1. Go and look
up at the sky this evening--take it all in.
Absorb as much of it as you can.
2. In your head,
hear these sounds: a hand on a door (doing
what?); metal creaking in wood (what is it?);
glass falling on concrete (high fall? slight
fall?) the crunch of something delicate under
your foot (did you mean to do it?).
3. What did you
do this day last year? Can you recall?
4. Find five
minutes just to look at clouds today.
5. Make a list
of who and where you are now, and who and where
you want to be in one year, five years...
6. Think about
images that come unbidden to mind when you see
the word: WARM, WINTER, YELLOW, BLURRY, WRITER.
7. Drink a glass
of cool water--think about describing it
while you are drinking it.
8. Go the
library and pick up a book you normally wouldn't
read, flip through it--why does it not move you?
What is it about it?
9. Watch a
classic horror movie--just watch it--suspend your
inner voice and watch it like it was meant to be
watched fifty years ago, before special effects
took away audience imagination....
10. Find a sunny window and just look...
11. Clean up the clutter around your
computer and desk.
12. Find new ways to say: hot, suddenly,
look, dark, fall.
13. Listen to the music of nature, just
sit somewhere outside and listen for ten minutes.
14. List (approx) five childhood books
that shaped your taste in reading.
15. Find letters in the branches of a
tree...A, B, C...there should be all of them if
you look long enough...
16. At evening, watch the sunlight
stream in a window and highlight even small
pieces of dust.
17. Open a drawer, any drawer, and look
at its contents, really look at them. What do
they say to you...about you?
18. Dust your book shelves, re-arrange
your books.
19. Re-read a best loved poem or short
story; give yourself enough time to really enjoy
it.
20. Spend the day being really aware of
how things taste--all day.
21. Breathe! Smell!!
22. Spruce up your favourite place in
your house. Dust? Wash? Clear? Get that chi
moving!
23. Make something to eat/drink--even
just a cup of tea-- watch yourself do this, as if
you were a character in a very interesting book
written by you...
24. Listen to water run, no matter the
source (fountain or tap), does it burble or pound
or thrust or gush or???
25. Imagine what you would be wearing if
you were you, but it was some time in the past?
Why do you pick that certain date in history over
all the others?
26. Look carefully at your hands, both
sides of them, note the wrists and the nails,
what sort of watch do you have, do you have
rings?
27. Colours are all around you--look and
see and notice how they interplay and how they
change in shade and light.
28. Think of famous characters (movies,
books, historical...)--who do you relate to
the most? Are these people the same that you admire
the most??? Hmm...
29. Look through a book of art--any
art--what do you like in art? Do you like several
styles? Only one movement? Men artists? Women?
Portraits? Trompe l’oeil?
30. Look back over the month...has
anything changed in you? Outside you? For you? To
you? What did you do this time last month? What
do you think you will be doing this time next
month?
