Sexy Curses: Part 2

...An Upir, the name for vampires in Romanian folklore, was God’s curse reserved for heavy sinners. After death, the person would rise from the grave and return home to feast on their loved ones. The amount of time between death and rising depended on the severity of the sin - a witch would become a vampire almost immediately, the un-baptized child becomes a vampire seven years after its death. The vampire had no free will. Though many people are attracted to, or at least intrigued by, dark themes, there’s nothing sexy or romantic – in the literary sense – about feeding on one’s family and friends. In fact, the curse of an Upir reminds me of the darkness in Hera’s curse for Hercules, driving him to a rage in which he kills he wife and children.

Just as Hercules has shifted into modern times, namely with Disney’s Hercules and the 90s TV series, the list of modern actors and actresses who played vampire roles includes Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Aaliyah, and Kate Beckinsale. Twilight’s lead vampire could (or has, for all I know) make the cover of teen magazines worldwide. High school goths daydream about becoming vampires. Even Stoker’s Dracula, 111 years old, gets literary critics excited by the symbolism of sexuality and seduction in Victorian society. So how did the vampire go from the most revolting curse to a mainstream symbol of dark seduction?...

Sexy Curses: Part 1

A couple of weeks ago I finished the first season of “True Blood.” It didn’t take me long, watching an episode a night, and after the finale I missed having evenings with the supernatural. I then watched season one of “Deadwood,” but its gritty and often grim depiction of life only accentuated my need for otherworldly elements. At the same time my two younger sisters also got into the vampire scene with the release of the movie “Twilight.” In thinking about why this brand of the supernatural appeals to us, I remembered an essay I wrote during college about the symbolism of vampires.

My thesis, vague as it is, argued that in Mikhael Lermontov’s novella, A Hero Of Our Time, the narrator’s comparing himself to a vampire has different implications in the context of the Lermontov’s time period than in the context of my/our time period. The symbol of the vampire shifts between 1839, the novella’s publication date (Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897), and 2004, my essay’s “publication” date. In the essay I focused on how an understanding of the 1839 vampire gives a 2004 American reader a new understanding of the narrator’s self understanding. Upon recently rereading the essay, however, I began to wonder if this shift in vampire symbolism could give insight beyond the analysis of a nearly 170-year-old Russian novella...

Poetry Pals

With much appreciated help, I've worked on a previously posted poem and have it to the point of almost satisfaction. It goes as follows:

Grasp

These gassy ideas
shift and search,
wisp along my mind,

could mean anything to anyone,
or nothing to no one,
like animals in the clouds.

I need tidy oceans,
deep and powerful,
to sail for uncharted lands.

Even a passing shower,
palpable, nourishing,
some liquid to sate this thirst.

Better yet: concrete,
solid and steady,
supporting others’ weight.

Maybe a pebble
to toss at your head -
something you could feel.

-spk

Grappling

Last week I started Judo classes. I’d been antsy for some kind of physical activity since I got to France, and I wanted experience with a new martial art too. Perfect. The knuckles on a couple of my fingers got skinned – not sure if it was from rolling on the mat or gripping someone’s gi. I got a couple of bruises on my chest too. My body’s sore, but in a satisfying way.

So far I have basically no idea what I’m doing, and from what I gather Judo’s a technical sport. The main thing I’m trying to work on in these early days is staying relaxed. Fluid. It’s something I strived for in boxing too. Keeping loose, while moving with speed and strength when the timing’s right. Fighting the instinct to tense up. Or rewiring the instincts. Mentally I understand what I need to do, but then it’s transferring that to the physical.

That state of relaxation with speed and strength – speed and strength coming from relaxation, even – transfers beyond boxing and judo. It’s the same as being “cool under fire.” Keeping the mind open to all possibilities and solutions even when the stress of the situation makes us want to shut down. Talking about it as liquid reminds me of the Tao, too. Or good teachers who have that intangible “presence” in the classroom – poised while passionate.

When I started learning classical guitar my teacher would often remind me to relax. If the hands are tense they move slower. And when I would practice sheet reading I’d enter tunnel vision if I started to stress. Thinking about it, though, didn’t seem to make the difference. In all of these examples, the main solution is experience. Practice. But is that the only means to this presence of mind? Or does some of it come a priori?

Spread Out the Speed

One day, as I read Scientific American while eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese, I thought of creating a new version of chess. Since the current version only uses x and y axes, two dimensions, why not add a z axis? You know, like up and down. I started thinking of plastic cubes and intricate magnet wands to move the pieces.

Turns out my idea for 3D chess didn’t break any ground. Mathematicians have already gone beyond 3D and 4D versions of the game, or at least that’s what I hear. Still, I came upon the idea on my own. That makes me an original imitator. And really, accounting for time as a dimension, my chess would be 4D.

Now hold on. If I think of time as a dimension, don’t we imagine only one axis on which motion occurs in one direction? Obviously we can think of going back in time, as Michael J. Fox brilliantly portrayed, but what about going up or down in time? Side to side?

Nevermind. What’s important is that I learned something new last night. Reading Briane Greene’s explanation of Special Relativity, it turns out all objects move at a fixed speed – the speed of light – but that motion divides into the four dimensions. Like, right now I’m going at a certain speed through time while also moving at certain speeds in the spatial dimensions.

If I managed to move at something close to light speed in one of the spatial dimensions, the speed at which I move through time would decrease proportionally. The total speed remains constant. That’s theoretical physics’ time travel: go super fast and you will live eight years while others live sixty. Jump into their future.

But does this connect with the motion of our minds? Do all people have a fixed speed that their consciousness moves at, which is then divided into varying “directions”? Or do we start at different speeds? Can we level up?

I’m thinking of the “Create a Character” mode in video games. You get a certain amount of points – say, twenty – which you divide into the character’s different abilities. I put ten into speed, three into balance, five into strength, and two into stamina. Or ten into processing, three into communication, five into confidence, and two into focus.

Two Birds

Still ain’t flying. Mostly bad brains. Bad Brains. Fast lanes. Past change. The past has changed the past can’t change. Work it out. Let him get there. Work it out. Think of the name. What do you think of the name? Fast lane. Spare me change. Don’t let it change. Stay on the corner against the wall with tattered gloves no change. Work it out. Let it change. What’s the name? The sound. Make the sound. Make it sound. Sound. A loud sound. Change the sound. Bend the note. Blend the notes to get that name. A landscape of names. One big name. God what’s the name? It’s a word in a sound. An idea in a sound. A worm in an apple. A warm tooth. Rolling white skies in beaches of names. Grains of names. The price of grain. The price of your name. The cost of using names. A man made name. Bring down that fire for these caves. These illustrious caves. These illustrated caves. Fire and names. Ready. Aim. Fire the name. Spread out the spray. Hit the name on the head. Squeeze the nail the trigger. Hold steady. Aim.

Slip mountains. Slippery mountains. Open canyons. Fast canyons. War cannons. Name nannons. The game handed to us. Slip ups. Toss up. Throw it up. Give it a shot. Just say a name. Sound it out. Round about. A roundabout way for a straight line. Past time. Passed time. Passing time. A billboard’s name. There’s the name. Rest for a bit. Stay here. Pass it. Give it up. Take it. Just try it. You’ll get it. You’ll find it. Try the name. Dance it out. Try a dance. Give it a name. A big slow sticky rolling changing staying the same on a slippery slope of names.

Boxe Anglaise

This is the amateur boxing match I had on Saturday, April 19th 2008 in Springfield, VT. Bob Kelly helped me by converting the recording from VHS to WMV. I'm in the red corner, wearing American flag shorts. During the National Writing Project's Summer Institute in Vermont I wrote about the fight. Here it is:

Three Rounds
Shawn P. Kelly

Fighting In the White Spaces

“Do you know who you’re fighting?”
“No.”
“What do you weigh?”
“137”
“And you’re from…”
“Burlington.”
“Yea. You’re fighting my guy. He’s a good kid. He’s right over here. So, you orthodox or..?”
“Huh? Oh… Southpaw. Yea. And him?”

“I’ll tell you when there’re only ten seconds left in the round. I’ll yell: ten seconds. And when I do that…”
“Give him everything.”
“Yep, you use all you got. Cause sometimes that’s when you win the round. It’s the last thing the judges see. And you can count – I got it down – you can watch the tape. After you hear me yell on that tape, you start counting. It’s exactly ten seconds.”

“All right. What the hell? What are you doing? I can’t help you win if you don’t keep your hands up. When you go back out there, what are you gonna do?”
“Keep my hands up.”

“Good. You won that round. You know why?”
“I kept my hands up.”
“Yep. Now you need to keep doing what you did and win the next round. This is it. Keep circling him, working your jab. Keep your hands up.”

“You did good.”
“Sorry I got blood on the shirt and shorts.”
“No. Don’t worry about that stuff.”
“I heard you yell ‘ten seconds’.”
“In that last round I yelled ‘ten seconds’ when there were thirty seconds left. You needed those points. And you did good. You worked him.”

“Hey man. Good fight. You kept going. Hitting hard.”
“I thought I had you in the first. Thought you were gonna go down.”
“I thought I was gonna go down too.”

“You should clean up your nose. Ice it.”
“I don’t think it’s broken.”
“No. But it’ll be pretty swollen. You can check again with the doctor.”
“Did you see his eye?”
“Yea. It’s all dark and swollen underneath.”

Animal Memory

Before the fight, his coach pointed out my facial hair. Suggested I shave. His fighter had. But the match started between a clean-shaven man with long hair and a bearded man with shorter hair.
The audience sat on hardwood bleachers. The ring stood in the middle of a high school gymnasium, at center court.

I circled clockwise in the first round. Then he had me against the ropes. He swung again and again for a knockout, stepping into his punches.
I didn’t go down. He stopped moving his feet as quickly.
During his attack in the first, the audience crackled with excitement. But for most of the fight they sounded like static.

Jabs had loosened his hair from his headgear. Each shot made a shoulder-length, sweaty, dirty blonde splash. I knocked him down, fast, but the referee called it a push, shaking his head “no.”

His gloves in flashes, or held tight against his cheeks. Then my blood. At first it was a few splotches. With each punch, more red pooled on his blue glove. But he no longer stepped in. He leaned now.
I started punches with a long jab. Then volleyed fists from each side, like the ball in a tennis match. The torso twisting and lunging.

He came in, clinching after a shot caught him in the head.
We stood close in the end, throwing all weight into looping punches. Analog metronomes reaching back and swinging into each other.

Recording

Not quite a tension. Just a thick expectation that made me feel empty and heavy at once. The ring looked awkward, floating so high at midcourt. But so did I, gangily weighing in at 137 pounds on a 6-foot frame.

I think his coach told him to test me right away. See if he could knock me out. Snap that stick of a man. The solid shots disorient more than they hurt. I started to turn my back during the initial flurry. It’s something I’d done in sparring at first – turn my back – and it’s not only bad boxing, I didn’t like what it implied about my instincts. My heart.

When my nose started bleeding, it felt heavy. Like someone was pinching it with their fist and pulling down. But the videotape doesn’t show the blood. The tape disappointed me the first time I watched it. Reality is more violent. Memory more stuttering.

Hallway

I don’t have internet access in my apartment, so I can only get online at the high school or middle school. However, I found some writing from the last time I was in France, dated March 12th and 13th 2006, and figured I could put it on a flash drive and post it here. At the time I’d been reading The Elegant Universe. I didn’t finish it, and so I brought it with me to France this time too. There are other parallels with the found writing. I mention spirals right away. Talk about cavemen (second entry). Other themes come up that connect to current thinking. I ramble too. I guess I haven’t changed at all in two years.

The following is from the first entry. Not sure why there were only two entries, and two days in a row, though I guess that shows my dedication:

[March 12, 2006]

I wonder if this corridor has always been the same. If the atoms have replaced themselves like skin cells. There’s probably an easy answer in the collective mind of science, in a book somewhere.

I think about how I see my memories differently depending on where I am when looking at them. Then I think about how my memories contribute so much to who I am, and then I think of a spiral moving away.

Voices change over time. In writing, in throats, in heads. In wroads. Roads change too. Even if you stay on the same road you’re on a different road when you move. That’s what makes it a road, that it changes and you can change with it.

I don’t believe in chemicals. Imagine a globe, a spherical map, with each person’s worldview, that tiny point of our heads that rolls out across and through everything, as a light positioned where they stand. And that worldview, that perspective, is something so small holding up, putting together, something so big. That globe is being held afloat by each tiny light extending and wrapping around it.

We see energy. It’s tasted, touched, heard, smelled. Except that’s the passive voice and energy is never passive. Sure, it is directed and manipulated; but it never stops. It just changes. It wants to stop, but there’s nowhere for it to stay put. Because it’s still energy when it stops, it doesn’t die. It can’t be created or destroyed. But humans stop. They’re directed and manipulated. We change. But some of us can stay put, and all of us die. We create and destroy; we are created and destroyed.

I wore a robe for a whole school year, my first year at University, and I didn’t write a thing about it during that time. Why not? I never let myself burn photos or commit suicide, because I never know what I’ll think and want later on. So far things always have reached a new point of being appreciated.

Remember how pure capitalism causes the economy, usually represented by a line graph where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is prosperity, to have extremes ups and downs? So it’s usually suggested that we infuse socialist and democratic regulation to ease the slopes. Sometimes I try to assert control over my emotions and thoughts. Other times I let it go, to feel the highs and lows. I like rollercoasters, especially extreme ones. But riding a modern rollercoaster isn’t comparable to fluctuating among intense emotions. Old rollercoasters probably weren’t too much like it either; except any judgment I make of them now would be comparable to future judgments of modern rollercoasters, and opinions then about rollercoasters then are comparable to opinions now about rollercoasters now.

[…]

Soft usually means vulnerable, but also important. If I were to sleep alone in the woods I’d sleep stomach down with my arms under me so that my hands touch my shoulders. I know this because whenever I sleep without a blanket, often on a floor, I end up sleeping this way to best keep warm. Plus, it’s the safest way to sleep, because you need to protect your soft belly and under-chest, where most of the heat comes from. The other option is to curl into the fetal position, but this only makes sense if you have a sort of protection. Because from the first position you can pop right into action and get a quick view of what’s going. But in the fetal position there’s rolling necessary before you’re on the move, plus you have to expose your softness in order to look around efficiently.

The road changes, but it’s made of the same thing. It changes because of where it is, and I think people do the same thing. As a matter of fact, I think most things do the same thing.

What’s fun and exciting about thinking is how you can do it in different ways. That’s why poems can really get you going. Because a good poem makes you think, and it makes you think in different ways about the same thing. Cause the poem is made of the same thing, and so is your brain, but if you want they can both change and when they do it’s a direct cause and effect. For example, when the poem changes your mind changes, or when your mind changes the poem changes. But I guess that’s really the same thing, so maybe the poem and the mind are the same thing.

This corridor can’t be the same because they must repaint it now and again, plus there’s some gum outside door 315 that wasn’t there yesterday. And when I walked down it yesterday I felt differently than I did today. Still, I bet if I came back in two years I’d recognize it, barring an explosion, though I’d remember it differently than I do today.

Entrepreneur

If I start my own business, I’ll run an outdoor adventure course. Sort of like the kind that helps corporate groups practice teambuilding, except I’ll have an emphasis on survival skills, and make challenges for groups and individuals. Ropes courses, paintball, puzzles - all of it. Some activities would go year round, but I’d have seasonal activities too. Survival skills would include shelter building, farming, foraging, hunting. Probably locate in New England.

Or maybe I’ll start an inner city survival course. I’d have to hire some experts, cause my skills and experience don’t even come close to close. We could probably keep the paintball equipment. Get some wild traffic. Participants would need to pick personas, like characters in Dungeons and Dragons. I’d have a good handle on the middle class white kid living in a moderately priced neighborhood. Or a foreigner trying to find his way around. Beyond that, though, I’d rely on hired experts.

When both of those courses get rolling, I could open a suburban adventure course. Not so much survival. More of an emphasis on creating your own entertainment. Getting around without a car. Participants would make their own skate ramps, start punk bands, cruise around at night. Watch neighbors cut down trees, or whole lots of trees cleared for another housing development. Again, participants would need to pick a persona. A townie? Kid always complaining about how boring this place is, can’t wait to get out?

People would pay big bucks.

Heavy Fog

I’ve been sleeping too much these days. This summer may stand as the longest stretch of time I’ve gone without working. Well, since I started working regularly. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in production and structure lately. It’s as though I can’t get anything done because I have too much free time. When I have a work schedule to plan around, I give myself specific time slots, focused time, to get other things done. But it’s hard to focus when the whole day lays open. This bothers me.

At first it was relaxing, but now I feel bad not working - not getting anything done. Aside from spending money without earning any, it bothers me to feel unproductive. Why? Is it a cultural value that I’ve been drilled on growing up? Is it part of wanting to be an adult, feeling like I’m making good use of my time? I’m cautious of both those reasons, not as possible answers but as valid reasons for feeling guilty. They are too external. Driven more by learned cultural value than discovered, individual value.

Maybe it’s an internal push, not an external pressure. There’s so much I want to do. So much to experience and learn, and I know that I have limited time (and even less youth). Maybe I feel I’m betraying this knowledge. But what do I think I should be doing instead? I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be right now than in Virginia, spending time with Alix. Yet I can’t shake this feeling that I should be doing more. That I’m dulling, not sharpening.

I remember one of the first days of student teaching, before school officially started. During the summer I’d read all the books we would cover during my semester at the high school. I’d talked with my cooperating teacher to get an idea of what we wanted to do in the first few weeks. Aside from that, though, there wasn’t much I could do to prepare for the year. As a student teacher I would start out observing, then eventually teach a whole unit. But it was too early to know what I’d cover and with which class. Still, I wanted to do something in those first days before students arrived. I wanted to work hard. I wanted to get ready, to be prepared for the coming months.

My cooperating teacher had been given two classrooms for the year, one on the first floor and the other on the second. He was to share them with another teacher. We didn’t know why this was, but it was quickly decided that it made more sense to give each teacher his own room. The only problem was moving all the stuff my cooperating teacher had already piled into the first floor room. But damn if that wasn’t the most satisfying thing I did in those early days. Amidst all that uncertainty - sitting around, imagining, wondering – I knew I was getting something done by hauling those crates up the stairs to our new room.

Loose Verse

I wrote two poems today, with similar themes. Though “Sustenance” feels more complete at this point, I still want to work more on both of them.


States of Matter

These gassy ideas,
shifting and searching,
wisping along my mind,

could mean anything to anyone,
or nothing to no one,
like animals in the clouds.

I need tidy oceans,
deep and powerful,
to sail for uncharted lands.

Even a passing shower,
palpable, nourishing,
some liquid to sate this thirst.

Better yet: concrete,
solid and steady,
supporting others’ weight.

Maybe a pebble,
to toss at your head,
something you could feel.




Sustenance

You sit under the tree,
reading, feeling, thinking,
contemplating, realizing, deciding.

You see a new world.
Colors vibrate.
Words explode.

You sit at the table,
cleaning, chopping, boiling,
scooping, chewing, swallowing.

You still need to eat.
Food tastes the same.
People still laugh and cry.

Chaos, Insanity, Violence

A Vermont teacher gave a demo this summer that helped me connect Faulkner’s writing, the film The Dark Knight, and pedagogy for writing. She didn’t mention the first two topics, but she did give a sequence from educational theorist Ruby Payne that goes as follows (my notes, not quoted):

Inability to plan → cannot predict → cannot identify cause and effect → cannot identify consequence → cannot control impulsivity → will have an inclination toward criminal behavior (That is, if a student cannot plan, he/she will not be able to predict. If he/she cannot predict, he/she will not be able to identify cause and effect, etc.)

The teacher used the sequence to emphasize the importance of teaching structured, ordered writing. Though the teacher’s focus was on the style of writing and the thinking it required, Payne’s argument states that criminal behavior may result if students can’t plan and give structure to memories. Implied in this is that “good” behavior, unlike the end result of Payne’s sequence, relies on linear thinking and trust in cause and effect.

Ideally, a teacher will work with students at a young age to help them develop the skills – the way of thinking – necessary to avoid Payne’s sequence. The child will learn to create ordered stories, and in turn that will help them to see and fit in with the order that society creates. Specific to their trust in cause and effect is that good action will result in reward, and bad action will result in punishment. But what happens when the system doesn’t work? When good things happen to bad people, and vice versa? Since this system is how we create order out of the seeming chaos around us, chaos is all we are left with when the system fails. Insanity.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker tells different, conflicting stories to explain the scars on his mouth. There’s no cohesive background to him. No clear motivation. That’s what Batman struggles to understand, with Alfred eventually helping to explain. The Joker isn’t a criminal looking for money or power. He just wants chaos. He wants to see the world burn, as Alfred puts it. As for his background, it’s left to the audience’s imagination, with no rational way of pinpointing what made him who he is.

We do, however, know a fair amount about Harvey, the man who later becomes Two Face. He trusted the system, and its collapse, pushed by the Joker, makes him insane. All he has left is the flip of a coin, showing that the only fairness in the world is chance. Heads you live, tails you die. Justice, as he sees it, must come from his own vendetta. Starting out as a hero for the city, a man who defends the system and stands as one of its leaders, he ends up a villain.

The Joker argues, and convinces Harvey, that this imposed system belies human nature. Betrays the universe. As I understand his work, having read only As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner presented the universe in much the same way. His writing is dark, violent, and real. Particularly interesting, and often challenging, is his decision to reflect this chaos in his prose. Not on the sentence level – though they too can stand against the demands for clear, concise statements – but with his shifts in time and perspective. Often abrupt and unexplained, the reader grapples with uncertainty. Faulkner’s writing does not fit the mold of structured, ordered writing. The reader wants to impose order, but Faulkner’s point is that he has written the universe as it is. As the Joker would have it. As students shouldn't see it

Stick It

Why does NBC think I want to watch Olympic volleyball? They’re right, but it’s certainly not my top choice for sports. Still, it seems to be there whenever I turn on the TV. Fortunately I can see any previously aired event online – though not with my computer because it’s outdated the necessary software – and I’ve been able to watch whatever I want. My first choice is gymnastics.
My parents started me in gymnastics at a young age, and I trained and competed for about seven years. I quit in middle school when the amount of practice overwhelmed me. At that point I had more interest in skateboarding and playing music. But I stayed active enough to maintain certain skills – handstands, back handsprings, back tucks – and eventually I got a good friend to go to the gym with me once a week during our sophomore year in high school.

We only went for a couple of months. I felt out of place because we, though still teenagers, were so much older than most other gymnasts there. But I don’t think that was the reason we stopped. I can’t remember why. It was lots of fun, and I got a chance to polish my form a bit and even learn some new stuff. In the constant drilling of specific movements, our coach would use a saying that I’d heard many times before, from different coaches during my more serious training. He said, “practice doesn’t make perfect – perfect practice makes perfect.”

Watching the Olympics makes me wish I’d stuck with gymnastics a bit longer, but I’m happy with the other pursuits I’ve taken up in its place. Yet I often think about that saying. Does it apply to other things I “practice?” Classical guitar? Probably. If I learn bad technique to start it will become a bad habit to painfully break later. Exercise? Sure. Poor technique will not only keep me from getting the most out of an exercise, but can cause serious injury.

But writing? I’m not sure. And if not, what is it about writing, or anything else that doesn’t fit the saying, that’s different? Is it a matter of my end goal? In writing I may not know what the ideal form looks like. I can know what I want the writing to do, but that doesn’t mean I know what it will look like. So is it because I need to explore, because there isn’t an ideal technique, that I can’t worry about practicing perfect writing? Or am I approaching writing the wrong way? Is it less subjective than I see it? Can judges agree on a perfect 10 for a piece of writing, and if so would they agree as to why?

Painting My Cave

I want to find out more about the shift from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies. Specifically, I want to compare their levels of productivity. That word, productivity, sounds a bit industrial and brings to mind a measurement of how many pounds of food each society would produce in a day. And though food production does interest me, with the issues of health that accompany it, I’m thinking more of artistic productivity. Like, who wrote more poems per day?

My stake in the question comes from my own experience. Whenever I have a chance to travel around and cut loose, my creative output drops to almost nothing. Instead, my greatest productivity usually comes when I’m in a comfortable routine. However, at the end of September I will fly to France, and I won’t return to the US until May. There’s a romantic idea of traveling to a foreign place and having a fling with the muse. But the last time I lived in a foreign country I spent more time playing sudoku than writing.

Is comfort the key? If so, what kind of comfort? Maybe it’s a comfortable sense of self, which could come out of a routine environment that reinforces who I am. When my surroundings always change, or seem too foreign, I could doubt what defines me. In that doubt, I may not be able to explore new ideas or reflect on experiences. Or maybe not. It could be physical comfort, specifically more time freed up from not needing to worry about where to get my next meal. Not worrying about figuring out my new surroundings.

Or maybe it isn’t comfort. Maybe I need those times of change and uncertainty to get the juices flowing. Then it isn’t until I get back into a steady routine that I have a chance to process everything. Flesh it out, articulate it. Maybe the past has answers.

-spk

If I wrote a book...

from the morning prompt at NWP-VT summer institute '08

...it would have a different narrator in each chapter. There'd be few sensory details, but they'd be a powerful few. It'd probably have lots of symbolism and allusions that don't reveal themselves quickly. That's not to say that they'd be all that important. Ideas would be most important in my book. Maybe if I write it ten or twenty years from now people, characters, will be more important than ideas. My book would probably bore most people. Maybe it'd bore me, although I'd probably be really into writing it. I would have so much excitement and such big ideas. Then I'd get frustrated with my inability to capture all of it.