Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell, Santa Fe

Writing Spaces: Reading

 

Reading, like tracing

fossils, ancient marine life

in white chalk cliffs,

remains or impressions

of thoughts and dreams

cast into immutable form.

Like stone maybe, but

always giving, carrying

forwards and back.

Fluent in voice and time.

 

 

image:  Blanche-Augustine Camus, woman reading

Writing Spaces: Glastonbury Tor

 

image:  Christie Cochrell

Writing Spaces: July Jottings

 

image:  V.E. Jenkins

Writing Spaces: Spring Work

 

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”
― John Muir

image:  Christie Cochrell, Filoli

 

Writing Spaces

 

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Liber Floridus, Leviathan

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Edward Gorey, The Interesting List

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Franklin Booth, Giving Wings to Words

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Christie Cochrell, The Globe Theatre, 2010

Writing Spaces in the Kitchen

 

Old recipes:  hand-written tales on stained pages telling of kitchens past, and some of them on parchment paper, torn sheets folded maybe into neat packets.  Stolen biographies of far-away places and times, of grandmothers or unknown chefs in New Orleans or the countryside of Normandy, a friend nearby, a friend across the world but always in your heart.  Sensual stories from distinctive cultural settings, written again while mincing garlic and not mincing words.  That expressive ambiance of spices, those life-changing/life-commemorating stories in every ingredient and every taste to come.

 

This afternoon’s writing was in ancho chile powder, paprika, cumin, a rainbow of little tomatoes sprinkled with oregano (Mexican rather than Turkish), caramelized onions, snow peas, baby lettuces.  Black beans will show up in the final paragraph, as well as salsa fresca and that oven-roasted evergreen poblano which will have so much to say.

 

 

image:  Pixabay, Bru-nO

Writing Spaces: Words

 

Words, how I loved you

Then—when I

Was young

And you led me

Out of the dark!

 

How I love you now

Even more,

As the dark approaches.

 

(#14 of 15 parts, Gregory Orr, “Ode to Words”)

 

 

 

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Ashmolean Museum

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Giacomo Puccini manuscript (looks like La Bohème), Torre del Lago

Writing Spaces

 

image:  "Romeo's House," Verona

(Christie B. Cochrell)

Writing Spaces

 

image:  www.VagabondJourney.com

Writing Spaces: Offerings

 

A ti leaf offering is a sacred package wrapped in ti leaves and placed at a significant location to honor ancestors, loved ones, or scared beings.

 

But for those who are not conversant with what’s appropriate in context, in Native Hawaiian culture,

“The most appropriate offering that any person can make can be made without any tangible item being left behind. The most perfect offering is one’s aloha, ha, and olelo. To love a place, and breathe out that love in the form of a spoken promise to cherish and protect it, that is the most perfect offering.”

(Leilehua Yuen, from “Ho`okupu – Offerings”)

 

Image:  collage by Christie Cochrell 

Writing Spaces for a Rainy Day

 

Image:  Dome, slatki dome, with Mariza Fdez De Castro Jenkins and 濱谷千里子

Writing Spaces

 

image:  the incomparable George Booth

Writing Spaces: Querencia

 

QUERENCIA:  (noun) a place 

from which one's strength is drawn, 

where one feels at home; the place 

where you are your most authentic self.

 

 

 

images:  source unknown

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Edmond Aman-Jean  

(French painter 1858 - 1936)