Synchronicity

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An exercise adapted from a book called "The Portable MFA in Creative Writing," compiled by The New York Writers Workshop.




1. Poem. Write a paragraph or two based on a line from any poem. You have to reference the line and poem title (preferably author, too). You will use the line as your poem's title.


2. Dream. Write a paragraph or two from your last dream or a disturbing dream you can't get out of your head.


3. Conflict. Once again, write a paragraph or two concerning a minor (or major, if you must) conflict in your life right now. It could be something as minor as someone that irritates or excites you.


4. Conclusion. (this is where the poem part comes into play) Weave 1 - 3 together into a poem. Length is up to you. Also, the poem doesn't have to be about 1 - 3 directly (or even at all).



The only real rules to this game are to reference the poem prompt and use the line as your title. The rest is up to you.




1.

To Go to Lvov
by Adam Zagajewski

To go to Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams on a suitcase, when express
trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,
if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just
in my new passport, if lances of trees
--of poplar and ash--still breathe aloud
like Indians, and if streams mumble
their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs
in the Russian language disappear
into thickets . . . .

...a dream, at dawn, when dew


When I first heard this poem - it goes on for some eighty-five lines - I drifted off into my own dreamland, Morocco. I wrote about the plaza of Marrakech, how the dancers erupt like the shoots of dragon's teeth from the dust of Djemaa el Fna, whose name I had to look up. I was delighted that Djemaa el Fna shared a strangeness of consonants with Lvov, and that I hadn't known that when I left Zagajewski's poem for my own.

Synchronicity.

Tonight when I revisited the poem, again I drifted off part way through, this time taken by the sense that the poet is recounting his childhood. I went back to Victoria, to the willow grove on Braefoot Road, the place we called Fairyland, the one great weeping tree with the boards nailed on a limb, where a young girl could perch like a panther over the street, unseen by passersby. This place has tried again and again to inhabit poems, but it has yet to really fit.

Tonight I returned to read the rest of Zagajewski's poem, and read how Lvov was pruned away, destroyed, it seems, how Lvov is nowhere and how Lvov is everywhere. Now, of course, I have to look it up.

Here is a helpful bit of background.


And here is a YouTube video that captures some of the flavour of Djemaa el Fna.




. . . a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams


Zagajewski didn't write those words, I have to remember; he wrote in Polish. Who knows what music I would hear in that language?






2.

I don't often remember my dreams. Oh, I know, remembering can be practiced, but dreams are not something I place great importance on. They are the workings out of the subconscious, I suppose: a nightmare signifies stress, an erotic dream, well.... When I do remember my dreams, they seem to be repetitions of previous dreams, though I can't be sure. In one recent dream, which I think I may have dreamed numerous times, I was desperately trying to find my way out of a beautiful hillside town, a place I imagine to be typical of, say, Tuscany, and why I'd want so badly to leave makes no sense to me.

But one dream that has stuck with me is the one about the bear.

I spent some fifteen summers in the "bush," as we call it, of northern British Columbia. If you were to look on a map, it wasn't truly the northern part, but rather smack in the middle of the province, in the area around Prince George (which we affectionately called the armpit of BC, a tribute to its pulp mills.) When you're there, however, it's definitely North. Nine months of winter and three months of bad snowshoeing. Long long summer days, and long long winter nights. A cold snap would reach minus forty; your breath would freeze before it left your body. This was North.

We supported ourselves in the silviculture industry, which is to say, we planted trees. Millions of them. In fact, we ran treeplanting camps, with crews of 20 to 30 people, for two months every spring. And we had plenty of encounters with bears.

I have baked for bears, though not willingly: one came into camp one night and ate a whole bucket of oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies. I have tried to ward them off with cayenne pepper mixed into bacon-grease balls, but one bear was a spice aficionado, and returned night after night. I have had a growling contest with a bear; the bear won. I am not afraid of bears, as long they know I'm there. Wouldn't want to surprise one.

My dream. I know the date I dreamed it because of what was on the news the next morning: it was February 7, 2006. I dreamed I was staying in a cabin on a cliff above the Pacific, alone. The weather was mild, about as warm as the upper west coast gets, which is not very, and the chop below my perch glittered in the sun. I took a shower outside, in a stall made of transparent plastic sheeting, under a bucket filled with warm water. When I got out of the shower, the white bear was there, a spirit bear. He walked away.

I slept the night and wished he would return, and in the morning he did. He sat on my doorstep and I could not go outside. He stayed, as if standing guard, and I finally woke up.

In the morning, on my way to work, I learned that the government of BC had struck a deal with a conservancy society and set aside a massive protected area for the spirit bear. I hadn't known anything about it, previous to the newscast.

Synchronicity.

(Read about the Spirit Bear Protection Area.)



3.

Conflict: not tonight. I'll continue this post another day.








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