The Spring Sky
From orange to orange
You’re reading the quarterly newsletter of The Dream Side, a collective of friends, novelists, and teachers: Meng Jin, Rachel Khong, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy. We’ll send this newsletter at the start of each new season, and share craft essays and writing prompts in addition to our forthcoming offerings.
Writing prompt: Follow orange
Follow the color orange. Where does it lead you? Is that place now or in another time? Is the orange fleeting, seasonal, accidental, fixed? Do any feelings or memories emerge? Is anything suddenly apparent? What does orange reveal that you didn’t notice before? Let yourself move associatively. Let one orange lead to another.
The Dream Side on orange
Rachel: My cat is a little bit orange. So is the trim on my house, and the cape honeysuckle blooms that the hummingbirds frequent. For several mornings now I’ve been lighting a candle before I begin to write. A way of inviting the mystery to collaborate with me. Today the flame is jumping and dancing—exuberantly, like it has too much to say. An excitable orange in the tall blue candle. Recently I read that the chakra associated with orange is the sacral chakra, at the abdomen, having to do with creativity, sexuality, sensuality, pleasure—it makes me think of that alive-feeling orange of fires, that shape-shifting orange that has some yellows and browns and blues in it too. My life has been a few years of doing what I’m supposed to do—task after task, appointment after appointment, obligation after obligation. At this moment I want to do differently: I want to follow the orange, what makes my life more flickering and joyful and alive.
Shruti: A few months ago, my partner gifted me a felt board (not orange) and installed it above my desk so I could pin notes and pictures and things to it, a few weeks ago my partner pinned a picture that is a still from the movie Mississippi Masala at the top of it because they are way taller than me, and now I look at it all the time. Near the center of the frame, a young man and woman walk together, the man facing backwards, the woman forward, wearing an orange silk salwaar kameez that I know to be the director’s own. They’re on a beach, and the bottom of their pants are both wet, but they are feet from the water now, water that reflects the sunset colored sky. The kameez is orange, but so is the light, low: golden light that makes their skin look lambent. The light too is the director, Mira Nair’s own: she fell in love with the man who would become her husband while making this movie and moved to the house in Uganda they filmed part of the movie in. That kind of light that makes everything gorgeous, that charges each object with the excitement of desire, somehow casts itself onto the viewer, that generous orange light of desire.
Meng: First the tangerine haze of San Francisco dusk, next poppies poking out of sidewalk cracks, next construction cones, next nasturtiums through a chain-link fence, a traffic sign, the blinking halt! hand, crosswalk lines, paint splashes on a mural; “follow orange,” Susanna said, and I do what I’m told, on my evening walk with my orangish dog to see Jeremy Touissant-Baptiste’s “Unmarked Car” at the art school down the street, where a naked not-police car sat parked (orange headlights). The artist said, “the only rule is don’t get in the backseat,” and turned it on, and for a long time orange didn’t appear. First there was dancing on the hood, handstands on the roof, subwoofer in the trunk: the vehicle of violence turned into a site of play. Next somebody brought a hammer and tapped a beat, next spray paint—neon yellow and orange!—and orange got angry, wrote FUCK ICE and FUCK TRUMP, orange spoke the names of loved ones wronged, and the hammer smashed, and the engine sputtered and died, and orange headlights blinked in alarm: “follow orange,” if orange is what can happen when you make different rules, point to a different (orange) aspect of reality.
Upcoming Offerings from The Dream Side
We’ve been busy preparing for GREEN HOURS, a generative writing retreat we’re hosting at Steamboat Inn in Southern Oregon. We can’t wait to spend five days by the river, writing and dreaming with other writers. See some of you in a little over a week! (Applications are closed, but be sure to subscribe to this newsletter to be notified of future offerings.)
News & Links
YES, MOLECULE, our year-long generative novel class, is off to a magical start. We’ve been so inspired by our students’ attention, creativity, and commitment to writing, and we’re looking forward to all that we’ll learn together in the months ahead.
Susanna wrote a letter about a phone booth at the edge of a continent for McSweeney’s 81. On April 26, she’ll give a short reading in Boston as part of the 50th Annual PEN/Hemingway Award Ceremony (Awake in the Floating City is a finalist). This summer, she’ll teach a novel workshop at the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference (registration opens in April).
Meng is struggling to write the penultimate scene of her novel.
This April, join Rachel in celebrating the release of My Dear You! She will be in Boston (4/7, Lovestruck), New York (4/9, The Strand), San Francisco (4/16, Green Apple), and Los Angeles (4/23, Skylight). Preorder the book from your favorite bookstore.
Shruti’s new novel, Margret & Vishnu, will be published by Algonquin Books in Summer 2027! She will be teaching at Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Lab this summer, applications close on 3/22. She also has a story in McSweeney’s 81. Her story in Elastic Magazine’s first issue was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
