Alternate Universe: Twitch

Writing recently has been like leaving my brain on top of my spirit like an empty pan on a hot burner. I'm reduced to exercises. This is my granddaddy of all exercises, the "alternate universe." I call it that because it's the inverse of the fairly famous "Personal Universe Deck" exercise, in which you quickly write down a hundred words (in various categories, mostly centred on the senses), put them on index cards, and proceed in various ways to play poetry solitaire, or cast poetry Tarot.

I like to do this exercise backwards, writing down a concrete fragment of memory, and then selecting a single word to represent it. I've found in this way I've been able to trace one or two of my "icon" words -- or at least to become better aware of what they are. Because for better or worse we all have words that push buttons independent of their meaning, and if you're going to play or work with words, you should know what they are. And anyway it made me better at titles.

Of course it's a very long exercise if you do it this way, but I am not committed to finishing it, just to playing with it as long as it is useful. It's really not very different than notebook writing, but sorting memory out by the senses sometimes gives a different place to start.

I have to thank Lisa at "Ink and Penwipers" for suggesting it, indirectly, in her comments Sunday on the magic power of words hold even when they aren't being put to use. Of course magic is exactly the right word -- it's not a coincidence that spells are called "spells." (Also I have to thank her because she said nice things about my writing!)

So here's a start on the "alternate universe" -- a motion word, "twitch."

At Janelle's house I'm drinking tang at the kitchen sink. Her back yard slopes down to a stone bank where we sometimes collect gardener (or is it garter?) snakes in a bucket, especially when Colin, who lives next door to Janelle, is with us. In the patchy grass under the walnut trees, I see something black flapping. Struggling, I think. The closed window is silent, the light is billowing in the windy trees. I think the black thing is a crow with a broken wing. Or a crow being attacked by a snake, not a garter snake but a big one. I want to go help the hurt bird, but I am afraid of it, and afraid of the snake. I don't go. I watch. Eventually I stop watching. I still don't know what it was.