Weeks 5 & 6 Redux: Spinning Down the Page

This weekend, Dianne and I did the "spinning" exercise in a Google document that allowed us to edit the same piece simultaneously. Once you get over the weirdness of writing in front of someone, joint writing like this is really very efficient. This exercise was surprisingly fun and surprisingly long.

For your viewing pleasure, Dianne 'filmed' the process and you can view it here:

The text itself is available after the jump.

We decided to alternate every two lines, allowing each of us to work off what the other had done before taking a tack of our own. I've found these exercises to be helpful in the past for my personal use as a warm up and a kind of tuning process. Done jointly, it was equally helpful (from my perspective) to let us exercise being in tune with each other.

The story so far: Anah and Dianne don't know nearly enough about video editing, but they are pretty good spellers. They can finish each others' sentences with relative alacrity and can spin a pretty good yarn.

This is a story about a sterile bubble breaking.
A man with too many goals and not enough
flexibility tries to make a place for his children to
grow up with the life he didn’t have.
A man who stopped driving in one direction learns
how to change directions to achieve the same
goals without losing himself in the process. He
finds that rescuing people is not always about
emergencies. Sometimes the people who need him
most are the ones waiting quietly, patiently right
beside him. Walking away from one life opens up
the possibility of a future unimagined. A man devoted
to his work learns that work alone won’t make
him happy. His family is more than financial stability
and high-minded opportunities. The simple pleasures
of life must be learned just like arithmetic. Without
someone to teach the children, they might never
see the joy in a raindrop or the sounds made by
frogs. They need spontaneity and compassion as
much as they need discipline. When money can buy
perfection, imperfection becomes priceless.
The children aren’t the only ones who need to
learn; their father has lost the knowledge, if he ever
knew how to be open and carefree. If one is
always spotless and sterile, there is no soil in which
to grow or from which to draw nourishment. Play
is vital, but forgotten by a man who makes his
living creating games in a virtual reality. When a
man whose life is rooted in viscera and accidents
collides with the sterile bubble he so carefully
maintains, change is inevitable. But change comes
slowly, especially when people are separated by
the vast expanse of a house too big for three or
four or more, when a new member is brought into
the family after being rescued. Some habits die
slowly, if ever. Taking responsibility for a life
together, even the life of a stray dog, brings about
a sense of unity they’d been lacking. Unity leads
to intimacy but neither man can be sure of
his place in relation to the other. Only through
the absence of one or the other can they begin to
find their balance and see how they are already
bound together. Outside the haven of their home
the world is not certain whether or not their idea
of a family works, but for the children, the growing
attachment and sense of security they find in
their new family is answer enough. Both men
find it easy to think of the children before themselves
but that is not enough. The illusion of a family
must be made real. Acknowledging their bond
only seems right once they learn to trust what
they feel when there is nothing keeping them apart.
For a young man seeking a new role that will
offer him the security he has lacked all his life,
this new family is a welcome surprise. For a man
who has made his fortune programming reality,
real life has never been satisfying enough until
now, when his life seems more full and more real
than ever before. Sometimes the addition of
a new person can illuminate what is missing in a
life, holding up a mirror. When the white
picket fence is more than just wood and paint,
but the hard work and care put into every
nail and brush stroke, the cliche can be right
without being static. Smudges and stains are
nothing to be covered over, but rather are the
signs of a well-loved, well-lived life. More than
walls and a roof and food are needed to make
children thrive. They need to know that they are
as important as the roses on the trellis and the
perfect paint on the mailbox, and they need
responsibilities of their own. Their father’s life
is all responsibilities. He may delegate, but he
feels the weight of each decision made in
his name; giving over control to anyone is
a failure--or so it seems at first. Once it
happens, he finds that instead it feels more
like success. Trust earned is rewarded by
trust given, and trusting someone with his
children proves to be the bigger step. After,
trusting someone with his heart seems
simple. But he still has to be careful, because
the decisions he makes for himself affect
everyone who depends on him. No one is
more aware of consequences than the man
beside him. They both know the risks and
have to trust what the children have been
hoping for--that they are already a family.
Life is just waiting for the two of them to
catch up and realize that the changes they
fear have already happened. Once they
have enough evidence, the question is
answered. The spectre of mortality often
reveals the basic truths hiding beneath
fears and uncertainties. Everything is
as it was before, from the outside. The
engine has changed. Two people living
side by side, but where once they were
separate, now they are together, and
for each other as well as their children.