Gemini Ink Writing Lab - Week #5 - Cultural Identity

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism

Writing prompt

• What culture do you speak? Write the narrative of your unique American history

Entry:

Mestiza

Texan y Tejana, she forms as a slender trace of miel mesquite, a drizzle of chamoy, a hearth of pecan meat. She soars the monarch's trail, with conviction of the river current, while calling the mockingbird's bluff. She pats her hands with cornflower, reciting cantos que pasa el tiempo. De la luz, de la tierra, she reigns. She resides...

Gemini Ink Writing Lab - Week #4 - Human Nature

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism

Writing prompt

• Write what's in your human nature

Entry:

Forgive and forget, so the old saying goes. But what of the capacity to forgive and remember? Get over it <---- this is what we're told when hung up, caught up, on some burning memory that we can't seem to let go or undo or make right. We turn this memory into an event or an occasion or a landmark and give it so much weight we become the burden-laden oxen dragging along this old happening across the field of ______. How often is the feeling to return, we don't know. Whether it appears as its old self or takes place in a new form, we don't know. How could we forget what is now a part of our human nature? How could we disregard any experience that has made us, has brought us to who we are today, right here, right now?

(when we forgive we don't become the hardened stone)

And if all it is is a memory, a moment passing, what is there to grasp, to hold against someone? Forgiving the faults of our human nature is forgiving the actions of an unrealized self. Blame is cast aside. Shame has no place. Can we admit we were all learning? We were going to do what we set out to do. Again, when the memory returns, can we withhold our reactions and forgive ourselves and others for our actions and theirs? Can we drop the harsh command of "get over it" and replace it with something deeper, more caring, more nurturing? We must forgive. We must "overcome it" and face remembrance in the ever-present mirror of now.

Gemini Ink Writing Lab - Week #3 - Circles

Engaging the Active Imagination: Writing as Activism

Writing prompt

• Write what in your life has come full circle or what seems to be spiraling out of control

Entry:

I see the circles in my life, the curving lines as a path created by my energy field, leaving in their wake all the past lifetimes of adventures and misadventures, of turn-ons and hang-ups, of fallings out and rebirths, and I would how much I would be held responsible for. I see cycles within the circles, running perpendicular to each other. Occurrence is an understatement. They don't merely occur for me, it seems I have to crash into this intersection of action and energy, or maybe because I am spinning I am hurled into the situation. A discomforting collision bringing with it a chance for enlightenment, for awareness to blossom, to be reborn. But I have to catch it. How long have the cycles been returning and when can I hope to break free of the ones weighing heavy on my soul, on my mind, on my body? And I have, through release, letting go of the illusion of control. What's so shocking about the collision is when the mirror is held before me by hands that are not my own. I look deep and I see what is not to be, and I see what is and I see the chance to move forward and complete the circle, in eternity. I take action and I see the cycles dissolve, the ones that are not of well-being and balance and love. What takes their place of detriment? Nothing. No thing in its place. Instead, the circles begin to unlock and widen ever further, reaching beyond what the complacent cycles had lead me to believe. The circles deepen and become a reservoir of wisdom and company and conviction and patience. I remain patient and wait and live for the next circle to begin.