chronicled & illustrated

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

spires
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.

soft landing
Originally uploaded by nuanc

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.

I joined a weekly photo group called For the Love of Flickr on NaBloPoMo. Groups within groups—whew! Makes my self-referential head spin.

Each Sunday we post [some of] the photos we’ve taken this week.

Here’s the link:

Here are the photos I took this week:

SUMMER SPIRITS


WINDS OF CHANGE

WIND. FALL.

CHANGE

passssst
Originally uploaded by nuanc

Oh boy! My novel FINALLY picked up some speed today. It’s been going in that direction for the last two days but today was truly the first day this month that I felt as if I could just keep going, as if I couldn’t type fast enough to get the words down. In fact, I wasn’t surprised when I got to the end of the chapter I was writing that the word count was 3,163 (to be exact) words more than yesterday.

It’s momentum. What a great feeling! An exhilarating sled run after a long hard slog up the hill. It’s gratifying after all the work put in so far—the feeling of having to paste myself into the chair and duct tape myself to the desk, all the draggy days, the suppressed doubts (because they never actually Go Away, do they?), and the endless setting up of characters until you are quite certain that it’s going to be a book about nothing whatsoever except six single characters milling around in search of something to do!

At this point, however, my main characters have finally come together into a situation that not only brings up aspects of what has happened in the last two novels set in this world, but also sets up new mysteries and, later on, when it’s time, a resolution. No. I don’t know exactly what that will be, but I CAN tell now (as opposed to three days ago) that I’m on the right path to discover it. And so are my characters. How nice to be on the same page as one’s characters.

If you’re not there yet, keep going! You’ll find that momentum sooner or later as well. It’s worth it!