from the workshop given by Leslie Jamison on Flash Memoir
This exercise takes its inspiration from the tradition of wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities -- also known as cabinet of wonder, or wonder-rooms. These are collections of wondrous objects -- some crafted by hand, others taken from the natural world: polished stones, stuffed crocodiles, bits of coral, bits of human tooth, wooly ferns, tusks of narwhals. Cabinets of curiosity often held items that remained somewhat mysterious, whose categories hadn't yet been determined. I saw several of these cabinets at a museum in Atlanta -- they are a fascination. You can see many more images to help you get ideas by using Google Images.
For this exercise, I'd like you to explore the idea of a "memory theater" full of objects from your own past. You can draw these objects or list them. But the idea is that you remember objects that feel charged with some kind of emotional electricity -- ideally objects whose significance you haven't figured out, objects whose categories haven't yet been determined. In particular, I'd like you to focus on objects that feel dangerous -- that hold some kind of pain or explosive charge, that feel as if they might erupt at any moment. (Please don't get too hung up on the last part. I struggled with this during the workshop because I focused on that too much.)
List five of these objects (or more) and jot down a few sentences about the memories and emotional charge that attach to each one. Then choose one and write more about the story in any format you choose.
Due date: December 8
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