3-30 Writing Exercise - Bringing the Abstract to Life

Think in concrete terms. Make the following abstractions come to life by rendering them in concrete specific details or images of one sentence.

Racism - Hiring an unqualified white over a qualified minority

Injustice - Letting a drunk driver back on the road after his third incident involving injuries or deaths of innocent victims.

Ambition - Skating five hours a day, starting at age five, for fifteen years.

Growing old - Suddenly finding yourself lost on an "unfamiliar" street one mile from your home of forty years.

Salvation - A five year old seeing her mother's face after spending a frantic few minutes lost in a large crowd at the amusement park.

Poverty - Going to bed for two nights in a row with a gnawing hunger that presses through to the backbone.

Growing up - Understanding for the first time that your parents are actual people.

Sexual deceit - Lying to a partner about birth control in hopes to have a baby.

Wealth - Living in a home where there are rooms you never, ever need or use.

Evil - Forcing a four year-old daughter into the basement for another game of "hide daddy's hot dog."

**********
Quote of the day: ...and then she made me swear not to tell which was like asking me to carry a bomb in my mouth. Kaye Gibbons - "A Cure For Dreams"
Chosen because who has not been told a secret that was screaming to be told, to feel the impossible pressure of it against the door of their clamped lips, pushing, pushing to be released to the nearest ear. I love the urgency and danger of "bomb in the mouth", perfectly describing the fine balance of wanting to tell, yet knowing the destruction it could wield. Bearing a secret forces one to combat inner forces and I love using the bomb metaphor to mark the tightrope walk of it.