Want to start the week with the frank acknowledgement that between writing with others three mornings a week and editing my novel, I’m not able to show up here quite how I’d like. For now. Even with comments. Please be patient with me!
I took this photo in high school. It’s somewhere on Route 20 where the road loops over Lebanon Mountain, crossing from Massachusetts to New York. I think it’s just downhill from the infamous “Dead Man’s Curve.” It fell out of some shelf recently and I share it because it demonstrates the consistency and resilience of the house as motif in my work.
Scrolling backward to find a color xerox collage made in my early twenties, I tagged just a few recent house compositions.
Below is the piece I was hunting for. Two Isabella Street, Northampton — the last place I lived while a student at UMass. The photo was copied, cut up, fragmented, and copied again on what was then an absolutely ground-breaking and thrilling piece of technology: a color copier. It had a dial that allowed the scanner to apply different colorways. This copy shop was in San Francisco and I worked there and probably the only saving grace to that job was access to that Xerox machine. Now I can see that this red collage/color copy exhibits not only the resilient house motif, but a love for technology-aided variations (now done with filter in my iPhone). Somewhere, I have green and yellow versions of the collage.
Back to the binder! It’s cold and damp here today, which you might be able to tell from the shots from Finn’s and my walk this morning. The one of him lounging on the couch might have been taken while we were watching Stanley Tucci in Italy.
I close with two Paris Collage Collective Week 12 compositions that didn’t make it into my Instagram feed.
I think people forget how solitary a process writing is.
A walk with temps in the 40’s was cause for celebration this week. Daffodils shoving aside leaf debris. Snow shrugging off the curbs. It won’t be long now ’til the miracle of hyacinths.
In the meantime I am trying to answer the question (Acey’s): how do you hold your heart? Or maybe just asking it. Softly.
Walked the dog. Did both crossword puzzles, more or less. And I’m back to editing after a hiatus — easier than going back to writing after a pause, but still a hurdle.
To hear 
It’s a gorgeous day here in the Northeast. Sunny and warm. Our street is blocked off from whatever utility work the city’s doing, but the machinery’s still. I can hear the crickets and I can hear children on the playground.