Sensationate

"Sometimes a poem comes over me like weather, feels like an itch or impulse. It's a near physical sensation. At that moment, there is nothing else to do but move to the typewriter or computer to pound the thing out." - Cate Marvin

How does one capture ideas to transform into pieces of writing? Awareness of what's happening on myriad levels of sensation begins the process. With eyes, nose, ears, and fingers alert, receptivity opens. 

Translate sensations into words with sounds, scents, touch and taste to enliven writing.


Make lists of possibilities.

Take time to follow the light as it bounces during the day.

Notice shadows and dark spaces.

Taste the air and make notes on sensations and scents.

Observe conversations between others.

Watch their body language and record gestures.

Listen to sounds floating and mingling in the air.

Read signs and transpose words.

Scan the newspaper for headlines that mean more than the subject.

Search for oddities.

Gaze into flowers and plants for shapes and faces.

Ask, "What happens here. . ."

Look up and around.
       Make friends with clouds and small creatures.
                   Squint to capture nuances.

Start your own list of observations and sensations. Do a freewrite to see what adventures will unfold. 

Express yourself in sensations.

Discover a Moly Experience

As Odysseus nears Circe's house in Homer's Odyssey, Hermes, Greek messenger of the Gods, gives him the flower, moly. This will protect Odysseus from the witch's magic.

Homer describes moly, "The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it moly, dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods. All lies within their power."

James Joyce wrote about this invisible influence as prayer, chance, agility, and presence of mind. Hermetic gifts are those fertile coincidences that lead to creation, not chaos. 

As a result of references to the magical moly, people began saying, "Holy Moly" to denote something extraordinary.  

Discover the extraordinary with a moly experience of creation.





Reverence Reveal

"Wherever people try to act together, they hedge themselves around with some form of ceremony or good manners, and the observance of this can be an act of reverence. Reverence lies behind civility and all of the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant." - Paul Woodruff

Create an essay around the word, "reverence." Avoid using the word in your writing. Write what you feel, think, and reflect about its meaning and necessity in life.

Use a unifying metaphor or tell a fable that reveals the essence of reverence.

Keep in mind a sense of Awe.

Explore reverence beyond spiritual associations.

Show as aspect of respect in a conversation between two individuals with disparate views.

Revive an ideal of reverence.