The New Book - scene 3

Originally uploaded by macorlin

I have a landscape-living view of my life. If you ask me what happened today, I'll tell you I dropped the kids off at school, went to the gym, came home and showered and sat down to write. The same as Friday. And Thursday. And Wednesday. And so forth.

I see my life in big sweeping pictures, broad strokes, and I often don't see the details that make my life different from anyone else's, or any day different than another.

This has become overly apparent through Twitter. While others seem to be able to endlessly narrate their days in humorous and delightful chunks of 140 letters or less. When I sit to update mine, all I can think is the same thing as every other update of mine... I'm sitting at the computer ready to write. Because when I twitter, that's what I'm doing.

But as I've gotten into my new book, I realize this book may have landscape photography in it, but the story is all about the macro. It's about seeing the tiny things we miss everyday because we are swept up in the larger things... or about seeing the details that make a person go off the edge one day, when seemingly that day is the same as any other.

It's important that she's had her plates for fifteen years and no one has a chip in it. It's important that she has conversations with her daughter where neither look each other in the eye as if they are both invisible. It's important that her husband falls asleep each night in the middle of their conversations. It's important that she tucks her hair behind her ears without noticing that she's doing it.

In a small thumbnail, this photo may look like a leaf with a water drop. Click on it and see the amazing world inside each of those drops. If you stop to look at droplets after the rain, if you tilt your head just the right way, get close enough, this is what you'll see. A world inside a world.

This is Riley's life. In the landscape of her life she is mom, a wife, a neighbor. In the macro, she is something no one bothers to take the time to see.

Until someone does. And that will change everything.