T-12 hours

I'm terrified.

I take off tomorrow at 11:55 a.m. and will arrive in Vienna around 8:00 a.m. local time on New Year's Day. I'll then take a bus to Bratislava, our first stop. 

Not that I should be. I love the DAT team, and I've talked to one of the people I'm meeting there — I think we'll really get along. I'm probably most worried about what I'll produce. Here I am, trekking off to East Europe, because, why not? in hopes of re-igniting my writing habit. 

Though you know, I'm beginning to suspect that my project will change and morph. I will almost certainly be writing, but the framework of that writing is getting a little hazy. I had intended to write several portrait pieces — works inspired by the photos of people I observed in their natural habitat. I imagined these works would be complimented by the history of the area. 

But what I remember from my time in the Czech Republic 10000 years ago was the stones. The presence of all these lives being lived among the cobblestones, the cathedrals. And not the fancy cathedrals with gilding and stained glass, all the bells and whistles. The cathedrals that were massive, austere, weighty; one seemed a never-ending hall of pillars, huge pillars holding up a stone ceiling 5 stories above us.

When I was submitting my application for this trip, I noted that my photography tends to focus on inanimate objects. Earthy things, small things. And stones. And maybe there's something to that. Maybe I could write somehow about the place, or write about people in terms of their environment.

I also realized today one snag in my plan. Ekphrasis requires an image to write from; all my images will be on the backside of a digital camera. I've made the decision that I will continue the project once I return to the states, at which point I can get proper prints of photos taken. But in the meantime, in Slovakia, I have a 3x2 image. Given this, I've decided to take along a small sketchbook with me as well. I'll probably note details on the sketches that can only be seen in the photo or real life. I'm still writing from an image, but not from, say, Vermeer's "Girl Writing a Letter." (See first post here.)

So instead of expanding on a painting or an artist or a sculpture, maybe I'll write about specific places, places understood through a single image capturing one particular, suspended moment in time. Maybe what I churn out will seem "just like ordinary poetry" but even if that's the result, I think the idea of starting from an image,  a single moment, could be useful as a guide while I work my way back into writing.

I'm rather tired to check this over just now, but I hope that made some sense.
 

Here goes.