Directed Brainstorming for Braided Narrative

Three things you're (really) good at:

• Sailing
• Skiing
• Writing

Take a few minutes to write a common misconception about one of these three things:

People often assume that sailing is a luxury sport, an activity partaken of only by the rich. They imagine an older, pompous gentleman in a captain's hat standing behind an over-sized wheel grinning as the sun shines down on a bored looking bikini babe wearing sunglasses. Maybe this happens for some people. I wouldn't know. If I tried to wear a captain's hat on any boat I sail, it wouldn't go two minutes without getting knocked off. If someone tried to suntan on my deck, they couldn't lie there thirty seconds without me yelling at them to get out of the way, and that's acting under the assumption that I was careless enough to let a barefoot person on deck in the first place.

I didn't grow up learning to sail. I grew up learning to race. My dad, over 50 now, has probably not actually managed to go 'cruising' on a boat since he was six. He continued this tradition with me brining me on board at the age of six months, securely tying a line to my life-vest, and racing the boat with his motley crew on Tuesday nights. I grew up with the mentality that if you were the captain of the boat, then your absolute job was to make the boat go faster. Get those sneakers out over the rail, get your butt off the side, get that line in, it's causing drag. You can always go faster.



Write a list of 'Not's about one of your three things:

I am not going to define what sailing, skiing, or writing is not. I do not have the ferocity of belief or passion, the arrogance or pride to define those things myself. But, if I am to be honest and a bit deprecating, I have always been something of a priest of the sea.

The sea is not safe.
The sea is not dangerous.
The sea is not out to get you.
The sea is not out to get anyone.
The sea does not care.
The sea does not acknowledge.
The sea does not do anything but what it wants.
The sea does not begrudge you.
The sea does not bless you.
The sea does not care who you are.
The sea will not define you.
The sea will not hold you.
The sea will not comfort you.
The sea will not give a single damn about any part of your convoluted human drama.
The sea does not reflect your feelings.
The sea does not reflect you.
The sea is not so shallow.
The sea does not know any of this.
The sea does not know anything at all.
The sea is not anything but the sea.
And the sea will still be here when we are all gone.



Expain: What is _____ like?

What is skiing in the wilderness like?

What is it like, to ski off the man-made trails? What is it like, to throw these flimsy fiberglass foils on to what is otherwise untouched by humanity? Um. Well. Good question. That sort of feeling... is hard to comprehend for someone that's done it, let alone put into words. It's like hiking along a path, and then just turning off the path randomly into a thick wood. Except that you aren't just hiking, but you're running, as fast as you can. And it's not just a wood, but a steep hill covered in trees that you are running down. You have no idea how great the descent is, but it's so steep that you have no choice but to keep running until it levels out a bit. Problem is, the trees are really thick, and the ground is covered in roots, and the roots are covered in a thick layer of leaves so you can't see the roots, and the leaves are slippery in some places and sticky in others.



Write about one of the tools involved with one of the things you do well, about it's care and it's feeling:

A boat is far more than a tool. It is no mistake that boats are referred to as 'her' or 'she', because in many ways a boat is a person. Sailboats emulate this. A sailboat, even one as small as six feet, is made up of numerous other tools. The main sheet feeds into two different pulleys, one on the hull and the other on the boom, which is attached to the mast at the same place that the cunningham, vang, and plenty else all converge in their multicolored tangles, while the inside tip of the sail feeds into the mast, running the length up the stern-side of the mast, following the main halyard, which will generally run down the bow-side of the same metal pole. And that's assuming your boat has only one sail. A jib brings at least another three ropes into play, while it's bottom flops around without a boom, relying on dueling jib sheets to wrangle it like a bull. And that's just a fraction of the rigging. The hull itself must be kept clean of kelp and seaweed and other sea hitchhikers, and the same with the centerboard, or keel. And if you have a keel, woe be to you to keep that clean. You either have to lug your entire boat out of the water, (a process, I assure you, for any boat over 20 feet), or don a diving suit and plumb the depths with mop and scrub brush in hand to get that extra half a knot of speed out of your baby.

While doing one of these things, what could someone do wrong?

In sailing, if you have no idea what you're doing, things are likely to go wrong from the moment you get on the boat. The amount of skill, knowledge, experience, and sheer intuition it takes just to navigate out of a harbor can be to such a level that I suspect the reason you don't require a license is because no one could ever devise effective testing requirements. Fortunately, most boaters are self-policing, and you are highly unlikely to get a complete newbie trying to sail his boat with no skill or assistance. So, let us instead focus on what can go wrong even with some degree of competence. As mentioned above, m-word is key. Much of it is admittedly superficial. You don't *need* that extra half a not gotten from scrubbing down your keel every day. But plenty of it is also extremely serious. See that main halyard up there? If you haven't checked it for fraying or other signs of weakness, that thing could snap on you without warning, and then you've lost your main sail, and possibly your only source of movement. See those pulleys that you're running your main sheet through? Those can jam up, leaving your sail stuck in the same position, unable to move with the wind, and thus subject to being chucked around by the wind. Possibly one of the most terrible things that happened to me was when my tiller simply came off my rudder, without warning!

How did you first come to _____?

As I hinted at earlier and above, I was brought to sailboats at a very young age. My dad tells stories of me crawling around on the deck, trying to untie the knot that kept me attached to the safety line. There are pictures of year-old me sitting on my dad's lap and holding the tiller with him, my little hands not even making it halfway around the thin metal pole that was probably twice my height in length. I can actually remember being old enough to move around on the deck myself, and going through a phase where I was six and wanted to read instead of sail. So, during a race, my dad would just send me to the snug cabin below and I'd read on one of the side cushions, the bouncing and rolling not bothering me a bit. Each time we tacked, I dutifully moved to the new high side of the boat, in order to do my part in trying to flatten it out. A flat boat is a fast boat, you see, and even if I wanted to read instead of race, I understood without prejudice that everyone does their part to make the boat go fast. Later on, I would get back up on deck, where I would make a game out of scrambling from one side of the deck to the other faster than the other crew mates, my small size making it much easier for me to duck the swinging, several hundred pound boom above me. Schoolwork and friendships gave me less and less time to race as I got older, but that was fine as my father was no longer quite the roaring buck he'd been when I was still very young.


What's so amazing about _____?

What's so amazing about sailing is the fact that it allows human beings to move and be in a way that we never intended by nature, and yet feels so natural at the same time. We're land animals. Adaptable land animals, yes, but we have to struggle and strive and endure long bouts of practice before we begin to feel comfort in even shallow water. And even good swimmers would blanch at the idea of riding the tops of ocean swells twenty miles off-shore. But by sailing, we can do it. We can exist in a world never made for humans, and move through it powered only by our intelligence and the wind itself. It's as if we all had a way to fly. Not just fly on an airplane, because then someone is flying for you, but a way to fly for ourselves. It's as if someone could reach down to you from the sky and say, "Here, let me show you how." And amazingly enough, in this day and age, some of us will be lucky enough to fly for ourselves. Little airplanes, hang-gliders, airfoils, there are bountiful ways to personally fly, even if there aren't bountiful opportunities. And like sailing, most of these methods of personal flight provide little tangible benefit. In fact, they almost always cost more than they return.  But, for many of us, they are worth the while. They are our vehicles to the human spirit. They're the wings for our dreams.

Why do I ...?

Prompt: Why do I ____ ? Fill it in with some sort of thing that may be perceived as 'bad'. Timing: Five minutes.

Why do I sleep in?

Why do I lie in bed after my alarm goes off? No, I've gotten a bit smarter than that. My alarm is far enough away from my bed that I must physically get out of bed and walk to it in order to cease it's shrill siren. Yet, even though the act of getting out of bed is accomplished, I will, more than occasionally but less than frequently, simply lumber back and climb into bed again.

Why do I do this? At any time other than the waking hours, I can say with certainty that I enjoy waking up early. Actually, that is probably incorrect. The act of waking up early isn't terribly enjoyable, but being up early is. The world is quiet, filled only with the gentle breathing of the many sleepers, and the quiet noises of the few awake. I have time to myself, but I am not alone. I may do as I please, but I do it quietly. I feel refreshed, the world feels brighter, and I find myself more inspired to do things for others. Quietly cleaning dishes, or making lists, or best of all, making breakfast for those still asleep. I have always loved to wake up to a breakfast freshly made, but I perhaps get even more joy out of making that breakfast for someone else.

Yet, time and time again, I shut off my alarm and am back in my bed before I know it, staring lazily at the rising sun, hoping that it's bright light might push me off my mattress.

Word Explosion

Listen to a piece. Pull out one or two words. Write furiously for a minute or two.

Words:
away randomosity

The randomosity of life endeavors to take me away from the things I love. Except is there anything random about it? It's the path and the place and the purpose that was set down before me; that I followed because it seemed appealing and there were no other opportunities that really presented their presence. Was I right to wait and weigh only what was in front of me?

Words:
to talk about

Something to talk about. You'd think that it's such a commonplace treasure that no one would even bother looking for it. Isn't the ground littered with things to talk about? Someone should really clean those up. There's the worry, though, that if they do, something will be found underneath the clutter.

Free Write on Lu Hsun's "Death"

Prompt: Imitate the will presented in Death by creating your own.

The Final... No, The Current Will and Testament of Seamus Doyle Patrick Reynolds

1. If you want the funeral to be private, that's fine, but let those that I loved be treated as family.
2. Cremate me, do not bury me in the ground. And give some of my ashes to anyone that's willing to go to some place beautiful for me... A mountain top, the open sea, a field of flowers, an island, a cliff, even a skyline... Wherever they find somewhere they think is beautiful in this world, and let them spread my ashes to the wind. Let me fly.
3. My wake should be open to everyone, and it should be a party. I want an Irish wake, a wake of dancing and singing and commemorating. I would much rather have those I leave behind celebrate the time I had than mourn the time I will not have. You are all very dear to me. I would like your last gathering because of me to be full of joy and energy.

This Is The Way We Always Free-Write

Prompt: This is the way we always do it.

This is the way we always do it. We all filter into the room, sitting at the seats we always sit at, sitting with the people we always sit by. A few conversations between a few individuals pervade the room for a few minutes before the professor speaks. Most of us just sit silently, either reading the piece that we put off until now, typing half-heartedly at our laptops, or simply staring at something very far away.

This is always followed by the professor standing and speaking. The few conversations die down with little prompting, as the class is prompted to free-write about the prompt we are prompted with. Whatever it may be, whatever randomosity we contrive to see, we sit and write and type away, the beginning of the end of day.

This is the way we always do it. Bad things happen, and they seem to happen in waves. You can't have one suicide attempt without another. Is it the season, is it the air? Is it the way you think no one cares? You're trying to leave behind all those you know. What can we say to convince you not to go? I get distracted and depressed, even about the things I love the best. What is refreshing on any other day is suddenly melancholy and dull... A game I do not wish to play.

I'm sorry for my dreary view, in truth I do appreciate you. It's just that on today, writing does not seem the way.

Forces on the Parents Free-Write

Prompt: What social forces (or other force) affected your parents, that may also have affected you?

My mother and father has very different childhoods with eerie similarities.

For my mother, the force that affected her was most likely the feminist movement. I can't say I have the historical knowledge of whether it was second or third-wave feminism, or some other movement entirely, but the struggle to gain equal rights for women was something that I think really affected my mother. She's always been an incredibly strong woman. She had four kids, took care of them while working constantly from home. Her work would take her once a year to far-away countries where she would broker deals with the local vineyards that would affect global wine prices for the year to come. This didn't stop her from always making a different dinner for each of her four children, spoiling them with their favorites when it would have been far easier to just make the same meal for all of us. Even cancer couldn't stop her. Six months after chemo, she ran a half marathon just to prove she could, putting her two cross-country sons to shame. She wants no one else in her life, preferring to be what is called the 'strong, independent woman', despite the great effort of raising and championing four children. To be fair, this strength can manifest itself in aggravating ways. Many a time have I been sent back to the bathroom to 'put the seat down', silently fuming and constructing an argument that making me do such a thing was actually defeating gender equality everywhere, an argument I never had the guts to make. But it also gives her an incredible acceptance. Despite being a devout Catholic and going to church every Sunday, she accepted it with only mild disappointment when I told her that institution was no longer in harmony with my own spiritual beliefs. In the middle of my long and rambling explanation to her of polyamoury, she mistakenly believed that I was coming out to her, and assured me that she didn't care who I liked or who I brought home. She's never even preached to us about feminism, either. It's always just been our mom, being strong. It's only now as we grow older and familial lies break down that we begin to see her as a real person, a person that has suffered for us. Perhaps it's too late for recompenstation, and I doubt she'd accept any if put like that. But it is time we started appreciating her for everything she does, and letting our hearts appreciation carry to our mouths.

Combinational Free-Write

Topics for combination/writing: Stole something, shoes indoors?, someone you don't talk to anymore.

Three topics. Of the three, one brings a blank, the other brings a vague curiosity, and only the last actually inspires at all. If I'm to be fair, my mind is in all sorts of places at the moment, and only one of those places is this classroom. I'm slowly trying to pull it back in, but the urge to be in those other places is really strong. I made a to-do list, in order to focus myself over the next few days, we'll see if it's actually of any use. I have gotten a few of those things done, so that's good. I forgot to cross them off. Maybe tonight's meditation will help to settle my brain a bit.

Heh, I guess that 'stole something' isn't a blank after all. I stole my brother's sunglasses while I was home, thinking I might need them, but without any real honest of intention of returning them before winter break. They don't fit quite right, sized for his slightly smaller skull, but they do keep the surprisingly sunny snow from blinding me. If I'm to be honest, I do have a bit of klepto in me. Mostly around my family, in a sense that I think we all do. We'll grab little things that belong to another sibling or parent when we need it, and those that were stolen from will simply attribute it to stuff getting lost in our house. We all sort of know it happens, and make jokes about "Oh, that's a nice sweater! You know, I used to have one just like that..." but it works itself out. I'm much less apt to steal things from people outside of my family, but I do have a tendency to take little things. A rock, a bit of sea glass, a nice pen, an eraser, a little scrap of a picture, a little yarn from a blanket, maybe even a whole hat or shirt if it gets left in one of my various abodes. I lovingly hoard these little prizes, and each reminds me of the person I pilfered from. A little physical object that lets me feel closer to them when I am, as I often am, far away.

On the other hand, the matter of wearing shoes indoors is pretty much an academic one to me. I am sort of half Japanese in that respect; I do not like shoes to be worn inside a house or living space, but wearing shoes in a school building or business makes sense to me. I used to enjoy shoes, or at least socks, and always liked to have something covering my feet. Recently, though, I have begun to appreciate the world as felt through bare feet. Tae Kwon Do can probably take credit for that, as it has me practice barefoot for an hour or so twice a week. There is so much to be felt in this world. I think that we rely too much on our sight, wonderful sense though it is, and forget to actually touch the things around us. How many of us know how a blackboard feels against our cheeks? How many of us have lain naked on pavement? How many of us have stopped and stooped down to feel the wet, cold, outside stone steps with our own bare hands? There are so many sensations that this world has to offer us that we cannot hope to feel them all before we pass away. And to be sure, I do not have the time in my life to devote to feeling as many as I can. But, sometimes I can remember to try, and in trying, do my best to appreciate each feelings, as old or as new as it may be.

Freewrite on Inappropriate Dress

Prompt: Write about a time, any time, when you were very inappropriately dressed.

Oh dear. Huh. Okay. A time when I was inappropriately dressed. That's... hard to say, actually. I'm not really a fashionable person, but for the most part, I'm dressed either practically or appropriately for the situation I'm in. Sure, I may not always wear clothes as warm as I should, given the climates I like to live in, but otherwise I'm actually hard-pressed to think of a time when I was wearing something blatantly wrong and not just unfashionable in some way.

Ah, no, wait, here we go. For what have I worn the most ridiculous outfits? For what have I worn the most comic of costumes? My dear, dear larping. Oh, but does that even count? If I'm wearing a costume for a larp, no matter how ridiculous, the costume is usually appropriate for the larp. Ah, but wait, it's not infrequent that I wear a larp costume outside of a larp. In Dragon I ate dinner in the Commons Dining Hall, decked out in a regal purple cape, tight black vest, and chain mail sleeves. That... Was a good costume. And I wasn't even the best or most absurd of them there. Then we have dear Oscar Wilde. Oh, Oscar, how much fun you were to play. A ruffled white collared shirt over-adorned by a tight black long coat made of something that felt like, well... felt. Tight black pants clashed terribly with sneakers, (I never have proper footwear), but it was all brought together by the glory of the Drascot, dubbed such for being a black ascot emblazoned with a golden dragon. I wore that with pride as I obtained breakfast from baffled cashiers, and lunch from amused sandwich makers. There is something about dressing in utterly ridiculous and fabulous ways that gives you a strange confidence. No longer was I afraid of what people would think, because I had given them license to think anything at all!

Refuge in audacity, is that what it's called? Well, I certainly approve. Perhaps that is why I have always liked the bold and the unusual, the mad and the crazy. The sheer improbability of actions gives one a freedom from the opinions of others in a way that I have found little else can...

Free Write on Blindness

Prompt: If you were told by a doctor that you were going to go blind in the general near-future, what are some things you would try to do before that happened?

I'm honestly not sure of what I would do, because given the limited time frame, I'd have to rank things by what I felt was more important than others. But I know what I would want to do. I would want to take time to spend alone with each and every person I care about. I would want to etch their face, their smile, their visual selves into my mind. People's appearances are always changing, and memories are always tenuous at best, so I suppose etching them into my mind isn't what I'd really want to do. I'd want to take that time and appreciate what I can see, appreciate what they look like, every inch of them, because I will not be able to appreciate that again later.

I would want to wander the places I've called home, wander through them and look at everything, both what is near and familiar to me and what I am noticing for the first time.

I would take my friends that know of such things and see as much visual artwork as I could. The greats and the famous, to be sure, but also the little things. Lizzey's drawings and paintings, Izzy's various creations, my brother's little sketches, my own scribbles from when I was young.

With time running out, I would try to appreciate everything that I could one last time. Not for the memories, but for the worth in appreciating things that will someday be lost to us.