I’m brimming with ideas and creative urgency. I know I can’t/won’t get it all done but while things are percolating, I want to get some of it down.

I began a short story yesterday. It’s an idea that came to me over the holidays which, in and of itself, is something to celebrate! (getting an idea while busy doing lots of non-writing activities!)

While driving to and from Maine (and a wonderful Christmas with my younger son and gorgeous granddaughter!) I thought and thought and thought about it. Thinking about a story and writing it are two different things. But I’ve also learned that thinking it through is most advantageous. I believe that in the past I’ve sometimes been too eager to begin too soon. I’m still a bit uncertain about the unfolding of this tale, but nonetheless, I’ve begun and am excited about it.

I’ve signed up for a second round of Exquisite Corpse! Yay. That’s all I can say: yay!

I’m thinking of writing and illustrating some books for Cadi, my three and a half year old granddaughter. Um. Perhaps I should change that to A book.
Having been involved in the process of online publishing (see Third Person Press) makes me realize that I can do this for her, for myself and for very little money. And who knows where that might lead. Children’s books were an interest a long time ago and one that I studied and worked at for a long time. It would be good to get back to it. I have several ideas in the percolator.

A book about the house we live in. This has been an idea since we moved here. The house is old, we know a lot of the history of it and it’s interesting! I’ve been approached by a friend/historian/writer about it. He is doing a book about an old house on the island that has been in his wife’s family for many many years and has two houses other than mine that he’d like to see a book on. In other words, a series.

I’ve been thinking about it and know that my style of book would be completely different from a historian’s. But here’s what I’m thinking of including: some of my *artsy* photos of details of the house and yard, short personal essays, historical essays, and historical fiction, maybe a poem or two, maybe drawings and perhaps some transcripts of interviews with a woman named Georgie who grew up in the house. That sounds long but I think I would have to be extremely selective. Some of the fictional parts are necessary because 1) I write fiction and 2) there are gaps in our historical knowledge of the house and 3) filling in those gaps with conjecture would make the project fun to write and more fun to read!

So we’ll just have to see about that. It’s a huge project and I have no idea if my vision of it would be acceptable for this particular series of books. But it’s a definite maybe.

Then there’s that unfinished novel from last November…….

This must be done: I have two stories that are CLOSE to being ready to send out to possible publishers. I must do quick revisions, maybe give them to someone to review and get them out!

See other stories about and photos of our old house
Putting on a new roof: http://nancywaldman.net/2007/07/25/the-up-side-of-outside/
The White Lilac Fact/Fairy Tale: http://nancywaldman.net/2007/06/20/of-things-dreamed-of/
Near-by Fires and what I learned about what’s most important: http://nancywaldman.net/2007/05/17/weather-or-not/

Time for Sarcastic Mom’s Weekly Winners again. Where’d the week go? This we we had Valentine’s Day and very cold weather so the photos reflect those things (I barely went out of the house). Plus a portrait of one of the dogs.

Catching Flakes
focused on the snowflakes, not the trees!

Yellow Rose of Nova Scotia

Frosty Landscape

Wintree

Winter’s Edge

Summer in winter

Look for more great Weekly Winner photos from this week here.

Today I seem to be swimming freely in my life once again.

For a few weeks, I got stuck. I felt completely bogged down. Any kind of effort toward unsticking myself was a tiresome slog that left me only wanting to retreat back into my rutted state.

This wasn’t that noticeable to others because I still went about my daily life…I just wasn’t as productive. As I’ve written about before, I spent long hours mastering a certain computer game that shall remain unidentified lest someone else fall under it’s marblicious spell.

I continued doing what I could to get away from the rut that included only Me and The Game. Eventually, I began to tell people—my husband, my sons, my trusty girlfriends, and my mom—that I wasn’t really doing that well. I felt at the time that this ‘coming out’ was part of the process of recovery. That if I hadn’t been on the road to recovery, I wouldn’t have been able to admit it.

Today, I woke up feeling that my hated rut had been washed away by a good strong soaking. I can still sense the route that it wore through my brain, but it no longer has depth.

This has happened before of course. I think though that as I get older (pushin’ 60, girl) I have the mental calm, perspective and actual quiet in my life to be able to analyze what this feels like and what’s physically happening to me when I overtakes me. In earlier days, I was too busy with kids and had too many insecurities to look at it without fear clouding my view. Now I can imagine and actually feel (or feel that I’m feeling) a neurological rut—an overused, perhaps over-stimulated linkage of neurons; one that becomes prominent and doesn’t give up dominance easily.

It helps me understand—in an organic way—what people who have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder go through every day. And, it comes up very close to Depression—something I used to suffer from for months at a time. In Depression, certain thoughts or categories of thought (negativity! worthlessness! hopelessness!) become dominant. It’s changing those thought patterns that pull us up out of the mood (to be utterly overly-simplistic).

I don’t understand any of it well enough to predict its coming or its going, but I do have confidence these days that it won’t stick; that somehow I’ve accumulated enough coping strategies to be able to pull out of these neurological quagmires. But I have to be careful with that line of thinking. Maybe it’s never what I DO that pulls me out of it. Saying that implies that anyone can pull themselves out by sheer “coping strategies” and I don’t believe that. I know that if it were that simple, people wouldn’t suffer from it so painfully and so persistently. But on the other hand, that sense that I am doing things that help to get me over the distress is important to my feeling of control over my life. Always important.

This morning, I feel a fresh fluidity in my mind, I’m able to glide freely through the little pond that is my life, and for that I am supremely grateful.

The illustration was taken in Houston over the Christmas holidays at the home of The Newmans who graciously let us use their amazing house in exchange for looking after their greyhound. The koi pond was a practicing photographer’s dream.

Look for more great Weekly Winner photos from this week here.

I’m late getting them up and have a lot to catch up on, but it’s good to be posting photos again. Hi everyone!

Some of you would like my new(ish) ning network
Being Practically Creative. Please check it out!

Yes, I paid them money. No, you don’t have to, but yes, they make it seem like something you reallllly need to do. Hey. I was vulnerable. I needed something shiny.

Anyway, here’s one version of my first video. The photos are of my granddaughter, Cadi. She was playing in a fountain in the park. Nearby were anti-war protesters who have come out to the park in Bar Harbor, Maine each Sunday since the invasion of Iraq and stood in silent protest. I do not know the priest’s full name but his colleague told me he’s Father Jim and is retired. He couldn’t resist playing with Cadi and she, as you will see, took to him immediately. I’m so grateful I was there not only to see the spontaneous joy of their sharing but also to capture some of it with my camera.

Enjoy Acadia and the Priest, perfect strangers sharing a perfect moment.

Thanks to Beth Felice who first posted an animoto video on Being Practically Creative and to Suze Corte who showed me how to play with them!

the world according to cat

complicated

december first snowfall

in and out

dragonflew

small world

]]> http://nancywaldman.net/2007/12/02/this-weeks-photos/feed/ 15 http://nancywaldman.net/2007/11/25/sunday-photo-group/ http://nancywaldman.net/2007/11/25/sunday-photo-group/#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:45:13 +0000 nancy daygoodmemenancynuancphotosunSundayweekly winners http://nancywaldman.net/2007/11/25/sunday-photo-group/

I only took one photo this week that I liked.
Next week I hope to have a bushel basket of lovelies.
Then again, one that you’re proud of is good too.

rumplestiltskin

Originally uploaded by nuanc

I’ve got nothin’. It’s been a long day. I’ve written, talked and altogether used up too many words. Instead of words, I offer this odd, rather mysterious photograph.

But just before I quit using words for the day, I’d like to make a toast:

Here’s to the inexpressible. The tangle of feelings that has no neat label. The overwhelming moment that leaves us not only wordless but breathless as well. The times words will not do. Here’s to tears, screams, moans, dancing, making love, wrestling, climbing trees, falling down, skipping, running for the joy of it. To laughter. To music. To drumming. To throwing paint and pounding clay. To all the non-verbal languages giving voice to that which we would otherwise be unable to express.

G’night sweet bodies out there.

I don’t want to write about writing today, so I picked out this photo from my flickr site to inspire me.

Maybe the title spoke to me more than the photo itself. A “soft landing” implies what went on before. If I’m landing, that means that something somehow got me up high enough that I needed to get back to earth.

What possibilities does that bring up?
An airplane
A hang glider
A parachute
A para-sail
A strong gust of wind
A huge kite out of control
A very big and friendly (or unfriendly and hungry) bird

Other than the airplane which is scary enough—but a necessary and therefore acceptable risk—I’m not likely, given my personality, to leave the earth by any of those means. I do have wonderful dreams of leaving the ground, but it is never exactly flying. It’s more a sudden ability, a defiance of gravity (what a great phrase, eh?) that catches me by surprise. Suddenly I am like a man on the moon. I jump just a little and instead of coming back down, I begin to float. If I do it ‘right’ I can stay aloft and guide myself through whatever setting I’m in. It’s a controlled, suddenly simple feat and that seems to be the best part of it: I find am capable of gliding through the air. No problem with the landing, either. I just lose altitude and settle down on my own two feet as gently as can be!

Of course, the need for a landing could be from being in a tree. THAT idea I really like. As a child, I used to climb trees whenever I could find one big enough. It was the 50’s. Most of the neighborhoods were new and the trees put in by the developers were saplings. But I had one friend who lived in an older house, and out back was a huge live oak tree. Those are the ones with the low, spreading thick branches. We’d climb up easily, taking up our paper and pencils and paper dolls and nestle into the crooks of sturdy limbs. I remember it as such a lush hideaway and other-worldly time-apart.

Getting our feet off the ground, especially if we can do it without scaring ourselves more than we like, is a treat for sure. But what we’re really after is the soft landing, the relief and sense of connectedness of coming back to earth. With our feet firmly on sand, grass, dirt we know that we’re where we were meant to be, gravity and all.