Prose as Photography

May 6, 2016

Day two of writing every day for the rest of May. This morning as I stood in the shower I thought about what I should write about today, and the great thing is, I got kind of excited. Of course there was that all familiar dread, the judging voice telling me it wasn’t worth it, but I told it to shut up and here I am again.

I’m sitting on a terrace in the middle of what feels like the Secret Garden, on a hilltop overlooking the city of Nice, France. Surrounded by other verdant hilltops and circling birds, I feel like I’m on top of the world. Last night as I was sitting with my feet dangling in the air, a glass of wine in my hand and the sunset as my view I jotted down a quick description of what I saw. My current life feels surreal and I find the best way to capture it is with a couple descriptive sentences, rather than strenuous journalling (which let’s face it I would definitely procrastinate). I wrote: Painted cities — Red adobe roofs, warm candlight exteriors. Lush grounds, alive with the sound of insects. Lemons: succulent, sour and hanging, ready to be picked. Juicy oranges; lighting up a tree at dusk. Resplendent city: bathed in dusty light.

I was 14 the first time I picked up an SLR camera. I was taking a photography class in high school, and I remember that from one day to the next my entire way of perceiving the world changed. I started looking at everything as if through the lens of a camera, framing my reality in relation to photographs. Lately I’ve started doing this with prose. Capturing my experiences in a few short, descriptive sentences about a feeling or a mood or a view, framing my memory in words rather than a frozen image. I find this so much less intimidating than setting out to explain my day in its entirety.