Internal movement

How do are perceptions of the world around us shift with our emotions? In this workshop we looked at how our perceptions of the world around us change as we flow between mental states.

The task was to write a poem or short story about a memory or event that moved you.

Stranded

by L.M. Lewis

Stranded, in the darkness on the edge of the world, a mound of earth shifted and the shape of a young girl emerged. Her name is Oshan; she is from the earth, and of the earth.

The  features of her face begin to form, showing her wide nostrils and full lips, with blades of long wild grass, that covers her head in a halo of various shades of green.
Nearby, the figure of a wizened toothless old hag is squatting by, and attending to, an open wood fire; waiting.

She cocks her head as she detects the slight movement beneath her feet.
Although she has no sight, she knows that at this moment in time, she’s stranded in a universe of darkness.

Before she was the Hag, she had had a name, Emerald; she had been created on the Green Planet, where her mother, Makeda, had the ability to command the seas, and had been the reluctant leader of their dynasty.

She thinks she remembers being happy, and safe, and loved in her small family unit, of her mother, her brother and herself, protected and watched over by all the other inhabitants of their small part of the Green Planet, where she had been ”born, bred and buttered”.

She thinks she remembers, a millennium ago,  the destruction, both natural and human made, of her beautiful world; with blazing hot fires, that had ravaged  so many regions of her planet, and the floods that had devastated what remained.

Wearily, with gnarled hands, the Hag took a handful of golden dust from a fold in her rags, she threw it into the fire, causing hot sparks to shoot off in all directions, two, landing on Oshan’s incomplete face, giving her eyes that sparkled like stars plucked from the night sky.

Another spark fell on the rags of the Hag, consuming her in a burning ball of red hot fire.

From the embers, a glowing firefly emerged with lacy emerald green butterfly wings, displaying exquisitely intricate patterns.

Emerald, was once more renewed, reborn, regenerated...

Many of the sparks spread far and wide lighting up the darkness.

Oshan and Emerald were sucked in and spewed out, by a great, angry howling gust of wind and swept away into the universe...

Comfy

by Joao Godinho

I like to wear my identity like comfy clothes. Casual, no statements, just the comfort of being me and being free to be me.

They call it the comfort zone, but I see it more like the honest zone. Everybody tells me that I need to leave my comfort zone eventually, but it's easy to understand that doing so feels like lying, masquerading, and hiding some of myself. It doesn't matter if it's for a good cause, or necessity, or whatever. I don't like it, and I will fight it.

There is nothing wrong with my comfort zone. I'm not afraid to expand it or attach other zones either on a temp or permanent basis; just don't ask me to abandon my core do's and don'ts.

What is an identity, even? My mind is fluid. Every day I learn and forget new and old things. Identities are but constant motions, meanderings, subtle reminders of everywhere and every time. I see no point in having an identity if it means it's a limit.

I'll be myself when I cease to have to be myself.