Meander, spiral, explode!

writing about reading

Hi, hello!

I'm currently reading a writing craft book for a workshop group I'm in - Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison.

The book talks about different narrative forms (like the story arc we all learned in school!) and the different patterns that form in stories. It talks a lot about waves, and how, when watching the motion, it might seem like the important part is the big crash, but there is so much more to that movement. Each little piece adds up to large revelations, and after the peak, there's more.

And this has me thinking about patterns in a larger scope. The book talks about patterns in nature, like weather and seasons, the winding of rivers, etc. But what else can be considered a pattern? Where do they form in everyday life? Are patterns a good thing?

Adam downloaded an app on my phone so I can take pictures through a film camera filter.

We bought a real film camera because we want to start being better about physical media but I'm a little afraid of it because I'm not great at hobbies because if I'm not immediately good at something I shut down! The (free) filter has been a great way to help me realize it simply is not that deep. I took a picture of our refrigerator magnets the other day and decided it looked cool as heck because it's film-y!

Ways in which we consume, as a society, move in patterns.

I got my first iPhone in (I think) 2011-ish (and I'm pretty sure I was late to the game) and I've probably printed physical pictures from my phone approximately seven times since then. (Maybe eight to ten times if I want to be generous!) That is so many years of a mostly digital archive! And now, suddenly, I'm like "if I do not have my photos printed out and handed to me and kept in a little box in my apartment I will stand in the center of the street and scream!"

Probably because everything is very screwed up and no one ever needed to see 1 million pictures a day when scrolling on their phone or have the choice between 1 million movies on streaming services and we're tired and feel desperate to bring back older forms of media because they were cooler by the nature of them needing more care! Of there being less!

Personally, I'd be happy if the two shelves of DVDs and VHSs kept in the little TV room in my mom's house were the only choices I had when I wanted to watch a movie! Because then I might take five or ten minutes to look through all the titles before landing on a movie to watch but wouldn't waste so much time looking through movie after movie after movie that I wouldn't even feel like watching a movie anymore by the time I narrowed down the options!

The book I'm reading also talks about meandering through slightly off-topic ideas as you move through your story, how the asides put into a piece of work can give the reader an inside look into the minds of characters.

Probably what my meandering through ideas about film pictures and DVDs means is that I would like to say a bunch of stuff about capitalism and how its destroying us! And about how horrific the L.A. fires are! But it all feels like screaming into the void! Because it is! Another pattern!

I haven't finished the end of the book yet, but maybe there's something in it about abrupt endings! (I'm very curious about what will be in the "explode" section! Maybe it will mirror the way the country feels like it is going to explode at any second!) Maybe there's a deeper meaning to something that cuts off without big warning! But here, I just don't have anything productive to say about the destruction we're all watching unfold through our tiny screens!

So, a rushed poem draft (because of my own personal pattern of procrastinating every week):

35 mm

When you download the app on my phone, I think
I'm an artist of media, discarded. 

Why did we think we could leave behind memories?
Clock out of existence!

I take a picture of our clothing rack, of the bookshelf.
Look at the gleam of being known!

Documentation like an extraordinary sense of relief.
This week, Los Angeles is on fire

and we watch through the screens of our phones, no
filter strong enough to rephrase

a pre-told story. We should be much angrier, again.