Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Photography and Photo Art
I ran across an article not too long ago that talked about people who are happier living alone. These are not people who hate other people. They have close friendships. They even have intimate, sometimes romantic, relationships. But at the end of the day, they prefer to go home to their own little corner of the world, to embrace solitude. I am one of those people.
The train slowly gathered speed as it pulled away from the station. The sound of the wheels rattling against the tracks was something she found soothing. It established a kind of rhythm that, at least momentarily, drew her thoughts away from what she was leaving behind. From what had happened there.
Some photo art and photography from the last few weeks or so.
Mimi in Motion
When I was child, I remember having a great deal of freedom. I don’t mean that just in the sense of being able to spend a lot of time reading or wandering through the woods across the road from our house. I also mean it in the sense that being a girl was only one minor aspect of my existence and experience rather than being the thing that defined me as an individual.
Adolescents are the ones who get it
right, relishing
the graphic image as they cling together,
so close,
and whisper, “Oh, gross…”
Guts
and blood are undeniable
as are fingers, eyeballs, liver and kidney.
What have souls
and such to do with the body,
the words,
reduction and reproduction?
Even the phoenix only rises from the ashes
to become its fleshy self
once again.
Here is a selection of photo art pieces that all feature some level of abstraction. Some of these are slightly abstract and others are very abstract. I’ve always enjoyed abstract art and sometimes like to play that way with my own art. Enjoy!
If you’d like to see more, please visit my Flickr photostream.
A Fishy Federation
When I was talking with my sister about this self-portrait series and what I hoped to accomplish with it, she jokingly suggested that I pose nude. Um, no. Nude was out of the question but it got me thinking. One of my primary goals with this project is to explore aspects of myself that I have not completely revealed in the past or that make me feel uncomfortable. So I thought maybe I should push myself a bit and pose in a way that, for me, is more scantily clad because I’ve always had a poor body image. I knew I’d have to psych myself up for it.
The mockingbird’s song
clinks and slides against the glass,
rebuffed
by retreat
into each cloistered night.
Peace lurks like a ghost
in shrouded
corners of light.
In my post yesterday, I mentioned that I’ve been experiencing a bit of a writer’s block lately. So this morning I decided to start a new project as a way of unclogging the creative pathways. A week or so ago, I came up with the idea of doing a series of self-portraits with something written to go along with each one. The goal was (and is) to give tangible form to parts of myself that tend to remain at least partly veiled. My queer self, for example, is given free expression within the fictional and poetic realms but not so much outside of those. My masculine and feminine selves are often at least somewhat obscured by a layer of what is socially expected. And so on. By creating the self-portraits, I hope to push myself beyond those boundaries.
I’ve been in a bit of a writing funk lately, not getting anything to come together the way I want it to. I’m a slow writer under the best of circumstances. But it still seems like sometimes writing is a fight and sometimes it flows. Hopefully the flow will be back soon. In the meantime, here are a few photo art pieces with a surreal aspect. Perhaps one of these will tell me a new story.
7-Eleven
Karen Lee Kleis 