I have begun to pay closer (not more, because I always pay pretty close attention to every detail of everything . . .) attention to the process by which I attune with my thoughts, and thus the processes by which I formulate ideas; and not just in writing, but also on a more philosophical level. I’ve just honed my eye, I guess you could say, to take in what’s obviously there, sure, but also to try and observe what’s just beneath, or what’s whispered as opposed to shouted out.
And so, I began and abandoned, began and abandoned numerous project ideas, some of which included: the etymology of stars, the genealogy of punctuation/#s/characters of the alphabet, myths/fables of how each different species of bird came to be/look like it does (*which then evolved into a focus on the shorebirds of MD and then back to a much larger scope), various “tree-of-life” diagrams, Venn diagrams, flow charts, some mathematical theory came into play . . .
And then I turned to the images, first at the museum and then to the ones lying in wait in my own creative subconscious. I spent hours (that, although I at first felt “I should be writing” during this time, I realized pretty quickly that it was fine, that what I was involved in was informing and inspiring the writing that would come, which was an encouraging feeling indeed) collaging little vignettes together, then chose the few that spoke the loudest and got down to “writing”.
{i miss paper letters} 