Where is the Space in Your Story?
A sense of space can mean different things: geographical space, physical space, emotional space, and personal space.
Tourists looking out from an observation pod on The London Eye, UK. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2001
Above the City
Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. To boldly go where no one has gone before.
I think I've missed a bit out from the middle. Give me a second and I'll look it up. Ah yes.
Its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go...
The Starship Enterprise
I remember it like I remember saying grace at school. I remember sitting down to watch with great excitement the latest episode of Star Trek on a Saturday afternoon. My favourite episodes were always the ones featuring a planet of glamourous women, often aliens intent on bringing destruction to the earth, killing all humans and occupying the Starship Enterprise.
I'm probably cobbling together any number of different episodes here. The leader, always the most beautiful, seduces Captain Kirk. Spock, suspicious, confronts the Captain. They fight. Spock brings out his party trick and puts the Captain to sleep by placing his hand on his shoulder by his neck. With the Captain comatose. The real work gets done. The aliens reveal themselves as the predatory, murderous beings we, the audience, have suspected all along. Captain Kirk wakes up, realises his error of judgement and sets to organising his crew to form an attack on the said aliens. Spock and Kirk become friends again.
The end.
A Sense of Space
This week, let's write about space. You could write about outer space. Or you could write about environmental space, mental space, the physical space you take up as a human body, your domestic space or the unconscious space of your dreams. It's really up to you.
You might want to start from this week's picture of a pod from the London Eye. What strikes me about this picture is how close everybody is. Check it out! Right next to each other.
Have you found, through the pandemic, your sense of personal space has changed?
I watched a woman today ask a couple to move their chairs away from her as they went to sit down outside on the cafe patio. They were less than two feet from her table. I wondered if they'd forgotten the social distancing rules for a moment. Or if they hadn't thought about them at all. Our sense of personal space has shifted. What's your experience?
Write it all down. Extra points for getting Captain Kirk in there too.
