Story Time

So I joined a creative writing group. Its fun and allows contact with other writers. Writing is a lonely occupation. One only has one's characters to talk to ha ha!

So we are working out how to proceed. One thing we will be doing is to be given a plot and then write for 15 minutes and read out a short story. Can you imagine all the crossing out and the mess of it without edits and time to play with it?

Anyway, at the last meeting we were given this criteria as homework:

Creative writing group:

Male name: Peter    

Female name: Mary

Place: Hastings

Setting: Café

Time of year: Winter
Time of day: 3PM

Weather: Raining:          

Words: 300

I took a shot at it and here it is...so hard to fit all that into 300 words:

The First Meeting

    Peter felt nervous about today. Everything was about to change and he wasn’t sure if he could handle it. What if, he thought, I’m a disappointment? Or, what if I’m the one left feeling disappointed? After all, he’d only seen a very old picture of Mary and apart from the letters; he had no idea what she was really like.

    He was glad he’d purchased that Sat Nav. He didn’t like driving at the best of times, let alone all the way to Hastings. His hands shook a little as he set out on the journey. At one point he thought about cancelling the whole thing. But once on the motorway his concentration went into driving and his anxiety settled.

   He arrived in Hasting around 2.30pm. He and Mary had arranged to meet at 3pm in the Café des Arts. Mary had picked the location. She had mentioned in her letters that she’s an artist and that she frequents this quaint, little, bohemian café regularly. She thought she would feel less nervous if they met somewhere familiar to her.

   After parking the car, Peter decided to walk for a while before the meeting. He was getting on a bit and his legs stiffened up after long drives. He was nervously looking around the tables in the Café, when from behind, someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was her, it was Mary. Instinctively they hugged, both of them crying unashamedly, there in front of everyone. Ever since that first letter from Mary he’d worried but now Peter knew it would be okay. Here, in Hastings, on a grey, rainy day, the daughter he’d never met was in his arms. 

279


Jen S copyrights 2010

Do you find the world confusing at times?

Things are constantly changing and moving. Sometimes I am not sure where I begin or end. Life is always a puzzle, the next moment a mystery. Nothing is certain for any of us. Some of us are able to live in the moment. I feel like a star sometimes, one that still twinkles even though it imploded long ago. Other times I am filled with hope of something...at those times I feel as though my life is breathing again. I have wings once more and can fly. 

I am not sure what my next step in life is or should be. Where am I going and what choices, if any lay ahead.

Time for me to write some stories. I have a few on the go.

The Dream

The Road to Self

Its taken a lot of pain and heart searching to understand that life will not come and rescue me.


Intellectually, I have understood the concept that life is what you make of it. But...on an experiential level I have not really grasped that idea. I have put all my hopes and dreams out there, hoping that hope itself would bring contentment to me.


I now know that what I seek is more spiritual (not religious). My quest is to connect more with nature, life, and with myself. I have been far too busy looking outside. Time for me to turn inwards.


"Physis (or Phusis) is an ancient Greek word very rich in meaning. It is used to refer to life energy as it manifests in nature, in growth and healing as well as in all dimensions of creativity. Physician or physic (as in medicine) and Physics (as in Quantum and Chaos understandings of the world) are both derived from it.

It is used as a concept to concentrate some of the most significant qualities and aspirations of Prof. Clarkson’s work - in honour of everlasting change, unlearning as well as learning, living as well as dying well, bodysoul, the cycle as potent paradigm for human evolutionary processes, the individual and society, relationship and archetype, the importance of nature as teacher and inspiration, the drive towards complexity, quality and wholeness, the co-existence of contradictions. Whether in individuals, children, couples, groups, organisations or artistic work, the central and organising theme is simply to have life and to have it more abundantly.

In contemporary terms we experience ourselves as a global virtual community of enquiry and physis is another name for the complexity concept of auto-poiesis".

“Autopoiesis sees self-generated, self-constituting domains of activity and discourse, (explanatory domains) that are autonomous and incommensurable, each constructing its own self-referential differences and distinctions”.

I have taken this from "In Memory of Physis'" which is actually in memory of Prof Petruska Clarkson whom I had the pleasure of meeting and discussing "bystander" subjects as well as being invited to her colourful and wonderful home.

Love Jen