The Written Picture

Wintry things

It hasn't all been writing around here.

We've decorated our tree.

Celebrated our first snow.

Watched this girl dance as The Sugar Plum Fairy. (Photo edited with the Waterlogue app.)

Went on adventures with this little guy.

And tried our best to keep him out of trouble.

Happy Winter/Merry Christmas to you and yours!

 

Afterward.

Today we're snacking on left-over Christmas cookies, playing with new gadgets and cracking the spines on a couple of new books. (This, this and this were on sale yesterday on Amazon). The house is a wreck. I don't think there's one surface clear of stuff.

But I guess that's OK for the day after, right?

Lately

I've been falling in love with the color grey. I used to never understand people that liked that color. But that's all changed. Grey is the color of old winter sweaters, storms rolling in & fading ink.

I'm also loving these colors. I love looking at them but in real life, I think if I dressed or decorated in and with them, I'd end up looking like a rainbow sherbet explosion.

I've been writing with a fountain pen. The downside is that I love watching it write so I never want to quit. I'll write anything just to keep it moving on the page. I suppose this is good practice, but still. Sometimes my love of it interferes with my ability to get non-writing things done.

I've been obsessed with keeping a little book again. And by "keeping a little book" I mean making drawings and keeping track of my days. I mean glue and scissors. Snippets and bits recorded. I've done this on and off for a long time. And I'm on again right now, big time. It's evident in all the notebooks and scrapbooks I'm pinning on Pinterest. I can't get enough - which means it's time.

So. Grey, sherbet, fountain pens & little books. That's me right now.

Instant morning

Even in the depth of winter.

Two days ago we walked along the dam at the lake. We didn't even need jackets. Then we sat on the dock and dipped our toes in the water and turned our faces to the sun.

Now there's snow on the ground.

But I can still feel the sunlight when I close my eyes.

Even in the depth of winter.

Seeing the Holy

"When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: Ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul."

    --Rabbi Harold Kushner

The Peace of Wild Things

"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake 
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

 waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free."

  --The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

(all pictures taken with the Vignette app for android)

Seeing Double

Recently I found out my favorite camera phone app can do this:

It's a throwback to the days of old film cameras where you could expose a shot and then without advancing the film (so no automatic film advance) take another picture on top of it.

You can get the same effect in Photoshop by placing one picture on top of another and adjusting either the opacity of that picture or the blending mode. But I'm old fashioned. I like doing it in the moment and seeing what happens.

The way the app works is that you snap the picture and then without seeing a preview, you have to snap another. So it takes some thought. Or luck. Or both.

I don't know. Maybe they're horrible. Maybe they're too much like a piece of bad modern art. But I like them. There's something fresh and unexpected about them.

And if nothing else, it's something to do in the car when you're bored.

Or you can entertain kids when they're bored.

I don't know that they'll win any awards or anything like that, but for now, they're satisfying my incredible urge to get back into film photography - both the toy kind and the instant kind.

So until then, I'll be in my backyard...

...pretending my phone camera is really a little plastic film camera.

I've gone too far.

I'm aware that I may sound backward. Nine years ago when I bought my first digital camera, I swore I'd never go back. I haven't shot a roll of film since.

Now I'm obsessed with it. Going digital has made me lazy. I can't even imagine taking a roll of film and nailing a photoshoot with it. Yet, I used to do it all the time.

So I've been shopping around for film cameras. But I don't want just any film camera. I want one that makes my photos look like bad vacation photos from 1963.

I'm obsessed with my camera phone because I love that it can take little snapshots. But I still spend a lot of time post-processing them so they look like they were taken on a leaky little camera. Now? I just want the leaky little camera.

I'm not switching back permanently. I like to think different cameras are like paintbrushes and paint. You pick the tool that helps you best say what you want to say.

I don't know what started all of this. Maybe I'm just nostalgic. Even when it comes to cameras. Oh well, like the poet says, "Going far means returning."

**These photos were taken 10 years ago with a disposable Polaroid camera.

Funny things he said

My little Buddy is 7 today.

A few years ago, I decided to tweet funny things he said. My phone is almost always with me and I figured that was a quick and easy way to add a date/time stamp to what he said. Then I started adding them to Facebook.

Now when I run into people I know, they almost always say, "I love reading the things your little boy says."

So in honor of my little Buddy's 7th birthday, I thought it would be fun to list the top 10 things he said last year: 

10. "I'm against sleeping."

9. "I wonder how dogs work."

8. "I'm bullet-proof, fire-proof, AND cat-proof!"

7. "I forgot I had feet. Then I looked down and remembered."

6. "I like when I need to laugh."

5. "I wonder what it's like to be dumb."

4. "Sometimes I'm riding my bike, and I feel something itch but I'm defensive and don't scratch it."

3. "I wanna be spontaneous."

2. me: "Could you pick up all your little cars?" 
    Buddy: "Sorry I'm unavailable. Try again next year."

1. "I didn't breathe all morning because I forgot about it. But I feel OK."

Happy Birthday, little man!