#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

March 20, 2017 Kelly DuMar

My favorite found image in the woods today - well, no. As I write this I realize all of them, today, are favorites:

Dogs in love with a new day

greet a river and each other

Milkweed birds perch in silence

in the still snow covered meadow

Winter drab trees reflect green

life out of the brilliant brook

A tiny, barely visible fluff

of cattail cotton blows onto

a canvas of snow

For decades I have practiced the journal writing methods of Tristine Rainer's book, The New Diary - How to Use a Journal for Self Guidance and Expanded Creativity.

For weeks, I have been "free-intuitively" capturing, daily, photos of found images in ice, figures like a fetus, or a baby being cradled or a playful floating child – which call my attention and reflection back to the richness of what Rainer calls writing from "Maps of Consciousness" (p. 83)

Some diarists use free drawings as they would free-intuitive writing to tap their inner consciousness. Such drawings might be called maps of consciousness – graphic images of what's in your mind. The process is like meditation. You relax and without intent allow the pen to move where it will on the page. You let your hand lead the drawing and see what it makes as it goes. . . . . Some diarists use 'found images' that become maps of consciousness.' . . . . Surrealist, expressionist, and visionary art works could all be seen as maps of consciousness. But the diarist generally take the process of inner exploration a step further by interpreting the drawing at some point after its completion. The significance of the process lies in the diarist's reflection upon the spontaneous images from the psyche. . . . . Maps of consciousness can take you into the dynamics of your personality. Making images of the self and coming to understand them may signal the beginning of release from confusion and conflict. Free-intuitive drawings come to the rescue when words have failed. With a map to your own inner wilderness you can explore the future with a greater sense of direction.

Tristine Rainer, The New Diary

In the woods with my eyes, my psyche and my lens, I am not looking to tell a story with my images. I am looking for what the images tell me.

After all the ice figures of infants, this morning, the found image of my "own inner wilderness" reveals a personally meaningful development: Girl in Tree Bark

Map of Consciousness

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