Rambling: Creativity versus rewards and praise, and another rant about blogging

So, I was recently talking to a  friend (Hi, friend!) about the research that suggests that rewards suppress, rather than encourage, creativity. A week or three later, I ran into the same idea in the book How to Fly a Horse.  The book discusses a few experiments and facts:

• Children who were rewarded for writing stories wrote less creative stories than children who weren't.
• Adults who were rewarded for creating collages created less creative collages than adults who weren't.
• Adults who were told that their collages would be evaluated created less creative collages than adults who weren't.
• Woody Allen wants nothing to do with his Academy Awards.
• Einstein avoided Nobel prizes.

(By the way, I want to know why collages keep being the creativity activity for adults in these experiments. Is it because most adults can use a pair of scissors and a glue stick, so they reduce unwanted differences based on skill?)

I was thinking of all of this in the context that if you want to create an environment that encourages creativity, you may want to keep rewards out of it. And then I came to an abrupt conclusion:

Micropayments have destroyed blogging.

I don't actually know if it's a valid conclusion, and "destroyed" is a big overstatement, because there are lots of good blogs out there. But I have griped, many times, that it's essentially impossible to have any discussion about blogging without that discussion turning toward, not blogging, but rewards for blogging--readership and pagerank and ads and Adsense clicks, and all of those numeric metrics that can add up to making more money from ads or selling products or selling the blog itself.

Many bloggers chase that reward, focusing the entire blogging effort on increasing their Adsense payments from enough money to buy a burger a month, to enough money to buy a burger a week. The entire value of what should be a joyous creative-effort is reduced, in perception, to a few dollars. And if the reward stays at a few dollars, or in fact never goes above a few pennies, they feel stupid, like they're suckers. 

Even when a blogger doesn't actually care about money, the measure of a blog is still often based on the measures that produce money--readers, page views, pagerank.

What kind of sucker has a glorious, joyous time creating and offering their creation to the world, without demanding that they get paid for it? After all you get paid when you sing karaoke, right? You get paid when you invite friends to dinner, right? You get paid when you sing carols at Christmas, right? You get paid for those great cookies that you take to the potluck, right? You get paid when you have a fascinating conversation with a friend, right?

Oh. Right. You don't. And, yes, I'm descending into sarcasm. I'm annoyed. Blogging is an opportunity for absolutely anyone to create and share their creations--words, photographs, pictures, videos, whatever. But because, in theory, a blog could result in a financial reward, blogging is weighted down with reward baggage that discourages that creativity.

No, it doesn't discourage it for everyone, or at least it doesn't destroy it--there are great blogs out there that have ads on them, so obviously having ads doesn't keep you from having a great blog. I'm sure that for some blogs, the ads are what makes the blog possible, either by actually paying a wage to the person who does the blogging, or by paying for some of the expenses of the blog.

But the idea that creating for free makes one a sucker, is one that annoys me. And the standard measures of a blog encourage that idea. So I rant.

That is all. I may, in a later post, engage in the more nuanced discussion of creativity versus reward that I intended when I sat down to write this post. But apparently I had to rant first.

Perfume: Another Take on Seasons

So, I've posted (here, here, here, here, here and here) about the effect that the seasons have on my fragrance tastes. Traditionally, the pattern has been that as day lengths shift after the solstice, I gradually lose interest in perfume, and then as we're past the curve and roaring into the next season, I get excited again. Well, that's how I remember the pattern; not all of those posts agree. This winter is a new twist--as we edge into the seasonal turn, my interest in perfume is climbing, not falling.

I want sweaty or dirty or syrupy perfumes. Right now, I'm having a strong craving for MCMC Kept. (I'm in Portland, where most of my perfume collection isn't.)  I'm also eager for the right occasion for my shiny new birthday bottle of Papillon Salome, which Now Smell This just gave 7 on the skank scale.

And I'm thinking that I really must get another bottle of Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose, because I don't want to run out someday.  And after reading EauMG's review of Thorn & Bloom Orange Blossom, I'm craving it without ever having smelled it.  (But Thorn & Bloom wants fifty dollars for samples. Meep! Also, meep!)  And I'm craving the freshly-bathed-soapy-cat smell of Caron Alpona.

Dirty perfumes. Mmm.

Image: By Dwight Sipler. Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: Rambling

So.

Um.

It's "I haven't posted in too long" time. So I will now present a few paragraphs of random digressions.

The farm is petering out. The beans and cucumbers and tomatoes are still producing, but halfheartedly. The honeydew are saying, "Harvest us, already." So are the delicatas. So is the basil. The kale is a cabbage moth convention. The zinnias and cosmos are still pumping out flowers, and the lettuce is breathing a sigh of relief at the cooler temperatures. So are the strawberries, come to think of it; I keep being surprised that strawberries don't seem to like suffocating heat.  Oh, and there are pumpkins! A dozen, if I counted right.

As best I can recall without actually looking at the garden plan, I think that the next step is to plant the garlic and shallots, and more lettuce. And some perennials that could be planted almost any time between the time that the rains start and the time that they end. Well, the sooner the better, for all that nice winter root growth, but no special time. I imagine some winter Saturdays spent alternating between putting perennials in the ground and then warming up as I reorganize the shed.

Except that I should also spend those Saturdays gardening around the house. And decluttering. And writing fiction. And...well, you know. Are there really people who wonder what they'll do when they retire? I'd like to retire today, thank you.

I just saw a match.com commercial with a woman who looks startlingly like Lammily. You know, the Barbie substitute with something nearer human proportions. She's pictured in this post. No, not the yawning cat. Scroll down.

Um.

Apparently that is all.

Rambling: Blogging and Perfume Blogging and Writing and Stuff

So my perfume interest is perking up, after a long gap.

And I'm debating whether to try to be a real perfume blog...er...I was going to say "again", but has this ever been a "real" perfume blog? I suppose the question is whether to go back to being as much of a perfume blog as I was at my maximum level of perfume-bloggyness. Back when I tried to post my scent of the day, and knew some of what was new, and sometimes even reviewed an occasional scent that was new, and not only did the Review Roundup, but tried to update old Roundups with new reviews.

Oh, and I had cat pictures. (Look, cat picture!)

Should I do that again?

Not that I would ever stop posting about sewing or pumpkins or fried chicken or random ramblings. But I would once again have a default topic, a six-posts-out-of-ten topic.

It occurs to me that although I adore Henry Mitchell, I have never read Any Day, his book not-about-gardening. While I love Herman Herst, I don't know if I'd read a book, by him, not-about stamp collecting. I haven't read any of Judith Martin's non-etiquette books, and even though I've bought them, I haven't read most of Calvin Trillin's books not-about-food.

It appears that I equate a writer with a topic. My topic has tended to be perfume. I might like my topic to be fiction, but perhaps the solution to writing more fiction is not to write less of other things, but to write more of other things.

Maybe?

Stepping slightly away from me (me me me!) that leads me to consider the link between a writer and a topic. Why do I find myself wanting a writer to continue to write about the same topic? The first phrase that my head came up with when I asked that question was "in jokes." In jokes represent an ongoing relationship and a comfort with that relationship. I suppose that when a writer continues to write on the same topic, continues the same conversation, it feels like we're having that comfortable relationship. Whether there are jokes or not.

I read Linda Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser, where I met her mother as a subtopic, first, and then I went on to read her Remind Me Who I Am Again, about her mother, where I ran into clothes as a subtopic, and so it was like changing topics in a conversation with someone that I already knew. I suspect that I'm going to read all of her books that clearly involve clothes, before I move on to the ones that don't have that tie.

So it appears that when online, my primary topic is perfume. Well, and also complaints about my mother, but you probably can't build a blog community around that....

....can you?

You probably can.

But I'm going to stick with the perfume for now.

Image: By aall1. Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: I get older

I turned fifty recently.

Fifty.

Five decades.

Half a hundred.

Also, fifty.

Himself gave me a magnificent birthday week. I suspect that I was taught as a child not to brag about such things in detail, but please consider me to be squealing delightedly.

(The storm trooper? Well, I was looking for glitter, and our birthday vacation did include Disney, so...)

Image: By Nehrams2020. Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: MCMC Kept (Mini-review) and beeswax

You may recall that I've been looking, forever, for a perfume with a beeswax/honey note that doesn't do the, um, cat thing. I considered spending big money on Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia simply because it gave me about four minutes of beeswax, about ten minutes in, roughly every third time I wore it. There was also a combination of two perfumes that gave me thirty seconds or so of beeswax, if I applied them in just the right order and sniffed about four inches away from my skin.

So you'll understand my delight that MCMC Kept gives me a good twenty minutes of beeswax right out of the bottle, with no fancy rituals required. Actually, right out of the oil applicator; I tried the oil form, at Prize (in Ashland; no affiliation except that I really like 'em). Beeswax and slightly bitter, tangy roses. Bitter and tangy in a good way; I don't like candy roses.

I can't decide if I'm still getting beeswax now that it's drying down, but I still like it. The roses are softer but still not cloying, there's a very smooth powder that doesn't tickle my nose, and the main "body" of the fragrance is a vaguely creamy rich-sweet-resinous note that I might call beeswax and might not, but it soothes the beeswax craving; it's not like that "Dang. It's over." moment with Velvet Gardenia.

The MCMC site lists the notes as red roses, black tea, cloves, leather, and amber. Well, if they say so, but our only point of agreement is the roses. I suppose what I call powder and beeswax may be what they call amber. Reviewers agree on the clove, while I don't smell it at all--which is good, because I dislike clove. As I think about it, the bitterness that I attribute to the roses and the resinous note that I see as part of the beeswax may be what others are smelling as clove...

Anyway. Enough note inventory. Beeswax, I've got beeswax. Let's celebrate. And, when I get back to the store, spend money.

Meanwhile, on the other hand (literally) MCMC Hunter, the oil form, was quite nice when I rolled it on, and is still quite nice about forty minutes in, and I can't tell you what it was like in between because I was busy sniffing Kept and squealing (mostly but not entirely in my head) "Beeswax!" And "Honeycomb!"

Hunter's notes are listed as bourbon vanilla, tobacco absolute, and balsam fir. It was a bit challenging, in a good way, when I rolled it on, and now it's comforting and plush and not the least bit feminine, but not the least bit inappropriate for a woman either. They both have very gentle drydowns, powerful but in that way that makes hugging a scented person a pleasure rather than a sneezy assault.

MCMC Love was also available for sampling, but my current policy is only one scent per hand.  When I buy Kept, and either resist or fail to resist the temptation to also buy Hunter, I'll give it a try.

Rambling: Chicken Achieved

So.

I keep starting this blog post with the fact that I got my chicken. (Yay!) And then the post has nowhere else to go. Chicken is apparently not an inspiring opening. And I delete the post. This time I'll just keep writing.

It really ought to be. Chicken, I mean. An inspiring opening, I mean. Chicken is a glorious thing. Except when I say that I consider the post where I realized that this blog was started with fried chicken and fried chicken ties back to Mom and then, ack! Run!

Anyway. Margaret Visser's Much Depends on Dinner has a whole chapter on chicken. I think. I just got up to check, and it's not on the shelf where it ought to be. I'll need to find it or get a new copy; it's one of my favorite books. Detailed discussion of chicken, butter, and salt, among other things; what more could I want?

Um.

I once again watched eat-pray-love-lady's--Elizabeth Gilbert, that's it--TED talk about creative genius, the one where she talks about the idea that your genius, or muse, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it, is something outside you that may or may not show up to help, but that either way she--Elizabeth Gilbert, that is--shows up for work. And am trying to use it as yet another motivation to write regularly. I'm also trying to avoid perfectionizing, as in, "Well, what's the point of blogging? Your goal is to write fiction!" Blog. Blog the bleeping blog, and then bump up the goals later.

I haven't actually read Eat Pray Love. I'm one of those contrary people who refuses to read anything that's terribly popular. But I really liked the woman in the TED talk, so I should read it. Or her next book. There was a next book, right? That uncertainty is somewhat on topic for the talk.

I search on Elizabeth Gilbert and, wow, she has a lot of books. There isn't just "a" next book. Well, there might be; the others could all be from before, but I doubt it.

I feel cranky now because I see that the book, of hers, that I want to read most, about creativity, isn't out yet. It won't be out until the 22nd. Not even a Kindle sample. Hmph.

I go all sour-grapesey about it and tell myself that it looks too fluffy and pastel and new-ageish anyway.  But I'll probably be buying a copy when it's out. Especially now that I'm listening to the TED talk again, because I really like it.

Buy it in paper or on Kindle? I drift to that question because, quite frankly, I'm just trying to keep myself writing. I feel guilty about buying Kindle books, because, well, Amazon, and because Not Independent Bookstore. But in theory the author still makes money, right? Or do they? Anyway, I try hard to order real live paper copies from my local bookstore, but I often give in to "Ooh! Want now!"

Tum te tum.

I've been planning to write up one of my four book ideas (three of them novels, one that nonfiction thing where I was worrying about how much expertise I would need) but I haven't gotten around to the actual writing, and so I'm not showing up for work. The one I'm aiming at is one of the novels, the only one where I have a beginning, an end, and at least a notion of the path in between. I still have dozens of major decisions to make about the plot, but that's really no excuse for failing to write, because I am confident that I am not someone who can plan and outline and write. For me, planning and outlining beyond a certain skeletal level is going to be stalling.

One of the four book ideas is, I strongly suspect, a short story. The story ending would be different from the novel ending. I keep thinking of Stephen King in On Writing discussing how Misery was going to end when he first wrote it as a short story. In a short story I could give it the cruel and ruthless ending that it really wants, but I'm not ready, yet, to whittle it down to the toothpick that it really wants to be--assuming, of course, that I could carve a sufficiently graceful toothpick.

That metaphor ran away, blowing raspberries back at me and cackling. I'm going to move on.

To.

Um.

Yes. Don't criticize your metaphors; your brain will avenge them.

Orphan Black is on the TV, one of my favorite scenes with Helena, the one where that woman was mean to that little girl, and shortly regretted it. ("You touch her again and I will gut you like a fish.") That one. I love Helena. I always have trouble remembering that all of those characters are played by the same actress, but Helena is the hardest to remember. Well, Helena and Rachel. Come to think of it, have we ever seen Helena and Rachel interacting directly, rather than through the intermediary of a sniper rifle? Hmm.

Anyway.

I'm sure that Helena appreciates fried chicken. For a moment I imagine Helena and the Fifth Element girl in a scene together. My favorite scene in The Fifth Element is, of course, "Chicken...good!"

Maybe I should do a page of Great Chicken Moments In Film. I've threatened to do that before, right? The Fifth Element moment, the moment in My Cousin Vinnie where the guy in the pool hall strips a chicken leg in one bite like it's a... OK, I have no analogy.

Mm, chicken.

OK, that's full circle, so I think it's time to stop. That is all.

Rambling: Chicken and Earl Grey Jokes

I want chicken.

Yeah, this is one of Those posts. The ones where I ramble on wherever my thoughts take me. Usually to chicken. And sunflower seeds. And caramelized onions. Did you know that onions, like chicken and sunflower seeds and milk and all of the foods that I crave, have (contain? produce?) dopamine? I hope that they still have that effect when they're caramelized. I suspect that they do, just because of the nature of the craving.

My top-ranked comfort food is goop, a dish of creamed chicken with caramelized onions.  Maybe I should add sunflower seeds, just to make the experience complete.

OK, I'll stop staring dreamily at an imagined plate of chicken and try to think of something else to say. For example, there are pumpkins in the garden. Five largish orange ones and two or three or four largeish green ones that will be orange any day. And the Candystick delicata squashes are coming along nicely. I hope that they get all the way to ripe and I can taste them.

Chicken.

Chicken chicken chicken.

I've been thinking that I should start perfume blogging again, but even if my brain weren't chasing its tail like a squirrel in a cage, we're in that period when the seasons change and I temporarily dislike almost all of my perfumes.  I think. Let's see what the blog has to say.

I see that in late August 2010, I loved Fendi Theorema.

In 2011, around the same time, I said that I found Un Crime Exotique "surprisingly suitable for summer." I see that I was also spending a lot of time gawking at The Farm.

In early September 2012 I spoke positively of Royal Apothics Green Tea.

Around the same time in 2013 I was talking about fashion and fried things; no perfume discussion.

In 2014 I was making happy noises about Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle.

And that brings us to now. The main...

Blink. What's Captain Jack doing on My Family?

Sorry for the digression there, but the British sitcom My Family is on on the television in front of me,  and John Barrowman, aka Captain Jack, aka Jack Harkness, from Doctor Who and Torchwood, was just talking to Susan Harper in a bus station or some such thing. His character is named, "The Doctor." Heh.

Oh, my God, John Barrowman has an album. As in, y'know, singing.

OK, I'm feeling surreal now. I could actually see the happy-go-luckyish Captain Jack from Doctor Who as a singer. Easily. But not the one from Torchwood. That's where the surreal comes in. It's sort of like seeing...seeing...seeing Jean-Luc Picard as a standup comic. Or something.

Chicken.

OK, that is all.

Rambling: Delays and decay

Well. Dang. It's been well over a month since I last posted. What's my problem?

It's not as if I've been filling the gap by writing brilliant fiction. Or nonfiction. Or, well, anything.

I have been gardening. A lot of gardening. But you can't garden after dark (well, at least not without a very large investment in floodlights), so that's no excuse for the not-writing. I did write another post in pencil and paper, but I haven't transcribed it yet. It didn't really feel worth transcribing. I might change my mind about that when I read it. I tend to like my writing better after it's had some time to ferment.

Um.

You hear that sound, like an electric fan whiiiiirring to a stop? That's my brain.

So, apparently, that is all.

Rambling: The Pencil Speaks

(A few weeks ago, I had a pencil. I had paper. I applied the one to the other. The following appeared.)

Now and then I think that I'd like to be able to write on paper. ("How quaint!") And I do, as I am now, and my hand starts to cramp about two sentences in, as it is now.

But lately I've been planning The Farm, not really a farm but a roughly five thousand square foot vegetable garden divided into 120 4' by 6' blocks (the difference between that and the five thousand feet is paths and rounding error) that I plan and plan and plan, drawing those 120 blocks in graph paper and noting and erasing crops.

Um. Anyway. That's the sort of task that I would normally do in a drawing program, or a list program, but doing it on paper seems to be...different. In a hard-to-describe but nevertheless good way. And I wondered if writing on paper ("How quaint!") might also be different-in-a-good-way.

One thing that I already see as different is the fact that I felt the need to offer context for The Farm. My inability to link to something that explains it, to link to it here and now, seems to drive me to explain. And that's good, because I've been thinking that blog writing has the flaw of not requiring me to make my writing contain its own context.

However, my hand still hurts.

You know those computerized writing analysis thingies, that analyze your writing's grade level or try to guess whether the writer is male or female, that sort of thing? It would be interesting to compare my on-paper writing ("How...") with writing composed on the computer. Of course, I'd have to transcribe the paper writing into the computer, probably restraining the urge to edit it in the process.

Hand: Ow.

There's also the fact that my handwriting is simply dreadful. I think that I will be able to read this in a week, but I'm not sure.

I'm writing this in pencil, on the theory that I want to be able to erase. But I notice that I'm not erasing. I'm making few corrections, and those are being done with cross-outs, not erasures. This is a large change from my computer writing, where I backspace and correct constantly--usually because of typos, but the ease of correction also results in a lot of word and phrase changes.

Now, I'm writing nonfiction here. What I really want to write is fiction. So I suppose that part of my hope it that paper writing will somehow make the fiction writing easier. I have no idea how or why that would work, but a change always has some sort of effect, and those effects could always be good.

I find, just in these almost-two pages (ow) so far, that I am pausing to clarify phrases that I would normally charge right through on the computer. I don't know why.

However, I also find myself thinking of Willow on Buffy saying, "It's not magic, it's science. You can tell because it's so damn slow." This quaint writing is slow.

I don't actually know if that quote is accurate, because, interestingly, I didn't look it up, despite having Google right here on my phone. I think that's also related to the paper writing, but I'm not sure why.

If I'm going to make a habit of this, I think I'm going to need a clipboard. I'm sitting at a window table in the lobby of the Crater Lake hotel, and while the view is lovely, I'd rather be outside on the rocking chairs, but to do that I'd need a harder surface than this squishy notebook.

I also notice that with the paper writing I feel conspicuous in a vaguely pleasant way, as if I belong in the scene, while when I write in public on a laptop or tablet I feel conspicuous in an unpleasant way. A reporter's notebook would also be logical, but it seems that I like the larger page. All those itty bitty pages tend to have me flipping back to see what I said last, while on a big page, I don't flip back at all, which is vaguely strange, since surely the first paragraph on a new page would require the same flipping?

Interesting. I notice that as I go along, my paragraphs are getting longer. Why is that?

Except for that one, of course. And this one.

Will I, I wonder, edit this on paper? Should I allow that, or is the experiment about my first drafts?

With the farm plan, I've noticed that I make only so many changes, and then I redraw the whole thing. The same for lists of things to do. I doubt that I'll rewrite entire narratives, but of course if I didn't have a computer, I'd have to, right? I'd presumably write or type on a typewriter, scribble corrections, rewrite with the corrections incorporated, repeat. Is that experiment worth trying?

Maybe. But not today.

(Short paragraph again.)

It's possible that I'm also writing at greater length, though it's hard to tell until I see how long this is on a screen. On the computer, I tend to declare "That is all." as soon as I encounter an empty brain, while on paper...is it that the slower pace makes me more tolerant of temporary emptiness, or is it that the slow process of writing leaves my brain with spare horsepower to think ahead of the current sentence?

It is a different process. In that last sentence, I had thought ahead to the end of the sentence by the time I got to the "or" of "or is it." But (but? and?) the sentence got rewritten many times in my head before it ended. But never rewritten "backwards"--the words ahead adjusted themselves to the words already written.

That reduction in flexibility ought to be bad, but perhaps it's good. Perhaps the greatest creativity doesn't come from leaving all your options open all the time.

For (further) example, if I were writing this on the computer, I would realize that the discussion of the last two paragraphs depends on the understanding that I am a very fast typist (>110 WPM last time I checked) so a sentence travels from brain to work so fast that that rewrite doesn't happen. I do that all the time--realize that I haven't totally prepared the ground for my point, and I prepare it a little more, and a little more, by rearranging and adding to what I've already written. On paper? Not going to happen. Preparation is in theory good, but maybe in practice it's a little too studied, too tidy?

I'm experiencing brain blankness now, after four and a half pages. Can I tolerate it? Perhaps. (And the back of my brain notices that I didn't start a new paragraph here when normally I would. Why?) I should break away and attempt fiction. Perhaps that--breaking away--will be part of paper writing. After all, this is a typing session away from being "done", so perhaps the "That is all." pressure is reduced there, too--I can't have the satisfaction of "done" so I'm no driven toward it.

I am feeling an odd craving--perhaps I should say oddly strong craving--to put on headphones and listen to music while handwriting. Ah, yes, that is the term. Better than "writing on paper" or "quaint writing" and for some reason I resist the obvious "writing by hand." Handwriting. I ignore the fact that it's usually a noun. Or...well...you know what I mean, yes?

Blankness. But surprisingly my hand doesn't hurt. I also observe, for what it's worth, that I seem to like a .9mm automatic pencil lead for writing, rather than the .7 that I thought I liked. .7 breaks too often. .9 doesn't break at all.

I want that clipboard. I want to lean back and write on my knee but it won't work. I'm reminded of the scene in Men in Black where all the applicants are trying to fill out the forms.

Outside the window people are rearranging the rocking chairs and drink tables. I don't now why this feels...Oh, maybe Will Smith moving the table. In Men in Black. See previous paragraph.

I seem to be free-associating in pencil. Interesting. I thought that was dependent on fast typing.

I eat chocolate. And now my mind drifts to the things that I should do and want to do and intend to do but don't do when things get stressful. Things like avoiding sugar. And writing. And reading instead of reading fascinating but un-productive online forums. Why is my mind going there? Maybe I'm finding this handwriting (hand-writing?) thing to be meditative.

Fiction. Fiction. It wants to bubble up, but it's rather like the time when, as a medium-small child, I gathered together a mess of things--string and perhaps paper clips and batteries?--and stated my intent to "invent something." But I had no idea what. It was a powerful, optimistic desire to create, with absolutely nothing behind it. (Buffy describing a martial arts move: "What's powering it? Sheer enthusiasm?")

There are people in my head. Anastasia and Amelia and Emily and Henry and Jane and that woman who's too much like my mother. I ought to write them doing...whatever. But I feel the urge for a plot. Lovejoy has a plot, but I suspect that...

I stop. I stop because all of the above requires context that's missing, and when hand-writing that apparently bothers me.

I stall. I look at the lake. I wait for the emptiness to fill. Or maybe it's not emptiness, maybe I wait for the fog to clear. Yes, there was fog this morning, obscuring the lake.

(And that was all.)