Detail

It is no small task gathering the creativity that happens in my head while I'm going about my daily life and getting it to stick with me when I sit down at my desk to write. It's like the aura of the computer is some kind of force field within which such creativity cannot exist. It vexes me. It vexes me, and I'm determined to figure out a way to do this. Natalie says to keep pushing, to press through to the real, not to get scared or give up or settle for anything less than the deep, that which eludes me and flees every time I try to word it.

So I push through to snapshots of the real that I've seen and noted mentally over the past few days, like last night --or rather this morning at like 1:30am--as I was reading and I noticed how the angle of the reading lamp made my hand look old and wrinkled. It reminded me of my mother's hand, which isn't all that unusual since my hands are shaped almost exactly like hers--the only notable difference being that her nails were always rounded and mine are more squared. With each scar I earn (usually burns and cuts from cooking), they look more like Mama's hands. I don't mind.

It's hard to remember snapshots while sitting here chasing them in my mind. I think maybe I should start carrying my journal with me everywhere, even around the house like I do with my phone. Maybe I should make a journal-sized bag with a phone pocket on the side and a long strap to sling over me so I can always have it on no matter where I might be. I'm grinning at the visual, but I really like the idea. A bag like that would be easy enough to make, and I enjoy sewing. I'm going to do it.

I was completely enamored yesterday when I came across a word--elegiac--which I'd never heard before. When I went to look it up, I discovered a whole group of literary terms I either had never heard of, or I'd forgotten since Mama Nich's high school AP English class. I felt like a kid in a candy store rushing through web pages defining the terms and digging to understand the insides of a Latin poetic form called a dactylic hexameter couplet. I'm still working on it.