Gathering singing stones
Day 2
Practice one: warm up
Write a short story about a beetle you almost stepped on. Write it from the beetle’s perspective.
practice two: expanding
The above is a recording of the Kauai Oo bird. It was calling for it’s mate, there was no call back. It was the last bird of it’s kind. One of the sadest things I have ever listened to.
It can fill us with grief, sadness. It can awaken anxiety and all the nuances of those. For many it moves them in a deep way.
A few years ago I wrote a post about endlings - the last of a species before extinction. It became one of the most shared posts I’ve ever written.
“16,306 species are endangered at the moment roughly, What We know. We couldn’t name that many different animals If We tried. It makes me shiver and feel gasping. It makes others Shut down - it’s too much.
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I feel the activist in me come alive. And sit down straight away from exhaustion before I even begin. I get angry and fed up with the firm steal grip of our ways. That leaves these songs to be answered by it’s own echo.
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Sometimes as we try to gather the masses, make waves and move mountains I wonder How much energy is lost. That could be reeled in and used closer to home. Here. Where you feet touch actual soil. Where your ears aren’t drowned in all the shouting. Where you may have a chance to answer a calling.”
I’d like you to write a short essay or poem about what the recording of the Kauai Oo bird stirred in you. Emotions, images, action.
Through the body and the heart, through the activist and the human.
As an alternative or extra practice, write a short story about an endling.
