2.  Describe an ordinary place as if you are writing about it for someone who has also never seen it and has no reference for it (someone in a distant country, perhaps, or aliens from another planet).

The automatic doors slide open, revealing a sea of blank walls, white coats, and emotionless frowns. Beeps and hushed whispers amongst the bobbing waves of spectacled adults add little flavor to the drab atmosphere. If the feel of a place were a color, Sarah thinks to herself, this building would be beige. She hated beige. The colorful blocks and encouraging coos of Sarah’s second grade classroom seem years, not hours, away. A low growl to her left startles her, and she gasps – it is a man as big, hairy, and frightening as the monsters she had seen in storybook illustrations. He grabs her wrist, pressing against the bruises underneath her striped cotton T-shirt, and pulls her closer. She sees a long, black hair stemming like a beanstalk from a lumpy mole on his ring finger, and she feels sick. Sarah whimpers as he wraps a yellow band around her wrist. The mysterious, beautiful woman who had taken Sarah from class glares at the troll. With every passing moment, Sarah is more and more convinced that this glamorous stranger is her fairy godmother. Together, Sarah and the fair lady glide through the grey, ghostlike men and women. The lighting bleaches everything, warping colors and shadows like Sarah has never seen before. She cannot decide whether she is excited or terrified. Even a beige world would be better than the world of shadows she is leaving behind, she decides. A troll might be scary, but nothing can compare to the witches and dragons that lurk in the shadows back home.

3.  Describe a place/scene as viewed by way of a reflection in a window.  Thus, there is the superimposing of the reflected scene on top of what is seen through the window. How do the two scenes come together?

Two large, unblinking green eyes. Desirous, longing eyes, lusting after the towering trees and rugged wilderness beyond the windowpane. He cannot even fathom the endlessness of the wood. Uncharted, this backyard was in desperate need of conquest. He is just the one to do it, he knows. He sits, flexing his legs and licking his lips in anticipation, on top of a beaten-up, ragged and torn leather couch. The domestic life, one that he had never asked for, but one that was expected of him, was squelching his adventurous soul. His father, his mother, and their father and mother before them, had grown accustomed to this life, perhaps even reveled in it. But he, an adventurous soul, had never asked for a life confined to the home. Peering out the crystal-clear window, he dreams of escape. He could feel the soft, summer grass against his bare feet. He could smell the sweetness of the air, permeated with the smell of honeysuckles and chlorine. He could feel the gentle wind against his face as he ran into the wood, to the trees, and began to climb. He would hide in the branches, making his home there, living the wild life amongst the other cats of the forest. He could hunt for his own game, right underneath the clear, starry Arizona skies. Staring intently through the window, his dreams carry him days and years away. But then a smell – is that tuna? – interrupts his reverie. With a flick of his tail, he bounds gracefully off of the sofa and scampers into the kitchen, where his unsuspecting owners have filled his dinner bowl. One more night, he decides; he will stay for one more night.

4.  Start with a place-name.  It may be a place you know, or one you have never visited.  In either case, it should be a place-name you find evocative. This assignment is about the power of the name: you are writing about the name as much as, or possibly more than, the place.  Think about how you encountered the name, and how it became resonant for you.  You may make the name prominent in your theme, or barely mention it. 

Seattle. There must be water. After all, it is in the name. Sea. Attle? I think of the quirky, young, hip adults that energize the city with lofty goals and aspirations. The “attle” could also be a kind of obscure bird, which would make sense considering the comically eerie amount of birds flitting around the coast. There’s a peculiar vibrancy to the enunciation, too. You have to smile just the tiniest bit to say the word, at least the beginning. Depending on how you feel, you can round out the name professionally, really enunciating those final t’s, or playfully, switching out those hard consonants for softer, more approachable “d’s.” Both sounds fit Seattle, a city in which inhabitants have the option to choose your own adventure. Business and arts districts are definitively circumscribed on opposite ends of the city, providing widely disparate means of entertainment on either end. Bars, music, and drugs for some, picket fences, cubicles, and three-course meals for others. These two worlds, the lives of the bearded and of the clean-shaven, seldom intersect. When they do, you can see it: a mutual distaste and look of self-affirmed judgment. These two have more in common than they think, however. That is, you can dissect Seattle in another, all-unifying way. Sea-at-tle. Fog, cold, rain. Wherever you turn, there is water, water, everywhere. Sometimes, you can feel it in the air you breath, filling your lungs and dripping down to your toes. It is the bone-chilling liquidity of the city that unites all who live in Seattle. No matter how you slice the word, you will always have the water.

5.   Describe a place moving from something specific to something large—or move from the very large (vast even) to the very specific. Let the movement suggest some form of disclosure or revelation.

Sheer terror fills his seventy-two year-old heart as they begin their descent. He can see his hometown of Portland, Maine as he has never seen it before. It is much more organized, cut into bisecting blocks and ovals, than he would have guessed from the strange driving patterns he had experienced on the roads for thirty years. The plane is filled with a gentle hum. They soar over the ocean, above the rocky beaches that he had spent most of his youth on after school. They look like golden strings scattered through the wild green terrain, washed ashore by the towering waves. The passengers are hushed, quietly watching over Portland, just as he is. He notices his mouth is agape, and closes it quickly, embarrassed. Had the stewardess noticed? He looks down, through the window again. He can see his Church – how small it is, next to the hospital! But how much larger it seems on the ground level. Strange. They near the airport, and veer dangerously near to the ground. Are  they going to make it? The small houses grow larger and larger, and the beetle-sized cars loom closer. He grips the handles of his seat. He closes his eyes, shifting his dentures in his mouth around with his tongue. They touch down, and he can feel his brain jostling in his skull. The earth seems to open below him, and he screams. They are roaring, burning down the tarmac. Slowly, through the screaming, they come to a gentle halt. He opens his tired eyes, and looks around. The other passengers stare at him with a mixture of pity and annoyance. He is shocked, happy, and wholly alive. Home.