Watermark

Have you been a good little human this year?

Want to earn some more good-human points, before it's too late? You could go feed some squirrels . . . OR . . . you could go cast your votes for the 2006 Montana Weblog Awards.

... all votes must be registered as comments to [A Chicken Is Not Pillage] website, or to the email address [email protected] ... The voting will remain open until Wednesday, December 27th.  The results will be announced before the new year.  You do not need to be a blogger to vote.  You do not need to be a Montanan to vote.  So, just vote.

Watermark is nominated in the Culture categories of Most Creative and Best Written. I think I might have a shot at Most Creative, but I do believe there are better written Montana blogs out there, and there are lots of categories to vote in.

So, if you think Watermark qualifies, and you feel like giving me a little holiday lift -- go vote for Watermark. If you would like to see just how good Montana Bloggers are, go check out the nominations and pick your winners. The competition is tough, fun, and enlightening.

You can't lose.

Unless, of course, you annoy Squirrel Santa Claws.

 

This Year; Next Year

ProBlogger is doing another group writing project -- this one includes prizes (one in particular) that would solve the cash-free holiday dilemma. So, I'm writing for luck.

The assignment is to write a post that looks back or looks forward -- a turn of the season post. Bloggers (and diarists) have a definite advantage: we have something to look back at. What I see, when I look back, is that 2006 has been a project year for me.

In January I participated in the Brainstorms Daypix project, and began The Artist's Way. In March, I did the 30-Day-Photo Challenge, and in April, NaPoWriMo (National Poem Writing Month.) In May, Poetry Thursday started, and I began to (sporadically) participate in UTATA's Thursday Walk. In July, and into August, I took a blogging vacation, posting less frequently, and using old posts instead of writing new ones.

In September, Brainstorms did another Daypix project. In November, I went completely overboard, doing both NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post-a-Day Month) and now I'm doing the post-a-day project Holidailies.

Throughout the year, I continued with weekly Friday Cat Blogging and Wednesday Snapshot Poems, and this is not my first contribution to a ProBlogger Group Writing Project.

Why do I do this?

Well, I don't have a day-job, so I have the time, and appreciate the structure and community that these projects provide. As a non-pro blogger, without a specific niche, these group projects bring more eyes to my site -- and once in a rare while, a pair of eyes likes what it sees, and keeps coming back. Of course, this is mutual; I often add to my Bloglines as a result of these activities. Also, I'm approaching three years blogging, and fresh inspiration is useful.

And why do I not do the dozens of other blog memes and projects in which one can participate?

Sometimes because I already feel overextended, but often because they call for talents or skills with which I am not generously supplied. Some are designed specifically for amateurs, and I welcome those. Others demand some level of experience to do them even half-way well, and I tend to sidestep those, or offer something only rarely, when I feel particularly inspired.

Let me be clear, and in being so, offer you some advice: I do not do these to increase my hit count. I know, now, that sometimes that is a natural consequence of involvement in these memes, but that is not why I do them, and it is not how I choose which ones to do. I do those that set off some little spark inside me (even if the spark is just Wow, I'd really like to be able to give Davi an iPod for Solstice.)

I actually like cats, and other critters, too. I read and write poems, even when not encouraged to do so. I like taking snapshots. I like to write. I like to read what others write, when they care and do it well. I like to look at images, especially images made by people I know. I'm interested in a lot of things, and so I read and write about a lot of things.

What do you like?

Blog about it.

I will, in year 02007.

 

Oh, almost forgot -- come meet Watermark's readers and Introduce Yourself!

Illness is a kind of winter...

Illness is a kind of winter. It strips the green, leaving only the bare, peeling branches of your life; but it opens the sky. The view widens. It is a new season, only that. You know it will get colder. You know ice is coming. You retreat indoors; inside.

Reading MFK Fisher, I see that I know nothing, really, of pain; and less of those who live with -- who love -- the person in pain.

I am in a between place. I feel change coming -- which, I suppose, is appropriate to the season. I sit on the deck, alone, late in the night, smoking in the snow.

I shall accept T.'s offer of a tree, cut from his property in advance of the power company saws. We will put it on the deck, and decorate it with icicle lights and the Buddhist prayer flags K. gave me for my birthday. I will welcome this solstice and whatever darkness and light it brings.

I don't know who I am. I am no-one. I am a dark vessel, waiting.

 

MFK FISHER on not writing

"I think that many people want to write, but of them few have the will to. I write more than half the things I do or say or think. I can see the words on the sheet of paper and see the pen writing them. And in my head a voice, a kind of silent reading voice, reads them not from but to the paper. Often what is read is good. There is a quick sureness about some phrases. At times they come too patly, with a smart-aleck tone. But I don't write. I write a few letters, which grow less interesting as I age. But that is all. It is because I am lazy, and that is true of most of the people who think in prose. Laziness and a vague fear."

    MFK Fisher    Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: journals and stories 1933-1941

Autumn Ground

 

Poetry Thursday

  This week's prompt was If these walls could talk:

   

   

This house speaks.
Floorboards groan,
walls crack like
lightening bolts.

Windows insist
Wash me! Snow-
melt drips, drips,
from the eves.

Paintings proclaim
blue, green, gold;
they announce
Alaska, New Mexico,

Pennsylvania. Listen,
you can hear wings:
parakeets, iron angels,
carved wood goddesses

from Thailand and Bali.
Icarus. New Guineau.
This glass whispers
Czechoslovakia.

A flowered bowl blooms
China. Beads cry Africa!
That sheepskin says: home,
here, mountain, Montana.

 

Winter Crow

This morning, two eagles were playing in the winds above the river. No photos; I couldn't bring myself to stop watching long enough to bring up the camera.

So you get Crow, instead.

This particular crow posed and chatted with me for quite awhile. Then I said thank you, and it nodded, and we went our separate ways.

[Today: 1391 words. So far: 45,085 words.]

Writing

That blue & white bowl is for -- get this -- organic lollipops. Yep, I actually bought such a thing, on my pre-Halloween Good Food Store NaNoWriMo preparation shopping trip. I kept reading about all the food one consumes during this marathon, what makes the best snacks, on and on -- so, among several other things, I got these.

As it turns out, I don't actually eat while I write. How does one do that, anyway? Both hands are busy on the keyboard. But lollipops -- those work. One or two fruity lollipops per day.

If I'd thought about it, I would have realized that I never have eaten while I write -- even when writing by hand. Though occasionally I write while I eat. A different thing entirely.

Niki asked in a comment: Will we see results of your writing here at the end of the month?

And the answer is . . .

Um, no.

Because. Because I am writing without expectation. Because it is an exercise. Because I've no idea if there will be anything worth sharing -- and if there is, it will take several months, at a guess, to get it into shape.

Just now I am confronting the necessity to kill off a character I love. The necessity is as organic as those lollipops, and as unintended. I didn't resist the lollipops, but I am resisting this ... murder.

Story writing is so different from poem writing. More different than I had anticipated. One difference, for me, is that I'm avoiding reading fiction. In fact, I'm hardly reading anything. When I am writing poems, I am reading poems, with no fear that some other voice will intrude on my own; quite the contrary, nothing inspires a poem for me like reading other people's work. But now I am cautious, wary.

It will be interesting to see how -- if -- this experience changes the way I read novels, once I do so again. I've never read with a critic's eye; I tend to fall into a book, and then fall out of it at the end. It has to be pretty bad for me to watch it while I read it. But I suspect I am going to be more attentive to things like structure and plot and character development from now on.

Just don't take the magic away...

[Today: 1550 words. So far: 43,694 words.]

Veteran's Day

Thank you, neighbors, for the subject of today's photo.

But most importantly, for your service.

Halloween Detritus

I snapped this photo on the river path, the day after Halloween. I intended to upload and post it then, but I've been a bit distracted . . .

[Today: 3694 words. So far: 20702 words.]