Here is a list (so far) of the Calvino-inspired "incipits" written in ENGL 343:
- Traversing through the Winding Road (Ann Luu)
- A Look Beyond the Bridge (Bertha Bey)
- When There is No Story at All (Jackie Kennard)
- From the Deep Dark Cells of Isolation (Bryan Pierson)
- Swimming Through a Sea of Defiance (Randall Ford)
- Across the Dark Expanse (Philip Miller)
- Cowering in the Darkest Chasms (Jennifer Parker)
- Neighborhood Lawns in the Middle of September (Wes Shephard)
- "Rock!" said Mary (Jason Obenschain)
- The Drawn Pavement of October Nights (Lindsey Williams)
I used a blend of randomness and to specific ideas to create my links. I wanted to have fun and make people possibly smile or laugh when they went to where my link went to. For various of the links I would enter words into google and see what pops up. If I liked what poppped up, I would maybe make link to it. I decided to not put any links to pictures of caves although I came close to do doing that. It forces people to use their imagination versus getting a picture of cave given to them. Other times I may had a theme going that tried to make link to.
I used to be a very active caver and serious caver. These days, I don’t have time to do it like I used to. I miss it. I used to spend every weekend of my life crawling, climbing, rappelling of into caves, jumping off of cliffs, and all sort of other crazy cool stuff in caves.
The links I created reflect some of my caving experiences. Part of caves can have infamous nicknames for what people go through in them. I made the link the “The Nut Cracker” based off of that. There is a cave I’ve been in that has this really tight section nicknamed “The vasectomizer!” Other names I’ve come across for areas of caves include are like “The Corkscrew,” “Fat Man’s Misery,” “The Humble Pie Crawl,” and the “The Devils Pinch.” I think I heard about one called “The Hydraulic Press.”
The link to “powered sugar” for powered sugar reflects travering through sections of a cave. If you start on the wet end and then go through the dry end which has a crawl threw choking dust, you come out like a red powedered donut.
The links that refer to “You continue down into blackness…..” reflected my background in doing vertical caving. I loved vertical caving. It was neat to go down into black void to of nothingness where you migth not see bottom when rappelling in cave. It was also kinda spooky too. All that I might see before hitting bottom sometimes was a little speck of light at the of the cave which was usually maybe my belayer if someone had gone down before. Other times, I may not see anything below people till I hit bottom.
I also like to play with words. The word “Senses” sounds like “Census” when you say it. So put a link to a census.