Great topic humanodon.

In Paul Auster's recent memoir Winter Journal, he begins a section like this:

The inventory of your scars, in particular the ones on your face, which are visible to you each morning . . . You seldom think about them, but whenever you do, you understand that they are marks of life, that the assorted jagged lines etched into the skin of your face are letters from the secret alphabet that tells the story of who you are, for each scar is the trace of a healed wound, and each would was caused by an unexpected collision with the world

Wonderful writing, no? - and then he does take an inventory of scars. This particular memoir begins with his attempt to

try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenoenology of breathing.

I took this idea from Paul Auster and turned it into an activity for the writing workshops I teach -- beginning with, make an inventory of your scars BOTH INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL. -- then pick one and turn it into a poem or short story.

This book may not speak to everyone, but I took idea after idea from it and turned them into writing activities. I've written about Auster in previous Hubski discussions.