"Since I Saw You Last" is one my students' favorite prompts. Without fail, it delivers major yardage of writing memory, depth, and feeling and like most other Intuitive Writing exercises, can go anywhere, perhaps to the long forgotten, dormant, or unseen. Part meditation, part writers' block buster, pure bliss, it's one of those prompts that you can no-way—no-how predict where and when it will go... you just have to follow its lead and ride the ride. And every time you do it, it's different, wherein lives the magic.
It hatched one morning with the Friday Writers about three or four years ago when I for the life of me could not come up with an "impromptuprompt" as per youshe. Occasionally it will happen. We'll be sitting around the table, naked pads of paper rolled back, white pages glaring with anticipation, hungry for lick of the pen...
God, the pressure!
"So... shall we write?" I say.
The answer comes in hound-hungry clicks of the pen, chairs cawing up toward the table, enabling the writing posture, glasses donned or removed...hair going up... or down...rings and bracelets abandoned in coiled sparkly clumps for the sake of creativity. Soon we will be off to the races....Except I have either lost my prompt or still haven't found one. So I say something—anything—that might inspire the all too familiar "skritching" of pen hemorrhage.
On this particular day, I launched with "Since I saw you last, I..." and instead of finishing the thought, I had them finish it. However they wanted to finish it. And when they did, they'd come back and start over with the same line. And so on and so on, allowing it to take turns and dips and pacing all of its own.
It took me a while to embrace this raw moment as a great gift for prompt giving...there's nothing like sitting in the unknown and using that revved up place of panic to serve. Who knew?
So, here's how it goes (and goes and goes...): Since I saw you last...I got two flat tires, both with Jude, one at Home Depot where some kindly car neighbor left a note on a yellow stickie: "looks like you got a flat," and today we got a flat on the bike tire and had to call Dada 911 to bail us out because I was in no shape to walk a half a mile with a flat bike and bad feet. Since I saw you last I got three separate diagnosisese for my "bad feet," including, thank the angels, the world's most amazing physical therapist who looked me straight in my tearful eyes, one hand resting on my knee as I was just as convenient a hand rest as any in the PT world, and said: "Your feet are your feet. That's not good or bad. It just is. They will always be your feet... they will not be different feet and you can not treat them as though they are different feet or attempt to bend them into feet that they are not... however... you can work with them and work on strengthening...you do not have to be in pain...Do you see?" I nodded as I might have as an incredulous child. Since I saw you last...
Now you! SINCE I SAW YOU LAST..." there are no rules, no right and wrong, only just keep writing and start over when you have run out of thought or feeling or both...AND is a great way to keep the momentum going AND SINCE I SAW YOU LAST... because if you play around with pitch and tone you will yield new memories and trains of thought that go highwaying around your very large inner galaxy... Have fun... enjoy the ride!
If you do this and love this, remember I am starting a new summer INTUITIVE WRITING CLASS at the Loft in mid July (details here https://www.loft.org/adult-classes) on Thursday afternoons and of course, there's tons more of that to be had here at the Beach.
As always, share if you'd wish and I sure hope to write with you super soon!
Since I saw you last I've grown older. Not in the way I dread; not physiologically older, not closer to death, not even a mundane accumulation of days. Older, wiser, more adult, further along on my journey to actualization. Since I saw you I've wondered. Waited. Kept an eye open. I've ruminated, reminisced. I've wondered what could have gone differently, what was left unsaid, undone, what was missing. What was there to begin with. Since I saw you last I came to a crossroads. I pushed and pushed until I couldn't push any more and so I stopped pushing. And I felt so free as a result. The bottomless hole I kept trying to fill with you has been excised, lifted, abolished. I have holes. I always will. Holes are part of life. But I embrace holes as uniquely mine, part of my very fiber. Since I saw you last I've changed. You might not recognize me. I would go so far as to say that we are more strangers than when we first met. I try to say this without any hostility. Though the hurt is there I don't mean you ill will. I want you to be happy and I don't know what that means for you, but I'm finding my own happiness as it relates to me and only me. Since I saw you last I've learned so much about myself. I've learned about what I need, what I can do without, what I want, the paths that my dreams take me on and the lessons I learn along the way. I know that I don't know and I'm getting very comfortable with that. If I see you again I hope I can thank you. And if not, I hope that you've gained all that you've given me.
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