Our faces, my heart, brief as photos

For this writing assignment, start with a photo. This can be any kind of photograph -- it can be in an album or a frame -- it can be on-line or in a book.

As yesterday, there is a poem (and today, also a song) at the end of the post.

Remember... Have fun!

In my house, I have photographs of relatives I never met, in fancy clothes from before I was born... I have photos of myself as a child... I have photos famous people have taken in famous places... what do you have?

I ask lots of questions in this prompt -- I suggest you write for a bit -- maybe 5 minutes (or as long as you want) about any of the questions that interest you.


Elementary writers:
Parents -- if you can, help your child find a photograph. Be warned, a tiny bit of curation here can go a long way. On the bottom shelf of my kids k-8 library I found one of the most graphic and moving books about the middle passage I have ever seen... photographs can be powerful -- even from the newspaper and magazines.  Do you have an old album or shoebox of pictures they can rummage through on their own? Children's books will do too. Book covers.

Find a photograph that you like a lot.
What do you imagine about the person you are looking at?
What do you think they are looking at?
What do you imagine them doing the day the picture was taken?
What do you imagine them doing today?
What do you think about their clothes?
Ask them three questions.
Tell them three things.


Middle Writers:

Create a persona for the person -- it can be or can be not true to life.
What do you see about expression? Clothing? Setting?
Create a scene out of the day.
What is your person's biggest concern on that day?
Are there other people in the photo? Who are they? What are their biggest concerns? Is there no one there? Is that a concern?

What do you think about cameras? How do the people in your picture think about cameras. A camera can act as a barrier between two people -- it can also act as a connector. Do you have that experience? What is the difference between a selfie, a group selfie, a school photograph, a family photograph?

Write a story or a poem where the photograph becomes a conflict for the person you are writing about. How does that play out, and what do they do about it?


High school and beyond writers:

Write down as much as you can about the photograph. Notice as much as you can about what is there -- clothing, setting, expression...
What do you think is right outside the frame?
How did this photograph come to be?

Imagine the difference for this person in the day that the photograph was taken and the same day, when the photograph never happened. Why didn't it happen? Did that change everything?

Write a poem or a story about this.

AND OUR FACES, MY HEART, BRIEF AS PHOTOS

When I open my wallet
to show my papers
pay money
or check the time of a train
I look at your face.

The flower's pollen
is older than the mountains
Aravis is young
as mountains go.

The flower's ovules
will be seeding still
when Aravis then aged
is no more than a hill.

The flower in the heart's
wallet, the force
of what lives us a
outliving the mountain.

And our faces, my heart, brief as
photos.

                                 -- JOHN BERGER 

The Story was inspired by this poem and made a song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SScXmCTuO0&list=RD5SScXmCTuO0&start_radio=1&t=15

A pen! What for? To see it dance!

Writing exercise day 1

Ok... so here goes a first try. I thought I would try offering different age suggestions, though when I taught it was mostly older students. It starts with a poem, that I will paste at the end of the post:

Elementary school kids: 

Do you have a favorite character either on TV or in a book? (If you have the book you can go get it now.)
what do you know about the way the character looks?
what do you think about their personality?
after you have spent a little time thinking/talking/writing about the character, imagine the character was sitting down next to you.
Write a letter to the character. What would you like to tell the character about your life today? What would you like to ask the character about their life today?
Sometimes I wonder what the Pigeon's mom said to him later. Or if Toot and Puddle go to the movies. Do you?
What do you think Snoopy would do if he was home right now?

Middle School: 

Imagine a story you love. It could be on TV or in a book or a comic -- anywhere.
You can do this one of two ways.
A: Imagine that you step into a specific page of their story and rewrite that scene/chapter/story if you could "knock over houses with your breath?"
This, of course, could work the other way and your character could come into your life to help with a problem you've had, or maybe mess up your birthday part...

High School and beyond:
Imagine the intersection of two worlds. Here, Collins talks about the intersection between fiction and reality. What other intersections intrigue you? The place where one person and another person's thoughts are separate, man and machine, dog and owner, sky and tree... I am often obsessed with the relationship of perspective -- where a place (or person or language) can look so strange and too big to take in a moment, while years later it seems so ordinary -- known. Personify some part of that, or embody another consciousness.
Does the sky get cold when the sun goes down?
Write a story where you explore the boundary you have chosen, and what happens when that boundary disappears.

Remember -- writing is play! It's always a good idea to work younger!

Wolf

A wolf is reading a book of fairy tales.
The moon hangs over the forest, a lamp.

He is not assuming a human position,
say, cross-legged against a tree,
as he would in a cartoon.

This is a real wolf, standing on all fours,
his rich fur bristling in the night air,
his head bent over the book on the ground.

He does not sit down for the words
would be too far away to be legible,
and it is with difficulty that he turns
each page with his nose and forepaws.

When he finishes the last tale
he lies down in pine needles.
He thinks about what he has read,
the stories passing over his mind
like the clouds crossing the moon.

A zigzag of wind shakes down hazelnuts.
The eyes of owls yellow in the branches.

The wolf now paces restlessly in circles
around the book until he is absorbed
by the power of its narration,
making him one of its illustrations,
a small paper wolf, flat as print.

Later that night, lost in a town of pigs,
he knocks over houses with his breath.

-- Billy Collins