The #100DayProject is a free, global art project. The idea is to create something and share your progress through the 100 days of creation!
Creation, in this sense is a broad word. In truth, the idea is to choose some sort of activity; writing, reading, coding, tying your shoes – and commit to doing it every day for the next 100 days. Now, if you know me, you know commitment is hard for me.
But for the next 100 days – I am going to get a random word from randomwordgenerator.com and use that word to write three sentences. The sentences can be a story, it can be prose, it can be poetry…whatever. Even if it’s bad or I don’t like it – I leave it up here.
Take a moment to think about committing to doing something for 100 days – you could surprise yourself!
Day 1 – Weakness
It is hard to celebrate the dead for they showcase a weakness that the living do not: the fact that they have ceased to live. However, the living boast another weakness, one kept close to vest lest another use it for their own gain: the living can cease to be live at any time. In truth, the dead have no weakness because they are divested of it the minute they become what they are.
Day 2 – Awful
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they see a shadow come to life. It might be as a child, using tightly wrapped blankets as a sheild against the unknown. Or it might be as an adult, staring down the awful abyss after a lifetime of pretending it does not exist.
Day 3 – Team
We come into this earth alone; scared, crying because we have been thrust into a cold, bleak place without our consent. If we are one of the lucky ones we find kindred spirits: guides that show us a path forward, comrades that walk in line with us, pupils that follow our footsteps. Before long a pack of outcasts turns into the united and we all hope that before our final breath we can count ourselves as part of that united team.
Day 4 – Rice
Rice was done a disservice back when I was young. Sneers and leers at the bland dish decorated in rich spices and flavours and sauces. Years later, when the same people laud rice and it’s flavourings I am unsure – should I feel thankful that they are no longer ignorant or should I feel frustrated at a different type of ignorance.
Day 5 – Irony
Have you ever wandered outside in hopes that the warmth of the sun could melt the cold in your bones? Would it be ironic when the sun instead burned the outline of your pain across your back? Or maybe it isn’t – if that’s what you wanted from the sun all along.
Day 6 – Corn
Have you ever spent an afternoon wandering around a corn maze? The crisp autumn air chills your lungs but there’s something beautiful about the drying corn that lines the sides of the pathways, there’s something beautiful in the way that the pale gold matches the dull grey sky. It is a harvest vegetables that has brought health and warmth to many before us, but it also acts as a catalyst, fading from bright yellow to pale gold, for the autumn.
Day 7 – Care
I have not a care in the world. This is what I wish I could say, I wish I did not have to care about my future, my success, my ability to show other people that I have done something great in my life, it is a heavy burden to bear and to grow. However, at the same time, I am happy to care, without caring there is no love and without love then what is the point in living – I will take the worries and the anxiety and the struggle if it means that I have the emotion to care.
Day 8 – Arena
I can only pretend to care for so long as people cheer and pound their fists and yell their praises in the arena. The gods we worship now are no immortal beings or all-powerful deities. They are flesh and bone that were lucky or privileged or skilled enough to be parading upon a world stage and we are the ones that count ourselves lucky to witness their reign.
Day 9 – Suspicion
She stands alone at the edge of the sidewalk, rain battering her black and white umbrella as she watches the service from afar. Death was funny in all of its finality and she had the suspicion that if the roles were reversed he would not be watching her from afar. He would not be crying over her limp body either, because emotions have a strange way of ignoring the laws of equivalent exchange.
Day 10 – Miss
I miss you! We say that often, the words slipping off our tongues without a second thought, hoping to convey some deep emotion that cannot truly be captured with those three words. The word itself tries to bridge a gap, no a chasm, no a gaping maw that leads into a vivid darkness which threatens to swallow you and your loves ones – I miss you acts as a shield of light, preventing that very same darkness from taking over the memories of those whom you love.
Day 11 – Thumb
I use my thumbs constantly these days. They are almost always pressed against my phone screen, tapping letters into words and words into paragraphs. When they aren’t doing that they are often struggling to take the top of a jar of pasta sauce – strange the range of motion opposable thumbs provide us – they give us the ability to fend for ourselves and the ability to get lost in the world of virtual.
Day 12 – Remedy
Medicine is said to be the remedy for aches, pains and groans. But many a time I take a pill, rub an ointment or stretch a band-aid across an open wound I wonder about those who do not have the privilege to do the same. It may not heal, it may not even help, but at least it is something.
Day 13 – Taste
Today we can only see and hear each other through screens, crying out in the form of social media posts that exalt the new way of living. We cannot even think about touch anymore, to do so is blasphemous. What is left but smell and taste; holes that are filled by a spontaneous urge to create that has turned us all into personal chefs.
Day 14 – X-Ray
If I could x-ray into my own mind then I’m not sure what I would see. Would it be a set of neurons that are rapidly firing, throwing electricity from one side to the other? Or would it be a shining bright light, unknown to humans and unbeknownst to all knowledge but is powering the very way that we live.
Day 15 – Crude
Our dwellings were built by sticks and stones that came from blood and bones. From dirt and earth we have created metal and harnessed electricity and built systems that were not even dreamt as possible. Crude tools, hand-crafted by humans, created something beyond humans.
Day 16 – Appreciate
I think I can appreciate myself finally. I can appreciate the way that my body has carried me up till now, the way that my cells multiply every second, the way that my body heals from the inevitable damage. It is always hard to appreciate myself when I am comparing to relics and artifacts of past, present and future but it might be necessary.
Day 17 – Orange
In a rainbow of colours orange is a strange one. It exists as the one fruit that emulates the colour but it also exists as violent poisons in flora and fauna. A dangerous yet delicious colour that means so much more than the eye can behold.
Day 18 – Fade
When the heart is struck by love, pain or joy it feels like no other emotion exists. The thought of the feeling fading out of existence is impossible as that is the feeling that is allowing the heart to continue beating. If that love, that ache in your heart is true, compassionate and creates your reality then no amount of time will be enough for time to wash away those wounds.
Day 19 – Flu
It used to be a word that struck fear into the hearts or man, woman and child alike. Now the word is like many others, a commonplace nuisance that few fear. Isn’t it strange to wonder what words we fear today that one day will have little power.
Day 20 – Effort
We are a generation of children grown into adults that were brought up on stories of our parents working themselves to the bone to earn our livelihood. Their effort, sweat, blood and tears turned into our opportunities. Many a day I am so grateful, on other days I wonder if I am squandering their effort by stumbling through my opportunities.
Day 21 – Surgeon
Bright, metallic tools shine under fluorescent-baked lights. They cast blinding stars against the whitened walls. Those dressed in puffed powder blue do not mind the volatility of the instruments – of how they can be used to slice or to save.
Day 22 – Calf
The birth of a child is met with resounding rejoicing. Family, friends, strangers, all are held in goodwill as the bird of a child casts a rosy glow over the family. So to, the birth of a calf brings joy, delight and warmth to it’s mother – let us never forget our emotions stem from neurons that fire in more brains than ours.
Day 23 – Prevent
We wish to prevent death and decay by wrapping our bodies in plasticine and tape. These days we have gotten wiser and have started uploading our consciousness into the cloud, believing that death will not come to those who are never forgotten. But to be human is to decay so unless we wish to turn machine, the cloud will never be enough.
Day 24 – Width
One of the first formulas I learnt in school was length x width = area of a rectangle. It taught me that the space between lines can be defined without colour or feel. It taught me of a world that exists solely due to human creation, of a language that was built upon the understanding of our human brain and that while this language is a tool of immense proportions, it is fallible, just as humans are.
Day 25 – Water
They say it is lifegiving. They say that without it life on earth would not exist the way that it does. So I look out into the vastness of the sky, watch the twinkling stars that must hover around their own planets and I wonder, what is their water?