September Writing Newsletter
Creative Workshops 2006
The creative
mind plays with the objects it loves. Without this playing with fantasy no
creative work has ever yet come to birth. (Carl Jung)
Dear writer
Playing in
Scale
As children we played in scale – building a
mud house, upturning a table to sail the seven seas, arranging a doll’s tea
party, bending wire to build a car, turning a shoe box into a railway station. These
games were preparing the writer in us. Perhaps this is what Carl Jung means by
“serious play”, the necessary child-like play of adults. In his adult years he
used to construct villages and bridges across streams in his garden.
Imagination is expansive. William Blake
reminds us of this in his line “to see a world in a grain of sand” as does Emily
Dickinson:
To make a prairie
it takes one clover and one bee.
One clover and a bee and reverie
And reverie will do if bees are few.
The Dutch Photographer, Kees
Boeke, in his book Cosmic View, the Universe in 40 Jumps, presents a series of
photographs. He photographs a mosquito squatting on a cut in a finger. Still focusing on the subject, he moves the camera
out ten times till we are in space. Then
he zooms in to the power of ten into the mosquito and the cut on the hand
through “decreasing scales of size to the atom’s nucleus.” The outermost and
innermost photographs are identical.
There is parallel in one of the stories of
the
once he played in the sand
filling his head, hands and mouth
with its grains, sticks and leaves.
his mother prized open his lips
to clean the grit from his teeth.
her mouth opened in wonder.
she beheld in the great cave,
milky way and
morning star.
the tongue, a great whale,
frolicked in the spittle tide
that swirled round molar rocks.
the earth rotated on its axis.
the sun and moon balanced
on inner lips and palate.
an arch opened to the heavens.
and then the boy as gently
placed his sandy hand across her lids
and closed them, drawing blinds.
when she opened her eyes again
she saw only spit and sand
in a small boy’s mouth.
We contain the universe. “The Bigger You”
workshops explore this sense of scale, of dimension. (See below for J’burg,
Expanding the life of the one who goes to
work, expands the work.
From Sept. on I’ll be offering two
corporate workshops at The Learning Centre in Tokai,
The Halo and
the Noose: the Power of Story-listening and Story-telling in Business Life (with Graham Williams) - 14 Sept, 3 Oct, 8 Nov (repeats)
Words at Work, a writing workshop to enrich corporate work
- 15 Sept, 4 Oct, 7 Nov. (repeats)
In Sept I’m facilitating writing skills for
40 rural KZN teachers who in turn teach their learners to write their stories
around HIV/AIDS. (It is an ELITS - Education, Library Information Technical
Services – initiative. I co-edited I got the Message, HIV and AIDS life stories,
fiction and poems from KwaZulu-Natal Schools, Volume 1, MIET, Durban,
2005. This is for Volume 2.
Quality Life are
offering a Soul-in-Business conference in Sea Point,
The fifteen folk on the second WWW course
(Aug-Nov) are writing away. They are
delighting us with quotes and the aliveness (and expansiveness) of their own
created texts and exchanges. We already have a few bookings for the next WWW(Feb-May 07). Elma works with me on this. (Elma’s email starlight@wol.co.za.
021 853 6159) She mentors our Afrikaans clients and some of the English ones
too. She also offers life coaching.
Mentoring
Mentoring conversations are growing. More
writers are opting for a one-on-one apprenticeship as we walk the way of words
together. Recently I’ve worked with a film script, life stories, newspaper
articles, poetry, a teenage novel, a book on career
change, a text on developing intuition.
Workshops
…and so to the
September and on 06 workshops. Some folk are giving friends workshop as gifts. Thank
you for encouraging possibility. Philosopher, Jacob Needleman, in On Love reminds us “the work of love is to presuppose the
wish for reawakening in the other.” He quotes Kierkegaard who speaks of the “perfume of conscious love” that we offer each other.
Hiking and Writing in the Helderberg R200
2 Sept 09.30
-16.00 (N.B. changed to a one day hike)
We hike and write (not at the same time)
along the Helderberg slopes. There is
something about moving feet along a path and moving words across a page. Is it
rhythm? A left and right brain jogging? Time to amble – to
expand.
My Life My Death (with Peter Fox)
8-10 Sept Fri eve to
Sun after lunch in the hills of Ixopo… Alan Paton country
KZN Ixopo Buddhist Retreat
Centre 039 834 1863 brcixopo@futurenet.co.za
We’re constantly in the flow of life and
death. This workshop explores these twin energies on our journey of
transformation. We seek those experiences that bring us a sense of aliveness
and an acceptance of the mystery. We celebrate our life and befriend our
death. Myths, stories and poetry are our
guides and gifts as we create and craft our stories.
The Bigger You: Writing, Longing and Belonging R340
and there comes
the knowing that in me there is space
for a second,
large and timeless life (Rilke)
When we write, we move into a space where
we discover our ‘larger’ self. Other possibilities open to us. We live more abundantly.
This workshop explores how we can bring our creativity and imagination to our
writing and so engage our potential. The workshop also explores how writing can
open to a life-long love affair with ourselves.
Somerset West
The Bigger You: Writing, Longing and Belonging R340
Sun 22 Oct 09.30 – 16.00
See text under
Egoli
The Bigger You: Writing, Longing and Belonging R390
Sun 5 Nov 09.30 – 16.00
See text under
venue – to be arranged
And arriving November….
The Helderberg Writing Escape
14-19 November (featured
in South Africa Writing Vol 2 April 06)
Johanna Castro and I have created the
Helderberg School of Writing. Johanna is an
international freelance journalist who coaches in the genres of magazine
writing, travel writing and copywriting. This
extravaganza - our
first 5 day joint venture - hopes to attract both local and international writers,
We’ll be writing and mentoring at a wine farm and in the Helderberg Nature
Reserve. The escape will offer five days of exploration and discovery.
Tim Freke in
From Mandy de Vaal’s
The workshops will be based on mystical writing styles, drawing inspiration
from philosophical wisdom and deep insights from the phenomenon of Lucid
Living.
To book go to http://www.soulcircle.co.za/diary/diary.htm
Writing Opportunities
Mandy at the zany Aladdin’s cave, Bikini Beach Books in Gordon’s Bay has
asked me to bring her site to you. Why not submit articles and stories to www.WhySpirit.com
or email yellow@whyspirit.com? At the moment this is about
conversation, expansiveness, and publicity rather than payment.
Tredicis
in the
Good news for the Helderberg. At Tredicis (Italian for
Paul and Fadelah
host Hugh Hodge’s Off the Wall Poetry
readings - last Wed of every month.
(hahodge@gmail.com). and Dorian’s Between
the Covers Story-Telling evening first Thurs of every month. Both these
evenings begin with an invited poet / story-teller then its open mike time. And
is the meal something! I’m a-telling on 7 Sept. at 19.30.
And thinking of stories, Begun Khan, one of
the WWW writers, reminded me of The
Stories of Eva Luna. Isabel Allende casts Eva, the story-teller, in the frame of
Scheherazade (Arabian Nights) who
saves her life through telling one thousand and one tales. Eva “discarded harsh, cold words, words that
were too flowery, words worn from abuse, words that offered improbable
promises, untruthful and confusing words, until all she had left were words
sure to touch the minds of men and women’s intuition.”
May your writing expand your life.
Dorian
PS Thank you to all those who pass on this letter. Please let me know if you don’t want to
receive it. (Given the nature of email, I have been receiving ‘unsubscribe’
from people not on my sending list???)
Dr Dorian Haarhoff
021 852 7587 / 082 873 6802
http://dorianhaarhoffwriter.homestead.com
Marais Street