An idea is part logic, part thunder, part butterfly wing.

As I stepped out this morning ...

I saw small dewy ships ...

that sailed through forest seas

photos © 2012 by troy howell / click on image to enlarge

writing, writing, writing ...

writing a novel. it’s like putting a 5000-piece puzzle together. you assemble areas; they begin to take shape, looking good, making sense. but there are pieces you cannot find. that particular piece. no matter how much you look you can’t find it, and until you do, you keep building, fitting them together.

then, at last, there it is: the one you’ve been looking for.

art by troy howell / graphite on gessoed page from old scribner’s magazine

to do today

empty pencil sharpener

scrape palette

stretch canvas

adjust skylight-

unlock trunk

catch dreams—

feed dragon

What it's like to write a novel.

(And this is only part one.)

: (

Call it a lost art, though I know there are people in the world who refuse to abandon all to technology, who still have a hand for elegant penmanship.

Perhaps not lost but anemic is the art of courtship with a personal, passionate, aesthetic touch. A dove, in the upper left corner, carries this letter from one man who was heart-over-head in love. Notice the date, 1919. DeAlva Allman would have been 19 years old, born in 1900. She was my maternal grandmother, he, my grandfather, Duncan Robert (D.R.) Jackson. He played the violin, painted desert scenes, and worked in the Texas oil fields, and later, after moving to California, the oil fields in Long Beach. He died there at the young age of 61.

We now send light-fast notes, stripped of all but prefab emoticons, disposable. Give me a sad face, somebody.

image is actual size / click to enlarge

-
"portrait of snowy evening as seen from compact computer held by human"