#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

August 23, 2018 Kelly DuMar

A good friend texting with happy news is a sweet alarm. I am overtired, not having slept well, and Charlie must be too; he's nowhere in sight. For our walk we have a welcome companion; my youngest is awake and wants to join us. We are talking and talking and when I reach the trestle bridge I remember: today is my blog anniversary. Two years of daily posts, and I'm celebrating. I look down into the river, the reflected clouds, a favorite stopping place, for looking upstream and down in every river season and weather. I am so grateful to this blog, this home for my spontaneous daily writing practice, and the gifts it brings. I count ten finished poems or short prose pieces, most of them published, generated directly from photos and posts on this blog. I spent the day writing and sending my monthly newsletter, and these thoughts about my #NewThisDay process.

My August 23, 2018 Newsletter

'I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.' ~ Anais Nin My creative practice has been tethered to diary writing for decades. I’ve loved reading them, writing them, and being inspired by creative giants, like Anais Nin, who kept at her diaries so well for so long – over fifty years – she helped define the modern concept of journaling. At thirteen, my impulse to begin a diary was for self-reflection, a search for insight, a personal awakening of identity: who am I? What do I think, feel, know, wonder about? I’ve written my own diaries for so many decades now. All the stages of my life – teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties – are captured in my diaries. But my diary process is always evolving. I’ve kept so many different kinds. First, those self-reflective, Ann Frank inspired, angst-filled ones; later, the Ira Progroff inspired psyche exploring ones; then, the artist-y kind, mining my creative process of writing projects; then, delightfully, the ones I wrote for each of my kids from birth, those storytelling ones – relational – like letters written to their future selves. Stacks, volumes of filled blank books crowd my bookshelves and boxes in closets. But I no longer journal on paper. Now, I keep only my nature photo inspired creative writing diary. I wonder if you’ve read it? #NewThisDay is my new diary, a blog that I’ve shared from my website – every day – for the past two years. Today, August 23, 2018, marks the second anniversary of my newest kind of diary, and, today, I gratefully begin my third year of this blog. This diary grows from my pictures of daily walks in all weather and seasons, from the woods, the Charles River, the meadows, fields and swamps of New England; but whether I’m walking an island in the Caribbean or Martha’s Vineyard, the coast of Florida or California, the streets of Paris, or a college campus in Pennsylvania, I embrace this mindful, creative discipline of keeping my attention on what is new this day, in nature, as well as my mind, heart, my feelings, my relationships, my life. Because, it nourishes me, body and soul. Because it helps me write poetry and live my life meaningfully. Because walking and writing and taking pictures of wildflowers and trees, rivers and oceans and sky regulates the beat of my heart. Because nature is the church I attend. Because asking this question, what is new this day? helps me grow and change, create and be satisfied. My diaries, like stars, keep pulling my hair and enriching my life.