Reframe: What if fleeting was also full?

By Cheryl Murfin

Day one of watching

We used many different prompts to get to the writing on these journeys. Some come from the things we see on the path, others we bring with us—small art exercises that lead us to questions that lead us to words. One of my favorites on this walk came from my longtime friend, Andrea.

Near the beginning of the walk, she invited each of us to find a single, simple item, look closely at it for 10 minutes, and describe in full detail exactly what we saw. Then, to do it again the next day, pull out the item, watch it for 10 minutes, and draw and describe what we saw. Were there changes? Did the thing break down, remain the same, or look different in different lights? She invited us to do this every day of the walk, the same object, the same exercise.

By the end of the nine days, we never quite rounded back to sharing what we wrote about our objects, but this exercise was so profound for me.

I chose a piece of honeycomb I found under a tree on the first day. A dead bee was glued to the gray-brown mass like some gothic art piece. I carried the honeycomb (and the bee) with me, moving it from pocket to backpack to mouthguard case and finally, on the final day, I laid the gooey form out on a napkin, described what I saw, and laid it to rest in the hollow of a tree. But over those days, this item mesmerized me, changing, morphing, presenting itself as both metaphor and waste.

I found the right words to describe it: at the beginning it was "frail brown, edged in sorrow, its lifeblood honey dark and oozing, its last guard, crisp and wingless;" and on the last day "a sandlike swathe of decay, sticky yet shapeless, a vibrant moment of living returning to the source."

This exercise, for me, was a lesson in how to write. Start with an idea. Describe it. Turn it over, find more ways to say what you see. Then do it again and again and again, adding more detail and gaining a better understanding of the idea, the story, how it breaks down, where it goes next, and what or where it leads to.

At the end of the walk, the honeycomb and bee had become a way brown blob, a brownish ball that looked nothing like a comb or a bee, but blended in perfectly with the wood of the tree. Once I placed it there, I almost couldn't tell it apart from the bark. I realized it had become something else, melding into a longer story that I am still writing.

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Writing from the ro

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There is beauty in things breaking down

Beautiful decay

By Andrea Blander

Decay has a negative connotation.Things should be fresh and shiny and new to be good.  

Decay means neglect, a lack of care, of investment.

But decay is a process, it’s an adventure: a journey of something from its original state to another. Is something that decays the same thing through its entire decaying process, or at each stage is it something else?  Does decay change the essence of an object, or only its appearance? We don’t talk about people decaying until they are dead.  he body decomposes, decays. Not the person.  s decay only for non-living things?

Thoughts seem alive. They pop in, animated, with an existence of their own. They combine and mutate, create a memory. But as soon as the memory forms, it also begins to decay. A disintegrating impression, a diminishing fraction of the full, live moment, with its sounds and smells. 

The feel of my feet on the solid but soft trail, my butt on these cold stones, the wind blowing the strand of hair that has escaped my braid and plunging it into the blueberry yogurt I’m trying to eat, a pale blue dye job.

The sun trying feebly to warm my face.

The smell of drying grass. 

These four women, sprouted like colorful mushrooms on the rocks. 

So full.

So fleeting.