Almost Wordless Wednesday

I was going through all my photos and I stumbled upon this one. Taken at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a few weeks ago. I believe I caught Wordless Wednesday in the nick of time.

It's just...well...look at him.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

I love these pale winter petals, brushed by the light of burning lamps on the streets of Society Hill in Philadelphia (where I ran off to, briefly, just the other day.) 

Does anyone know these flowers?  How do they dry and stay through winter? 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Quartet

The first long work I ever wrote (a screenplay) took place on these waters. It was the fate of the computer Gods that I lost everything I'd ever written between a five year period, including the backup to the backup, so I have no physical proof that the dozen drafts of this story ever existed.

Still, I think of the characters often.  My memory has erased a lot of extraneous plot. What I have left inside me is only a set of two homes, side by side on this harbor.  Inside one: two friends who come from very different backgrounds.  Inside the other: two sisters who do not leave.

When I saw these twin trees, the stillness of these unbreakable waters, I thought of this quartet of characters, how they wait for me.

(Not Nearly) Wordless Wednesday: Something Inside Me Stirs Enough

I saw this little girl the other day and when I took this photograph it felt like stealing. I don't know. Look at her. She's stars and hearts and purple and sparkle.  All the things you can not possibly take.

It reminded me of something I wrote a while ago. A manuscript that lost its way.  The moment you fall in love with something you can not keep.

I wake up in the window, tucked in the corner of the sill, like a house plant you forget to water. The glass has become a pillow, the only place I can actually rest my head and sleep.  My cat curls up on the old blue shed across the way, in someone else's yard, under a canopy of bare trees and electrical wires.  I call him mine but, of course, he isn't.  He belongs to a stranger.  I haven't known him until now, until I stopped attending school, stopped spending afternoons in practice rooms and evenings with Graca as I played and she paced.

But now I see that he is there each day unless it rains.  He is fat, which means he's well-fed by this stranger, and he bunches himself up on the same spot of sun for hours. He has claimed it and I have claimed him.  Something inside me stirs enough to feel as though I've fallen in love. 

I place my hand against the glass, try to feel the winter cold in my palm.  I wonder if he is as numb to the cold as my hand is, how he endures such long hours in frigid temperatures, if the swelling sun is enough to keep him warm. 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: A Pair

When I was in San Sebastian Spain, I came across these twins, one boy, one girl, who reminded me of 'my' twins in Brooklyn.  I walk with them every morning to the subway.  They go to school. I go to work.  We walk at the same time every day.

What a strange and perfect balance.

(Insert transition here)

Happy Independence Day to those in the states. :)

San Sebastian Twins

Brooklyn Twins

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Coney Island / Playing From Memory

He sat at the old upright, drenched in sun, on a too-warm January day, just below the Coney Island Museum.  The fractured story of a place hummed above him.  He played from memory, just as we did, running our fingers along the slide of banister, drumming the floorboards, peering into the coin-operated telescope of time.

Maybe I have an urge to play an instrument I can not fit in my apartment.  Maybe I wish I was not at work but on Coney Island's beaches or riding the rickety Cyclone.  I don't know. But I think of him today.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Obsolete

I snapped this picture quickly because I don't know the last time I've seen this.

He tried his quarter again and again. It never took, fell through and popped out with a hollow tink.  But he was relentless, stood for a good five minutes, dialing a number that had been written, in pen, on the palm of his hand.

The last time I kept a number written on my flesh was probably about the same time I last used a pay phone.  In high school, notes and numbers were scribbled quickly after class or next to a metal locker. And I used the pay phone in the lobby to call my mother to pick me up after recitals, tennis practice, or a late track meet.

I felt sad that this stranger couldn't get through.  Because phone numbers on the hand always mean something special, written in the heat of a moment, no paper or napkin or digital keypad to memorize the connection for you.  "Call me," it says. "Don't forget."

When was the last time you used a pay phone?  Wrote a number on your hand?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: The Hum, The Moving Forward

I found these abandoned trolly cars, on their track to nowhere, last week. I sat with them a long while. I've always been fascinated with trains. Not the mechanics but the feeling I get when I ride them.

I am unable to read or sleep while riding in buses, planes, and automobiles. But I feel at peace on the train. I can always write. Always read. Always drift off to sleep.

I think it is the hum. The moving forward.

I always thought, I'm going to fall in love on a train.

It didn't quite happen that way. But it's a nice thought.

Do you like trains?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

My eyes are tired. Too much time in front of microsoft word documents or a library book. They need to rest. So I dream of this day in Cannes, even though it is colorless and hazy, about to rain.

I like how the stone and concrete mirror the condo towers along the water and the buildings up in the hills. Tiles of white and grey and all the spaces in between. I admire this man. Arms at his sides. Bundled. Waiting for the sun. Still. For just a little while.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: The Standoff

I took this photo at the Magnolia Gardens outside of Charleston. I'm not sure whose turf this is. Who doesn't belong. Sitting together, staring one another down, neither retreated. They made my day.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Little Miss M

Here is Little Miss M in the big city, sporting her tired face, knowing, at only three months old, that chicks do indeed rock. We wait for her to laugh, to roll over, to get to where she needs to go. And she does need to get somewhere because we watch her on her little mat, huffing and puffing and squirming with all the determination in the world. And we know, like Dr. Suess does, that, oh, there are places she'll go.

"You realize she's yours, right?" I tell Lynn, who it seems just yesterday sat in Professor Shanahan's communications class with me, who lived in Eco house, who drank whole pints, and dated the DJ. The girl whose name was always uttered in conjunction with mine. And, ironically, forever will be because I am (quite literally) Melissa Lynn.

(Almost) Worldless Wednesday: Mood Board

I work with a lot of designers at my job. Sometimes, before they design a project, they create what they call a mood board. It's a collage of color and style. It gives everyone a feel for the project. It creates a mood.

Over the weekend, I walked by this door. It wasn't clear where it led. It looked like an entrance to a church, but the rest of the structure was solid grey and it didn't have the customary steeple we so often see. There were no people. And no signs.

I thought...these flowers, this design, this color against concrete, this church but not quite church, an entrance to sanctuary and to peace and to nowhere, this is my mood board. Not the mood I'm in right now or the mood I might be in tomorrow, but the mood I want to live my creative life in, always.

What's in your mood board?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Wishes

What do you wish is at the top of the stairs?

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Thriving Where We Are Not Supposed To

For years my house plants survived in a poorly lit, ground floor studio. As soon as I moved in to my new place, sunlight poured through the high windows and, despite all logic, the plants withered away. I'll never understand it. And so, after a long hiatus, I bring the green back into our home. I hope that these tulips, however temporary, (and probably the least logical plant to bring indoors) have the strength to stay for a bit and perhaps grow again next year. Wish me luck...

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: At the market

It seems that all we want to do is see food. Marvel at it. Smell it. Take it home.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Pages Underground

I was standing in a crowded subway car and in every direction I turned, I saw this. There are people that say we are reading less, that the magazine, the newspaper, the book...they are all dying. I don't see it here. I never do.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Liberty

If you look closely, she is there in the distance. Between footprints and islands and branches, carving out a path for the sun.