Spices

Today for Writing Club we wrote to smells. I brought two different spices to the Skybox, one brown, one red, and we were all challenged to come up with four words to describe each spice. Then, we were to write three places, people or things the spice reminded us of. All the while attempting to stray way from "traditional" cooking and baking words. Once the descriptors were all complied we shared them. Brittany reminded us all that smell is the sense most evocative of memories. I think we all found that our pieces were ripe with many different types of memory, both personal and cultural, as well conscious and subconscious. Here are a few samples. The first is by Sumara, Sammi Baig, a freshman at Lake Forest College and the second by myself. More to come.

Sammi's  Spice Piece:

The two women spoke in harsh Arabic.
 “Yalla! Yalla!”
 She tugged my hair, the other tugged harder. One had my fingers; smoothing them, roughing them, buffing them. Clipping out the parts unliked.
 The ceiling light emanated a dusty brown hue from which a ray of light thickened by dirt danced; limited by its thin ballroom. 
 “La, la, khamsa” spits out the one whose hands are cleverly entwined in my hair. Her accomplice picks out the fifth bottle of polish from the shelf; a smoky red, as if the sun was set on fire and all that was left was ash.
 I look over at my sister, who flips through a magazine as her mouth sloshes around gum that has been drained of all its candy sweet taste.

Kaisa Cumming's Spice Piece:

Remember feet held close to the fireplace and how the skin tingles as 
it creeps back to the bone as you creep up the cold stairs to bed.

Remember the quilt made with two hands twenty years ago by a little 
old lady with winter hands or maybe it was a little old lover with
dainty, fairy hands who pricked her winter fingers so many times you 
think you might be able to smell blood in the
fibers--but that's romantic, right?

Remember the warmth of Novemeber sun. You can see ghosts come out 
your mouth in clouds that never last.

And remember the Indian medicine woman holding her crooked bones in 
the crooked door way and the crooked-legged dog  with cloudy eyes and 
the way the song she sang when you had the fever of a fire-warmed 
cabin inside you cracked around the     
edges of her mouth.

Alex Andorfer's Piece

traveled south every summer 
    - ironically, to the state I live in now -
looming over the Sound
a mile's walk above the ocean
our collective society stood seven days of june.
i stayed in the middle room,
in the middle of the house,
the very middle of the Sound.

a ladder took you up there
           to my room (the middle one)
           to my bed
that's when bunks weren't associated with
dorm rooms
cramped living
the inability to get you laid.

the breeze carried my innocence and
Sound
sand
through the society
      the innocence and Sound to everyone's pleasure
      the sand less so

Caravanning neighbors
enthralled with the Sound.

My spice piece (oddly similar to Urrea's talk later that night)

They called our mothers

when we didn’t have a water bottle at school--

rung through telephone wires

the way this clay

feels when the sky refuses to open
we fall

after the water jug they told us to carry

drained eighteen hours ago

and the urine stopped running too

fell into a cyan green

plant our faces in the colony, 
like an animal god that smells after rain.

we ask in the city 
didn’t anyone ever tell us how much
water to bring on a desert walk?

because our bottles hang in holsters on our hips.

we may think we are the suncrowned rooster

but the flint of our every step

ignites and mummifies the cold cut pollo we are:

found

like an newborn artifact

one lime green shoe

still left on 

Walking Backwards in the Dark: Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea, the author of  The Devil's Highway, and The Hummingbird's Daughter, along with many other books, told an audience at Lake Forest College tonight that his mother used to read him Dickens before bed as a child in order to give him a sense of culture. Although he didn't understand the words or the stories she was recounting to him, as he was still a young child and primarily versed in Spanish, he said the beauty of the words overwhelmed him. As he fell asleep he could picture a stream of words flowing through his mind like a trail. Tonight, at a discussion aimed to illuminate the issues of the Mexican-American Border. He said, "Do you want to know why I can write about the border? Because it is right here," he gestured towards his chest drawing a line down the middle of his button up shirt, "I have a border fence right here in my heart." Not only did Urrea experience first hand the cruelty and the beauty of the physical border between the United States and Mexico, but as a child he learned intimately about the borders between people. Between his mother and father, the city and barrios of his youth, even the Mexicanism and Americanism of his own self. Urrea said, "I don't like fences, I like bridges."

What Urrea intimately reminded us of tonight is the fact that writing can be used as a tool of self discovery, a crisscrossed map of bridge building within one's own self, and to raise the community up. Urrea's books are poignant examples of walking the line between striving for a personal resolution within one's own life, and promoting education and understanding within the community. What a better way to be a writer but to define the gap of ones self-understanding as well as the communities and attempt to bring each closer together. Here is one of his poems for you to enjoy.

Response to Deja Vu

This is the first official piece we have gotten in response to one of the prompts for the blog. This one is anonymous and from someone who does not go to Lake Forest College. Hope you all respond with thoughts!

Rainbow Cupcakes: Andrea Gibson Event

Tonight was a successful event for the Lake Forest Coffee House Club, now known as Cafe Calypso. We served fair trade coffee and cookies and cupcakes for PRIDE's Andrea Gibson event. Andrea Gibson is a slam poet from Maine, who currently lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her words tonight were inspiring, and  I think all in attendance can agree that we left with our arms covered in goosebumps. I think slam poetry is an intriguing avenue for writing as it blends performance and words. I would encourage you all to experiment with this style of poetry. See if this might fit your voice.  Here is a link to what I found to be one of her most arresting poems.

"I Do" by Andrea Gibson

Write to This:

Today, writers wrote to this image. The idea was that this image was so close up that the object itself was almost unidentifiable. Writers could describe what they believed this object to be, use elements from the picture to aid, challenge or inspire their writing. This is a piece, by one of toda's writers, that resulted from the 7 minutes of writing:

As a man accustomed to sunsets, raising children in Flora, Indiana is hard. Sunsets over the water fill one up like a bay: whole of water swollen color until you can't breath with looking at so much red. Sunsets over the cornfields and trees are non-existent. Days simply end. They don't fade, dissipate, release with a gust. It was simply day and now it is not. So I take my children to see the sunrise. Where the transparent ghost of the earth rises to meet the sky in a light-fog. We drive out of Flora, the boys bundled up in ther bootie pajamas, holding their blankets to their chins. I love to watch how they look out the window as the sun eases into the sky and the fog absorbs our car like we are nothing but this. How they hold their brothers hands the way I clung to my mothers elbow when I saw the sunset bleed into the Atlantic for the first time.

Meeting February 17th, 2011: The Reluctant i

Today's meeting went along swimmingly. Thanks to all who showed up, wrote, shared their work and ideas! The first prompte we wrote to was,"The Reluctant I," which is where you must write for 7 to 10 minutes from the first-person narrative without using the words, I, My, Me, or Myself. The idea is to create the feeling of narration, personality, and intimacy, but without the emphasis on the self. Writers could use any thing, person, or animal as their narrator as long as they refrained from using typical "self" words. I encourage you all to try this type of writing.

First Creative Exercise: Deja Vu

For those of you already bored with the blizzard and spending so much time in your room, here is a writing prompt to chew on for the next couple of days. I would suggest writing this prompt like an F.E. What is an F.E you might ask? It is a finger exercise. The goal is to write for 15 minutes to a prompt without letting your pen stop, keep your fingers moving and the words flowing. If you get stuck, write the last line over and over again, but never ever stop writing. So here is the first F.E of the new year!

Write a sketch of a scene in which a character has an experience that causes them to recall a startlingly similar past experience. Juxtapose the two scenes, the present one and the past one, on top of each other, writing for instance, two or three sentences of the present moment, then alternating back and forth between present and past. Show the reader the remembered scene by use of Italics. Why would a character be haunted like this? Think of a convincing reason for the Deja Vu experience. Or don't worry too much about a convincing reason--just let some strange set of events impinge on the present moment of your character. Be playful with the relationship.

There is something about being trapped in one place due to outside forces that forces one to consider past experiences. Utilize this snow and the quiet to think about this relationship!

The Inauguration of the Lake Forest College Writing Club

Hello All,

This is the blog for all the writers at Lake Forest College who would like to share their work with their fellow students, simply write creatively outside of class once a week, or be inspired by the works of other students on campus. We will meet every Thursday at 12:00pm in the skybox.


The purpose of this blog is so that students can share their work anonymously, or otherwise with the members of this group, and receive constructive criticism. Like any literary forum, there must be rules for this group. Primarily, it takes courage to share ones work with others, even if it is anonymously, and thus this page must be respectful and kind. That is not to say you must beat around the bush, or sugar coat your responses to someones piece, however you must provide both praise and constructive criticism when they are due. 


Beginning on February 10th, the Writing Club will meet for an hour at the least. Bring pencils, pens, papers, journals etc... and be prepared to free write. If, throughout the week, you have a piece you would like to share, whether for class or for fun, and would like to recieve comments, you may post it on this blog. If you have a piece you would like to share first email cliffsm@lakeforest.edu with the writing as an attachment. I will then post it to the blog. If you would like your name included, tell me in the email, otherwise the posting will remain anonymous.  Hopefully this will become a safe place for creative growth and inspiration.


Also, at points throughout the week I will post writing prompts. For those of you procrastinating on classwork, check out the blog for interesting prompts and inspiration.

Sincerely,
The Lake Forest College Coffeehouse