Whiskers - Night Wind - I.F. Nov 23, 2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday challenge word: Whiskers

...which meant I've had whiskers on my mind all week.

I keep thinking of the porous border between sleeping and waking, the way the mind scatters when we give it permission to break into its sensory particles and float off to absorb impressions from all over the universe past and present.

Dream Cat whiskers tickle night into dark, shimmery giggles that jiggle apart and appear one thing while mindslivers slip between them creating new layers, impressions, thoughts.  Stitching these impressions together we dream we are one entity while the mind itself relates as messages between disparate parts scattered who knows where as we sleep.

Emerging from the trees, memories

I missed this week's Illustration Friday deadline, hadn't finished my mental wanderings for the prompt word: Tree, and this week's quote:  "My sorrow, when she's here with me, finds these dark days of autumn rain as beautiful as days can be.  She loves the bare and withered tree, she walks the sodden pasture lane".  - Robert Frost  (Did I get that right?  Couldn't find the card on which I noted it down, though I read it often enough this past week)

Frost has been a favourite of mine since high school for how he selects words and invites the reader to follow into a landscape of carefully noted vistas and wonderfully implied senses.

The quote sent me hunting for my copy of Thoreau's Wild Fruit.  No idea why, beyond the shared intensity of appreciation for whatever is in view. 

And while mulling over ideas I was turning over papers.  Felt my thoughts skip when I came across this one.  Drawn as an exploration of themes while writing a retelling of a folktale from my childhood.  I can still hear my father's voice repeating a refrain from the story, and haven't given up hope of finding the reel-to-reel tape on to which he recorded this, my favourite tale - three times in a row.  He also taught me to rewind and play the tape when I was four or so, to avoid my importuning him at all hours.  Story within story, memory encapsulating memory, and I have yet to find the inner kernel. 

Haunt - Illustration Friday Oct.26/2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday word: Haunt

This time of year, haunt evokes stories of chills and fright, childhood anticipation of Halloween and all its promises of a night where rules were set aside and we could put on a getup in which we would not be recognized and traipse about dark neighbourhoods with our friends knocking on strangers' doors and demanding candy. 

But aside from this seasonal connection, what haunts us? 

For me, what can truly haunt are the breezes created by unspoken words.  Separated from the landscape where they could have been spoken, they hang in the mind, frozen constellations of thought, of connection and communication.  Perhaps at the right time they might have guided us elsewhere as constellations could.  Choked back they shed a cold light and stir up trailing shadows of unheard responses.