When they talk of those
walking on water, of
the miracle of wonder
perhaps this is what they mean
From here, anything seems
possible, even the way
we might slip across the
surface tension
and dance with the trees
I wait, while you pull
on your boots, our socks
still wet from yesterday’s
excursion into photography
Peace (through a lens, brightly),
Kevin
PS — this image was discovered through the Flickr Stampr Creative Commons search engine — I used the word “periphery” to find an image because it came up in another poem the other day and I like the idea of edges.
The CLMOOC Web Ring, still under construction with a few hiccups along the way (including this platform of Edublogs not quite in synch with how Web Rings work), is designed to provide paths to different CLMOOC blogging sites, so that you can move in circular patterns through the ring of writers. I still don’t have a full handle on Web Rings, yet, but I’m getting there, and Greg created this video tutorial on how to connect your space to the ring.
The CLMOOC RSS Planet, meanwhile, is a gathering of RSS feeds from bloggers who have been part of the CLMOOC experience over the years. Greg (with generous help from Sarah) set up a master feed that pulls in RSS into one place — one “planet” where we all orbit as constellations.
You can see both the CLMOOC Web Ring and the RSS Planet at the site that Greg has set up. Here’s another example of CLMOOC venturing into unknown terrain, under the ethos of making connections with each other and hopefully, expanding out the Affinity Space in different ways. And all with Greg’s continued guidance and support and, well, cheerleading, around the IndieWeb movement and Domain of One’s Own concept of DS106 and other connected networked spaces (a shift which I might need to start re-thinking myself this year, too).
I can’t draw what you see
nor can you draw, for me
Peace (in different visions),
Kevin
PS — this image was discovered through the Internet Archive Book Image project. I follow a bot on Mastodon that shares random pics from the collection.
I’ve been part of the SmallStories gathering over at Mastodon for some time (often with CLMOOC friends), first drawn there by Tanya and Kate and others, and now find myself a regular SmallStories writer. SmallStories is the idea of small moments, shared in the open. They are typically short bursts of writing, often hinting at something larger. Sort of like Slice of Life, if you are a Slicer with Two Writing Teachers.
I’m enjoying watching Laura share the ideas of the writing (including work that Geoff has done with the Young Writers Project in Vermont) at a conference considering the possibilities of open networking. She begins by contrasting the push towards bigger, bigger, bigger networking spaces with small corners of writing, sharing, connecting like the #smallstories hashtag. (oops, then the sound goes out when she moves to chat about Mastodon. Read her lips!)
Kate then explores the difference between flash fiction (short creative fiction) and small stories (mostly non-fiction of a single event).
“This little thing happened, how weird was that?” is how Kate explains how our days, all of us, are filled with small stories. “Noticing is something you need to learn to do.”
It’s in that noticing that we bring forth the story, however.
Kate defines small stories as:
being composed of the details we notice
having something to teach us about ourselves or the world
notice our values in action, made visible
Thanks to my friends for gathering this together and sharing it out.
You don’t remember me –
the way I was liquid in the crowd
hugging the shore with your family
and friends, nor how I pilfered
one of the ribbons off the ship
when no one was looking, sticking
it deep inside my jacket pocket
with clenched fingers, nor how, later,
I walked home a little lighter,
as if I were now part of something
rather than just another nothing
Daydreaming
of circles in the
sky, of stars in my
mind, of roots
underground —
where the Milky
Way meets the tree,
that’s the place
where you’ll find me