The 10 Project: Time Traveler

Take a travel book from another era, about a distant place or city you know,  want to visit or have some idea of, real or mythic.

Leaf through the pages of the book, read chapter headings, opening paragraphs, let sentences catch your eye.  Read on as you like.   Allow the feeling of the book, its sense of the place, the time, fill you.

Notice observations of change within the text.   Notes of regret, nostalgia and delight for what remains and is discovered new.  

Imagine yourself into the narrators voice, his or her viewpoint, perspective.

Begin to write of your city or place as though you were this writer.  See your place through their eyes,  tell of it in their language.

The 10 Project: The Younger Lovers

Write down the name of past lover.  Someone whom you haven't thought about for a long time. Look at his name and remember him.   His body.  The sensation of his touch.  The feel of his lips.

Hear the sound of his voice calling your name, crying out in passion.

Imagine him there with you now.  Think what you might say and do.

Write your lover a love letter telling all the things you felt as if this were then and he were there and still your lover.

Seal the letter up.  Mark the seal with wax.  Place the letter on a table by the fire.  Consider the artifacts of love.  Letters unwritten,unsent, lost to the vicissitudes of time.

Take this artificial artifact, pick it up from the table and place it in the fire.

Watch as the fire consumes the letter, unmaking your re-making of an affair.

The 10 Project: Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Find a mirror at least a hundred years old.  Look at the glass, the bevels (if present), the frame. Notice the quality of the reflection/representation.  Consider the imperfections, the distortions, the darkness from the loss of silver.

Imagine the gaze captured in the mirror, the reflections lost in the darkness of the imperfections. Notice how the distortions created in the mirror transform and reform the narrative of the the room.

Turn away from the mirror and imagine the now invisible reflection.  Place yourself in that reflection looking out and see the room as the mirror and as yourself.  Consider the collision of perspective and the mirror in the contortions of history and narrative.   Tell the story of the mirror as your story unfolding and unfolded.

The 10 Project: Coin of the Realm

Find three old coins of different denominations.   The coins can be in any currency.  Obsolete currencies are best.

Consider the three coins.  Examine the markings and engravings on each side of the coin.  What do tails look like on your coins?  Whose head adorns the front?   An artist?  An activist?  A King or Queen?  A ruler?  What was the head meant to represent?  What does it mean now?

Consider the value of the coin, its denomination, date of issue,  material of manufacture.  What was the value of the coin when it was issued?  What is the value now?  Is the complex abstraction of value to currency still supported for this coin?

If the coin is obsolete, how does value exist now for the coin?  As an artifact?  A curious object?  A measurable amount of a precious metal?  Gold?  Silver?

Take each of the three coins and toss the into the air shouting "Heads I win, tails you lose!"

Examine the results.  Consider the power of chance in the life of the coin,  the history of governments, economics and society.

Consider the realm of the coin.

The 10 Project: Foundations

Consider the Foundation

Locate a foundation in the landscape.  Consider the foundation’s history, prior and present use.  Note the material, condition and estimated age.  If the foundation no longer supports a structure imagine the missing structure, its material, shape, color and use.

If the foundation still supports a structure consider its condition, material, shape, color and use.  Tell a speculative history of the foundation, include personal or character elements humanizing the foundation.

When I Write of the Body

When I write of the body I try to tell an emotional truth, an intellectual truth though physical states of being.  The sex is choreographed as a dance piece.  Sometimes classical.  Other times modern or even experimental.  Bodies at play, sensuous and silly play always ending in some kind of death.

Rhythmic Writing - A Proposition and an Example

Experiments in rhythmic writing involve the use of rhyme, meter and/or syllabic constraints of construction to evoke layers of meaning in conversation with the semantic.

Gradual grammatical.

Sentences slip smaller.

Syllables simmer silently.

Language lists leeward.

Words without worth wobble.

Ontological offal overwhelms.

Queer queries;

Provoke persistence,

Refute resistance.

Grammar graduates.

Something settles.

Silent steps slumber.

Losses linger.

Wonder wanes.

Ovations of

Questions quiet

Pothumus promises,

Religious reliquaries.

Grammar gives.

The 10 Project: Time Travel

Take a volume of writing (perhaps a book, magazine or journal) from a particular period.  Read and envelope yourself in that period and a particular moment in it.

Recreate yourself in that period and moment as a fictional character with particular agency.  Use that agency to change history.