Truck Full of Flowers

Just working and thinking.

I’m excited about this workshop I’m teaching on May 9 on WHY WE WRITE. You can register for it here. This workshop will be excellent prep for 1000 Words of Summer, which starts May 30 and runs through June 12. More about that here.

If you’re in Atlanta, I’ll be doing this extremely fun event on April 30 with Matthew Shaer, sponsored by A Capella Books, Grocery on Home, and the Origin Stories Podcast.

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Hi friends.

It was rainy here yesterday and I was inside for most of the day, working on my proposal pretty intensely. Lots of copying, pasting, hunting, pecking. On days like those I sort of lose track of my body for a minute, the idea of height or strength or even texture, and it is all just words.

In the early afternoon I wistfully looked outside, wondering when it would stop raining, and it was then I spotted an enormous display of flowers in the back of my neighbor’s truck. I wondered if he had a party he was going to—or was coming from. Thought maybe I’d use it as a detail in a story one day, the enormous floral display in the rain, in the back of a pickup.

I went back to work. I wrote about the recent past and also a year ago and also twenty years ago. The rain turned to storm, thunder and lightning, and the dog ran into the room, scared. This is when he wants me to help him bury himself under the blankets and so I did that, got him snug and safe in bed, and I left him there and went back to work.

An hour later the rain stopped and it turned suddenly beautiful outside, just the edge of humid, and the dog surfaced from the covers, and then I fed him and took him for a walk. When I came home I realized I wasn’t done walking. I needed just a walk for me, where I could feel my body again without worrying what kind of trouble the dog might be getting into. He’s a rascal, that dog.

So I walked past the truck full of flowers down to the river to see what I could see as the sun was setting. I thought about how this whole day was just me and my words and my dog except for a phone call with my family and also the two people I had seen at the cafe first thing, and one person had complimented my new haircut, I suddenly remembered, but that was it, and that had been a lifetime ago. 7 AM. And I had been up since 5:30 AM, working. Strange where the day goes, I thought.

I didn’t see anyone I knew as I walked through the neighborhood, but it was good to do this extra walk, I thought. Good to feel the air.

Back at my house, I saw my neighbor at his truck, plucking flowers from the display, disassembling it, and then clipping the ends off the flowers. “What you got there?” I said, hoping for a story, but also just happy to hear the sounds of voices in real life, and not just from a speaker. He told me he worked weddings sometimes at a backyard venue in the neighborhood and a florist had forgotten to take this display. He was making bouquets for his roommates and friends. He told me to take some and then insisted I take more. “There’s plenty,” he said.

Then we talked for a minute about his hopes and dreams and the things he was making. I said I’d keep an ear open if I could help but who even knew if I could (or even if he really needed it)? But I’d like to.

Inside, I arranged the flowers. How do you think they made me feel?

I bet you can guess.

Sending love,

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.