Writers Circle Prompt: The Art of the Possible

 

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Second draft:

It turns out that the art of the possible isn’t about art at all.  It’s about political pragmatism.  Politicians are said to use it when they give up long range goals to take up the goals that are possible in their time and place. For example, Republicans spent 40+ years with small local goals that led finally to the larger goal of electing a president who would dismantle the liberal state and democracy.  And that is where we are.  A friend tells me that in the long sweep of time, Trump’s presidency will be a tiny thing.  Don’t sweat it, she says.  Live in joy.

I hope living in joy continues to be possible.

My mother found joy even though she lived in places that were abhorrent to her—like the 2-room apartment in her mother’s house.   Her joy came from the constant crafting she did.  She made my clothes, and with the scraps and the materials from old clothes, she pieced crazy quilts.  I still have one of them.  She made all the ornaments for our Christmas trees—or Chanuka bush as she called it the year she decorated with dreidels and stars of David made from papier mâché and cardboard, turquoise and silver paint.  Another year, she embroidered the bottom cups of egg carton’s together to make little lanterns with tassels.  She hooked rugs.  She sketched and drew all of us indoors, and painted from the great outdoors.

It was an art of my mother’s that she saw possibility in everything, an art I picked up from her and used in my career as an educational theatre director. My first love, mime, included anything that could be imagined and shaped out of air. And student imagination in groups and alone expanded anything I could think of.  For example, with few props and added dialogue, they made their audiences think about abortion and eating meat.  They accomplished the first by putting cords in audience member’s hands attached to cloaked figures in embryo-like positions.  The embryos talked to each other about their hopes for birth. When the show was over and it was time to let go of the cords, audience members weren’t so quick to let go.  They accomplished the second by having wolf characters go into a restaurant setting and admire the human head trophies on the wall.  When they started to order, one of them objected to eating humans.  They were invited, not too politely, to leave the restaurant.  You can imagine that I had to stretch my own beliefs to applaud the creativity of these performances.  The only limit to creativity and imagination was the ability of human bodies, hearts, and minds.

Fully-staged full-length theatrical realism left less room for the imagination.  Yet, added technology and lights with less realistic settings allowed the art of the possible to include theatrical magic.  Once again, anything seemed possible.  In staging the ancient Greek play Helen by Sophocles, choral dance commented on the action and extended it into dream and possible futures.  Masks allowed actors to play multiple characters.   Huge Bread and Butter style puppets allowed us to create the illusion of gods come to earth.  In productions of Shakespeare and Angels in America, less was always more—in props, in settings, and in costumes.  Light and shadow became real characters.

One could argue that like the political definition of the Art of the Possible, each of these production situations used only what was possible in its time and place.  Yet using the resources of their day in combination with imagination led to images which might otherwise be inconceivable and impossible. Theatre—and by extension, film—expands the definition of the Art of the Possible.

[Science fiction and fantasy does the same on the page and in film, without the restrictions of human bodies and sets.  A human meets a friendly extraterrestrial and enters a whole new world of possibility in which the imagination expands in characters and in readers.  For example, think of Mary Poppins and Star Wars.   Think of the interior worlds in Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Vincente Minelli's An American In Paris (Gershwin).]

In fact, it is one of the jobs of the arts and creative writing to expand what politicians might think of as the art of the possible.  Inventions have been expanded by what was made visible in science fiction.  Visions of possible interactions and futures—in all of the arts—are essential for reimagining the state of our institutions and our society.  Even from a childhood of limited resources, a child used to invention can imagine expanding the art of the possible.  And building from that place, find joy.

First draft:

I.

It turns out that the art of the possible isn’t about art at all.  It’s about political pragmatism.  Politicians are said to use it when they give up long range goals to take up the goals that are possible given their time and place. For example, Republicans spent 40+ years with small local goals that led finally to the larger goal of electing a president who would dismantle the liberal state and democracy.  They are now, unfortunately, on the verge of turning over the government and its policies to millionaires for whom profit is all.  

Despite the state of politics, the art of the possible in the arts appears to have no limits except that of the human body itself.  That is, if the main agency of drama is the actor--as it is in my branch of the arts--a a staged drama would be limited only by the actors' dexterity of movement.  But once you add technology to written drama and the stage, what the actor can portray in that marriage increases exponentially.  It may even enter the realm of what is inconceivable and impossible.

Science fiction and fantasy does this on the page, without the restrictions of staging.  A human meets a friendly extraterrestrial and enters a whole new world of possibility in which the imagination expands in characters and in readers.  In film, we saw this in Mary Poppins and the Jedi in Star Wars.  Technology has a powerful home in film.  And film expands the possibilities of what can be depicted on stage and on the screen.  Interior worlds from Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Vincente Minelli's American In Paris (Gershwin) illustrate.

The art of the possible, then, is limited only by the material it employs.  Putting more than one type of matter in the pot increases possibilities.  On paper, collage and dada show this best. 3-D Constructs can incorporate amazing surprises.  Move an actor or dancer into 3-D space limits possibility until technology and film expand the possibilities again.  Remove the human/animal agent of action, and there are no limits except the imagination.

Given freedom, art—creation—is limited only by the minds and hearts of the artist and creative team.  This is the freedom artists expected when activist communists created the Soviet Socialist Republic, but instead found that art was restricted to that which promoted life under the new administration.  Realism was required, though the realism depicted conditions that were not yet established.  Fantasy.

II.

Let's try dialogue:

It is possible that I won't finish all I want to do in one lifetime. Do I then get another chance?  

Maybe.

What does it depend on?

Losing the "I."  

I will not remember who or what I was, though I might have a feeling that I've been here before?  

Yes, it is a stranger who undertakes the unfinished work, as soon as that person discovers what it is.

And the previous me evaporates into the spaces that matter and spirit go to replenish themselves.  With no sense of continuity?  

Yes.  Just trust the process.  Live fully.  Don't save anything up.  That won't help.

But what if it could help?  What if I left a narrative which the next person could find.  Or left clues.  Like, remember the bag of clues in the movie Paycheck? The protagonist loses his memory, but he leaves clues so he could discover the big task he had to do.  And he does.  And he is able to save the planet!

Is that your unfinished work, to save the planet?

It could be.  Reverse climate change, and evaporate the money of the billionaires so they have to find another way to live.

In your dreams.

Ok, in my dreams.  But dream is the first step to the possibility of becoming real.

I think you should just do what you are called to do in this space and time, and let the future take care of itself.  The past, too.  People should stop meddling with God's plan.

Do you actually believe there is a God who has a plan?

Yes, though it may not be a plan you might choose.

Think, though.  What if the plan included people like me who tried to communicate with those who came after them?  Remember the prophets?

Yes.  But come on now.  Don't make me laugh.  Just work with the people around you with integrity and purpose--and we'll see where it goes.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Writer's Circle Prompts.

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Writers Circle Prompt: Space, Time, and Dream

(I'm thinking of space and time and 

dream, Writers Circle prompts I

neglected.)  

Here in my safe space, I find the time 

and quiet I need to think and to write--

or need in order to write so I can think. 

It’s Christmas Eve day, a rare unscheduled day. 

Snow is falling gently, providing further

cushioning from the worlds of daily life,

passionate causes, meetings, and deadlines. 

 

Usually, these worlds crowd other goals 

out of my space, and so I make lists to organize 

the crowdedness.  Lists are quite often on the 

backs of open envelopes and half-finished 

poems scattered on my desk.  (That's where

I found the Writers Circle prompts.) 

In such a jumbled space, I lose things.   

I lose time sorting and resorting. 

I lose time to write—though I have great

lists of what I’ll write next.  And I lose

time to assemble my next poetry book,   

though I’ve listed titles and locations

of poems I want to include.  Should I add

haiku, I wonder?  I haven't lost the haiku 

because writing them is a morning ritual.

 

There you have it: Space and time are crowded

in my head, even when I’m sitting alone

in my apartment with a luscious free 

hour or two.  Pen on paper,

I find my head is full of multi-colored

swirls like paisley rushing around the edge

of my mind, trying to slow down enough

to get to the middle.  The brain cylinder is

on the run!  Emotion and spirit try

to stop it, sometimes laughing at it,

but always paying attention to colors

and shapes, thinking I should portray them in

acrylic on paper.  It’ll look like an infinity scarf,

laying down in a figure eight.  I put painting on

a list to think about later.

 

Thinking of inner space and time makes me

want to talk about visions of outer space

and time travel.  I haven’t taken time to read 

any of my beloved science fiction and

fantasy novels lately.  But I love how in

them, the possibility of life on other

planets looms large, beginning as dream and

prophesy, and ending up as reality—

whether friendly to earth beings or not.

Space travel and communication are

often advanced, while relations among

human and non-human agents of action

remain much as they are now.  

Among other things, authors ask if roles

and attitudes would change out of necessity

and invention.  One novel, The Merro Tree 

by Katie Waitman imagines a multi-species 

performance troupe traveling throughout 

the universe.  The troupe includes more types 

of performance and performers 

than live in our most diverse dreams.

Most of the fantasy novels I read

stay on earth, but change the time period.

Often the plot begins after catastrophic

events.  Here humans must figure out what

to value and how to survive.  One novel 

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline,

is influenced by indigenous culture in Canada 

and the USA.  The overwhelming problem 

is that most humans have lost the ability to dream, 

and the solution is in the bone marrow of

indigenous people.  Those in power

trap indigenous populations to experiment

on abstracting the bone marrow

for themselves.  The book raises old questions

about colonialism and takes them to an absurd—

but not improbable--level. To be human

requires dreaming. 

 

Here at Simpson House, I've started 

remembering my night time dreams.

I wake with snatches of dreams in my head,

the tail ends of something larger that I

don’t remember.  Once I woke in a canoe,

trying to learn how to steer; once I was 

at a meeting of friends.  The conversation

was passionate, but I don’t remember

the topic.   I haven’t gotten to the point

of deliberately trying to remember night dreams

and writing them down.  

 

Daytime dreaming and fantasizing, however,

are a conscious part of my human existence.  

Despite reading dystopian novels, I am 

optimistic about the future, and I am 

searching for the reason.  My latest dream

was that Kamala Harris would be president

of the USA, and that another four years of

democratic rule would ensure democracy

and programs that create more freedom

for the lower and middle classes.  That dream 

ended in November.  I’m optimistic that 

most of us will survive Trump, but as of yet, 

I’m not sure how.  I’m reading and listening, 

looking for reasons to be optimistic.  

I have to find them, so I don’t sink into 

depression and despair.  I'm trying to find 

a dream that could be a reality for refuges.

When I think of refugees from war,

political danger, and climate change,

I try to think of ways to accommodate

more of them.  What if I were among them? 

What would I want people to do along

the path of my journey?  Of my cat’s journey?  

I put this on a list to think about later.

And that's How my Garden Grows

A poem flowers in my garden,
spreading pollen and scent
to anyone who lingers. 
 
It may lead to strata beneath
or beyond reality, but
its words—its whorls of petals—
 
take us to where we want to go,
to where we must go
given this world and time.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Writer's Circle Prompts.

Please respect my copyright. 

Writer's Circle Prompt: Earth

 
Earth Collage
1.
I read through all my poems
to find references
to earth.  I find some
I scoop up and hold
In one hand.
 
In my other hand I hold
a small blue marble
earth as if I could see
home from a spaceship
in the solar system.
 
2.
Before bicycles
took over, entire
villages lived in
our broken gravel
driveway
 
We carved out
Intersections and
roads meticulously
with the side of our hands
 
For the routes of
die-cast cars, vans
and scratched-paint
pick-up trucks.
 
Plastic tracks on rugs
couldn’t compete
with our dirt tracks,
scratched knees
 
And smudged shirts
from making and
remaking our towns
after anger stomped
 
Or real cars rolled
them away
like sand paintings
in the winds of time.
 
 
3.
Back when I was sane
I labored at the Mum Farm.
No.
Back when I was insane
I labored at the Mum Farm
to find what I had lost.
No. 
It's hard to tell the truth.
 
Back then I found myself
squatting between rows of color,
knees and hands brown from being
kind to roots and buds while
upper teeth held my bottom lip
 
Back then, sweat from my forehead
moistened my forearms, my shirt stuck
to my back, and my hands found
the healing heart of Mother Earth.  
 
4.
Look at my body riddled with 70 years of scars
that I sanitize and cover with clothes.
Broken, I resemble earth or any one of its
family. I take my place between a rabbit
and a dogwood tree. Two of three of us siblings
move purposefully away from home and homeward,
while the stationary one grows up, down, and out
from its center, never detaching from Mother.
Mother Earth and Father Sky—that's what
I call them—embrace all their children.
I don't wiggle away defiantly, but claim my home,
where Earth and Sky know me holy
alongside wrens and other flying things,
alongside trees and fruits of flowers' labor, too.
Nothing stops them—not scars, clothes, nor my attempts
to disguise my brokenness. Let me, then, accept
this now wholly, embrace earth and sky and siblings
as they are, and open my heart to the moment's
beauty beyond truth, its joy beyond grief.
Together, we erode. We grow. And we evolve.
 
5.
I was closest to earth
when I owned a piece of it
and lived amid maple trees
wisteria and lilacs.
 
Outside I added rhoddies, roses,
pine trees, and a pink dogwood tree.
My hands were soiled from planting tomatoes,
peppers, and lettuce.  My sneakers were green
from mowing the front and backyard lawns.
 
Inside, I lived near all the windows:
360 degrees of weather
360 degrees of day and night
360 degrees of earth life
Flying, running, and tunneling.
 
 
Now my windows have 120 degrees to the southeast
with dawn, morning light, and afternoon shadow.
Magnolia trees and parking lots outside my windows,
A blessed garden down 2 elevators in back.
 
My clean hands hold poems
and one blue marble.
I am at home on earth.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright. 

 

Writing Circle Prompt: fire

 

A poem of fires

 

A poem is a series of brief fires.

The colors of autumn’s maple and aspen trees

condensed into word images.

 

Yellow, red and blue above the match I hold

and growing in the fireplace when wood catches

or in the burner of the gas stove.

 

And beyond all words, the urban fires

jumping from rooftop to rooftop, 

and forest fires leaping tree to tree.

 

The fires of war’s intentional death

burning innocent bodies and souls.

(Is this what Baldwin meant by “The fire next time”?)

 

Wait! 

We light candles against the dark

and for celebrating the miracles of light

and for remembering dead ones.

 

We see the fire of miracles like burning bushes

and other visions, the fireworks

of finding the way.

 

We see the fire of the sun and other stars,

fire impossible to imagine

unless as small and fast as a comet,

 

or reflected off the moon or lake

something that can’t be raked

unlike the gold and red of autumn leaves.

 

Yesterday the sky was afire

with Northern Lights—a marvel

so far south of the magnetic north.

 

Over the aspens and maples, the green and red

of aurora borealis reminds us

of a poem. 

 

                                                          My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Writers Circle Prompt: The Holy Water Cycle

 

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In code, we call our planet earth.

Indeed, that’s what I stand upon

and keep sight of, even when

in water.  I who seek the shore

for solace forget we could call

our home ocean, the larger part,

which overwhelms and mystifies.

Is gravity enough to keep

water in place? I wonder, then

marvel at the water cycle

and its sun-driven processes*

in words that roll off of my tongue: 

From any reservoir, water

evaporates and condenses,

precipitates, infiltrates,

runs off surfaces and gathers

again, molecules waving to

each other and bringing their trash

with them, baggage renewed each day.

 

Our bodies are also water

reservoirs, yet we focus on

the solid parts and overlook

our correspondence with the earth,

code name of our planet home.

Each minute we undergo it.

The water cycle. I want to

sound those two words as holy.  As

they are: Water Cycle.  Music

in my eardrums.  I hear the pulse

clearly when water’s in my ears,

when my fingers are in my ears.

This most amazing invention

of God and nature, unceasing

water cycle.  I don’t always

love it like I should when I thirst

or when my bowels want to burst—

and yet I would pledge allegiance

to it in a minute if faith allowed.

 

Faith lets me affirm holiness

and thus recognize water cycle

at the core of my belief.   God

exists. What grand design! Water

Cycle.  The words are code for life

on earth, for gills to breathe and for

seasons that transform it into art.

Nature is the first artist, first

Bible—creator of all we

long to imitate in science

and art and faith. Whew!  Talk about

survival and we talk about water.

Talk about air and we talk of

water.  Talk of dry land and talk

water.  Water Cycle.  Water

music.  Walking on water.   Prayer.

If you don’t stand up whispering

water cycle with reverence,

I have failed at this holy dance.

 

 #

 

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright.