Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Broken Terrain


Let's put all our treasures together - the clock, plates, cups carved in gold into a sack and carry them to the sea. There let our possessions smash in the sinister shock of a breaker; let the things that are broken call out like a river and the sea render back to us whole in the might of its crosscurrents all that we held of no worth. The junk no hand has broken, but still goes on breaking. -from Oda a las Cosas Rotas by Pablo Neruda




Poet, Pablo Neruda makes peace with all things broken; he portrays brokenness as a state as natural as wholeness. When things get broken, it's no one's fault.  Items fall apart and wear out.  People go away, change, break down and die. 


What stories breathe in the crack in the vase?
In personal narratives, we weave fragments back together again.

Tromp through the landscape of your mind in search of broken things.  Make a list of  things that break.  Combine animate and inanimate objects and ideas.  What tools do individuals use to fix the broken?  Some possessions get fixed, others are replaced or abandoned.

Does everything break? What should become fixed or salvaged?




Creative Write: Write a story or poem about what you did with something that broke, including the feelings attached. What was life life before and after the break?

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