Firstly, visualise your forbidden place. It’s somewhere you shouldn’t be. It might be a room in your house; a rough part of town; the house of a friend your parents disapprove of. In the present tense, describe the place, using all your senses: the sounds, the smells, the way it looks. Write continuously for 5 minutes… Yes I have a forbidden place. I have exactly what the creative writing teacher wants: a broken down cottage, the smell of wet soot, the faraway sounds of cars on the main road and my ear straining to make out the wheezing engine of a particular van. But I can’t write about this. Because even I was ever ready to approach this in writing, it would be more an exercise in psychoanalysis than in creative writing. So my mind strains, unable to find another angle, drawn back again to that forbidden place that I am forbidden to talk about…
What to do? Funny thing, I’m facing the exact opposite problem in my yoga class.
The sun shining through the bay window, warming my body after the class, a winter morning, incense burning. The soothing voice of the yoga teacher.
Now find a place where you feel safe. Use all your senses, the sounds, the smells, the way it looks... I drift blissfully to my bed. The house is empty. I am under the quilt, looking out of the velux window at the clouds passing by in accelerated motion.
The yoga teacher jolts me out of my reverie.
It can be any place, a beach, a field in the country. Anywhere, as long as it’s not your bed... My meditation is unsettled instantly. I struggle. In a panic, I scan other possible places, and abandon them again. Not my bed? My only safe place is forbidden and I can’t settle to another safe place. I am agitated. I am the opposite of relaxed. The yoga class is over.
Photo by Nora
