Ever since I was little, I thought I wanted to write standard stories--fiction, a novel. But I've almost never written fiction, aside from a few pieces of fan-fiction.
I could have known I was more non-fictiony, judging from what I wrote when I was a horse-crazy eleven year old:
never a story about a girl and her horse.
I produced three issues of a magazine, Horsemans Monthly, on construction paper and Scotch tape, with newspaper clippings, reports, and my own drawings and observations about horses and culture.
After being on the rocky shore of Lake Superior this September, I tried
to write a fan-fic about lovers on the rocks, but it turned into a prose
poem about the lichen there.
It was thought to be a symbiosis of two life forms--one fungus and one alga.
Microscopy shows it's more variable than previously thought:
"The fungi and algae that make lichens are doing very interesting things
in a confined space.... There might not be
any one way to pigeonhole the relationship...."
--"Individual lichens can have up to three fungi, study shows"
Very interesting things in a confined space--like a sonnet!
So, now I want to write a sonnet about lichen.
I've never written a sonnet.
Penny Cooper looked it up, and she's all excited because it involves counting (14 lines, 10 syllables each, a rhyme scheme), and she's good at counting.
She doesn't care about lichen and will leave that part to me.
I guess I'm symbiotic too--part human, part girlette.
Haha can't wait for the lichen sonnet!
ReplyDeleteSARAH: I wonder if it will turn out to be rather Dr. Seuss-ish..
ReplyDeleteI love lichens. I remember collecting some while living in NH -- lots growing there. I didn't remove it from the trees but collected bits of bark that had been shed.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that there are anywhere from 13,000 -17,000 species of lichens. The Greeks and Romans used lichens for their purple dye. Lichens have been used in dyeing until the development of synthetic dyes.
I thought I had read somewhere that lichens shouldn't be picked in certain areas as they take so long to grow. By the way lichens are a good indicator of how good the environment is.
Kirsten
Definitely want to hear a sonnet about lichen! So much more exciting than lovers meeting on rocks.
ReplyDeleteSo that's what a Sonnet is! I never knew, just thought it was a short poem. Which just goes to show how little I know about poetry.
ReplyDelete