Just starting Nurridin Farah's Links.
Eating: A blood-orange and cherries. It is a syrup fruit kind of afternoon.
Listening to: Lisa Hannigan, The Low Anthem, Sam Cooke
Weeping still because of Happy. This book made me look at myself in a way that I never had before. I remember hearing somewhere that an alcoholic/addict/self-destructive person is always strung this way, even when they are sober this inner screw of needing to feel, needing to create or feel all things in a room still grinds holes into their being. This quote got me: "I only know how to return all the love people give me with cruelty." I did have some criticism going on in my head as I was reading. For instance, he gets away with a lot of shenanigans and if he were from a lesser privileged community he would have been locked up in no time. In any case, every book, voice, piece of art functions as it is and will resonate, may even inspire some folks while at the same time putting off others. The risk of putting experience and creative works out there is where the beauty lies. I will probably re-read it as it is a quick one- still pulling out the dagger of last breath it left in my chest.
I got a new camera (digital SLR) for christmas and I think I am in love. I had an inkling that I am an image-oriented person (probably because my ears lack auditory acuity), but this new world of moment-capturing, movement-slowing art is all my fingertips can feel- they shutter-flutter even in my sleep.
It's official. Maggie, Mandi and Kara are starting an online literary journal- "The Wild Mind." What started out as a group of us meeting to free write (thanks to Natalie Goldberg) at Mayday each weekend has now turned into a full on project. Our mission statement is on our blog and we are working on an actual website so that we can have the first issue up by Spring/Summer!!!! Wholey F-Holes right!?
I have that tip of the tongue feeling going on except that it is the tip of my toes feeling...details are lodged in my un-flexed, ex-dancer foot. So much writing and music and art to explore that my body must MOVE.
Thinking about characters and how we describe relationships- streaming, turns of phrase, transition...and how, for me, dialogue holds characters.
I have been stretching and breathing a lot lately- trying to open open open and do different and new things each day rather than getting stuck into sterile habits.
I captured this with my old digital on my drive to South Dakota a couple of weeks ago when a tree-shattering frozen rain fog cloud-hazed the farmland outside Watertown:
