not quite drawn and quartered

Greetings from Maryland, where it's 27* this Thursday night, with a "feels like" temperature of ELEVEN DEGREES---so I'm very glad that I tackled Molly's monthly Inklings challenge before all my senses froze over!  Molly's been reading Unlocking the Heart (a book whose cover does not seem to know that WINTER HAS ARRIVED), and she gave us this very open-ended prompt therefrom:

“Begin with a specific sensory experience (of taste, sight, smell, sound or touch), and see where that leads you.” 

 

This prompt is not what I was thinking of as I tucked myself into bed one night this week, adjusting for everything from plantar fasciitis to a tendency to clench my jaw, but I woke up in the middle of the night (another repercussion of passing through the middle of one's life) with this very specific and not especially welcome sensory experience in mind.

Still, I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for the way that my gray-pink matter is still working away under my gray-brown hair and can cough up this gray-green memory of a smell, a time, a place, a revulsion strong enough that I can hang onto it until morning and want to write about it. That's something, right?

Check out the further sensory experiences of the Inklings below, and many thanks to Carol at The Apples in My Orchard for hosting us after waaaaay too long a drive!

Mary Lee Hahn @ A(nother) Year of Reading

Catherine Flynn @ Reading to the Core, who may need a bye this month 

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche