pot shots

Roaming through my digital pictures I came across a few that made me start to think about inspiration. Normally I am immediately drawn to something—usually visual. But going through my file that is in desperate need of some weeding, I started to deliberately choose a few things that I would normally automatically ignore or even delete.

 

What the heck is this? And in this modern age of immediate digital feedback, why did we keep this? But I am glad I have it now.

 

A tree in our backyard that looks great with leaves, but plagues me with those menacing, treacherous little spiky pods. Now that I stop to look at this shot though, I start to feel all abstract-y.

 

Clouds from a trip that I wasn’t even on. But I love those hints at shadow on the right.

And I think this exercise in deliberately choosing to find inspiration in the everyday/mundane/refuse is useful for what I am about to embark upon:

Thing-A-Day

Join me! Or join Mr. Man in commiserating over a wife who will be spending more and more time closeted away. 

Anybody else out there have some unusual inspiration sources?

 

the road

I am posting rather late because I spent a good portion of tonight finishing up The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  I tend to think that I won’t like most Oprah Book Club books (please note that this idea of mine is based solely on NO sound reason or logic).  And I might not have got around to reading it anytime soon except that I like to read.  And if I pick up a book to flip through it I may very well end up hunched awkwardly on the floor in a weird position as I keep reading.  Plus there is all this talk about it being a good book, or something.  Like critics know what they’re talking about.  Pshaw.

What I am leading up to is probably obvious to most well-read types, but the reason I read close to 200 pages tonight is because it was fantastic.  A really tragic, overwhelmingly desperate, dismal sort of fantastic.  And despite all the grey ash and post-apocalyptic tragedy (or because of it?) it was also warm and heartening deep down underneath the horror of it all.  Don’t be misled, this is a harrowing, gloomy read, but it is written in starkness and absolute poetry.  And for those of you who claim not to be interested in Sci-Fi, this story is not as much about the future as it is about deep, abiding love and what one will do for those they are devoted to.

The boy is my favorite.