paradox

SUBMIT

/ janpriddyoregon / 17 Comments

I submitted my “Butterfly Fontanelle” novella to a literary press a couple of days ago. It has remained untouched since January. I had hopes for it when I began four years ago, but then lost faith. Today I reread the beginning of a letter responding to that novella. One of my favorite writers wrote: “I really do love this story! The imagery throughout is gorgeous, and your conception of the Daughters, every detail of their lives, their behavior and appearance, their singing—all of it—feels startlingly original. Amazing, really.” That’s right at the beginning of her comments, and I cannot say how startling it was to read that, to find such words of praise. I knew if I continued to read the letter, I would find her suggestions and questions. I did revise in response, and revise yet again in a further draft. And again. I even tried changing the title. I submitted. Rejection without comment. There is no knowing if I improved the piece and evidence I didn’t, but I think it’s better even if I failed to take it where it needed to go. I did try.

Anyway, I sent it off, my first submission in ten months. I hadn’t intended to submit anywhere ever again. I posted that notice on my publications page and have only been writing here, in my blog, and a few scraps of poetry, or what might become poetry if I had stuck to the page. I haven’t. [“Seat in chair.”]

A lot has happened.

This is one of my favorite photographs I’ve ever taken. In recent years I have used photographs for my winter cards and had them professionally printed, but for a couple of decades before that I designed, drew, and made cards, cutting linoleum blocks or illustrating family dreams for the New Year in pen and ink. Mimi wrote that some of those old cards are part of Janice Gould’s library collection. It fair took my breath. I had only just noticed that of all the art hung in our new condo, there was nothing from me. This year, perhaps I will return to that old custom. Gary thinks so.
Continue reading →

BEAUTIFUL THINGS

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

fullsizeoutput_109e

My brief essay appears on Monday’s River Teeth Journal‘s “Beautiful Things.” Please have a look or even comment: https://www.riverteethjournal.com/blog/2019/09/30/simplify-simplify

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Perhaps not everyone fantasizes about a simpler life, but I know I am not alone in imagining that complication might be set aside. To walk streets without concern or worry, to simplify.

It is a paradox. What does not fit upon my thumbnail, those details that exceed the fingers of one hand plus one, are still of matter. Life is not only engagement with two or three but always of dozens, and in the larger sense they encompass multitudes, the entire world.