100 words

100 Words is a site I just learned about from a friend of WotN's. In their own words:

The idea behind 100 Words is simple: Write 100 words, no more, no less, every day.

This project began almost two years ago. I don't remember exactly how the idea came to me, only that I thought it would be interesting to read the daily thoughts of separated people who were restricted to the same format of expression. Would there be intersections of incidence? Of reflection? Of emotion? Coincidence of joy? Of agony? Apathy?
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PS: 100 Words is not a blog.

So, in a nutshell, you can read, sequentially, various people's 100-word pieces from any time slot you choose. I didn't think it would be that interesting, and some of the pieces aren't, but I found more of them engaging in one way and another than I expected to. Here are excerpts from a few that caught my attention on a more or less random clickabout:

Today I was happy. Today I took a walk. Today I saw a movie. Today I had a good conversation. Today I smiled. Today I cleaned my room. Today I laughed. Today I appreciated the world around me. Today I took nothing for granted. Today I was a good girl. Today I tried to quit smoking. Today I made new resolutions... Today I wrote a short story. Today I ate a doughnut. Today I shaved my legs. Today I listened closely. Today I had an opinion. Today I loved somebody. / Today I was alone.

Holding hands... In elementary school, you hold hands to cross the street, to keep together at the museum. Most just hold lightly, barely any pressure at all. I always did... until you. You changed all that. Now it's an intense thing. We grip each other's hands and squeeze down tight, as if by this simple gesture we are trying to convey every emotion we feel at that moment into that act, all the passion, love, longing, boiled down into one clasp of the hand.

It's really challenging to leave a message on someone's answering machine when you have the hiccups. I just discovered that.

In a fit of hormonally-induced rebellion, I decided to dye my hair "cyber purple". I guess I should know by now that my hair objects to being anything other than red, having failed on several occasions to dye it blue, purple, green etc. It is far from purple. It's boring mahogany colour, too dark for me and had the result of making me look even more like my mother than usual.

Yeah, Eve ate the apple and she enjoyed every bite! She wasn't tricked into it and neither was Adam. They enjoyed many, many apples together! And God smiled upon them. The Apple was love, knowledge, pleasure, companionship, and ecstatic lovemaking i.e. good fucking. Would a parent withhold a delicious apple or life-earned wisdom from a child? No, and neither did God. We were not designed to fail. It was Man who created the myth, the illusion, the guilt and the sin. Mistruths and half-truths abound, I never did buy that story that God cast us from the Garden.

You can read a lot of people's 9/11 100-worders if you go to the relevant month. This one:

I woke up, as usual, alone in my bed with my sixteen year-old cat. I put on my red jeans, which used to be my favorites but have been supplanted by newer, tighter ones. The phone rang. "Turn on the TV," she said. I watched, and then got on the bus. Not the train, the bus. An hour later, the world had changed as much as the skyline of my city had changed. I walked back to the apartment, where I was again alone with the cat.

And this one:

I can't get through to anyone. Once I dial 212 or 718 I just get this long flat tone. The same pictures are being shown over and over again on the BBC news. And I just get a long flat tone. I’m sure all I love are fine, but I can't be anywhere near as sure about those that they love and I just want to hear one of their voices. I have never felt so far away and so shattered. There is no reaction strong enough. There are no words - Only waiting.

I found much of the site compelling in an odd way.

(Hat tip: Geraldine Brennan.)