5/23: "Mysterious Kor," the Museum of London, and the Polynesian Triangle (yes, these are related)

Today, we're chatting about the way setting, by which I mean TIME and PLACE, affect character development.

Consider not only London, but WWII London and how it affects Pepita and Arthur in our story.

Now, prepare yourselves for MY FAVORITE WAY TO EXPLAIN HOW SETTING AFFECTS CHARACTER!

Hawai'i--all rainbows and 80 degrees, and hula-ish

Hawaiian leg tattoo

Samoan shoulder tattoo

Ta Moko, Maori face tattoos

New Zealand, in July

Tasman's Voyage

Holding a pounamu, or jade, knife, a Maori weapon of choice

The Haka

The All-Blacks version


So, setting shapes human experience, and it should shape your characters, too. Setting is comprised not just of place, but of time, of economic conditions, and weather. Even settings that are in your characters' pasts make a mark in their development.

For now, let's focus on place and time. For your first Creative Response, write a 2-3 page scene in which two characters meet in wartime London. Use the exhibits at the London Museum as your research, and try to incorporate objects you might see there.

As an added challenge, let's try to work in a line of poetry, too, a la "The Mysterious Kor."

EURYDICE
by Sue Hubbard
(take the lift down at the front of the Waterloo station to see the installation of this poem on the walls)
 
I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,

the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.

Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train's wet glass,

will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards

of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge.

Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.

You turned to look.
Second fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.

This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.

Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.

I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.

Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.