Write.

The students and I began doing Experiences and Experiments in Writing (developed by Diane Tabor and Richard Herrmann, and edited and revised by Rob Riordan, my idol). Since I am not merely a writing teachers, I am connecting about ten of the writings with a project that we do for festival, and we are calling it the Meta-Project (the story of my life in the IDM Project). The writings are powerful, and wonderful, and the process by which we write and discuss is inspiring and making me wish I only taught writing, because writing is so, so wonderful and I want to say more about it, but mainly I want to share the bit that I wrote during the "Spontaneous Image."

The way that this writing works is that you begin to write your feelings and thinkings, only as you do it, you turn them into an image. As soon as I set my pen to paper, the image began and I went with it, just like a dream.

In fact, I felt like I was dreaming the entire time.
I was in a waking dream.

And this is what I saw:

There is a parade of a million random objects. An Africa mask made of wood, a duck that is attacking a 9th grade. There are people with arms raised like zombies and red eyes, they are chasing a lamb. An innocent lamb. They corner the lamb in an alleyway with a thousand doors -- all unlocked, or maybe not. The lamb turns into a human, a little baby girl with pigtails and white footie pajamas. She unzips her pajamas and then you realize that she is a woman. A woman holding a blue teddy bear. She is crying. "I want to go to sleep. I am so tired. Please make the parade stop!" But it continues.

The parade must go on.

There is a giant foot float casted in orange, and balloons shaped like question marks. It starts to rain. It is raining, pouring, it is raining and pouring. But everyone keeps walking. There is no escaping this parade because it is everywhere.

The crowds jeer and the paparazzi takes pictures and the girl, the woman, screams and pleas, "Let me rest! Please stop!"

Suddenly, from nowhere, there are a billion birds that swoop down from the thunderclouds and they swarm around the audience, begging bread, begging bits of bread.

"I have nothing left to give you," she insists, holding up her empty hands like a surrender. "There is nothing else to offer." So the birds begin to snap at her shoes, and when those are bitten into pieces, they snap at her toes until they have eaten off her feet and she collapses on the street.

Men in white coats pick up the pieces and place them on a float and her remains become a part of the colorful parade. The music gets louder, and so does the screaming from the audience. The world won't stop for coffee. The world won't stop to pray to think to wonder if it should have been any other way.

I almost cried while writing this. The image was so intense. I love to share my writing with my students, and to hear the lines that strike them. It is so honoring to be heard.