For our first exercise of our first meeting (aside from a warm-up) Ilene asked us to write about the topic “Can one see voices?” – I believe she had in mind the Torah portion of that week, Yitro, in Exodus. I wrote this:
Thunder shakes me,
it wakes me up. No matter where I am or what I may be busy with, that sudden crash rips me from my moment, suddenly and mercilessly. And I can no longer ignore the world outside my window, and suddenly my space expands and I see wonder. And in the rumbling rolling crashing waves of sound that jar my bones and quicken my pulse, I find joy. Or it finds me, I don’t know. Friend or foe, messenger or warrior, I am always thrilled to embrace the storm, to be shaken.
I hastily jotted down some feedback on this one:
J: Expand on the ideas in the middle, they’re more abstract and hard to grasp
E: Started as story, matured.
S: Very experiential – “this is what happens when I hear thunder” challenge to start there and take it somewhere else. It’s a great moment, but take it somewhere else?
