Image by Monika Grabkowska
I hope someone gave you chocolates on Valentine’s Day or if they didn’t, you went out and bought some for yourself. My indulgence is Pana Organic Chocolate — Sour Cherry is my favourite. I don’t eat it often, but every now and then I have a little bite to remember how exquisite the sense of taste can be. For us writers taste is important not just as a way into the qualities of food and drink but for describing the emotional atmosphere surrounding a place, a person or a feeling.
In my workshops I use guided meditations to take people into sense memory. Remembering the taste and smell of certain childhood foods brings sensations, imagery and associated emotions back in an instant. But imagine depriving yourself of a taste for many years just to see what would happen if you ever came across it again. This is something I did by accident when in my 30s I gave up sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. If it sounds like a kind of torture, I assure you it wasn’t, as overnight I had more energy than ever before. And because I felt better without it, it became an easy habit.
I gave up chocolate too as it seemed whenever I indulged in a big piece of black forest cake I always came down with a cold or flu. The taste of chocolate didn’t pass my lips until probably 25 years later when I participated in a theatre show by a Belgian theatre troupe. Audience members were blindfolded and pushed around in a wheel chair while being subjected to various sensory experiences. Different soundscapes and scents wafted by, textures and fabrics touched my skin and at one point a small piece of dark chocolate was popped in my mouth. For someone who had eaten chocolate yesterday this may not have been such a big deal, but for me it was like a moment of exquisite enlightenment.
I didn’t suddenly become a raging chocoholic but since Pana came on the scene, every now and then I like to revisit that moment of delicious pleasure.
We will be indulging our senses and our writing in Italy in May this year. By indulging I don’t mean gorging. Taste by taste we will will enter the temple of creativity, savouring each experience as we go and mining it for our art. I do hope you can join us!!
Heading out…
April 2-8, 2019 — Bali Writer’s Residency.Total focus on your writing project with in house mentoring and peer feedback.
May 25 – June 1, 2019 – Sensing Italy. A creative immersion in an Italian village in the Le Marche region, near Tuscany.
Oct 6-12, 2019 – Haiku Walking in Japan, a pilgrimage along the ancient Kumano Kodo trail.
March 1-15, 2020 – Moroccan Caravan A creative adventure into the heart of Moroccan culture. Tangier, Chefchaouen, Fes, Tissardmine.
www.writersjourney.com.au
