WRITE AT FIRST SIGHT: TEENS AND SEEING

Practical Exercises to Articulate Experience

Mary Donnarumma Sharnick

www.marydonnarummasharnick.com

AWP Convention

Boston, March 7, 2013

Venetian author Tiziano Scarpa, whose book, Venice Is a Fish: A Sensual Guide (Gotham, November 3, 2009), invites his readers to join him on the exquisitely physical experience that Venice offers both its visitors and residents. The physicality of la Serenissima he describes has been a constant provocation and creative catalyst for me since 1969, when I was myself a teen and a first-time tourist there. Venice’s unique geography and atmosphere has awakened and evoked in me an ongoing awareness of the body in moving physical space and time. The floating city and a number of its lagoon islands provided the setting for THIRST, an historical novel set in 1613 (www.fireshippress.com, March 1, 2012). It continues to offer settings for an historical trilogy, tentatively entitled PLAGUED, presently in draft. The fictional excerpts that serve as examples for each writing exercise are taken from those works.

Since 2008, I have led writing students to Venice and other Italian cities. A major purpose of each trip has been to help students transform seen, heard, tasted, touched, and breathed experiences into written articulations. These expressions, when characterized by apt, specific language and clear voice, capture in language moments lived in keen

awareness. Like photographs framed, they still the kinetic. Like music remembered, they resonate, their persistent interior hum connecting the outer with the inner life.

Come June, nine students will accompany me to Venice for a ten-day stay. None of them has been there before. They will feel, each and every one of them, the bodily rock and sway of the tide, the tug and pull of centuries-old stone pathways and bridges, the often-flooded docks that comprise this tremulous city surprisingly held up by forests turned upside-down. Their five senses will be assaulted by new experiences. Giving voice in their journals to what they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell will provide the basis of their future writings.

While Venice is the locus of this writing group, any other place may certainly serve effectively as a springboard for young writers and those who work with them. Each of the following exercises may be adapted to the geography you select.

And so we begin…

Scarpa instructs us, “Let me tell you what happens to your body in Venice, starting with your feet.”

Renaissance noblewoman’s shoe, Museo Correr, Venice

Everything moves all the time. All outer surfaces are damp and tinged with salt. Venetians now wear practical shoes. But in 1613, noblewomen sported heels known as chapuys, or zuccoli. The wealthier the woman, the higher the heel, so that in order to walk she had to be assisted by two serving-women. She held each of her arms out and rested them on the serving-women’s shoulders. Walking was nearly impossible. A virtuous woman’s place was in the palazzo, not the piazza. So the stilted shoes were a perfect solution: the lady displayed her wealth on approved public occasions at church and festivals and was rendered nearly immobile at the same time.

EXERCISE I: “Bare Feet, Comfortably-Shod Feet, Hampered Feet”

Select a walkway. Walk upon it with feet bare, noting how the feet feel contacting the walkway.

Walk the same walkway in shoes that fit well and are comfortable, again noting how the feet feel.

Finally, tread the walkway one last time with feet purposely hampered in some way (for example, ill-fitting shoes, broken shoes, too-high heels).

List verbs that precisely describe each experience.

Imagine character traits of those who walk in each type of shoe.

“So uncomfortable was la Signora that she did as the Abbess suggested. Holding her hand against the stone wall, she used the other to remove one shoe. Then, standing lopsided, she reversed herself and repeated the task. Placing her chapuys by the outer door, she accepted from Abbess Ubaldi a pair of simple flat cloth slippers that the converse [lower-class nuns] wore inside. Intent on explaining her unexpected reappearance, she did not appear to take note that Abbess Ubaldi now walked beside her taller by a cheekbone length.”

from THIRST

The third Saturday of every July, Venetians celebrate il Redentore, redemption from the plague. They construct a pontoon bridge from Venice proper to the island of Giudecca, where the Church of the Redentore stands. Contemporary pilgrims walk across the bridge, pay respects to the Virgin, and return to Venice proper to celebrate in an all-night gathering that rivals Carnevale.

The pontoon bridge is actually a collection of boats side by side, topped with a temporary walkway.

Associated Press

EXERCISE II: “What We Think and What We See”

Look at the photograph on the previous page. Look again!

Stand a distance away from an edifice. Describe it in space, color, shape, size, texture. Tell its purpose if you can.

Then come as close as possible to it as you can. Describe it once more in space, color, shape, size, texture.

Contrast the difference in understanding distance and proximity make.

Microsoft Photos

“The ivory-colored structure loomed before Michael, perhaps now only two hundred paces ahead. Michael continued toward it, his sprint turning into a steady-paced jog. The closer he came to the building, though, the less certain he was of its purpose. He could not make out a roof, or windows, or a door. His inquisitiveness propelling him, then, he darted forward once more until he could no longer hear the voices of the men behind him. Coming within feet of the construction—easily taller than four cottages stacked one on top of the other—his heart beat with the eager anticipation of an innocent spying novelty. Then, as the composition of the imposing form became clear, he stopped short, first in wonder, then in shocked comprehension.

‘Bones,’ he spoke the word aloud, though he did not mean to.

He stared. The skeletons, bleached nearly white and worn from some three seasons in the sun, wind, and rain, lay atop each other. Fingers that had once been hands. Feet of varying sizes, some still connected to legs, others fallen solitary and mismatched among the variegated weeds. Skulls with sockets devoid of eyes, rib cages that held bowl-sized birds’ nests, a brown-and-black-speckled snake that slithered like a parched tongue from what had once been someone’s moist mouth and ruddy lips.

‘The Death,’ Michael said.” from PLAGUED

The island of San Erasmo is home to virtually all of Venice’s produce. Visitors can taste fruits and vegetables directly from the soil.

Microsoft Photos

Likewise, an early-morning foray to the fish market can bring the lagoon’s bounty to one’s mouth only moments after the nets have been spread on the dock.

Microsoft Photos

EXERCISE III: “The Tastes in My Mouth”

Bite into a lemon, an oyster, a hazelnut, or other foods of varying flavors and textures. Note how each piece feels, tastes, interacts with the teeth and lips and tongue. Apply a certain food experience to a character’s situation. Write a descriptive paragraph that uses taste to illustrate a character’s state of mind.

Microsoft Photos

“Her lips, dry as old crusts, felt sewn shut, her one eye opening wide now in panic at the realization. She moved her tongue around her mouth, dry as well, but tasting of flaked blood, as if from meat that Cook had roasted and let sit in the iron pan. Her tongue found a small opening by her right eyetooth. She pressed past it to lick her lips, but cringed at the pain. Her mouth had become a rusted hinge.”

from THIRST

Microsoft Photos

EXERCISE IV: “Listen and Hear”

While students sit completely still and listen for ten minutes, the instructor will tape. Students will note all they have heard, how it sounded, how the sounds made them feel.

The instructor will play the tape, with students listening once more, then noting again what they have heard, how it sounded, how the sounds made them feel.

Students will then write a paragraph that synthesizes what they have heard.

Microsoft Photos

“He had just turned five, old enough to keep up with his father’s pace to the short dock in the cove his mother could see from the doorway, old enough to accompany Theodore to the pre-dawn dropping of the nets. Sitting in the rowboat within sight of the big harbor and chewing on a crusty piece of the previous night’s bread his mother had handed him after crossing her arms against her chest to say good-bye, he watched the ripples in the water against the coming dawn. Then, just as the sun rose, he heard what had sounded like a chorus singing. He turned to look. That was when he knew.

It was not so much the looming galley itself, but more the synchrony of the rowers that mesmerized him. Their cohesive movements, matched with their booming voices that became one voice, urged him to abandon home, even though he could not yet reach the door latch to let himself out or in. Even then, he yearned to join this crew of men. With them he would be able to become a part of something bigger than himself, than his parents, than the island of Rhodes. The seas and the lands that sprang from those seas belonged to the rowers, he believed. They would become his, as well, he decided then and there. He had dropped the bread crust, forgetting sustenance for a moment, hungering instead for adventure.”

from PLAGUED

Historians contend that Medieval and Renaissance Venetians smelled the arrival of military and commercial galleys one full day before the boats approached the city’s docks! While such experiences do not occur there today, it is fair to say that Venice offers a multitude of olfactory possibilities.

EXERCISE V: “Breathe Deeply”

Students write a sentence that describes each of the following olfactory terms:

Fragrant,

Putrid,

Earthy,

Decaying,

Redolent,

Perfumed,

Sweet,

Cloying,

Sour,

Bitter.

Then students draft a situation or scene in which the olfactory sense is the primary image.

“’Buon gior--…,’ he began, then realized the sister was asleep. She lay across a plain wooden casket, her long freckled arms stretched from beneath a hooded black mourning robe. Her face was hidden, turned away from the grille, and her breathing was even so that her robe rose and fell like the tide.

On the floor the other side of the casket over which the sister lay, Lorenzo saw a smaller box, carved from the same wood and draped with an infant’s baptismal gown. The fragrant eucalyptus branches, yellow roses, and citrus-scented candles did not trick him.”

from THIRST

To access exercises online and to contact Mary, please go to www.marydonnarummasharnick.com and follow the links to “blog.” Photos by Wayne R. Sharnick unless otherwise noted.

With sincere gratitude to lead panelist, Chantel Acevedo, and fellow panelists Michelle Hopf and Tawnysha Greene.

With enduring thanks to mentor and friend Rachel Basch.

With unabashed love and admiration to my husband Wayne.