Well, today was interesting.
Today I had the chance to get intimately acquainted with a delicious piece of chocolate cake.
Allow me to explain. As part of a feature writing lesson (workshop?) with the wonderfully bright, inspiring and talented Virginia Winder, we were encouraged to engage our senses using some of Jaz's birthday cake (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAZZY-DAWG!).
Having done similar exercises at some of the better poetry workshops I've been to, I was quite excited at the idea of this.
First we examined it. I got interesting ideas and words such as "hazel eyed" (yeah, I don't understand it either), "like a gravel road" (it had two tiers with a strip of icing down the middle) for the cake itself, and "smooth mudflow" and "lahar" for the icing.
Secondly, we smelt the cake. That led to more...interesting....ideas, such as "like every chocolate cake ever, yet uniquely its own" (cliche, I know) and "rich and ashy like burned out fires" (you know how chocolate cakes, even perfectly cooked ones, have that "burnt" sort of smell? Just me then? Ok.).
Listening to the cake was quite challenging. This produced a range of different attempts to hear the cake, from dropping it to poking it. Apart from the obvious "Eat me", I heard "thump" and "squish".
I know I've already talked about how my favourite word is flail, but squish is probably among my top ten words. It's also an onomatopoeia (yes, it took me three attempts to spell that correctly), which means a word that sounds like what is is, such as boom, or pop, or sizzle. Onomatopoeia is also an awesome word.
But I digress, as usual. Next up was feeling the cake, which was quite fun. It definitely felt to me like a new sponge that was full of water. The only other description I could come up with was "like new slippers", because you know when you get new slippers, and for about ten minutes it feels like you're walking on air and firm pillows at the same time? It felt like that. Except new slippers lose the feeling after a day at the most, and I doubt the cake would have. Maybe we should make slippers out of cake...On second thoughts, maybe I should be forbidden from ever starting any sort of product line...
Finally, after all that suspense and build up, we got to eat the cake. That was also quite a difficult thing to describe. The icing was definitely soft and slippery, but the cake itself...I got frustrated because I couldn't find the right words and the closest thing I could come up with was "rice without edges". Don't ask me to explain that...
Final verdict is that the exercise was definitely helpful and Jaz's mother makes the best cake ever!
In other news (I use that quite often too, don't I?), I have a bubble gun, which started because I won a funky hat which prompted Robin, my tutor, to ask who had let me go to a rave. That inspired the bubble gun idea and so I bought one. It's blue and shaped like a seahorse. It is hand-powered and makes a pleasing whirring sound which I'm pretty sure my class is growing/has grown to hate.
Anyway, I've been using it to blow bubbles, lots of bubbles, in town, because it would make my day to walk through a cloud of bubbles and surely I can't be the only person who feels that way. Even if most of the other people who feel that way are under the age of 18. I may be too old for this. But people were smiling and that's all really wanted to do, was bring a little joy to someone's day.
Also, I met up with my awesome friends whilst I was in The Warehouse. They adopted me. So now I have LOTS more family members. YAY!
It just occurred to me whilst writing the tags for this post that one of my first posts also used the "sensory exploration" method, that time on my room. I was thinking I might do one post using my five senses each month. Comment below if you have any suggestions as to what my next "sensory exploration" should be!
That's all for now,
thanks for reading,
Love,
Jess
Showing posts with label taste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taste. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Come one, come all, step right up...it's time for the introductions to be made.
Hi. I'm Jess.
I'm 18. Female. Poet. I play guitar. I try to be a good person, just the same as you. We're not all that different really.
They say you can learn a lot about someone by their surroundings. Well, I'm going to put that to the test, using my five senses on my surroundings in an effort to tell you about myself. This could quite possibly be the most brilliant thing you read all day. Oh yes, I've got high hopes indeed.
A quick reminder, the five senses are sight, touch, taste, smell and sound. The sad thing is I almost forgot sound. Let's move on before the terrible puns start.
Sight. I can see posters on my wall, magazine pages, children's drawings, and even a couple of pieces of my own artwork. One of the posters is the famous "Footprints in the Sand". Oh, and there are glow in the dark stars and the like above my bed, because I've always wanted glowing things on my ceiling. I have glowing faeries on my cupboard door at my Mum's house. I can also see lots and lots of books. I'm reading The Book Thief at the moment, but I can't see that. I can see my much loved and battered copy of Catch-22 though. Catch-22 and Fight Club are two of my favourite books.
Touch. Well, from where I'm sitting I can touch the rug, my laptop, my soft bedspread, the floor, my phone, my hair (which is not nearly as awesome as Alex Kingston's hair), my shoes, the washing, and my giant whiteboard, which I've just finished cleaning. Touch is kind of a redundant sense in this exercise, isn't it?
And so we move on to an equally useless sense for the current task - taste. I can kind of taste spaghetti bolognaise (my spell checker refuses to recognise this word so I'm going to spell it however I like), which I COOKED. This is surprising and I hope you have your impressed face on because cooking is not my schtick (a wonderful word taught to me by my friend Jackson of http://www.jacksonjwood.com/. You should check him out. But not like that.) .
Smell. Now this one will tell you a bit about me, but not in ways you might think. Right now I can smell nail polish remover. This is partly because I am clever and figured out (through trial and error and a bit of scientific knowledge) that nail polish remover will remove vivid from a whiteboard. However, it is also because I left the lid off the nail polish remover and spilt it on my favourite rug. And then proceeded to leave the lid off of the nail polish remover and spill it on my favourite rug again. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from that.
Side note: I have since put the lid on the nail polish remover and taken to wondering how I have a favourite rug when I'm ONLY EIGHTEEN.
Lastly, sound. I can hear classical music downstairs, which is great because I actually like classical music.
Side note: all teenagers secretly like classical music, they just don't want people to know it.
I can also hear the TARDIS materialising. Except that it's actually my ringtone for my phone, which is disappointing, because I'd rather have a TARDIS than a text message. Or a phone.
Now it's your turn!
Pick a sense or two (or five) and use it to tell me about your surroundings in the comments!
Or just let me know what you think!
Lots of Love,
Jess
xoxox
I'm 18. Female. Poet. I play guitar. I try to be a good person, just the same as you. We're not all that different really.
They say you can learn a lot about someone by their surroundings. Well, I'm going to put that to the test, using my five senses on my surroundings in an effort to tell you about myself. This could quite possibly be the most brilliant thing you read all day. Oh yes, I've got high hopes indeed.
A quick reminder, the five senses are sight, touch, taste, smell and sound. The sad thing is I almost forgot sound. Let's move on before the terrible puns start.
Sight. I can see posters on my wall, magazine pages, children's drawings, and even a couple of pieces of my own artwork. One of the posters is the famous "Footprints in the Sand". Oh, and there are glow in the dark stars and the like above my bed, because I've always wanted glowing things on my ceiling. I have glowing faeries on my cupboard door at my Mum's house. I can also see lots and lots of books. I'm reading The Book Thief at the moment, but I can't see that. I can see my much loved and battered copy of Catch-22 though. Catch-22 and Fight Club are two of my favourite books.
Touch. Well, from where I'm sitting I can touch the rug, my laptop, my soft bedspread, the floor, my phone, my hair (which is not nearly as awesome as Alex Kingston's hair), my shoes, the washing, and my giant whiteboard, which I've just finished cleaning. Touch is kind of a redundant sense in this exercise, isn't it?
And so we move on to an equally useless sense for the current task - taste. I can kind of taste spaghetti bolognaise (my spell checker refuses to recognise this word so I'm going to spell it however I like), which I COOKED. This is surprising and I hope you have your impressed face on because cooking is not my schtick (a wonderful word taught to me by my friend Jackson of http://www.jacksonjwood.com/. You should check him out. But not like that.) .
Smell. Now this one will tell you a bit about me, but not in ways you might think. Right now I can smell nail polish remover. This is partly because I am clever and figured out (through trial and error and a bit of scientific knowledge) that nail polish remover will remove vivid from a whiteboard. However, it is also because I left the lid off the nail polish remover and spilt it on my favourite rug. And then proceeded to leave the lid off of the nail polish remover and spill it on my favourite rug again. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from that.
Side note: I have since put the lid on the nail polish remover and taken to wondering how I have a favourite rug when I'm ONLY EIGHTEEN.
Lastly, sound. I can hear classical music downstairs, which is great because I actually like classical music.
Side note: all teenagers secretly like classical music, they just don't want people to know it.
I can also hear the TARDIS materialising. Except that it's actually my ringtone for my phone, which is disappointing, because I'd rather have a TARDIS than a text message. Or a phone.
Now it's your turn!
Pick a sense or two (or five) and use it to tell me about your surroundings in the comments!
Or just let me know what you think!
Lots of Love,
Jess
xoxox
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