Inspiration
Back in the 1980s, writer Marion Winik wrote an unusual essay about her relationship with her father. It’s called “Sixteen Pictures of My Father.” It’s a memoir essay told through sixteen individual scenes or pictures. We read this essay last week at my conference. Below is a excerpt; click on the title to read the full essay. I’ll wait!
Sixteen Pictures of My Father (Marion Winik, Chicago Reader)
1. A small, square, black-and-white photograph with a scalloped white edge on which the date, May 1959, is printed in small type. I am the curly-headed baby in a white party dress sitting up on Daddy’s shoulder eating a strawberry. Boyishly handsome in his crew-neck sweater and grown-out GI haircut, he smiles up at me, squinting into the sun. He is 30, I am one, we are in love.
2. Twenty-five years later. My father and I at my younger sister’s wedding, a beautiful summer day at the golf club. . . .
Are you back? Great!
My take
This week I took my one of my “sketch-a-day” projects – to draw a lamp – and I combined it with ideas from Winik’s “Sixteen Pictures” essay to create a new meditation-poem. Here it is.
Sixteen Uses for a Lamp
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To shoo away the darkness.
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To light the pages of a book in the corner of your living room when a storm is raging outside.
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To show you where the scars are.
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To find an honest one.
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To prove that inventions are possible.
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To hold down the newspaper when the windows are open and it might fly away.
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To warm a face.
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To be the last thing that is turned off at night and the first thing that is turned on in the morning.
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To help you look into your lover’s eyes.
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To keep monsters in the closet in a child’s room.
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To be the light of the party.
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To illuminate the wrinkles of wisdom in a loved one’s face.
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To be part of an easy spelling list.
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To use up electricity so that the electrical meter will spin faster.
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To show a film.
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To make one glad there is light in the world.
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(bonus – surreal/zen) Because the orange is tardy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Your thoughts?
If you’re a writer, photographer, textile artist, I’m sure you must be inspired by certain other writer or artists . . . thanks for looking at my thoughts today!
