An Explanation

You know, I like Nate's photograph today (although the dust kind of geeks me out and makes me want to scrub it clean) but damned if it inspires any sort of narrative. I had a couple of vague thoughts involving incandescent pastries and the monsters that eat them; or mobius-strip worlds; or space stations; or even super-hero-emblems, but none of them really jelled. So I'm just going to link to it and move on.

I wanted to comment on yesterday's post, actually. You maybe have noticed that it was somewhat ultra-sad. You may even have been concerned that it was a reflection of something going on in my life (well, up until you hit the part where the narrator identifies himself as a man). Well rest assured, Gentle Readers- it's just not so.

Let me back up a bit. First of all, unless you're also following Nate and Meredith's 365 Project (which, by the by, you really should be) you may not be aware that they have a different theme for each day of the week (which is why they call their project "52x7"). It goes like this:

Monday- Macro
Tuesday- People/Animals
Wednesday- Manmade
Thursday- Themeless
Friday- Low-Light/Night
Saturday- Action
Sunday- Nature

Being the creative people they are, they do occasionally play with the themes, and it was just such an urge that prompted Nathan to label yesterday's shot "Man Unmade". Well I heard that title and saw the picture and said to myself, "This is like the ruins of someone's relationship," so I set out to write a poem about it.

Most of the time my poetry starts with a seed-phrase. It pops up outta' nowhere in my head and it grows from there. Until this point my poetry has always been very of-the-moment-autobiographical, which makes it- not easy to write, per se, but easier. Yesterday was a whole new challenge, tho'- to write about someone else's experience (using poetry rather than prose) and moreover make that experience one I'm not currently in the middle of.

It was a little daunting.

But I'm nothing if not resourceful! My first step was to turn to my music library- specifically to a play list I call "I Need to Cry" (oh come on- you know you have an album/play list like that. No? Never mind then...). I used it to manufacture myself some False Sadness. And then I sat there and thought horrible, depressing thoughts about the man who was sitting in that rubble, and I slowly, painstakingly, began to translate it from prose to poetry. Nathan was somewhat appalled by the entire process (it distresses him to see me depressed), although he was somewhat mollified when I explained that I was creating it rather than genuinely experiencing it. He read the poem when I finished and looked me and said in a subdued voice, "That's really sad," and although part of me felt guilty for depressing my husband, part of me just felt really victorious for having completed a successful experiment.

I may try it again some time (the non-of-the-moment-autobiographical poetry rather than the husband-depressing). We'll see.

(Also yes, I did work on Blue Menagerie today, but it needs more tweaking to get it where I want it to be before I can post it. It may interest you to know I've got over twenty pages written now- it interested me, anyway...)