“Critters”Hand-Colored Zoological Photomicrographs by Ernst Heeger, courtesy of Hans Kraus Gallery An update from our forty-first Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday May 15, plus some of the output published below We started this week’s workshop with a visit to New York! Photography expert Hans Kraus showed us around his Park Avenue gallery, sharing a selection of the beautiful nineteenth-century photographic drawings composed from insect parts, microscope magnifications, and even prints made from living material in the gallery’s current exhibition, called “Critters.” One of the key images from this show was William’s jumping off point for this class. We looked at the photograph – composed of wing scales from a Hawk Moth – considering how the similar but slightly different shaped and coloured objects in the image relate to each other, or not; how groups and sub-groups might form and interact depending on how we look at or think about it. We moved through examples of writing from a previous class by Georgia Marshall, as well as Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen, and listed to a quartet from Fidelio, all of which presented multiple characters in different, sometimes parallel, interactions with one another in different group formations. The Challenge: Write a piece from the perspective of 3-5 characters. They might appear in a single group, multiple groups or alone; they could be interacting, avoiding interaction, moving away from one another. The Participants: Peri, Lena DN, Maddie, Gia, Madeline K, Pranjoli, Reese, Margaret, Wesley, Julia, Rachael, Chelsea, Jaya, Lena A, Mia, Delight, Lina, Helen, Hanbei, Peter, Sage, Sierra, Mahika, Anna K, Audrey, Angela, Jonathan, Grace, Charlotte, Iago, Nova, Madeline, Nami. Lina Kim, 11Weston, FL Alone in the Wind Lina Kim, 11 As I walked home from school, I glanced at the kids outside, playing basketball and soccer and baseball somehow all combined into one game. They called it ‘basketbasesoccball’. For a second one girl saw me watching and I quickly shifted my gaze away, looking down at the sidewalk covered in chalk drawings. I pretended to be interested in them, trying to push the girl’s attention away from me, but instead she walked up to me. “Hey, do you wanna join us?” she asked. I stood there, paralyzed. I’d always tried to hide in the shadows—but here, there was no shade, not a single tree. The only shelter from the beating sun was on the bench with the covering—which was inside of the basketbasesoccball court. With people sitting on it. I shuddered at the very thought. Sweat trickled down my forehead, but not from the heat. “Robin?” she asked. I flinched at my name. “No thanks,” I managed quietly. She stared at me for a minute, then shrugged, getting back to the game. I watched as they laughed and played, shooting hoops and kicking balls into the net and making home runs. I’d always been invisible. I looked around at the barren earth around the school. There wasn’t a single plant—not a shrub, not a blade of grass, not even a weed. I’d always wanted to do something about the lack of nature. Instead of staying any longer and risking someone talking to me, I headed straight towards my house. It wasn’t exactly home. Nothing felt like home to me. It was just a house. My house. No, my mom and dad’s house. They cared about me, but they just didn’t go about it the right way. They tried to get me to be out in the world, out in the sunlight, when I’d rather be sitting in the shadows of a large redwood tree in the middle of the forest, drinking in pure nature. I reached a small forest. It wasn’t exactly a forest, just a place full of grass and trees, and it was really small. Still, I made a split second choice. I looked both ways and ran into the wilderness. I decided to climb a tree. I hadn’t done that in years, ever since I fell from one at four years old and broke my right arm. But that was seven years ago. I put my foot in a small dent in the bark and pulled myself up into the middle, where the trunk split into several branches. It was a nice hidden place. Suddenly a large gust of wind swooped around me, somehow grabbing me and throwing me into the air. A tornado? A hurricane? I reached wildly, trying to grab a branch to hold onto, but I was too far. The wind swept me into the sky. I felt myself dissolving into the wind, becoming part of it. I scrambled desperately in the air, but soon I was only wind. No one would remember me. I was invisible. And I still am. Forever. Sometimes I still wish I could go back, make friends. But I know I will always be part of the wind. Immortal. But sometimes I didn’t want to be. What was the point of never dying when there was never anyone to keep you company? Even if I could be seen, if I was still immortal, they would just move on and I would be left, friendless once more. Alone in the wind. Anna Ko, 11Saint Louis, MO The Midnight of our Friendship Anna Ko, 11 They were happy and content. They had all they needed. Three friends together. But their bond wasn’t that simple. Their bond had its ups and downs, like the tide. Sometimes, they would click. They would understand and know just what to do. But sometimes, they were annoying as the squirrels and rabbits which continued to terrorize their garden, always huddling around to see how they could help the other. But never, never, had they ever had such a situation. When they were young, they had first met. But as they grew up their interests started to differ, and they argued more. They had their moments, but slowly, over time, it just started to collapse like a half-demolished unkempt structure. No one noticed
Writing Workshop #40: Ghosts (Part Two)
An update from our fortieth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday May 8, plus some of the output published below This week, William completed the journey to the spirit world that we started last week. Inspired by the Victorian-era spirit drawings of Georgian Houghton, the group considered ways of using the idea of the inspiration of spirits in writing, as a way of communicating between the living and the dead. We thought about various means people use to stay in touch with their ancestors, from home shrines to seances, and the different ways spirit manifest themselves in stories. We watched a video of a Hawaiian storyteller telling a story about a haunted condominium, ending with the classic words “and the story is true”, and discussed Augustine the Samburu blacksmith’s story of a baby that turns out to be a ghost. We read a section from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, as Scrooge sees the strange, form-shifting spirit appear before him; and considered the role of the haunted house in many traditional ghost stories. We watched a beautifully animated (with shadow puppets) performance of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s ErlKonig by the Oxford Leider, and looked at one of the earliest recorded zombie stories (Ishtar). Finally, with a woodcut from Hokusai, William reminded the group that spirits can take many forms… The Challenge: Write a scene, story or poem with a connection to ghosts, spirits or the spirit world. What does the spirit world bring to your story? OR, try some spirit writing. The Participants: Peri, Lena DN, Maddie, Gia, Leo, Madeline K, Pranjoli, Reese, Margaret, Wesley, Julia, Rachael, Chelsea, Jaya, Lena A, Mia, Delight, Lina, Helen, Hanbei, Peter, Sage, Sierra, Mahika, Anna K, Audrey, Angela, Tilly, Jonathan, Grace, Charlotte, Iago, Nova. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA My Shame By Peri Gordon, 11 Whistle, whistle. They inhabit me like I am some sort of haunted medieval fortress. Whoosh. One of them darts through one of my walls and into the well-furnished but dust-covered room where the young girl once spent her time making beautiful sketches before her death of sickness in that same room. Another ghost haunts the stairs, where the girl’s father met his own end in a fatal accident. And yet another lurks in the former office of the girl’s mother, where she privately ended her own life. Whiz. Each spirit was once alive. One of them was the girl. One was the father, one the mother. They all died too soon, and that thought keeps them here, passionate grief scorching their minds and hearts. They are each so caught up in their own misery that they do not notice each other’s ghosts, only their own. I was once a place of happiness, the cheerful, stylish, modern home for a family of three. Now I am a place of despair, a ghost habitat. People come outside, snapping photos and gossiping about what went on inside me. Even those who do not believe there are ghosts are prevented by others from coming inside me. Most of them know that the ghosts are, indeed, here. There is a mansion across the street, looking more old-fashioned than I ever have. That would make a good haunted house. But no; I am the haunted one. The home across the street is filled with happy people, happy rooms, happy memories. But I am desperate. Whistle, whistle. I summon all the energy that being haunted provides me. Whoosh. Power and adrenaline build up inside me like fuel for a car. Whiz. I send the spirits soaring out of me and into the home on the other side of the road. I am free from being haunted. Let the suffering be transferred to somewhere else. I have held the burden of being shunned and isolated for long enough. It is another home’s turn. It only takes a few days for the family to move out. Hope rises inside of me. But they do not come here. People don’t know I am no longer haunted. In fact, they believe I have spread the ghost disease, and that now both the other house and I are haunted. Most people leave the neighborhood, never to return again. And the ghosts, missing their old spaces, return to me. Well, that backfired. Perhaps I really am haunted, not just because of the spirits I contain but because I have a wicked soul. Maybe seeing the deaths truly changed me, for I have become immeasurably evil, so evil that I would try to inflict my suffering onto another to free myself. I am despicable. And now that the neighborhood’s inhabitants have left, I am even more lonely than I was before. Lina Kim, 11Weston, FL Stars By Lina Kim, 11 That was the last thing I saw before I faded into the darkness, the dust of those who have fallen. But then, how am I still in the world of those alive? My country has changed much since the war. My people are no longer enslaved. But at times, we are mistreated. There was an incident with a man named George Floyd nearly a year ago. I’d lived with these people for over a century, watching as our society changed. Everything is so advanced now. I had scoped out the woods for a perfect resting place. There, I would not be disturbed. Until the day I was. As I hovered, formless, above a fallen log, I saw a flash of light and heard a short click. Without thinking, I rushed towards it. “Wow, this is a perfect place for—” started a voice. It was a girl, holding what I had learned was called a smartphone. “What are you doing here?” I asked in my deepest, most threatening voice. She jumped in fright and whipped her head around. “W-what?! Who’s there?” she stuttered. “Leave,” I growled. She took off running in the other direction. I sighed. Finally, peace again. I decided to explore the woods. After several hours of aimless floating,
Writing Workshop #39: Ghosts (part 1)
An update from our thirty-ninth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday May 1, plus some of the output published below In his second class in the spring 2021 series, William took us on a journey to the spirit world, looking at mysterious manifestations in fiction and popular culture, from Caspar the Ghost to the ghost of Hamlet’s father. We considered the different language used to describe ghosts and spirits, and the tricks used by writers and movie-makers to show us ghosts and spirits of people who aren’t really there. We saw excerpts of two versions of Hamlet, one in which his ghost father appears through a (somewhat traditional) mist, and anther more contemporary version where the ghost appears through the glass on an apartment balcony. We discussed some of the reasons fictional ghosts might appear, in particular (like Hamlet’s father), restless spirits who have unfinished business. The Challenge: Write a story where a spirit manifests itself in non-corporeal form (a mist, a vision through glass, a wind, a scent) and/or has unfinished business. The Participants: Julia, Leo, Sierra, Mia, Lina, Lena A, Lena DN, Margaret, Maddie, Jaya, Peri, Sage, Delight, Hanbei, Helen, Gia, Pranjoli, Reese, Rachael, Mahika, Jonathan, Angela, Anna, Audrey, Charlotte, Grace, Tilly, Peter. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Andrew’s Will Peri Gordon, 11 Samuel had made a pact with his wealthy brother, Andrew. When Andrew died, he would leave half his fortune to Samuel in his will. But when Andrew passed, no will of his could be found. It left Samuel tremendously angry. At the same time, he mourned the loss of his brother. With his mind toggling between the two emotions, Samuel felt as if he were in a cage of steel, the robust metal reinforced by layers of grief and fury. He skipped work, skipped sleeping, skipped eating. He just sat in silence. But it only took two days for him to receive the shock of his life. He was sitting rigidly, the only movement on his body coming from the tears that would race each other down the man’s face, made even faster by the incoming wind. The moment this last concept was absorbed into his brain, Samuel sat up straighter, his eyebrows raised. All doors and windows were closed; the air should not have been swirling as quickly as it was. The air was heavy, too; it billowed, bounced, and seemed to breathe. And then. . . it spoke. “I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, but I see no way to soften it. I have not been peacefully at rest for the past two days.” The voice was silky-smooth and deep. In fact, it sounded like a less self-assured Andrew. Samuel shuddered, wondering whether he had gone mad. He looked up, where the unexpected wind had formed and where the voice was coming from, and felt a warm, comforting sensation, as if he could sense Andrew’s body heat returning. Samuel knew this was ridiculous, as the hand of Andrew’s body had been cold. But after pinching himself, Samuel knew that this could not be a dream. “Andrew. What are you doing here? How can you be alive–” the moment he finished the word “alive,” Andrew spoke up again. “Of course I am not,” said his disembodied voice. “I am obviously dead.” Samuel protested, “But how can you be here?” The voice answered, “I am a voice and a mist. You might call me a ghost, or a spirit. And I have good reason to be here. An unfulfilled promise, specifically.” Samuel started to ask what that was, but then he remembered. “The pact. Andrew, why didn’t you create a will?” Andrew explained, “I died suddenly in the night. I hadn’t expected it or prepared for it. My brother, you know I’ve never been prepared. But now, I will provide you with what I always said I would. Half my fortune will go to you, and then I will be gone.” Delight Kim, 11Glendale, CA The Spirit of the Muffin Girl Delight Kim, 11 Muma always said, “No ghosts, Zeline. If you ever meet one, turn away and run.” before I went to sleep. And even though I knew the stories of ghosts were rubbish, it kept me awake. The soft rustling of the velvet curtains, the whispers outside my window and the small creaks in the old wooden stairs were always there. I always got a tense feeling that someone was in our house. The sounds frightening me, chilling my bones, holding my eyes awake. So I decided I would find the culprit. If there was one, anyway. Getting up at 1:37, known as the ghost’s minute, I crept down the hall to our praise room, the room where my family honored the dead. Amazingly, the candles were still lit and the bread and goodies that were from last week were mostly fresh. Then I noticed suspicious activity. There was no wind, but the smoke from the candles was curling and bending in an odd way, like hands molding tack putty. The bread was rolling around the table and I had to steady them a countless amount of times to keep them from falling. A munching and a “Mmmm,” came from behind me. I whirled around, grabbing a cross that Muma told me that would fend off unwanted spirits and I thrust it in front of me. There, a spirit, a girl no older or younger than me, was licking the dulce de leche frosting off a triple chocolate muffin. My eyes widened. She screamed and fell off the chair she was sitting on into a large bucket, but I didn’t. I was too frightened, anyway. The muffin flew in the air but was miraculously caught by some invisible force and led to an empty plate. “Who are you?” The spirit licked her lips. “What are you doing in my house?” She tried to get up but the bucket held still. “Y-your house?” I asked.
