Swish swish swish the water-dipped paint brush swipes across the paper surface—a blank one. Gentle sound to illuminate color. The art template provides a black line, an outline of an image—bird, tree, or orange—but is still void of color. Once the paint brush applies water, then the colors start to appear.
Remember these pictures that render invisible pattern to newly visible colorful design? Blog writing can be that paint brush. Click click click go the key board letters and scratch scratch scratch the pen on paper. And what surfaces are an ordinary day’s new pattern, color, and design.
Writer Zadie Smith posits that writing gives two chances—to live the original event and to relive through reflective nonfiction story. Living on Big Island Hawai'i gifts plenty thriving life, first, and next the blog story reveals. Like the paint brush on a blank canvas, once writing starts, I find, the reveals are unknown, writing as I go into mystery so discovery happens so prose builds.
What adventure awaits this lesbian mom raising her mixed-race African American and Caucasian 14-year-old son? Prior essays delve into food, film, and family topics via talk-storying, a suggestion that the circuitous often has purpose. Otherwise known as not all who wander are lost. So far we have had a set home in Kapaau, next to Hawi, two villages in the Kohala region.
Is now really the time to idly wander across America? When I picture you on that last hour at the cafe exhausted from a long shift, I wonder. Staying curious, I see another worker staying late into the evening, meticulously entering database numbers, diligent at a minimum wage employment. Maybe your gig is a 6 a.m. start time on the golf links—irrigating, cutting, and fertilizing someone else’s leisure lawn for the next eight arduous hours. I can remember being a cashier at a gas station when I thought the long line would never recede and I was caught in a what-if this is an endless work loop? Wake up, drink coffee, and go make doughnuts—yet again.
How about a brief hiatus? Even inside long work hours, we nurture dreams. One of mine has long been to travel across the United States. Doesn't reading lift the chance to wonder, to stay curious, and to ask what if? For an immersion reading moment, let's collaborate.
I'll write the essay and you invest in the prose. Choose a starting place that works for your right here, right now economy. Asking range I have is from $3 to $37. Monies arrive and I go frugally into travel. Simplicity. A day fueled on curiosity is one charged with feet-on-the-ground optimism. Let's invest in ourselves, one writer's version of the good life and her intrepid readers.
When I am crafting essays and framing photographs, I picture a reader’s reflective emo-bounce, maybe yours, a surprise laugh or cry. This is the grateful work I attempt now. Generosity of spirit has such wild abundance (scarcity model is quite over) that paying forward all that has been gifted to my life feels familiarly calm and lucky. Some life moments absolutely design you to go in a direction.
And this one is mine, so my asking is from healthy humility. Clearly, if you have an art project that requests a reciprocal donation, please ask. Seems impossible to quantify, yet reading Amanda Palmer’s book The Art of Asking or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help has taught me to seek “art patrons” as I go.
Deciding on a $37 collaboration is supporting three equilateral sides on a triangle, which are unflappable lines, symbolic for balance and the geometry inside peaceful strength. And seven days in the week count how often I'm idly planning another essay. Hence, we have $37. And I suppose that's the point in the idling and the wandering—can happen anywhere and is so vital to enliven perspective. Guess now really is the time to slow down. My vote is that we collaborate. Yours? Collaborate button is below.
One clarity note on social media. I am not on there. Yet let us compare where a painting resides—in a studio or art gallery or museum—and so these essays are on a blog, the display case. My hope is that a reader has a pause moment to appreciate the words and photos. Milling around and viewing creative work on display does not provide an immediate commentary button. And so our blog does not either. My presence on social media then is simply to provide wider access to readers.
With little to no debt, usually—the essays built are how I earn my “living,” meaning an enriched life happens inside the joy of frugal anyway, simply that finances gladly help. Living forward, I cobble a “salary” together based on collaborations. Whatever you gift is helpful abundance so mahalo nui loa for all generosity!
Creating a blog without advertising and e-mail campaigns for merch on discount, I am; hear the blissful quiet and shared solitude (zen koan)? An occasional hello through e-mail could happen. Hope we are good on that.
If you wish, send me a note: hawaiitalkstorying@gmail.com.
~Karolina Garrett
Mauna Kea began forming when lava spouted from the ocean floor one million years ago; over 800,000 years she took shape arriving to 32,700 feet tall. Many island energy lines emanate from her center and at the peak is earth’s clearest telescopic view of the space universes.
Karolina Garrett retains copyright to all prose and photos on this blog.