Weekly write 11
Holiday memories - and what you learnt from your experiences. Catch one while you can!
Please read ‘Things I learned at University’ by Kate Bingham
https://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2013/11/09/lifesaving-poems-kate-binghams-things-i-learned-at-university/
Now jot down a list of some of the unexpected things you ‘learnt’ on holiday – any holiday – about yourself, others and the world – both trivial and profound.
When you are ready and have a starting point in mind, write for 10-20 minutes.
By holding on to a memory and opening your experience for reflective writing at a distance, you create a space for meanings to circle and re-settle - like the coloured pieces in a kaleidoscope. This is not just a way of ‘living your life twice’, one of the affordances of memoir according to Natalie Goldberg, but also a way of wrestling with the stability/fluidity of its significance. Re-membering - the re-assembly of what's left after an experience has passed - can itself be a way of learning about the shape of what sticks and what is forgotten - and beginning reflecting on why.
Simon Wrigley, Sept 2017
Please read ‘Things I learned at University’ by Kate Bingham
https://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2013/11/09/lifesaving-poems-kate-binghams-things-i-learned-at-university/
Now jot down a list of some of the unexpected things you ‘learnt’ on holiday – any holiday – about yourself, others and the world – both trivial and profound.
- Think of the difference between what was advertised, or what you might have anticipated, and what you actually experienced - or what you can retrieve of that experience.
- Recall those times and moments - look beyond the photos and videos - close your eyes and visualise them.
- Move your hand as you did, walk as you did, listen as you did.
- Re-live your holiday (and talk about it) - the sensory particularities of place, people and feeling - the tastes, the smells, the songs, the rhythms, the temperatures and the textures of it.
When you are ready and have a starting point in mind, write for 10-20 minutes.
By holding on to a memory and opening your experience for reflective writing at a distance, you create a space for meanings to circle and re-settle - like the coloured pieces in a kaleidoscope. This is not just a way of ‘living your life twice’, one of the affordances of memoir according to Natalie Goldberg, but also a way of wrestling with the stability/fluidity of its significance. Re-membering - the re-assembly of what's left after an experience has passed - can itself be a way of learning about the shape of what sticks and what is forgotten - and beginning reflecting on why.
Simon Wrigley, Sept 2017