ROB: Let him turn and face you; see his face.
Leslie: It's too dark to see his face, but the sunset is reddish on the side of his cheek.
ROB: Red like what? [Long pause.] Reincorporate. Red like what?
Leslie: Red like blood in a sink.
ROB: OK. Thank you, Leslie.
That was very good, thank you, Leslie. This is what I'm getting at. Couldn't have planned it better. [Laughter.] Look, if it didn't work for you tonight, don't feel bad about it. This is really tough. You're approaching an awareness that you haven't been led to before but that is an essential basic skill. You must be masters of the sensual moment. These questions I've asked — when, in fact, you can range anywhere — are much less demanding than the questions your work will ask of you under similar circumstances. You must move your characters from here to there. They have to be in the moment, and they have to look into a face and see something, and you cannot analyze it, and you cannot abstract it. You're in the sensibility of the character, and you must be in the moment in terms of that character, and also there in terms of the rest of the piece. But what we've done tonight is artificial in many ways, and if it didn't work for you, don't feel bad about it. Just open up the negotiations between you and your unconscious and your computer. You'll make a lot of mistakes, and that's OK. It's part of the process of getting to where you want to go.
Actually, all of you had very good moments. None of you was up here without at least a few very good moments, and I hope you felt what you tapped into briefly when you were inventing, recombining, in the sensual moment.
9. The Written Exercise
Tonight we're going to do on the page exactly what we did last week orally; that is, to write moment by moment through the senses only. This will be a coached writing exercise in seven stages. I'll give you the first stage and you'll begin to write; then I'll drop in six more times, each time to give you another step. It's important not to go beyond the parameters of what I tell you to do. When I describe a new stage, if you've not finished the previous one, note the new instructions in the margin, then go back to where you were, pick that up, and move as quickly as you can to the new stage.
Don't run ahead, though. Stay within the boundaries of each instruction. Once again: no abstraction, no generalization, no summary, no analysis, no interpretation. Force yourself to write moment to moment through the senses only. Don't hassle your style at this point, don't agonize over just the right word; just keep the flow of it through the senses—
flowing, flowing, flowing. Don't think, don't think. Senses, senses, senses. If you really do that rigorously, you'll find yourself flowing right down — at least into the foyer of — this great house that is your unconscious.
I want you to write in the first person. When I say "you," I am referring to your character.
Now, about the character. If you have a character you're working with closely, you may write from the viewpoint of that character, but I'm reluctant to encourage this, because if that character happens to be one you're willing into being, then the exercise will not be very useful to you. In the absence of any character you feel a desperate need to get in touch with, I urge you to write through a character with demographics very similar to your own. This is not you, this is not autobiography, but unless you've got a really burning character that you need to explore, then the character you choose needs to be very close to you in age, gender, ethnicity, and so forth.
If you get to the end of a stage before I come in, don't write ahead, and don't go back and start rewriting; just put your pen down and meditate. I'll notice if there are a lot of pens down, and I'll jump in. It's likely, though, that if you finish these stages before I get to the next, you're not giving it enough intense moment-to-moment attention. In that case, try to focus more intently on the next stage.
When you finish the piece and feel done, just close your notebook and pick up your pen and go away. At some point if there are only a few of you left we may decide that you need to take your piece home and finish it later. I wouldn't think
that you'd be able to bear spending more than an hour and a half on this, if you do it as intensely as you should. Let's start. Here's your first stage. [Editor's note: what follows are the seven stages of the exercise, succeeded by three examples of the results from the class on the evening when the exercise was recorded.] The seven stages:
1. You awake abruptly, though it isn't morning, and you're not in a bed. But you are in the place where you live. The room where you awake is rich in objects and their associations. You are breathless and anxious from a dream you can't, and won't, remember. You look around the room, everything in it shaped by an unspecified anxiety. Let's see the room, in the moment, through the senses.
2. One object in particular catches your attention and suggests a strong connection to your anxiety. Move toward that object; touch it; experience it sensually.
3. The object evokes a memory as vivid as a dream but not the one you woke from. It is a real memory, one based on wanting, desiring something. But this is a surface thing you want — an object, a gesture, a touch, whatever. Focus on the moment-to-moment, specific memory of desiring this thing, which, nevertheless, carries an intimation of deeper yearning. But don't go to that deeper desire yet. Experience the surface thing through your character's sensibility.
4. Now let the memory of this want include a moment when a second memory is evoked. This second memory
involves another object, different from the one you are touching in the present time but similar to it in its basic sensual pattern. This second memory surprises you. You deeply connect it to the first. And the wanting suddenly goes deeper, into a state of being, a state of self. Don't label it. Play it out in the moment through the senses.
5. In that second memory you are moved to an action, driven by your yearning. Let the action happen moment to moment.
6. Some part of the action will bring you back to the present, to an awareness of the first object. Reexperience the object. Your sensual perception of it is altered, re-shaped by the emotion and yearning you have experienced in these two linked memories.
7. Now, back in the present, in the light of all this, you take an action.
The examples:
Rita Mae Reese
Magnets
A small spot of the green Formica table and the left corner of my mouth is slick with my warm drool. What woke me up? How did I fall asleep here? Outside the kitchen window is just darkness crouching and I can hear the hum of the little fluorescent light twitching over the sink, full of dirty dishes, but nothing else. There is no other sound in the house. The round white clock's hands say 5:16 but its battery ran out weeks ago. 1 look at the microwave but it isn't programmed. I'm sweating, my mouth is horrible, like I've been siphoning gasoline with it. I push the chair away from the table, noticing the letter I'd pushed to the other side before falling asleep. The white paper with its rows of neat black ink strains up from its creases like a tired child unwilling to go to sleep.
I ignore it and walk across the sticky linoleum. Had I spilled something? I open the fridge door and the light is too bright even in this brightly lit room. My heart kicks and I can almost see a scene — something slithers from the back of my neck, through my throat, and stops at my larynx. My mind struggles to see — some dream fragment, repulsive and indistinct. I stare at the carton of milk, the cartons of leftovers, and the little round jar of horseradish. What had I dreamed? I felt like I'd missed something important, the bus back home or a lover's last call. Is that what I'd dreamed?