Imagination and memory

Last week I said I was in-between times. In a sense I still am in-between classes. I will start to teach Discovering Writing again on Saturday, Sept. 3, at 10 a.m. at The Sunshine Place, 56 Jupiter Street.  Then in the afternoon at 2 p.m. of the very same day I have my Phenomenal! class.

 Discovering Writing is about waking up your right brain. Every human being has a left and a right brain. The left brain stores everything we learn in school and in life.  All our words, numbers, phrases, formulae are stored in the left brain. Our right brain holds our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, our ideas, our creativity.  When you wake up your right brain and make it lead the writing process, you will surprise yourself with your creativity. That’s what I teach you to do. To bring out your creativity. To write in your own voice.

 If it is amazing for you, it is equally amazing for me. I see my students unfurl, like rosebuds blooming. I know that from the fourth session onwards, their own voices will speak and they always surprise me. Also our writing classes are always filled with laughter. We laugh and cry together.

 Phenomenal! is something I discovered reading Maya Angelou’s poem on the Phenomenal Woman. It is a wonderful poem that defines women as confident. Then I realized that if there was anything I had to work at all my life it was my self-confidence. Phenomenal! is the combination of two books that I bought around 20 years ago but re-read recently. Both were written by Sarah Ban Breathnach.  They are Simple Abundance, which is a book that teaches one how to live through a short essay for each day. Very easy to read.  The other book is Something More, which I like better.

 Phenomenal! uses collage as a medium. Okay, you can dismiss that as boring. You’re given a topic and a bunch of old magazines. You look for pictures that reach out to you and words that you can cut up and put together. When you’re doing it, it engrosses you and you find that time just slips between the magazines and your scissors and before you know it, three hours have passed.

 When you put it all together your collage talks to you, tells you more things about yourself that you had become unaware of. For example, there was a session on Dreams that I set myself free to collage. But I had to work quickly because I’m the teacher so I better finish before the others do. I saw a picture of a romantic room with a girl wearing a long white nightgown. I cut that out because it reminded me of me.  I have a romantic side that expresses itself in my room. Then I got attracted by a vase of pink roses. Pasted that. Then by wild animals. Pasted those too.

That night I looked at my collage again. You know that I live totally alone. No maid, no man, no pets. But I feel very safe. I am not afraid at all to sleep alone. Maybe it’s because my flat is very high up, almost impossible to climb. And I know I’ve imagined having lions and other wild animals watch over me. There is even a made-up big python on both my porches. They will tear apart anyone who approaches over my porch rails.

 I don’t imagine those animals every night but I know when I just moved in, I did. I sat on my porch during a full moon. I was new to the place then, was sort of worried that somebody might come in over those very high porch railings and assault me. I used my imagination and had animals appear and stalk at night. But after a while I had forgotten about them and gotten comfortable. I began to feel safe alone. This collage simply reminded me of that night. You know, I really liked that.

 As I grow older I realize how important imagination and memory are to us — to men and women. But often we grow old denying ourselves because of so many years we spent giving in to other people, to our husbands or wives, our children, our bosses. When did we make time and space for ourselves?

 That’s what I hope to do with Phenomenal!: To teach men and women how to discover and do little wonderful things for themselves, to know themselves better, to love themselves more, to enjoy their lives and memories much more.

Initially I thought Phenomenal! would be an advanced writing  class. But now I no longer think that. We discuss the collages in class. Then and only if you want to do it, you can write about it your way.

 Both of my classes are magical moments for me and for my students too.  And because of that, I don’t really mind being in-between times.

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