Sunday, January 01, 2012

Bray

The donkey braying several fields away pins my attention to the moment as the peg pins the clothes, damp and cold between my fingers, to the washing line.

~

(First small stone.  I've not been sure what to do about photos while I'm doing this. It seems to me rather to be against the spirit of it: if the photo is linked to the small stone, serving as an illustration and/or a prompt, it's getting away from the aim of conciseness and immediacy of the writing, rather like drawing from a photo, but if I post photos that aren't related to the writing, it's also digressing and a distraction, and perhaps just a bit too much.  However, I shall miss posting photos for a whole month, although I have been drifting away from taking as many.

The solution I've arrived at is to resurrect my long dormant Flickr account and commit myself to posting one photo a day there, which will get me thinking and observing photographically also, but in a different location.  Then at the end of each week I'll make a collage of them and post them here.  Hope that all makes sense!  

OK, that's all; small stones only from now on, no other writing.)

15 comments:

Setu said...

Très bonne année to you and to the ones you cherish!

I'm sure you will offer us beautiful amazing pictures (with or without words) all the 2012 year round. Thanks beforehand for that!

Pam said...

I'm looking forward to them. Happy New Year. I love the little Christmas video.

Zhoen said...

I'd like to see the photos here, related or not, or indeterminate.

Catalyst said...

Ooohh, I will miss your fantastic photos.

zephyr said...

Oh...i like this
and didn't realize that the small stones were words only...hmmm

but
am very glad we will still be seeing your photos.

HKatz said...

It's a beautiful moment, contained and complete in itself, and you capture it in just the right way.

I look forward to the collages, if that's your plan.

J Cosmo Newbery said...

I'm having a go at it too. I decided to have a renewing feeder post and a composite post where all the bits will come together as a composite whole. Good luck!

Unknown said...

There was a moment a few posts back when I took "small stones" literally and imagined a bag or bowl of stones collected over the years or days each with a special significance. I quickly realized that the stones were verbal or graphic and that the idea fitted in perfectly with some thing that had occurred to me a few days earlier. I was given a blank leather-bound notebook, with gilt edged pages which called out to be filled. What better use the pages for than what has now turned out to be small stones! I had already dropped a few, one per page, into the book when you picked up the idea and provided a link to its originators. The term "stoned" meanwhile seems to have a new meaning.

Anonymous said...

but isn't it too restricting to limit oneself to a small stone a day? I prefer random out-pourings anyday

Lucy said...

Thanks all.

I really don't think anyone's made any hard and fast rules about whether you are 'permitted' photos, or whether you can't carry on with random outpourings as usual as well as the small stones, it's just an idea that's on offer, which people are invited to take up as they wish, if they wish. I'll see how I get on, but I have often found that submitting to a form, which might be seen as a restriction, for a time can be helpful and interesting, a tonic. And just now I like the idea of focussing and working directly and succinctly from observation with words rather than photos-with-words.

Already I've found that going back to Flickr as an alternative place for photos has reminded me how much pleasure and inspiration I used to get from browsing there. Also how I miss the old Canon Powershot, basic though it was, with a less powerful zoom and fewer pixels and having to replace heavy batteries was a drag, I'm sure it was quicker, the macro was better and the depth of field on the auto shallower, and I often took better, brighter pics with it, sigh... I'm even toying with the idea of searching out a cheap secondhand one on e-bay or something.

Anyway, random outpourings clearly live on in my replies to comments, though not many people actually read those!

zephyr said...

am i not seeing the link to your Flickr page...?

rr said...

Well I thought your self-constraint was very interesting. Almost like being on retreat.

Although I think stones with pics can work (I loved Lorianne's), I tend to use pictures to convey small visual things so am attempting to avoid something that could be delineated (to my satisfaction at least) with a picture.

Lucy said...

Hi,Zephyr, link added. Didn't do so at first as apart from what I'd put on in the last couple of days there's been nothing new there since 2009! There now though.

RR - yes , exactly,an interesting angle...

Bee said...

First I wrote with no pictures; then pictures seemed essential. Like you, I'm going to try to liberate myself from the constraints of photographs . . . although not, perhaps, for the same reasons!

Fire Bird said...

just to say - I loved your stones.
and - just to say - no reason not to do them and other stuff too as and when...