So, this weekend I finished getting certified in the Amherst Writers and Artists method of writing workshop facilitation. I went through the training because if I want to facilitate writing workshops with Voices from Inside, the organization that brings writing workshops to incarcerated women, I have to get certified in this method. But it was a good thing to do anyway, and now I feel much more confident to lead writing workshops in any context. Parts of the training were boring and monotonous, but it was an amazing group of women with whom I really bonded, and I learned a lot. We also spent a lot of time writing together, albeit very short writing sessions because we had to move onto more pertinent parts of the training, but it was nice to be disciplined to write again and to be inspired by others' work.
I wrote very few things I actually like, but there were a couple which I'll post here. The first was inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston quote, which I of course can't remember now:
Twenty-two years of questioning plus let's say approximately another seventy years of life expectancy equals ninety-two years' worth of questions. Altogether, about...oh, six of those years also consist of answers. So ninety-two minus six equals eighty-six, and if we subtract the first year and a half of life during which questions were wordless and therefore very difficult to measure, that leaves us with eighty-four and a half years of unanswered questions. It's amazing how those racked up, isn't it? And then, at the end, there's just...silence. Life ends, but the questions remain floating nebulously in some ether somewhere. Who picks up and starts again?
This is the result of an "experimental writing" exercise. We begin by writing for two minutes, and then every minute after that we go around the room and each person says a random word, which we have to somehow work into our piece. We then have another two minutes of silence to wrap up. It was actually kind of fun, and I ended up with something I'm at least slightly happy with. See if you can guess what the random words are.
The ocean was saltier than she'd ever remembered it being before. The water clung to her lips and stung her eyes. She sniffed a few times and then grimaced as the saltwater burned the back of her throat. She had jumped into the water with abandon, but now, as snowflakes began to fall more and more rapidly from the sky - she watched them land on the water's surface and disappear - she began to regret her course of action. The water was really taking wing now, the ocean filling up with snow, roiling and toiling around her as if at any moment it might overflow and fly away. She choked on a salty snowflake, gazing at the cluster of palm trees on the beach before her. The fronds and coconuts seemed strange and out of place here, and she found herself wishing she were among the maple leaves she'd grown accustomed to. She flattened her palms against her thighs and tried to remain afloat.
How odd that it was snowing here at all; how odd that the air was cold and the sea was warm. The setting sun reflected a pink glow on the surface of the water, and it briefly occurred to her that she must be in another world.
But she didn't want to be in another world, even though she'd initially dived into the ocean in a vain attempt to escape the world she knew. She thought of where she'd been, where in the kitchen the china would still be soaking in dishwater and the wedding guests were probably still dancing the cha-cha and eating the coconut bread she'd begged for the caterer to provide. And her new rapscallion husband, chatting idly with the bridesmaids, was most likely oblivious to her absence. That thought alone made her glad she'd climbed down the fire escape, hiking up the long, trailing train of her ruffled skirt, and stolen away into the night to come here. But where was here? Where was she?
Her dress became oppressively heavy with the weight of the salt, the cold air, and warm water. She fumbled for where she remembered the zipper being and, not finding it, ripped the dress from her body and felt herself begin to glide. Soon she was moving so quickly that the snow seemed to fall in slow motion and she realized she couldn't see the palm trees anymore. She closed her eyes, laughing and crying at the same time, and allowed herself to disappear.
Lastly, this was brought about by another odd exercise, one that's a little too complicated to explain here, but also involves lists of somewhat-randomly generated words. One has the choice to use all, some, or none of them. I used some:
It felt weird to Harold, finding that baby's toy in the waves. It might have been something once, but now, soggy and dilapidated, he couldn't figure out what it was - only that someone had held it and then thrown it away.
And where was the baby now? Harold wondered. There were millions of babies in the world. Which one of them had lost this toy? Was the baby even a baby anymore? Harold realized with alarm that maybe it had once been his. His fingers traced over the smooth plastic of whatever the thing was. He would definitely lose sleep over this. Something had been lost, found, and there was Harold in the middle, getting a sunburn and wondering where he was.
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