Things I've Seen Float By
- A skiff with a man at the oars and a woman playing accordion
- A heart shaped rose petal
- My neighbor's houseboat being towed out for a bottom job
- A whiskery seal
- A man standing on a paddle board with a dog on the front
- Garden clippings
- A seagull
- A seaplane
- A beer can
- The month of October
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
- Mary Oliver, Blue Horses
photo by Dennis Bayer
Peace Corps memory: a sunset on Lake Atitlan, people drawn towards the shore, alone and in pairs, silently sharing the beauty & wonder of light on the water & across the sky.
Early this morning as the sun rose across the bay I went to the roof and beheld the glow, saw neighbors on their decks, on their roofs sharing in the silent wonder of beauty, the golden joy of light ~
Ricardo & Peter
We lived on 2 acres with a pond. Pierre had the run of the apple orchard, quite the dainty killer back then. Now he's a houseboat kitty and prowls the roof and decks and rooms afloat. This morning a gull flew below the long window where Pierre relaxed in his favorite post following an exhaustive breakfast and instantly the old hunter went into his crouch. Old instincts never die. The gull perched on our piling, surveying the channel. I watched and wrote. Better for all that way.
Winning post by Linda Saldaña
Congratulations to Linda Saldana, winner of the "Six Word Story Contest" based on the above photograph. And thanks to everyone who participated. It was a pleasure to read your words and see where your imaginations took us. As my friend Ken Rodgers said, " Carumba!"
“I don’t use people I know at all. I really value the shorthand, the compression of suggesting a whole life while actually having to render up very little of it. I feel tired of exposition and backstory; the more you can suggest without spelling out, the more you can encompass in the same space. Fiction writing is always about compression and suggestion.” - Jennifer Egan, The Goon Squad
Walking the planks, shadows and light catch my eye and stop me in my tracks for a moment of wonder.
photo by Dennis Bayer
I was reading Facebook, checking email, looking for my morning writer's almanac poem, cup of coffee in one hand and a cat in my lap, having already seen Tu off to her early morning shift at Driver's.
A text came in: The sun right now!
Off went the cat and the mac. I climbed the stairs and beheld this, sharing the wonder with two early risers on the dock below.
I was reading about complementary colors and how they are opposites and it made me think of Chekov's remark - you can write a story about anything, you can write a story about that ashtray for example, as long as it has a north and south pole, a he and a she. I love learning, reaffirming, making discoveries about writing while studying other art, other crafts, and of course, while observing nature herself.
I’ve never been a coupon clipper but when I see a poem or a story or riff, a quote, that I think someone I know or love would like I will send it along; not to teach or admonish or show off or rub anyone’s nose in anything. Just to share. I read a Humans of New York post the other day about a vibrant, active woman in her 90’s. She said she had a boyfriend. She didn’t even know how old he was. But they exchanged books! Maybe that’s an act of love. A spiritual act. An act of kindness and joy. Maybe it’s just what I do. Like this email, which I’ll share with you.
. . . that remind me of what I love most here ~
photo by Jamey Genna
In the month of July I read at three different places - Tommy Mierzwinki's Two Jacks Denim, Kara Vernor's, and Dani's, Get Lit in Petaluma, and Jamey Genna's Summer Sparks in San Francisco. I've had 10 stories published since March. One was a contest winner. Another featured as 'poem of the week' in Third Wednesday's blog which amused me. Quite an honor for fiction to be running with the poems! I've been on a submission mission for 5 months, though I prefer send to submit. Been writing for 35 years, teaching for 27, never consistently sent my work out before. Seemed sorta beside the point at the time. So why now?
Why not?! And the readings? They feel vital and invigorating and put me in The Now. It's being orally published. It's an exchange. Hearing the work of others, sharing your work, feeling the crowd's response (or lack of one!). It's exciting, it's got juice. And it's something we can do in what at times seems a powerless time— take things in our own hands, make our own way, discovery, share, listen, and embrace. A two way flow. There was a writer at the SF reading, Tongo, who performed his work with no script. I had no idea what he said, but it knocked me out. I told him after reading my stuff and getting some laughs, then listening to his intense and moving words, felt as if I'd arrived in a mini van but left on a BSA, maybe Triumph. He said, 'we all come from the same volcano.'
