A – Rhythmi (the rhythms of word lists)

                                                                                                                               journal jl

Sensory Index

Are you a list maker? Is it a compulsion? A passion? A way to keep track of all those pesky tasks that have to be done, sooner or later?

Whatever the motivation, rows of words have a way of capturing information in a very compact way. A lineup of ingredients. An agenda of appointment times. Short-hand cataloging can be pragmatic and to the point. Compiling a table of pros and cons can be exhausting and yet weirdly revealing

Narrative strings

As a inveterate list maker I find that quickly penned columns distill and clarify. When I fall off the edge of a paragraph I’m writing and can’t seem to continue on, I make a tally of characteristics or impressions. When I commuted to work and had a good fifteen minutes on a ferry each way I wrote poems that I called strings. Those poems were essentially an enumeration of words rendered hastily and furiously because that was all I had time for.

                                                                                                            family album

WINTER’S EDGE

blue
sky
heart
break
blue
leaves
as
sharp
as
knives
laying
on
their
sides
turning
gold
then
dark

innocently
dangerous

 

                                                                                                                        family album

Notes on the  fly

In my on-going revision work this old habit has found a new application. Here are some lists that are tied to Lou Keats and the town of Fireweed Crossing:

List B – School (elementary)

• chalk dust
• damp asphalt
• threatening sounding bell
• linoleum squeaking under shoes
• desks that wobble
• sweat
• corn chips
• eraser crumbs
• oil
• blood
• despair
• names etched with sharp points – illegible
• warm metal
• wood veneer
• notebook cruft: balled up, notched edges of lined paper
• an old candy wrapper – liquified jawbreaker
• nobs of snot
• scent of talc
• the bumpy rinds of skin-pink recess balls
• the clang of flag-pole cables
• the sheen of windows that gaze like lidless eyes over the playground
• chili, cinnamon rolls, warm milk

 

 

the vocabulary of a time and place

List F

• View Master – techno color image
• Barbie in a pillbox hat with tiny red lips
• Silly putty – pressed onto newsprint to pick up images
• marbles – cat’s eyes, steelies, agates, devil’s eye, oxblood, shooter
• Pick-Up-Sticks – vibrantly colored, as sharp as pins
• Monopoly – little game pieces that take on a life of their own
• Scholastic books – that new book smell of scotch tape and vanilla
• tiny plastic babies – a handful for a dollar
• Etch-A-Sketch – like drawing in a secret code
• Troll dolls with wisps of orange hair
• Comics: Incredible Hulk, Strange Tales, Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider Man

 

                                                                                                                        from Olio notebook

Character traits

List E

• Independent (quietly defiant, listens to others but will wait to decide for herself)
• Wary (doesn’t believe what people tell her to believe – especially if they say it’s obvious)
• Lonely (misses her mother, grieves for Shakespeare, wishes her father was reliable)
• Imaginative – problem solver
• Argumentative – unwilling not to call BS, especially with friends
• Curious (avidly, dangerously, acutely)
• Stubborn – determined – the more frightened she is the more determined she becomes
• Attuned to the natural world – animals, the forest, the seasons
• Adept tracker
• Careful observer
• Private (does not appreciate pity or others who know better)
• Uncertain (who to trust? how to grow up? What is an imagined threat,
  what is a real danger?)
• Fiercely loyal to friends even when really pissed off at them
• Protective of small animals, old people, misfits
• Angry at gossips, bullies, loud visitors, any one who spends a lot of time thinking up insults to hurl at anyone who won’t or can’t hurl them back
• Tired of being herself when other people wish that she was more like them (and   sometimes she wishes the same thing)

 

Igniting a scene

 

List G (sensory record of Fireweed Crossing)

• Fresh bread, yeast and warmth
• Wood smoke, coiled and tang
• Dog shit
• Snow melt and mud
• Tar, engine oil, Aviation gas
• Fish guts coiled on river gravel
• Fog as thick as clotted cream in narrow mountain valleys, along the river margin, rising up in the ravine
• Split wood, damp willow bark, musty cottonwoods
• Mud puddles filled with mosquito larva
• Moon rise halos in bare branches
• Deep ruts and blue shadows over snow
• Cigar smoke, dense enough to make you feel light headed
• Cigarette smoke, sharper and thinner
• Strong coffee gone cold
• Rain typing a hard story on tin roofs
• Mosquito repellent, numbing lips and making eyes water
• A screen door thumping closed
• A laugh echoing over the water
• Loons on the high lake, chortling
• Damp canvas
• Sharp scents of skunk cabbage
• A creak of floor boards
• A rasp in the dark – words impossible to decipher

                                                                                                                   family album

Every list leads to another. Each compilation of words suggests a new scene or takes me deeper into a forest I thought I knew, landing me on a path I never realized was there.

                                                                                                                             family album