I’m taking part in a 10 day Winter Writing Sanctuary, with author Beth Kempton, and I decided to post some of my responses to the exercises here on my Substack blog, if only to help me get back in the habit of writing for the new year.
Today’s exercise is about finding a way to condense a day or even a moment to its pure essence. The first activity was to make some notes about “the perfect winter day”. I journaled a bit, and then came up with this memory:
The creek behind our house has risen and breached the small embankment, flooding the backyards on our side and the woods and fields on the other, before freezing solid. My mother has gotten out our ice skates, and so have the neighbors, and we're skating and sliding on the frozen creek. There's a bonfire - is it in our yard? a neighbors? We're at home and also far away, in a place where cold becomes warmth and frozen becomes movement and we are all at peace, if only for a few moments.
The second activity was to choose one image and turn it into a vignette, poem, whatever. Here’s mine:
A Dream of Winter
the water runs freely under the thick ice
movement and immobility harmonious in the same space
in season either floating or gliding
always buoying a soul away from the shore towards freedom
I knew someplace, on an old back up drive, I had photos from our skating parties and sure enough, there was one of the neighbors, huddled around a fire in the neighbor’s back yard while we kids skated up and down the creek banks, and another of my mother shoveling the large, frozen backyard so we could put on our skates and fly up and down the creek banks. It was like a balm to my spirit to find the photos after I’d done the writing exercises.
These scribblings are raw, unedited, and will simmer before they (maybe) become something else. If nothing else, may they inspire you to let words spill on the page, no filter, no need to defend or explain or edit. Let the letters form and fly freely out into the world, trusting they will land where they are most needed.
That’s it for today.
Happy creating!
Joanne