FAST

Last night, I arrived at a famed beer garden in Queens in a pretty foul mood, to meet my friend, who was also not in such a hot mood. As with all good friends, our bad moods dissolved as we sat across from each other on benches in the remarkably cool, but so cool that you could not sit outside garden. I started taking pictures with my iPod touch and my friend said that I should submit pictures to contests or something--that I have an "eye." Suddenly I understood my friend whom I kept telling him he was such talented photographer and he said to me he just takes pictures with his phone as if it was nothing.

You have to make it something so it does not become nothing.

Photos are my new avenue right now, but I know I am an amateur. Though I now have two cameras in my bag--the point and shoot camera I bought from B&H, and the one on my new iPod touch. I am always taking pictures.

In lieu of writing.

I am a creative person, even my conversations become a major source of creativity it seems. I had a discussion with someone today about my figurative use of the word glamorous. Putting words on the page is not something that is happening and now I am fasting as I prepare for NaNoWriMo. I have won four NaNos in a row, am doing it this year without an outline. It will be purely organic for me this year--whatever happens when my hand touches keys on my iPod or MacBook.

Writing is like blood for me, whether that it is contained in me, pours from me or is an essential body fluid I am not sure but it is my blood. I feel comfortable when I have pen in my hand or fingers skimming my computer or iPod touch. I write whether it is to create or to relive by retrospective like the Anais Nin quote. I feel stable and level when I am writing and even to retreat from it, pursue another creative endeavor like photography is okay because I know I will return. I was working on a short story, not sure I going to completely abandon it, but I have fasted from fiction writing for NaNo before and it made it easier to write under the pressure that NaNo is.

Like anything you love whether it be a person or a thing if you let it go and it returns it's the real thing...Writing and I will return to each other...

Photograph by F. Solomon