Writing exercise from En Plein Air Writing Workshop,
led by Kathe Izzo, at the education center and grounds of Olana, Hudson, NY, yesterday morning
"What is so simple as eating an apple?..."***
In light of this passage (link above, pp. 4-5), for this exercise, go outdoors, connect with something in nature, and write about the very origins of things...
It's a wonder that impressionism was invented as late as it was, in the nineteenth century. I look at the reflections of autumn trees shimmering on the water, prismatic falls of color extending down across the surface of the pond. Which is more real - the trees themselves, or their reflections? One would say: the growing trees themselves, growing up into the sky. And yet they're both apparitions to me - two sides of the same coin - "cultivate the space between." Are both here so that we could behold them, and so that Frederic Church could paint them? He cultivated this landscape, planned this park as capably and inspiredly as any by Frederick Law Olmsted - so that, Godlike, he could arrange the elements, create his own design of the elements, and then in a reflection of them - he, pre-impressionist - capture their reflections - make a 3-D image on a two-dimensional space. And so I wonder about the origins of things - of the trees themselves, and their dissolving apparitions on the still surface of gleaming pond - and I wonder, in what dimensions unseen, dwells another form of tree.
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