Session One

Please note, this is very rough - as noted at the end, it is meant to be!!

I can feel my skin give under the rough bark as I climb, but I don't care - I can't care. Slinging a leg over the branch, I pull myself up. Only a few feet higher than the ground, and already, I can feel the wind tugging at the loose curls, the very tip of my very long braid. The street is nearby, but I allow the sound of the engine, the sound of tires on pavement, to turn into the sound of my ship, crashing and slamming into waves. 

My hands wrap around the trunk of the tree, letting gravity threaten to pull me into the long green waves of grass - of ocean - and away from the nameless ship. 

Higher, higher, I must always climb higher - even toward my greatest fear - what will become my greatest fear. But now - right now, there is no fear. Nothing can touch me. 

The sky opens up, that big bowl of cloudless blue. An exquisite painting that can never be redone. And I climb. Up up up until the tree begins to give way to the nature of itself. The branches grow thinner than my waist, then smaller than my legs, until I finally stop. 

I am in another world. A new world, unexplored.

Green surrounds me. The light that spills across my skin is new light, fresh and fractured. Beauty, unhinged. I breathe in the silence, until another wave comes. This one is somewhat more violent. My branch sails back and forth across my sky, threatening to drop me into that sea once more. 

"No!" I cry out, one toe finding a place to wedge in the rough bark. 

My skin on my palms burns, but I don't care. Bits of it - skin or bark - break off and roll between my fingers, palms sore and raw. 

But my chin raises higher. 

Yonder! - an enemy or ally? What can it be? It wends its way through obstacles unknown. 

But I am distracted. 

"Peter!" 

"You are in my territory, pirate!" 

"Is anyone you don't know a pirate?" I ask, even as I parry a strike. He is good, but my tree - my jolly roger - is my home base, and I am always one swing, spin, or step ahead of Peter Pan.   

He flies, trying to get me down, and it works. 

"Get down from there!" my mother cries. 

Ah! It was an ally after all, I think as I drop from the gangplank, rolling into that green grass sea, squealing at the tongue of my fuzzy white dog.

So, I picked up this little book called The Writer's Portable Therapist. It essentially guides you through the process of identifying why you can't seem to write, which, admittedly, has been a problem for me. It also comes with a bonus of what author Dr. Rachel Ballon calls a Creativity Chronicle. Essentially, you write in her Free Flow Method (straight up, no edit writing) for twenty minutes. The above is the result from my first session. That's right. I'm going to try for a session a day and get them posted as soon as I can. Hopefully, at the end of 25 fun-filled sessions...I will be linking you to my own book. ;)