Darwin and His Rabbits, A Fairytale

As my previously written post indicates, this next tip tapping is the result of a zippy free writing produced from a word association exercise. We took out a piece of paper, folded it into 4 columns, wrote 1-10 in the margin, and as quickly as we could, wrote down 10 words, any words. We then passed it to our right, and wrote 1o more words free associated from the words written on the left, and so on, until there were a total of 40 words on the page.

We then had to unfold the paper and write a story using all 40 of these words…in order from left to right, working through all 10 lines. We could not change the original form. If it said run, you could not change the tense to ran if that fit better, etc.. And it had to make sense. As in, it couldn’t be a story that just slammed all of the words together like when you were a kid eg.The unicorn ran into sausage toilet paper on his way to yellow(I just made that up. Pretty good, right?) …you get the picture. I didn’t manage to evade leaps of logic; this will be evident upon partaking in the odd feast that is my brain unleashed at the end of a rigorous eve of writing.

The quality of some of my classmates’ work was astonishing. Such polished prose.

In retrospect, it doesn’t particularly matter that I had mostly basic vocabulary to work with. It’s not important that the pieces read were better than mine, because I lost myself in it and burst into laughter at one point because it was so much fun and such a release from the overly weighty “But I am an ARTISTE!” sayeth I, flourishing fountain pen in the air.

The words bolded and italicized are the 40 from the page I had to work from. Some words appear twice or more because they were free associated by different people.

“One can be certain that the most compelling story of all time is definitely a fairytale. One of Grimm’s, in fact: a little known tale called, “The Unbreakable Dancing Monkey.” What most of us do not realize is that this is the origin of evolution theory. Forget Darwin! He is merely a fiction lover stranded lonely in a sea of confusion, based principally upon this fabrication.

(Another ill-forgotten fact: Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” initially had humans evolving directly from rabbits)!

Darwin’s heart ached when he realized the error of his ways. He had the urge to cover up the facts and murder the Brother’s Grimm.

That same evening, he strolled into the mist. The mist turned to rain. He became ever so very wet, soaked, in fact, when suddenly the rose of his brilliant mind blossomed from the buds of his eternal sorrow. Spring had sprung like a lithe gymnast on a spring board.

He’d nearly fallen down with his own misery and ineptitude, like a kaleidoscope of leaves in autumn. But nary a worry, he was of the Spring. His genius blossomed purple flowers that rose yellow under his careful watch.

He went home, strapped on his satchel, and returned into the bitter cold. He ran until it hurt. He felt an extraordinary yell climb up and out of his throat.

“Coffee, cream, I must get to work! Genius, it’s genius, I say!”

In his ecstasy, with words erupting as lava from his lips, he tripped and tumbled onto the rocky earth in a punishing  face plant.”