Postcards from the Unthinkable, Vol. 2

It's been a long day.

The sun is near setting and I am back in the cafe, inside this time, with my handy tiny keyboard and iPhone as mini computer and screen. This is turning out to be one of the best gifts my son has given me. I brought my laptop, but it's a lot to lug up and down the hills here in the steamy and sticky weather.

The air is so heavy with moisture it's hard to breathe.

With my tiny keyboard, I can write in the cafe and edit and post when I get back to my room. Things are kicking in the cafe and it's fun to be where the action is. Tonight people are playing games and chatting over ice cream cones. 

The ice cream here is famous. Locally made and wonderful, with flavors like coconut almond joy, my personal favorite, and chocolate cherry chunk. The chocolate looks good too, rich and dark and creamy. Someone at a nearby table is having grapefruit sorbet.

I can think about ice cream for days.

But we're here to explore the UNthinkable. 

It was the title of the workshop that captured me. Who wouldn't want to spend a week writing the unthinkable? Such a title sets my imagination into overdrive. It turns out that writing the unthinkable has more to do with freeing the mind to write than with anything else. In just two hours this morning we wrote three stories and drew four cartoons. 

Yes. That is what I said. I actually drew cartoons. 

And they're pretty good. 

If you told me last night that I would be drawing cartoons today, I'd have told you you're nuts. But I did, and I spent the afternoon learning how to draw comic strips. Mind you, we had no idea that's what we were doing. It's all part of the teacher's genius. What started with a paper folding exercise and a squiggle became a four panel comic strip. I drew four of them.

We might be in a magical realm where the impossible happens.

As we moved around the room, looking at the strips produced by the class, I marveled. I still can't believe what we did today, except that the evidence is right before my eyes.

What's fascinating about the writing is I had no idea I could do such deep work without thinking. If I had thought about writing those stories ahead of time, I might have been too intimidated around how to voice them to have attempted it. 

And this is just the first day.

During the week, we'll write in the morning and draw in the afternoon. There's a required nap time from 2-3 p.m. and we all look like a bunch of kindergartners lying on the floor on our mats. We can't re-read any of our work until the workshop is over on Friday afternoon. The stories have to cure. We'll go home with a new writing journal and having learned the skills to sustain it.

I don't know, but I think I've got a new fire around writing. 

Wait. No thinking allowed.

The Summer of Self Love is a daily writing practice created to hardness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.