Zelda's Inferno exercise: in your journey of the mind, what country, whose territory, are you entering?
The land grows gentler. Not flat, but not the steep up and down of the mountains we traversed on the way here. Just hills that a traveller might confortably walk up and down, not scrambling for a handhold or a foothold on a rockface. Wildflowers scatter across the fields like a big box of crayons - the 64 count Crayola package, at least - kicked over by some child-fairy.
Occasionally we startle a rabbit, who usually runs and vanishes into the scattered Crayolas. Twice - or was it thrice - we walked right by a rabbit who sat on the side of the trail, nibbling its whatever-it-had-found and ignored us. Perhaps we are entering into a country where even the rabbits are unafraid.
The ground is soft here, after coming down from the mountains - not mushy or muddy but springy, easy on the feet. I feel like I cold walk forever. I pick a wildflower I don't recognize, put in in the band of my hat.
Second exercise: writing from the phrase "the historian uses his [skills] to enrich the past" (from Tom Robbin's Another Roadside Attraction)
the historian takes the moment-points
and draws a curve through them -
or at least near them
a physics student trying to fit an acceleration curve or that Ohm's Law line to his observations
puzzling out the unknowns in the equations
we take the moments of our past -
and fit a curve to them
that first kiss, that bully you punched in fourth grade, the question you missed on that final exam, the time you gave the guy with the gas can and the made-up story five bucks -
puzzling out the unknowns in our selves
creating meaning for it all
then the past becomes
not just a bunch of stuff that happened
but a plot, a story, a work of art