What the Heck is This Words | Pictures Thing?
It’s a blog. Beyond that, no promises as to what exactly it will be.
I’m a creative writer and picture taker since the age of having hair and braces. Now, I focus mostly on nature and our fraught place in it. Rather than morning pages or journalling, which are productive habits for many writers, I like to walk with my camera, see what catches my eye, and snap the image. And pretty soon I’m lost in the cadence of walking and looking, and then a line or a fragment comes from the ether. I’ve learned to follow. The line might be part of a novel I’m working on. It might be short and unto itself. Whichever it is, this routine is the one dependable thing that awakens my muse and sets me to my writing for the day, and I hope it brings a moment of reflection or inspiration to yours.
I call some of what I’ll do here, these short pieces, One Thing, but they are really two; a picture paired with short prose. The subject could be anything. Like poems or stray thoughts but inspired by the photography. Rather than talk about process, I’d rather just do it. And I’ll share other creative work, both brief and long. A story, a poem, an essay. Whatever these posts are, their intent is to both sharpen my blade and hopefully carve out some quiet space for you in the middle of our chaotic days.
Another World
The coffee grows cold again this morning. I've forgotten it exists, lost in the brief escape where thoughts and words are colliding in a tenuous weave. The computer screen glows in the coming light. One moment words are a failed lift off, the next its outer space. Into the wormhole and time is bent into a different realm. What I am left with, the words assembled on the screen, is a mystery as to how they appeared and where time went.
Creativity After 50
In my head there should be a factory
Unfortunately it may be closing
It’s more like a dying pet store
animals abandoned
shelled seeds strewn on cage floors
birds flutter around the bars
searching to fly free
peck for seeds but live on
stray chaff
Sustenance
…What a surreal nightmare to live through. Every person you’ve ever known and every person they have ever known only knew this way of life. Until the exact day when tomorrow became unknown and yesterday became never again…
October Storm
…Ollie the dog was leaping
at the sliding door. Opened
the cold air
rushed in
and he rushed out
bounding into the yard
barking at nothing
I could see except
the white grass…
