – unless they are volleyball or hockey or scrabble.

I know for sure that I love sex, really good sex, and that I will not put up with bad sex – or be in a relationship with scarce sex or no sex. Fuck that.

I know for sure that I can see bullshit coming from miles away but that I don’t always dodge it very well.

I know I like to put my tongue on smooth stones, to taste their chalkiness and feel the moisture being sucked from my tongue.

I know that I say I want to be near the beach but I keep staying in the high desert because I like to choose when I am around lots of people.

I know I need to visit the ocean soon.

I know that I like to see softness in things that are hard.

I know that I am glad to be a woman, that I love having the body that I have even though I am not always satisfied with it.

What do I know for sure?

I know for sure that I could not have said no to save my life.