On Sunday...

I don’t call myself a writer simply because I’ve never been legitimately published. I don’t call myself a photographer even though I take and play with photos all the time. But neither one is exclusive of the other – one has words that create images and the other images that create words. One does not exist before the other – something that I write exists as an image first. Something that I photograph is first a sentence.

It’s a struggle. I would love to write fiction – I’m almost desperate to write fiction. But I can’t if only because my stories don’t seem to have any beginning, middle, or end. I can’t create plot. What I write just simply is. Much like my photographs.

I used to write poetry. They were quick snapshots. There’s that photography metaphor again. But I can’t do that anymore probably for the same reason that I don’t have an instant camera. There’s just too much of the story left to be told.

I can turn a phrase and string a word or two together that would be something like a quick burst of color, that first test shot out of the fireworks cannon from the river barge before the real show begins. It hangs there in it’s ooh-and-ahness – but then it dies out.

Frustrating.

Some people stop writing because of that frustration. That there has to be some purpose to it, some goal, some end, some resolution or reason. It’s a burden to be curious and never truly answer the questions. Sometimes you don’t even know what the questions are so you just get on that bus, pay your fare, and ride until your stop comes.

I’m hungry. I’m not sure what to eat or even the temperature of what it should be. Do I blend it with that noisy sharp bladed machine? Or simply stir it slowly with a thick spoon in an old pot…

It’s Sunday…time to look and see…

outer wall
Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Newark NJ
© Jeff Kopito