Scribbles and Photos

Vain Crocus (Central Park) A long time ago I took a course on writing.   It was one of those two-day intensive workshops held over a weekend.   It was not my kind of writing at all.   The premise was that we should sit with pen to paper and write for 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes.   No re-reading, no editing, just write and see what comes out and since this was a pen to paper exercise there was no place to hide an edit.   The underlying theme was that an “edit as I go” approach was wrong – according to our teacher, it made for bad writing. Crocus on the Cusp (Central Park) I remember feeling discouraged as we completed each round of speed writing.   What I was producing was trash – something that I would “ball up” and throw into the closest wastebasket if I had my druthers.   It was two days of sheer torture for me – someone who has never written a sentence that I couldn’t see how to say it better within 15 seconds of writing it.   Tak...

Crinkle Nose (Tanzania) I learned a new trick today -- how to add sound to a video and now I've made my own little movie of the lions we saw eating at Klein's Camp in Tanzania. Along the way, I upgraded my iTunes to 10.2 and purchased some tunes (Arcade Fire, Kanye West -- the latest from both had been languishing on my list). Sneaking Up to Steal a Piece of Tail (Tanzania) I grew up with home movies shot on an eight millimeter camera that my parents got for their wedding.  Somewhere, there are faded images of their honeymoon in Bermuda -- which appears to be the only place where my Dad ever dove into the water head first. I am sure that there are other instances of that but when we were growing up, he would slowly walk into the water until it was up to his shoulders. This notion of him Dad diving was so novel to us kids that we'd ask him to rewind it just so we could see it again -- going backwards AND forwards. Yes, we had those home nights that people of a c...