New Day #9

Did another Twyla Tharp exercise today, which sounds like I whirled about in a flexed-footed modern dancey manner when in fact I did one of the creativity exercises in her book (see New Day #7). This one involved going to a bookshelf and opening a book at random to see what text you find. I must admit that, when I mentioned this to several creative people at a party tonight, they all looked at me like, "You've never done that before?" Apparently I'm a negligent creative. An artistic slacker.

I tried to make the task more interesting by choosing a section of the public library I'd never been to, in which case I chose Biology. The first book I chose was about ornithology. I'll resist the urge to say the page was for the birds, but it really was dull. I learned afterwards that I shouldn't have been so literal, that I could have used the idea as the jumping off point for notions of flight or song or, I don't know, feathers. But I just put it back and scanned the shelves looking for an interesting title instead. Which is how I found Sperm Wars, which is kind of like Star Wars except for, well, sperm.This was infinitely more interesting. For instance, the book says that ten percent of children born are not actually the biological children of the men who father them. We're not talking about adoption here. We're talking about mom gettin' a little extra man sauce on the side. Because, get this, women supposedly are more likely to conceive through a casual fling because they're more apt to be unfaithful when they're in their fertile phase.

Of course, there's no proof, but it did get me thinking.