Organiser Fi writes ‘LOVE: Thank you or please’ on the flipchart. That’s the theme for this month’s Journaling Club in Manchester’s Hinterland. We start with a little 5-minute warm-up task, a familiar one:
I’M HERE BECAUSE
I’m here because again I’m looking for stuff to do that isn’t just getting pissed in bars. I’m a writer anyway, so it’s good to do something creative. I have to address this: there’s a dude in here who looks like Filnjor in The Northman. He has the beard. The hair. How’s that for automatic writing? Rollo from Faithless once wrote:
I get this writer’s block
It comes as quite a shock
And now I’m stuck between a
Hard place and the biggest rock.
PHOTO OF BUDDHIST TEACHING
The next prompt:
MY EXPERIENCE OF LOVE AND FEAR IS
I sat this one out. Too personal for me.
Organiser Reggie takes over at this point. On the board he writes:
THANK YOU / PLEASE
Here, we’re asked to write from the perspective of something that we love. I thought fast.
I am chocolate. I am dear, but a man has a Secret Santa present to buy. He heard that his colleague, who he has drawn in work, likes chocolate. That’s all he knows about his colleague. All he does is transfer calls to her. I’m a chocolate box set, 4 circular chocolates with Christmas designs printed on them: a snowman, a reindeer, etc. I’m wrapped, ready to be given to my purchaser’s co-worker. She unwraps me. The woman’s face, the moment we see each other, drops. She appears unreasonably angry. She places me to one side. It seems my purchaser has been misinformed. After the handout...
The gong goes at this point. Cliffhanger. I’ll tell you later.
The next prompt: FEAR.
Fi explains that a lot of emotional trauma that we feel isn’t about the actual fear. What would that fear look like, personified? Would they be casually spoken or formal? How would they be dressed?
Whatever it looks like, my fear is instantly recognisable to myself and everyone in the room. My fear is more about other people’s reactions than the inciting moment or person itself. I say to my fear, I know it’s you, fear, that is the problem; not the person.
--
Gong.
The next Weds the 11th, Hinterland hosts their second ‘Create and Play’ session, involving chess and Lego for adults.
Oh, and if you want to know what happened with the chocolate: I heard my colleague say to another, ‘you don’t give someone something like that unless you want to kill them with sugar!’ Later she handed them out to the team, so I had one. It was nice. Biscuity.
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