Currently reading . . .

On My Bookshelf, 7.18.2021

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Bird by Bird: Every writer’s go-to writing manual.

Finding the Center: A famous travel writer describes why–and how–he became a writer.

Aspects of the Novel: A classic that offers a writer’s perspective on great novels and their authors.

On My Bookshelf, 6.28.21

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1. No Time to Spare, by Ursula K. Le Guin
2. Between You and Me, by Mary Norris
3. Dear Life, by Alice Munro

Hope and Flowers

This morning I have been thinking about hope and how I experience hope. It is not an emotion or insight that comes to me naturally or directly. It is, rather, a sensation I experience indirectly and imagistically. When I was younger and casting about for an image around which to develop my writing, a blue sky always represented hope to me — something limitless and all-encompassing. Some flowers also represented hope, such as the fiery orange gulmohur flower that garnishes trees in New Delhi during the summer months. Literally “gold coin,” the gulmohur flower symbolized life, a living flame, something eternal and everlasting, which is what hope is connected to in my imagination.

Thumbnails, repetition, sameness

But what is the purpose of so many thumbnails floating in space on a screen? Illusions of plenty, of abundance, of multitude. Distinctions and differences blur and are reduced to a visual ocean of sameness: the same rectangles, the same “content,” the same covers and data and metadata. It is sameness and sameness and sameness, when the essence of art and literature is the opposite of sameness, copies, and mindless repetition.