B.) Write a scene in which you slow down time (think Conroy & the yoyo, or Slater & her mom at the piano on New Year's); take one moment and DRAG it out so that it takes up a paragraph, a page...all for something that in real life would take about a second or a minute or two.
The snow gave way under my feet with a crunch and sigh. For each footprint I left, the snow hurried to fill the scar. I made my way to the edge, and braced myself as I looked over, looked down, and down. My eyes fell like a stone, bouncing from cliff’s ledge to the next, taking years to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And when my eyes found the river’s edge, they rolled right in. Snowflakes tumbled above me, icy water flowed beneath me, and one night-black rook flew above me. I breathed in the moment, closing my eyes to save everything I saw. When I opened my eyes, brushing snow from my lashes, those first few seconds took flight, but left behind a feather in my mind’s eye.
G.) Write a completely TRUE paragraph. Now add the word "perhaps" at the beginning of every sentence.
Perhaps I fell for you when I saw you under your hood. Perhaps I felt it when I first saw your green-blue eyes. Perhaps I gave myself up for gone when you started calling me by my name. Perhaps our story began with a wrestling match, and we’ve been wrestling ever since. Perhaps we make it through these next few years, when we are apart more than together, if we make it then, we’ll make it forever. Perhaps dreaming is more than wishful thinking; perhaps it is willful thinking. Perhaps if we keep this up, we will never have to ask ourselves who we are—we’ll just know.
E.) If epilepsy is the metaphor, or Lie, which conveys the real person Lauren Slater IS (see p.162)...what is the LIE or METAPHOR which conveys the real person you are? Now take 10 minutes to write about it, as if this were real.
I live within a Lie that calls itself Society: where we walk the streets amongst a crowd of people who refuse to look up from the sidewalks. Where suit and tie strangle the once young and proud—strangling their sense of independence and need for adventure.
Society is a Lie I embrace. If I did not embrace society, I would run. If I allowed the Truth to set me free, if I stopped and looked at the sun and felt my worth beaming down on me, I would break. I would cut up my social security card, I would burn my birth certificate, and tear my credit cards apart with my teeth. I live with a Lie that keeps me on the roads between work and school, the streets between my divorced parents’ houses. This kind of life is limited. This Lie is limiting because my sense of conforming knowledge, as opposed to independent experience from which life is derived.
But Truth is a flame in the back of my mind, in the core of my being—it reminds me of that cabin in the woods where I would learn to be complete. I think about a rifle and ammunition which would translate into raw food—a match flickers—a warm meal. A cold stream for water: for bathing, for music to listen to when I rest my head on my arms and stare at the stars. To be lost in the unknown.
But Society throws its arm around my shoulders like a car-salesman and assures me this is the best one, this is a steal, this is what he would drive out of the car-lot. I nod, dumb and mute, because if I don’t, I’ll run from this Lie.
The Truth? The Truth is what scares me, it is who I really am.
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