zirconium

I've been dipping into an old issue of Shenandoah -- Spring/Summer 2005, to be precise -- and I find myself marking different pieces than the ones that caught my attention seven years ago.

This time, an essay that made me pause and think, "Oh, I need to share this" was Donna Steiner's The Loupe, which is republished in full at her blog (the link will take you there). Two quotes, to entice you there:

A friend, who grew up to be a painter, wrote the word "Look" in crayon on the walls of her parents' farmhouse when she was a child. She sat on the bottom stair of the hallway and carefully outlined the word, then proceeded to the next stair and wrote it again -- all the way up the staircase, until the hall displayed an ascending, repetitive series of the command or entreaty -- Look Look Look Look Look.

* * *

A teacher once said, to a room full of nonfiction writers, that other people sacrifice their lives for us -- our friends, families, lovers, acquaintances, students -- they live, they work and love, they mind their own business -- and we steal their stories. I'd expand that list to include animals, flora, the whole natural world. . . . For this essay alone, I've used a half-dozen plucked flowers, the treasured story of a good friend, the very bones of creatures. Am I a thief, have I committed a criminal aesthetic act, stolen what is not mine? Or do I simply want to share what I see? Look look look look look.

The dog killed a possum last week. A pair of vultures came by the back yard to snack on it this afternoon.