Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 08:13:21 -0700
From: momcmorrow1@yahoo.com
Subject: Hope all’s going well
To: _______@hotmail.com
From: momcmorrow1@yahoo.com
Subject: Hope all’s going well
To: _______@hotmail.com
Hi _____, I’ve been thinking of you.
I re-watched a movie I’d seen years ago “The Shawshank Redemption” about a prison break that took 19 years of execution to complete.
It got me thinking about how dealing with one’s own self-inflicted limitations are like a jail sentence and it takes years of thinking about it, poking around it, scraping away with a small metal tool before we can finally burrow our way out, or sneak past the guard in some way.
I enjoy finding metaphors for this escape or re-awakening or whatever the heck it is we’re all trying to do.
This last one, prison break really appeals to my sense of adventure. I think I’ll be doing some thinking on this one for a while.
And that just made me think of an idea for you. (for me too actually) Seriously, I didn’t have the idea until finishing that last sentence.
The idea of writing a story for your own self, an alchemical story, where you project all the secret desires into your main character who takes the burden for you and overcomes some overwhelming odds to win something or to survive or to discover some magical cure or to slay a dragon and take back the treasures it had stolen. Sort of like a waking dream, how dreams come to us to speak to our unconscious and whisper a secret in our ear so that we can be given the magical elixir of self knowledge. It’s the archetype of all stories and maybe just maybe it’s a matter of igniting that already kindling fire, tapping into the template that is lying dormant just waiting for oxygen.
It just SEEMS right. We skirt around ideas getting closer and closer and closer. What if we could just give ourselves a “project” that actually uses the paradigm.
So what I mean is, say… a writing project that has a time frame to it so that the energy is concentrated and not allowed to dissipate and dissolve into the ether. A deadline, for a story you have no intention of letting anyone read (unless it’s under an assumed name) You could even have a goofy publication to send it to – a teenagers publication…. (hey that’s an idea, take on another identity, one that’s opposite to you, or write as an adolescent, or a boy or a man or a warrior woman (you ARE a warrior after all, just a quiet warrior using the subtle energies) but anyway, just ideas to break you out of you, break you out of taking it “seriously”. Shake it up. Slap it against the wall and watch the colors run. Do it for the hell of it. Do it for the alchemy of it. The act of it may stir up the silt.
I’ve joined Toastmasters and the deadline for these speeches that I’m writing is creating magic. I would not write them if I didn’t have to. There’s something about a deadline that creates anxiety and I guess anxiety creates energy,… or something.
Also we were talking about how much shit someone has to write before they get to the good stuff. Maybe this would help slough off a whole mountain of heaviness and let the sun in.
Okay I’m rambling now but i’ve discovered it’s when i’ve hit the rambling stage that I’m actually at my best. this email was unintended. I ws only going to mention the movie and the obvious metaphor for personality escape and out rushed all this stuff. I might as well send it and let the chips fall where they may.
Looking forward to our Thursday chat.
Mo