Wee Willy Winky and all that stuff.
10:28 p.m.
Writing group reconvened for the fall last night in the belly of BIack Cat Books. I was so incredibly happy to be there in the bosom of creativity. Bruce was back. I hardly recognized him since he�s grown his hair long and is wearing it in a pony tail. But he had such a happy grin when he saw me, it was like one of those moments when you greet a long-lost friend, which in a way he is. Janice gave us some rather hard exercises, or else I was very rusty and just found them difficult.
Our warm-up write was 15 minutes on the topic of heat, which proved to be mostly descriptions from most of them, descriptions of stifling summer heat and nights when you kick off the covers and the air is thick like porridge, or the afternoon sun beats down on the garden and even the cat has only enough energy to flick the tip of its tail. Mine was different as usual, as I described the necklace a student of mine was wearing that day, a pendant made from the same metal alloy from which the space station is constructed, a substance specifically designed to withstand great heat, but which is also rather beautiful to look at, inspiring some smart entrepreneur to make jewellery out of it.
Our second exercise was rather entertaining. Janice distributed photocopied poems, all by the same author, and we had to snip them into pieces, separating each word from its fellows, and then gluing them back on a piece of paper, making our own poetry out of the words thus provided. It was hilarious as we had little bits of paper falling all over the place. The resulting poems were actually not bad. Mine was rather bizarre. I don�t think it�ll sell, let�s put it that way.
The third exercise was more interesting and I think I produced something rather good. Janice handed around prints of paintings, and we were to write for 25 minutes in the �voice� of the subject. Mine was a detail of the head in �Woman in White� by Picasso (an early work, extremely beautiful and technically well rendered), and I pretended that she was Ophelia, writhing inside at her rejection by Hamlet, but not showing an iota of emotion on her smooth, alabaster face.
This morning in Latin we almost finished the Ovid we were translating, and this afternoon I met with D.J., presently heading ITS at the university, who guided me through the pronunciation of the Polish text for the first movement of the Gorcki. The language sounds like a hive of bees, if you know what I mean. He also translated the text as we went, which will help when I try to be expressive.
Now I must go. We have an early rising tomorrow. Have a good weekend everyone. I�ll be back Sunday, I promise.
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