July 23, 2014 Check-In

How was your week?

Mine is going well. I didn't do much creative wise on Monday but yesterday I did. I went to the library after work and got out a few books on poetry (a manual, a collection by Margaret Atwood, and a Bill Moyers selections collection), as well as a new book for my theology reading book group --- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I finished Year of Wonders last night. The last thirty (?) or so pages are a whirlwind of action and the strongest part of the book to my mind. I'm not sure if I left with a 'theme' from the book. It was more of a book that was like looking at a painting depicting a life and period intricately but there was no agenda to convince the onlooker of anything -- like a Vermeer painting rather than political art. Have you read it?

I went for a run and thought about writing on my jog. I looked up at the clouds and thought, it will take me a lifetime to be able to translate the beauty of what I see right here in that simple skyskape into words. What words to pick? What rhythm, sound, meter? How to communicate that wonder and beauty to others...

A child can color a cloud and we know it signifies a cloud. You see someone like the Renaissance artist Titian who can draw a cloud and there's beauty in his symbolism. It took years of mastery and probably iterations upon iterations of clouds to give us something that has both sacredness and symbolism because the time the artist paid to developing his craft.

Writing about a cloud in the sky will take a lifetime of work. And what a joy of a journey and work I feel more and more drawn to each day.