I really like the contrast of this with @Tofu4’s rendition. The drinking coffee as a sedative to the beauty of the day vs trying to find the beauty through the blurred and throbbing aftermath of the whiskey. Very descriptive from the sensory point of view though great work!
Really dig the anthropomorphised phone at the beginning. The use of the word pneumatic is cool because of the etymology meaning spirit of life for the inanimate objects. The clumsy grasping at everything except that which you want to grab is definitely something most people can connect with. Super nice negative wording about the the curtains and the darkness. Well done!
I like how the dream fades through the haze of your mind shows the slow burn of waking rather than the abrupt waking
I feel comfort, and pleasure. A familiar face, place and time. Like I’m floating through a warm river. BEEP. BEEP. I’m jerked into a cold reality. BEEP. Sirens assaulting my brain. I’m lying on my back, but I’ve lost my balance. Round and round I go. I think I might throw up. BEEP! The warmth in my chest drains out. I sigh heavy. It’s black everywhere. Just cold, bitter black. My head is throbbing. My mouth tastes like terrible decisions and drought. I angrily grip the soft sheets. I clench my jaw and hear my teeth grinding against each other like bricks. I close my eyes, desperate to drift back into the warm dream.
The weight of obligation slaps my cheeks. It stings. BEEP. I hold my breath in defiance. A sliver of yellow light pierces through my blinds and begins to scream at me. I cover my ears.
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@WLDFLOW3R The first sentence is a little more “tell-y” than “show-y”, but that is ok. We are all learning. I think the next sentence actually describes a comfortable and pleasurable feeling with visual imagery. The harshness of the alarm jerking you out of a warm river of weightlessness is really cool. My favorite part is that groggy feeling “lying on my back” but “[losing] balance”. That is an amazing line. The mouth tasting like terrible decisions and drought is another really nice sensory image that pulls us in. Great job! I hope you are having a great time doing these and learning some things to help you along the way.
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I am really loving it! I know I don’t respond very often, (I don’t want to clog up the feed) but I sincerely appreciate all the feedback, and the fact you are taking time to read what I’m writing, so thank you! I enjoy reading all of your writings as well. These style of exercises seem to be helpful and challenging for me. 
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Ha. Just wait until you get to the other kinds! Difficulty rises, but so does the fun
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Consciousness wakes me, stilly stirring, my heart and breath work in tandem, making love together as we return from the cousin of death. My alarm blaring any minute, piercing the sleep cycle as the coffee maker weeps, her aroma filling the space. My body rolls under linen sheets, airy and warm as my body interlocks with yours. Holding on to this for just one more minute before it’s gone.
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The tension in your first line is great, the “stilly sirring” adding the conflict and the heart and breath in tandem adds harmony. Those two concepts often lead to great lines! The audible sense piercing sleep is another really great image. You carry that tension all the way through, giving no break or resolve. That is really cool. I could see this being a verse in a song, where the tension gets broken in the bridge, or maybe even the chorus. Great job!
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Just a–very, very late–note, Pat Pattison Really kinda states that we don’t even have to be true to the topic when he suggests this exercise.
I think what he is getting at really is the overall ability to access a kind of sensory semantic chain in which one sense primes another until we can pick any link we want at will.
If your association with the morning is the ocean, I think that falls perfectly in line with the exercise. (although it may be helpful to try to make the temporal connection more obvious)
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The violent reverberations of a mini-earthquake hum their dissonant mantra against the harmony of the sweet siren’s song of heavy cotton warmth and soft, silken clouds. My eyes stay sealed in my best effort to will the phone out of existence until I cycle through the stages of grief—grief of dreams forgotten and a temporary existential respite. I throw off the protective layers, eyeing the alarm’s description below the digitized vertically outstretched arms. ‘Practice Keys’ sprawls across the screen, a remnant of midnight’s motivation sent from a more optimistic me—thanks for the kind words, maybe next time go to bed on time instead. I wade to the sink as if through a bog and prime myself for the day. I trace the cool spring waterfall into my stomach. My roommate’s hints of Brazil’s finest tickle my nose tauntingly, a reminder of the 5 long days of abstinence.
This is another wonderful great start. The thing I like about the beginning is it leaves room at first and then gives you the specifics. For instance, Your first sentence, the thing that came to me was the loud garbage truck running early disturbing me. Then, in the second sentence, I figure out that the noise was the phone alarm. Because of that freedom to lose myself and then the clarifying after, it did a wonderful job at mimicking that groggy morning feeling. I was out of it because I just woke up and confused my phone’s vibration for a garbage truck. That is powerful on different levels (even though I am not sure that is what you intended). Wading to the sink is another great image to show that early morning stiffness in our muscles and joints. Great job.
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Shimmering morning lights through the soft curtains were blinding my eyes. Deafness can be heard as the dog pricked his ears as I moved into the balcony, wind tiptoed, sneaking up on me, surprising me with a cold hug as I stretched my arms and legs, tightening my ropy body. my itching throat from hours of dehydration was gulping on the warm water. Warmness radiating from my belly throughout my body.
This is really well done. The soft morning light blinding gives that stinging sensation and visual. The wind tiptoeing is especially neat. I dig that. It has visual, auditory, and tactile senses. The “itching” throat is a little “tell-y” more than “show-y”. You could say something like “my throat was stuffed with a cheap wool sweater” or “poison ivy brushed my larynx” or something to work in more showy language. Great job!
@4StarViewMusic thanks for the feedback. This is really helpful. I didn’t even realise this until now that itching throat is more of telling.
Question. How do we figure this out when we are writing that we are telling rather than showing. There are some of these things that we just miss out and skip over them.
That is a hard thing to do, especially in these types of exercises when they are time limited. One way that I have done it when writing a song is to just write what comes out first. After I get a song kind of completed, I let it go for a couple of days and work on something else. Then try to go back over it with a fresh set of eyes and critique it. Sometimes, I sacrifice “showing” in order to preserve something that goes better (maybe alliteration or something that I think makes the line more memorable). But often, I find a way to strengthen it by using more showy language. So, I guess the answer is I don’t worry about it much when I am first writing, instead my goal is to just my thoughts down on paper. Then go back and critique and edit with a fresh mind that has been removed from it for a while. Hope that helps.
Darkness gives birth to an unfamiliar haze of gray and dark blue, resolving into my bedroom walls. My body feels tight and warm, with a slight numbing from inactivity. I launch automatically into breathwork, using the cell phone timer to guide the rapid, deep inhales of cold, crisp winter air. Lightning surges warmly through me as I exhale for an extended breath hold. I relax, trust, wait, and listen to the slowing drumbeat until the fire of oxygen deprivation burns too hot for my mind to resist. The involuntary deep breath after is a brief cold plunge, before more rounds to feel fully awake. With lightning in my limbs and sand in my mouth, I rise to investigate the clattering of childhood activities in the next room.
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my tired arm reaches over and slumps on my alarm clock. its an old one. it ticks. the brass on it has dulled with years but its bell echoes in my ears each morning as i brush my teeth. foaming at the mouth, the cool mint tickles my lips and suds whooshes around my mouth to splatter in the porcelain sink. my shirtless torso presses against the edge of the counter top. marble is always cold. nearly black with speckled iridescence. fire truck sirens and car horns kill the quiet of the morning dew and birds chirping. pasty deodorant in my armpits and the fluorescent light bulb flickers. cold and sterile like a hospital or interrogation room. i still taste the mint in my mouth when i smack my lips. or they dont smack. they kiss. its dry and sticky like jelly hands stuck on walls. translucent green leaves snail trails on the stucco.
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I roll over on my side and the duvet catches beneath my hips. A soft red glow pulses from the corner of the room. There is silence still. I let my eyes fall close. But my mind races. The sheets are wrinkled with sweat. Dirty clothes hang in the air. The coat hanger in the corner looks like a man. I wish there was a man to justify the sweat and dirty socks in this room. I could roll over and blame it all on him, and he could catch beneath my hips. Two hours are but a breath while the menacing red glow dissipates into open window sunrises. But instead, my limbs are contorted in disgust with myself. My clothes fold in on themselves.
Suddenly my senses come back to life. My tongue is a desert undergoing a stale cigarette storm. Laughter and conversation is muffled by obnoxious techno that thumps so loud it makes me question whether it is coming from inside my own head. The inside of my nose is stung by the smoke of a thousand cigarettes and made nauseous by the cheap lager spilled on my t-shirt 5 hours ago. The first light of day whispers around the edges of the curtain the perimeter, telling me “bedtime… bedtime… bedtime”. I shut my eyes to escape reality but now the sofa is rotating an all axis’. Time to go home.