“The earth’s proper scripture could be carried on a three-by-five card if we weren’t drunk on our own blood.” – Jim Harrison, from After Ikkyu

INTRO NOTE: This little article about five photographs appears to jump around a lot; but that is only because it is an EXPERIMENT in attempting to capture the process/es of one writer’s mind during a mini-siege of controlled thinking.

I repeat: THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT. In the same way that scientists do experiments is this. (We know as little about the mind as we do about the entire universe which is just one reason why I believe Mind Experiments are productive.)

Henry David Thoreau once said: If I knew anyone better than I know myself, I would write about them (instead of writing about myself.)

Second Intro: These five pictures are called “One Writer’s Life” for six simple reasons.

ONE: I write in my car (a small, fuel-efficient vehicle), a lot, by hand, while roaming around, or ferrying my kids around, from work to school and back again, sometimes while actually driving.

I can drive like Paul Newman or Steve McQueen. There are a trillion things in this world I’m no good at, at all (even unto the point of being mentally deficient at some level, at least by this society’s standards), but driving is not one of them. (Writing an essay about all the things I’m not good at is on the agenda.)

TWO: I spend a lot of time in the northeastern Illinois fields roaming around with and sometimes without my three dogs, and writing, by hand, on paper, with multicolored pens, in all four seasons, which I love equally well. (Every time I try to pick my favorite month, I remember that all the other months are equally good for different reasons.)

I use many-colored pens because I like many colors (it makes the page/s look alive and vibrant, and reminds me of my heroes, Van Gogh and Walt Whitman), and because it helps me tell what the hell is going on in the packed page/s later (if and when the pages don’t fall out of my pockets for someone else to find, or not find, later).

THREE: I watch a lot of documentaries about writers in my down time, when I’m too tired to read or think on my own.

(I have (almost) no regular furniture in my small, fuel-efficient apartment, and if I did have it, I wouldn’t use it (which is why I don’t have it).)

FOUR: I write outside, as stated previously, a lot, including at night. I rarely use an umbrella even in the rain because my uncle, who was a Marine sniper in the Vietnam War with two tours of duty (and later regretted his actions but felt he was serving his country at the time), told me that Marines never use umbrellas unless it’s holding one over someone else, and I admire that kind of humble, dutiful, rock-solid toughness; but I still find umbrellas beautiful for some reason, I think because of my fondness for Asian culture and some of the beautiful paintings I’ve seen.

The lonely plant here, reaching toward the stars (not touching the stars: reaching toward them) is a symbol of the real (and HUMAN, all-too-human!) writer.

The stars are not of this world; and at the same time, they are the only thing that’s truly important in this world at all.

FIVE: In the mode of William S. Burroughs, that great Kansas aristo-cat who always wore an Army jacket and baseball cap in his later years, I sometimes toss together half-assed collages of writers when I’m not writing.

At the present moment (I counted) I have 103 pictures of various writers (and a few other artists, especially Van Gogh (who was also one of the greatest writers of all time, just pick up his letters and dive in anywhere), Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Marilyn Monroe, and Joan Crawford, one of whom reminds me of my mother and another of whom reminds me of a few someone/s I won’t talk about right now) up all over in my apartment.

Many of the pictures are small, like postcard-sized and so forth.

I see them much more than I see any other humans these days except strangers on the street and my kids, and sometimes their friends, etc.

SIX: Real writers are more introspective and self-conscious, and less publicly performative and pushy, than all other kinds of artists (in general, or mostly) and many of them definitely fit into the category of “neurodivergent,” and many of them in many more ways than one, too. And many of them are always dodging and disappearing around corners, like Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, were both equally wont to do, on a regular basis.

Hurray for the Human Writer, the Outsider Observer who cares (and struggles and strives) and can get it all down in words!

They call/ed Jesus “The Word” because they knew he is the greatest writer who ever lived, bar none.

Paul first spread The Word’s teachings through the word. (Open his letters anywhere and dive right in; Kurt Vonnegut repeatedly called himself a “Christ-loving atheist”; Charles Bukowski said, “Jesus had style.”)

Literature is the deepest, most profound, most complex, and longest-lasting Art form (without any doubt whatsoever at all).

Almost all of the greatest military generals in the history of Planet Earth (from Alexander the Great to Napolean to Ulysses S. Grant) have known and acknowledged this fact.

Michelangelo, and Picasso, and Rodin, all also acknowledged this fact.

They were all obsessive readers of Literature, and either were, or wanted to be, Writers.

Dale Barrigar (Words and Photos)