"matrix +, a chance story realised"

 

One of my greatest pleasures is sharing my work with my grandchildren. Usually, when they stay over and we have more time, they like to spend time with me in my studio doing things they rarely get a chance to do anywhere else. I like to try to get them away from their devices some of the time and since they feel comfortable using my computer, I encourage them to use it as a creative tool as well. We have made many little books and works later transformed from ideas explored digitally.

Recently, my youngest grand-daughter (13), who is the least interested in "ART" was looking through "Matrix" and quite interested in the "weird" pages. We explored some pages as open-ended stories, orally which worked well. Since she quite likes writing, I asked her to choose her favourite page and make her own story. 

She spent the afternoon playing with my little book and I was just so impressed with her focusing for so long on this one task and then absolutely thrilled with her little teenage story that resulted. It takes off, hardly stopping for breath just like the way she speaks. I feel a little uncomfortable sharing this precious moment on my blog but I hope you will forgive my indulgence.

" "One night when she was in her office late working on a project, she saw her very first shooting star, so of course, she made the wish which had stayed the same for every birthday, Christmas and whenever she blew on a dandelion. Para Alargar had always dreamt of going to England, especially the country town Borne.

That exact night that she was talking to one of her work colleagues about Borne, this happened.

“Para Alargar please go to gate 36” the PA system announced. Believe it or not, Para was going on the next available flight to Heathrow airport and would then jump on a taxi and take the long drive to Borne.

The second that she passed the ‘Welcome to Borne’ sign it all clicked. The reason why she has always wanted to come here, was, Para’s mum grew up here and so did all the females in the whole of the McClure generations except for Para.

It was finally time for Para to leave England. She had decided to make it a new tradition, to go to Borne every autumn from now on."