Art Therapy for Broads Abroad :: Without Conclusion :: Exercise #14

:: The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. ::

- William Faulkner

Have you ever noticed that when a fairytale finishes with "The End", you have this stinking feeling that it isn't the end at all?  One of my all time favorite tales is of The Red Shoes.  An orphaned girl finds herself without shoes.  She collects scraps of various pieces of red cloth, stitching together a crazy quilt pair of shoes.  One day while journeying back to her hovel, a wealthy woman riding in a fine coach decides to adopt her.  The woman, disgusted by the handmade life of the girl, discards her clothes and her crazy quilt shoes.  On a fun little retail therapy trip, the girl spies a pair of red shoes.  The candy-apple-fire-engine-blood-rose-red shoes scream, 'Hey Biatch!  You NEED me!'

Though anything colored red has been forbidden, knowing the wealthy woman's eye sight is poor, the girl selects the shoes anyway and has the wealthy woman pay for them.  "Brilliant manipulation!" you may think.  However, the following day, as the girl attempts to leave a church, where the candy-apple-fire-engine-blood-rose-red shoes are proclaimed scandalous, the girl finds she has lost all control over her own movements.  The Red Shoes dance her nearly to death.  For years she has no way of determining her own fate.  Finally, in a fit of desperation, she instructs an ax-man to remove the shoes.  The shoes he cannot remove, but her feet fly off like the wings of Icarus.  

Now, if you have read the Handless Maiden, you know that this is not the end of the girl with The Red Shoes.  She may start out on a little board, wheeling around town begging for red fabric scraps, but in the next chapter, she will be recognized as the greatest red shoe cobbler in all the lands.  In a fairytale, hands and feet grow back, from infant to adult size, in the span of seven years.  Not unlike our own cells, the thrust towards the wholeness of living does not stop with an assault upon our bodies or our spirits.  

Today's Secret Message of Love
Allow the unexpected!

Without Conclusion © News From A Broad

Materials

• A beautiful blank paged journal.
• A pen molded to your hand.
• A few magazines.
• Scissors
• Clue Stick
• A desk placed near a window, preferably with a scene of your garden.  *See Options

Process
During the writing process, attempt to have no beginning and no conclusion.  One of the simplest ways to accomplish this is to not write the first and last sentences to come into your head.

• If you do not already have a collection of images for collage, you can begin one during this exercise.
• Select 2 images and glue them to the top of a blank page in your journal.
• Sit with the images.  Allow them to guide the process for a title to the piece you will write.
• Begin writing with the title as your opening line.  
• Attempt to complete 500 words.  This is of course easier to gauge if you are typing, but what fun would that be?
• No matter what the last line, do not commit it to the page.

Options

• Most of us do not have our desk and window with a beautiful view in the same room.  Find an image, as full page as possible, and tape this on the wall over your desk.  This serves as your inspirational view when you need a break from writing.

Conclusions
We are in the glorious middle of our stories and cannot be sure how they will end.  Narratives are dynamic, partial, fragmented and context dependent.  We are bound by discourse structures to a limited range of expression and understanding.  The stories that we form and that we share are created with other people and are told and retold in our everyday life.

Create the life you want!

The Broad 

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