Response to What Imagery Do You Keep Coming Back To?
An unrelated but evocative image of Shia the Cat
The “Hands Arts for Humans” (HA4H) livestream has started encouraging daily writing exercises. Common prompts are being shared. This has actually motivated/inspired me, so yay! See M’s Patreon or Vi’s Patreon if hand arts sound good to you.
in response to prompts on Images from Life,
from Anne West’s "Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work"
WHAT IMAGERY DO YOU KEEP COMING BACK TO?
Honestly it's weird. I have intrusive thoughts.
Sometimes I'm just back in a situation that happened before,
at least as I remember it. And I usually start apologizing.
So I should have these clear images, right? I'm sure I do.
But now I want them, and where are they?
Just thinking about it now, my mind wanders over things from flight school.
A forest fire in central Florida, seen from a mile up.
Fire like rivers, glowing pink through a column of smoke and ash that coated
the plane.
We'd mistaken it for a cloud and just flown through it.
Not really the best idea, but I treasure the memory.
Other things:
A cumulus cloud I was trying to fly over in central Texas, once,
and then a terrifying vertigo, which would trouble me for years! before
just not being there anymore.
But I'm not sure if that image is so distinct as the feeling of falling backwards.
False-horizons of beaches at night.
[then the five minutes were up and I'm just...troubled.]
I'm going to try to think of some other things.
The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, in pieces, moving down Highway 3 at midnight;
standing with friends, excited, in a chill
Watching the HI LOAD SPECIALISTS shepherd the power lines and traffic lights out of the way
Then A PLANE IS COMING OUT OF THE FOG
Then its wings
and tail
And later a much cooler view from another friend, the night after, a night I felt sick and didn't go
From the roof of an Italian restaurant they climbed on top of
Light glinting off the reflectors during the launch of IDA-2
Burned into my brain by the feeling that I'd done something right
An old self-portrait that my mom made into a quilt
And me wondering how I was going to tell them I didn't see myself that way anymore
And I needed them to see a different me
That's actually way better than what I really came up with.