Date:         Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:44:14 EDT
From: tink away <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      EXERCISE: Colors, smells, and thou...

WANING-here be bad puns and other wadplay!  Read at your own
expense.

[short and sweet(we hope?)-in between meeting old friends, eating,
talking, walking, shopping, and the other scurrly-burly hurries of
a vacation.]

1.  Pick a number from one to six.  Simple, right?

    1.  violet
    2.  blue
    3.  green
    4.  yellow
    5.  orange
    6.  red

2.  Pick another number.  One to six, of course.

    1.  the odor of baking bread
    2.  the scent of a flower (you choose the variety)
    3.  the smell of a dentist's office (okay, other medical
    practitioner at your election)
    4.  the smell of a wet dog (do wet cats smell like that?)
    5.  the odor of fresh-cut grass
    6.  the musk of human sweat

3.  And another one.

    1.  hatred
    2.  relief
    3.  revenge
    4.  first love
    5.  fatal curiosity
    6.  bad judgment

Okay?  At this point, you should have a color, a smell, and an
emotion/situation.

Take your three words, and think a little.  Why should the odor of
fresh-cut grass be blue?  And what does that have to do with
relief?  Let your little gray cells do their thing with the
notions, building up some connections, letting you feel the yellow
taste of yeasty bread filling the kitchen of your first love's
mother, or...

And now take two or more characters.  Sit them in a caf , let them
be talking about their relationship (pick one!  Rubber, co-lazier,
relative, best fiend, wurst enema, even pest with cleerical
color!), and a faint breeze (or maybe a hurricane wind?  How about
a passing blouse or pants?  Your choice, again!) wafts the gentle
green smell of a wet dog into one character's perspiring snout.
The other one notes the sudden change of expression, the dropped
fork, the tears - and asks what that was all about.

And there hangs a tale (or two, or three).

One Sentence Stringers?

        Today we looked into many skies.  Tomorrow we'll see streams
and rivers of water.

You got me.  It was on T.V., in Japanese (well, actually, it's a
phrase or two from a song.)  You get the rough translation to play
with.  The notion is that you can use this to start your own
piece.  So, with a one, and a two, and a three-four-five...write a
little piece for us.

tink