Writing back about the monkey pot...

 The monkey pot 

 "I have a surprise for you.." Cosmata told me as we were getting ready for the Groundings.

She took the small light mud coloured object from her bag of books and put it in my hand. 

I had not expected to hold one again. The "monkey pot"  or the shell of the fruit came from somewhere on the Berbice River. The story goes that monkeys reach their hands inside for the seeds of the fruit and their hands are stuck. There is some tale about a wise monkey saying that you have to take one seed at a time.

The first time I held one of these was in a creative writing workshop. I had gone to the workshop to learn to write better creative non-fiction rather than fiction. We had to exchange random objects and then write stories around the objects.

Cosmata had brought a monkey pot. I wrote a clumsy short story then around the monkey pot. There was a critique. The lecturer did not understand the story, the timeline was mixed up. Some people liked the story. 

Then the lecturer took the monkey pot 'I want that .. give me it " and took it.  It was a bizarre experience and I let it go as the workshop was free and I was a 'guest' and it was not mine to begin with.  

Two years later, another monkey pot is in my hand. There is a kind of comfort from slight roughness of the rounded part on the palm. It is easy for the fingers to curl around it. It feels like clay, not too hard or too soft and not fragile. Light.

I remember the story I wrote, the reason I wrote the story and the context for the short story.  The weirdness of the bullying lecturer.   

I wonder if I should write back the short story.

Writing back again

It has been a month since Cosmata's generosity. I brought home the monkey pot, not sure what to do with it. 

I have not really blogged about anything since then, not sure what to blog about.  Starting things and then thinking, nah I have written about this before. There is something about the breathing and the management of thoughts to get through rough times which means that well.. the detachment means a kind of distancing. 

Breathing instead of writing. 

Except today, the breathing did not work. Not sure that I felt like writing again.

Looking at the monkey pot, imagining it coming from the tree along the banks of the Berbice River into the house in New Amsterdam. The journey. The conversation with the man who has bee hives on the Berbice River. 

Thinking I need to write at a time when I can't write about anything really. That in these times of not finding things to write about, that it is good to do the exercise to find something to write about. Like the monkey pot. 

Writing when the breathing does not work.

Not a short story though.

So about taking the monkey pot down in the sunlight which was in between the rain, instead of doing other things.

 And taking a picture of it while not sure yet what to write. Of creating the composite image, still not knowing what to write.

Thinking of the request to do a 15 minute speech last minute and being brave and saying no, I can't do a speech can I do something else in the 15 minutes? A friend who spent a long time writing an important speech last week said she knows I do these things easily and I explain I don't do speeches.

Writing this and thinking of the letter to the editor which was published and which had a mistake in it. A lesson in not writing and sending immediately, writing about alcohol.

Writing about the monkey pot though, no danger really about mistakes There is no right or wrong thing here.  I wonder if  any monkeys were able to get at the seeds. 

I find an article about  the tree,  and thinking it would be nice to have one in Georgetown somewhere.

And after writing all this, still not sure what I could write about having the monkey pot...and that it is okay to write about nothing really..