Hey friends 👋,
Welcome to the fourth edition of Bulut Points.
In last week’s edition, I told you that I was taking a week off work and getting up at 5 AM every day to participate virtually in a storytelling course called Word Dancing.
Update: The course blew my expectations out of the water. The instructors Shonaleigh and Simon Heywood were both so phenomenal. I know we only scratched the surface of all that they wanted to teach.
For now, I’m replacing the usual links with a few bits of my work from the course, but I’ll share more about what I experienced and learned in the upcoming weeks.
I hope you enjoy them and let me know what you think.
BULUT POINTS
A shopping list, featuring the extraordinary in the ordinary. We often miss the extraordinary parts of life while they are hidden in plain sight. Stories often use ordinary characters, language, and events, but somehow manage to teleport us to extraordinary places. My take on an exercise from the course, the list below sprinkles a little bit of extraordinary into a good ol’ grocery shopping list.
A bottle of orange juice
A bundle of wonder
A bag of avocados
A bottle of giddiness
A bundle of cilantro
A tin of temptation
A sack of onions
A bottle of history
A box of chocolate
A bowl of fire
A carton of snow
A carton of play
A love poem, without the letter E in it. This exercise was particularly difficult to complete in 15 minutes because the letter E is the most commonly used letter in the English language and is even more common in words related to love. If you’re feeling up for a challenge, set a timer for 15 minutes and try to do it yourself. I’d love it if you tell me how the process went for you. (I read every response and I promise I’ll reply!)
A riddle. Riddles tickle our minds and bring back child-like wonder. Great stories feature riddles that set up tension, but once intellectually solved, they set conflict resolution in motion. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, think about how we found out who Tom Marvolo Riddle is and the events that followed. That’s a Riddle solved (quite literally 😉).
While not in a particular story, here is a riddle from me to stretch your mind:
What is something you can only wear when you enter into something else?
I’ll share the correct answer in the comments next week. If you send me three guesses, I’ll share the “correct” answer with you earlier. Correct is in quotation marks, because multiple answers can solve the riddle and the joy of riddles lies less in the “correct” answer and more in the process of searching for them. In fact, “wrong” answers can sometimes be just as fun and accurate, so enjoy the process and watch yourself sit in wonder.
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Wow! I love what you've shared from all of these exercises. They each brought a smile to my face. :)
Somethings on my grocery list are - a gallon of generosity, a can of condolences, and a carton of ice cream. :D
I spent [some amount of] minutes trying to come up with a few lines that don't include the letter 'e'... wow, is that hard! But also SO FUN. I love to create with some tricky guidelines like this. It makes the creative process more liberating in a way -- to have some boundaries and instructions, but not too many.
At a party, on my own
Initially, sulking in my singularity
You pass by
My chin shoots up, darting a look at you
Palpitations, skipping
Dazzling adoration
___________
My guess for the riddle is.... a seatbelt.
Loved all the answers to the riddle: "What is something you can only wear when you enter into something else?"
Condom is probably my favorite guess, but unfortunately not quite right.
Seatbelt is as good as the official correct answer. See my point about multiple correct answers?
And, for those of you who came back here to check the correct answer, drumroll please... 🥁🥁🥁
A wedding band!