Seeing a Story

 A colleague and friend, who taught photography at a nearby university, used to say that a photograph reveals the essence of the photographer, because it is composed of meaningful subjects he or she has selected. But, he explained, the photographer isn’t always conscious of  what he’s photographed. So, he encouraged students to be spontaneous in taking pictures. Then, he advised them to study the images, as a way of discovering what they  projected. 

For example, I took this photograph (above) to capture the contrast in color between the muddy stream and the vivid green trees, green grass and the brownish-black barked trees. Several months later, I recognized another subject in the image, that of the stream’s path.  My mind’s eye had responded to the way the stream flows beyond the trees, until it’s out of view. Today, as I write about seeing a story, I’m struck by the complexity of  recognizing or seeing what we know on an intuitive level and, then, putting it into words. 

This image reminds me that, as a writer, I have to trust the ideas that reside just beneath my consciousness and and interpret them into words for the reader.  Just as photographers must allow themselves to take pictures, trusting the process of discovery, writers must learn to trust that little voice that wants to tell a story.

About three years ago, I developed an interest in taking picturess of nature and writing about them. One morning,

while reviewing the pictures, I noticed they were all focused on horizons and spatial thresholds. I had been taking pictures of bodies of water and bridges that crossed them, shorelines that  intersected oceans and this photo, of a beautiful horizon at a beach in Mexico. 

What these pictures revealed was my fascination with the experience of standing at a threshold, where I can look backward and glance forward. Backward, at the decisions I’d already made in life and forward, to see the infinite possiblities that exist in the future. As a photographer, I loved standing behind the camera, trying to capture what lie on the other side of the lens. As a writer, I wanted to stand at the edge, between life and life’s story, to observe and write. 

In literature, thresholds, such as doorways, windows, cliffs, mountains, passageways, and horizons are used to represent an opportunity for the central character to see his life in a new way, or reach a higher level of understanding.  When the protagonist in a story approaches a threshold, he often experiences a new state of consciousness that allows him to reflect or reconsider his experiences.  This state of consciousness is called liminality, and is characterized by an ambiguousness, a feeling of being in between two worlds.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the protagonist is struggling to decide whether to honor his draft notice during the Vietnam War or to defect to another country. He travels to the American Canadian border and checks into a fishing lodge, looking for some time alone to think about his future. One rainy morning,  the lodge owner, an old man, takes him fishing on the Rainy River, which forms a long border between Northwestern Ontario, Canada and Minnesota.

Halfway between the Canadian and American shores, the old man stops the boat, and, in silence, the two men fish for several hours.  As the protagonist thinks, he shifts his gaze toward Canada–where he could go to avoid the draft, back to the shores on the American side. He is torn between his obligation as an American citizen and his desire to avoid war. He is at the threshold, both literally and figuratively, where he can look forward and backward.  Standing in the boat,  between two worlds, he contemplates his options.

Learning to see is part of an artist’s craft.  But, seeing is made more complex when the artist, or the writer must discover what she has seen because, as Leonardo DaVinci taught us, the eyes are the windows of the soul. We see what we project onto the world. That’s why it’s important for writers to allow themselves to discover as they write, discover what their souls want to say to the world.

A a writer, I walk along a path that allows me to see a single event and, using words, cast it into a larger picture for the reader. I see a tiny butterly’s wings flutter and I want to describe it in the context of an unwavering sense of peace in a world that stands still long enough to allow the butterfly to navigate the sky and land on the ground. Then, I wonder, is it the world or the ability of the butterfly to cross boundaries, to move from one plane of existence (the ground) to another (the sky). I want to be the butterfly, to move between one threshold and another, to get a glimpse of what is about to happen. 

The task of seeing a story, or seeing story, is more challenging when the writer is trying to interpret real life experiences. It’s particularly difficult to write about events that occur suddenly, without warning, because they have a randomness about them, and we often need time to distance ourselves from these experiences before we can come to terms with them. At the time, we can only try to live through them.

This photograph, taken at a lake where my husband and I vacationed a couple of weeks before his death, has puzzled me for nearly three years.  On the surface, it’s simply a picture of a horizon, its threshold marked by the sails of boats that are  barely visible.  As I sit writing, however, I can see the photographer/writer on this side of the camera, searching across the expanse of water, straining to see the small white sails, in search of a sign that her life was about to change.  She is looking, both forward and backward, trying to understand. This is the process of seeing and writing story.

 

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