Volume VI, Issue 21 May 22, 2017 Word of the Week: airport Dear ,
Greetings from O'Hare airport in what, at this moment, is sunny
Chicago!
I took this photo to go with the preselected word-of-the-week I chose, knowing I'd be traveling early today (6 a.m. flight!) after a wildly full weekend. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to share what is, to me, an unforgettably lovely essay with you. It was published in The New York Times
in April of 2009, and it takes place in—ta da—an airport.
We all know what kinds of bad things can happen in airports (and in airplanes: I'm pleased to say the "Friendly skies of United" have been exactly that). Most of us don't love flying, not anymore, and airports are places that can
bring out the worst in us.
But what's really happening in airports, both inside and outside of ugly incidents, if you look hard enough, is love.
I saw it in the TSA
employee who came over to cheer up the tired, one-step-away-from-grumpy TSA attendant who was checking me in. After just a moment of banter, during which he told me that she was not only, as I pointed out, beautiful on the outside, she was beautiful on the inside too; to know her was to love her.
I felt it in the father and
his son sitting next to me in row 7—such a quiet tenderness between as they slept side by side.
I heard it in several phone calls flyers made to loved ones: "Miss you too, honey."
And I experienced it when the flight attendant sent me back to get my check-at-the-gate tag taken off my small suitcase so that I could carry it on, after I told him I was concerned it would get delayed and that the beautiful dress I bought for the wedding wouldn't make it to LA in time.
"Finding Forgiveness in a Ziploc," this week's featured reading, is better than any of these. It's about a moment that looks NOTHING like love, and yet is filled with it.
I hope you enjoy it! I also hope you enjoy the prompt. It's one of my better ones, if I do say so myself :), a "recipe" to create your own essay (or story or poem if you prefer), using "ingredients" I pulled from "Finding Forgiveness in a Ziploc."
Lastly, please
forgive any typos—I've got a plane to catch!
Upcoming WordPlay
WRITING OUR WAY TO HAPPINESS
waiting room only
(Learning New Practices and Strategies for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing; Expanding Our Well-being) Come explore time-tested ways writing can increase your happiness level! This class will not only teach you how to use writing as a tool to increase your sense of well-being, but also jumpstart your pen and provide inspiration and knowledge about the process of creative writing, whether you want to write memoir, fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. For writers of all levels,
including beginners, who are interested in expanding their writing practice—for personal fulfillment or for publication.$630 for one week-long session (lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School
website)
WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road, Brasstown, NC 28902
WHEN: Sunday, May 28th – Saturday, June 3rd, 2017.
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WRITE YOURSELF!
Reap writing’s benefits—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Give yourself the gift
of exploring how creative writing (journaling, memoir, poetry, fiction) can enrich your life, and what your writing can provide for others. You will learn and practice a number of fun, easy tools and methods to help your words flow, whatever your particular interest. Whether you have published widely, sometimes write in a journal, or haven’t written anything since your senior year of high school, you will enjoy this lively, informative
workshop.
WHERE: Matthews Branch Library. 230 Matthews Station St. Matthews, NC 28105
WHEN: Saturday, June 10, from 10:30 a.m. –
noon
COST: Free! TO REGISTER: To register, visit the Matthews Branch Library registration page here. (Registration opens May 11th.)
And also…
WHERE: Scaleybark Library. 101 Scaleybark Road. Charlotte, NC 28209
WHEN: Tuesday, June 20, from 6:00 – 7:00
p.m.
COST: Free! TO REGISTER: To register, visit the Scaleybark Library registration page here.
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CLASSES AT CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION
WRITE YOURSELF (Week 1)
Reap the benefits writing can provide – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – in this class in which you’ll learn and practice whole brain methods for using writing as a
transformative process as well as a creative one. These techniques can be used to create essays, poems, memoir, fiction and/or nonfiction. For beginners and seasoned writers.
WHERE: Chautauqua Institution. 1 Ames Ave, Chautauqua, NY 14722. Hall of Ed. (Sheldon) Room
204
WHEN: Monday, June 26th – Thursday, June 29th, 2017. 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
COST: $82
TO REGISTER: Please visit the Chautauqua Institution registration page here.
MEMOIR: TELLING THE TIMES
OF YOUR
LIFE (Week 2)
Our life stories are a precious legacy. Writing them is a gift, not only to ourselves, but to those who love us – they’ll be treasured for generations to come. Come learn engaging, easy-to-use tools and techniques to retrieve and record your adventures, loves, losses, successes, and more with ease and enjoyment, no matter where you
are in the process, and whether you are writing for yourself, your family, or to publish for a wide audience.
WHERE: Chautauqua Institution. 1 Ames Ave, Chautauqua, NY 14722. Turner 105
WHEN: Monday, July 3rd – Friday, July 7th, 2017. 2:00 to
4:00 p.m.
COST: $82
TO REGISTER: Please visit the Chautauqua Institution registration page here.
More WordPlay opportunities here.
Featured Writing Finding Forgiveness in a Ziploc
by Jane Hamilton One morning last summer I blew up at my husband in La Guardia Airport just after we had gone through
security. There was no ticking of the bomb that I knew of, no flame traveling along the fuse to the dynamite. The white-hot fury was suddenly upon me — boom, no warning. This explosion was shrill. It was loud, it was in earnest, it was heartfelt.
Our trip to the city had been fine. We had gone with a long list of
things to accomplish, for pleasure and business. It was hot, but we are used to heat.
We don’t travel together much, and we go forth with the knowledge that being in strange places in each other’s company isn’t our strong suit. I tend to dash into traffic, thinking I can surely make it to the median. My husband, who
was the captain of the patrol boys in the eighth grade, has a tendency to hold out his arms at the curb: stand back!
Deep down I think he still wants to guide everyone to safety, wearing the treasured blaze-orange harness. Also, he would prefer that I don’t make lifelong friends of strangers in the museum and at the
theater. Instead of trying to do everything and all at once, he favors a moderate schedule. I travel quite a bit and he loves to stay home, and I’ve always hoped that for him, part of the payoff of being married to me is the fact that through my friends who visit us, the world comes to his doorstep.
Despite our
different tendencies and tempos, we had managed during that trip to be on our best behavior. When the time came to leave we found a taxi and reached the airport with well over an hour to spare. The line for security wasn’t long. We did everything correctly: took off our shoes, held up our regulation-size Ziploc bag of toiletries and put it into the little white dish. The buzzer went off for my barrette and
my underwire bra, but the authorities and I worked it out. Our carry-on emerged from the X-ray chamber and came smoothly down the line.
I suppose if there were a flame traveling the fuse to the explosive, it was ignited there, in the moment when my husband pulled the carry-on to the end of the
platform.
Oh no, I thought. Oh God.
He picked up the Ziploc bag.
Don’t do it, don’t do it!
A Modern Love column from The New York Times
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Jane Hamilton lives in Wisconsin. Her most recent novel is “Laura Rider’s Masterpiece” (Grand Central).
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "airport."
PROMPT: “Love in a Zip-Loc” ESSAY "RECIPE":
Write about an
airport experience and/or an epiphany, a moment in which you had the experience that nothing after this moment would be quite the same, using ingredients from “Love in a Ziploc” (see parentheses after each item below) as a model. Use any genre you like.
After choosing your subject:
Create “A Sprawl” (also called a mind map) and include: - the “story” itself (what happened at the airport)
- at least one List (bromides like “Don’t go to bed angry,” “Be generous” and “Forgive your spouse and forgive yourself.”)
- at least three “Gathered” words from “Love in a Ziploc”—to get these, go through and circle words that appeal to you.
- at least one “Likening”: figurative language comparing one thing to another (“his fiddling hands like a raccoon’s paws at a bottle cap, the way the animal obsessively turns the shiny thing over and over,” “as clean and grim as a surgical table”)
- at least one “Hello It’s Me” (Address the reader or someone outside the
essay—“ That made me insane. Your Honor, I went insane.”; Forgive your spouse and forgive yourself.”– this is the Imperative – telling someone what to do.)
- at least one question (“What made me blow?)
- at least one bit
of "Dialogue" (“But did it last, that feeling?”)
- at least 3 visual images (blaze-orange harness, against a background of billowy clouds and wise songbirds). Extra credit for auditory images, olfactory, gustatory, propriaceptive)
Then, take
the “ingredients” from your sprawl and use as many, or as few of them as you like as you create your piece of writing.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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