Date:         Sun, 21 Jul 1996 00:46:48 EDT
From: tink fractured <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      EXERCISE:  Another Friday Past...

[oops.  it seems that yesterday was the end of the week, even though it
felt more like some strange beginning as I finally returned to work and
wailing and wallowing in email...so I sort of missed a Friday.  Here we
go!]

1.  Pick a number (one to six?  why not!)

    1.  a stone (type, shape, etc. left to your indiscretion)
    2.  a flower (ditto!)
    3.  the pit of a fruit (the seed, the little bundled knot inside)
    4.  a bent, perhaps broken wand (willow, ash, metal, plastic?  you
        decide!)
    5.  an empty casing (could be a paper bag, could be plastic, could
        be an organic husk, could be any kind of wrapper you like)
    6.  an impression in the ground (a footprint in mud?  a hole left by
        a cane planted in the sand?  perhaps a dip in stone, made by
        dragging flesh again and again over the same sad spot?  guess
        what - you get to decide!)

So, you have now picked a little piece of the universe.  You have
thought carefully about it, considering the cracked quartz, the bell of
snowdrops, the hardened pit of a peach, the sadly bedraggled willow whip
left after a flash flood, the twisted paper bag from a wino's last
bottle of mouthwash, or the odd handprint so carefully made in the
setting concrete--with all seven fingers clearly displayed?

In any case...

2.  Pick another number!  Roll that die and here come the fly?

    1.  "We cannot live, sorrow or die for someone else, for suffering
is too precious to be shared."  Edward Dahlberg, "Because I Was Flesh"
(1963)
    2.  ""Do not say things.  What you are stands over you the while and
thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." Emerson,
Journals, 1840.
    3.  "The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others."
Homer, Odyssey (9th c. B.C.), 6, tr. E.V. Rieu.
    4.  "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." Eric Hoffer,
The Passionate State of Mind (1954), 241.
    5.  "Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison."
Epictetus, Discourses (2nd c.), 1.7, tr. Thomas W. Higginson.
    6.  "When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn." Ovid,
The Art of Love (C. A.D. 8), 2, tr. Rolfe Humphries

And now we have a quotation (from The International Thesaurus of
Quotations, compiled by Rhoda Thomas Tripp).

3.  Pick one more number?  Okay!

    1.  death
    2.  broken love
    3.  broken trust
    4.  false friendship
    5.  the heartbreak of jealousy
    6.  defeat

And the situation is...

Character A has suffered the problem you just picked.  You, as
writer/artist, are comparing them with the physical point from number
one (a rock, a flower, a seed,...alone in the world, suffering...)

Character B, being a helpful type, is doing their best to explain how
the thought contained in the quote applies to this little contretemps.

Put A and B in a setting, consider their relationship with each other,
and let the quotation meet the person dancing in metaphorical tights,
all dressed up and nowhere to go but onword and upword with poetical
delites?

Short start?  How about:

    "I just can't believe it," he said, hands twisting a napkin into
shreds on the table.

Let's write!

tink