Optional: Past + Present

Additional Activities

Want to do more? Try some or all of these optional activities.

Stretch: More Writing

Add a Memory: So far, your capsule description has focused on direct observation in real time. Now connect the present details with a memory from the past. It might involve the same natural place or another place you remember. Do you think this changes the quality of your capsule description? Has it become a fuller anecdote or mini-story?

Try Other Capsules: Write capsule descriptions of city places or people, too, depending on what you observe. Describing people and the way they interact often introduces more action into a description, which, in turn, can lead to a story.

Make a Haibun: Combine your capsule description (aka prose poem) and haiku to create a haibun, a double form made popular centuries ago by the poet known as Bashō. He lived from 1644–1694, describing his travels around Japan in notebooks that combined prose with poetry. A sample haibun from Bashō: ^[1]

“I left my rundown hut beside the river during the eighth month of 1684, placing my trust in my walking stick and in the words of the Chinese sage who said, ‘I pack no provisions for my long journey – entering emptiness under the midnight moon.’ The voice of the wind was oddly cold.

Weather-beaten bones,
I’ll leave my heart exposed
to cold, piercing winds”

Here are two options for creating your own haibun: (1) maintain the first-person voice in your capsule description, as Bashō often does in his travelogues; or (2) take out all personal pronouns and references to yourself, nodding to the Buddhist tradition of non-attachment to “I.” ^[2]

Do you like your capsule better the second way? With either option, you can make the imagery from your haiku picture part of the haibun as well.

Respond: More Reading

Read: First-Person Journalism, Chapter 6 (“Observing Real Life,” especially the first three sections: “Relevance Versus Vagueness,” “Three Kinds of Details,” and “Conveying the Feel of a Place”). Try some of the “Voice Lessons” in this chapter, adding them to your Process Notebook.

Watch: “The Contemplative ‘I’: Zen and the Art of Autobiographical Fiction,” a talk by Buddhist writer Ruth Ozeki.^[3]

Respond: Reflect on and write about what you think of the reading or Ozeki’s talk in your Process Notebook (see suggested prompts in the box below).

Writing Groups: Connecting with Others

Discuss: When meeting with your group (or partner), address the discussion prompts below, especially if you’ve done the suggested readings or watched the video.

Exchange Capsules: Share revised capsule descriptions (or haibun), offering supportive feedback.