#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Brook in winter
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.– Aristotle
Ice melt and the river is over its banks, spilling onto the trails. Other paths must be taken. Suzi and Charlie and I get our feet wet and don’t mind. The river is whiplashed, from freeze to thaw and back again. Today, fragments of ice leftover in the brook. It’s a pleasant occupation, bending to look at ice formations in the fresh air.. Wandering, careful not to crack through, the wetlands and humps of dead grasses and thin, very crackable ice patches. My favorite today, above, a small filament of ice attached to a stalk of grass leaning into the brook rush, like a pen, a fountain pen excitedly spilling ink all over a page in swirls of emotion. Ah, if writing could always be such a gorgeous excitement. Storm Cellar, a journal that published a hybrid prose piece of mine exactly one year ago, tweeted that they featured a reprisal of it on their front page today. I worked a bit on a poem for tonight. Some very nice comments, particularly about the sound of it. But I see it needs work. A festive night at our workshop, a cheerful, congenial night, especially so, and some remarkable writing from my peers. I baked a batch of Aunt Virginia’s Blue Ribbon Molasses cookies and gave little packages to all. Just as I was in the middle of making them, Frank’s executive assistant texted me: “Can I have that wonderful cookie recipe?” I had made them for her recently, and she’d asked for it, and I’d forgotten to send it. Well, I love making these cookies, and I know the recipe by heart, but I sent her a picture of it from the stained, worn and faded much used handmade recipe book Aunt Virginia gave each of us, probably forty years ago. (Reader, e-mail me if you’d like this recipe. You’ll love this recipe. If you enter these cookies into a Grange Fair, you will win a Blue Ribbon in honor of Aunt Virginia.)
