July 5, 2021
The day began easy. No alarms, a cup of tea with my dream journal on a mellow cloudy morning. It progressed at a relaxed pace. Chat with sis, things going ok there. Outside the wind blew and cooled the tropical day. I had cancelled my work meeting as I was isolating after my friend was quarantined. I hadn’t experienced such a chilled day in a while and I thought about reading my old manuscript. These two weeks of writing the blog had revived the motivation to revisit it, then decided to wait a day to two till the intent built further. I didn’t want to start and then have the desire fizzle out. I pulled out my sketch book.
During the lockdown phase of the pandemic, I had found myself dabbling with all of the dry sketching materials I had purchased over the years, but never used. When curbs lifted I went to the art store and bought a bunch of B and H pencils, kneaded erasers, fine liners, and a couple of sketch books. I eyed the gorgeous coloured pencils—this store had the full Derwent ranges—but only bought raw umber, ultramarine blue, Chinese white, a burnishing pencil and a blending pencil. I decided to use my old basic Faber Castells till I knew whether coloured pencil was the medium I wanted to swim deeper into. I was still nervous to try messy, rather what I felt was messy, water colour and acrylics.
Over the last months what I kept going back to was black pen, both the technical pens and fountain pens. The simplicity of the medium and the monochrome that could create such complex sketches was what drew me in. It relaxed me to experiment with making black marks on white pages to create shape, form, texture, light and shadow. And it was cool that all I had to carry when I went out were my Faber Castell medium nib, and Platinum Preppy fine nib, pens to draw or write.
In writing I am searching, to do something different than I what I have been doing so far. My first two books—the fantasy series—had a big story, with a strong plot, a huge landscape, and a ton of characters. The third one had fewer characters and focused on their emotional changes through a stormy time. I think I want to do something even less complicated now. I am drawn to reading short books with just a character or two and a simple story where language is used to create beauty, intensity and truth. I think poetry does that beautifully but somehow feel an edge to being the creator of poems. I am seeking a form that will take me deeper into observing the marks I make on blank days, of knowing fully this life I am living in a time when meaning has leached out of this pandemic—perhaps soon to be post-pandemic—world, where I find myself far from purpose.
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