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 contour, an outline of an image—bird, pueblo, or sky—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 into newly visible colorful design? Blog essaying can be a paint brush. Writing sounds are click click click go key board letters and scratch scratch scratch goes a pen on paper. And what surfaces are an ordinary day’s new design and color.
Life adventure gifts us two chances—to live the original event and to relive through reflective nonfiction story. 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 daily serendipity awaits for me being a lesbian Mama in sobriety raising her 15-year-old son? He is a mixed-race African American and Caucasian contemporary youth. We have adventures, for sure. And is how these essays delve into modernity topics through talk-storying or how circuitous often has purpose. The phrase not all who wander are lost has truth. Still, we are dwelling in a set home in Kapaau, next to Hawi, two villages in the Kohala region on Big Island Hawai’i.
Even inside anyone’s long work hours, we nurture dreams. A path to hopes and their fruition is quiet time, simplicity space to catch a breath or two and relax. During this brief hiatus, reading is a kind of creative daydreaming that lifts the chance to wonder, to stay curious, and to ask what-if beyond clocking a work shift. For an immersion reading moment, reciprocity a writer and her readers share, let's collaborate. Three sides are to the powerful triangle symbol and seven days are open for being curious, so my request is $37.
My vote is that we collaborate. Yours? Collaborate button is below.
Goes without saying and even so still needs saying that if you have an art project that requests a reciprocal donation, please ask.
When I am building essays and framing photographs, I picture a reader’s reflective emo-bounce, a surprise laugh or cry. What I also see in readers’ lives is a long work day. Arduous hours are in a work shift: a barista pours coffee, a landscaper prunes trees, a warehouse worker shelves products, or a librarian researches books. When we have time freedoms away from being on the clock, soulful work is to nurture our lively creative spirits and reading is one strategy.
And is the meaning I get from Audre Lorde’s social justice primer The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. She often was at a speaking podium and would announce her identifiers: Black, lesbian, feminist, mother, and poet. Then she staked a claim for “learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish…learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Keeping creative time for reading is one tool for living thoughtfully.
My hope is that a reader reclaims a pause moment to appreciate these words and photos. Higher consciousness dismantles the economic grip—or the master’s house—that modern life often has on our lives. Choosing freedom to slow down online is like visiting a neighborhood art studio or casual gallery; the blog reading time is for reflection and observation—rather than instantaneous clicks and rushes and likes on social media. Advertising is absent on our blog. Rather we have a simplicity experience to go into the day on curiosity.
Essays arrive on the 7th and 21st of the month, giving a writer who works with words a few numbers even she can calculate: $1.54 an essay throughout the year. Your $37 annual investment keeps the prose and photography flowing. Let’s collaborate!
And I love to hear from readers: 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.