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The Art of Losing


(Post by Kirsten)



Oh no! It's late, and this post nearly got away from me!

Do you find yourself losing track of what you thought you had a hold on? I'm struggling with this more and more, the longer our social isolation period continues. Not only has time begun to lose its shape for me, but so--apparently--has the physical world. I've lost my glasses twice today. This morning I misplaced the coffee cup from which I was, just a moment before, drinking. And forget about ideas! (No, really -- forget about ideas.)

We're all under a little more stress than usual, and stress can negatively impact memory. (But don't worry--your memory will bounce right back as soon as you're under less stress.)

Today's writing prompt borrows from this phenomenon:

* Write about a person who has lost something. What is missing? Where is it? Why was it lost? How does the person feel about the loss? 

You can read "lost" here as "misplaced," or--like Elizabeth Bishop did in her famous poem on loss, "One Art"--you can read "lost" as grief, absence, the end of relationship. (Maybe you even want to begin by borrowing inspiration from Bishop's first line: "The art of losing isn't hard to master.")

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