A road in an island of green in the Pu’u Loa lava fields, The Big Island, Hawaii

Artists respond. It is their joy, their craft, their life, and for writers in particular, an eternal riddle. And remember, we are all makers and storytellers. How happy that makes me.

Thank you so much writers Melissa, Deborah and Vita for accepting my Invitation to Write. I asked you to write freely in response to the word Equal and the word Angles, for five minutes each.

So readers, now read with the knowledge that this is new, like the slow lava flow of Pu’u Loa, rising up, beginning the processes of layering and creation. It’s raw, it’s hot, it’s wondrous, it is potential and essence all in one.

Melissa

Equal

Is my love equal to yours? I mean the volume of my feelings, do you have the same volume? Calculating mathematically, apart from ∞, I think a cone might be the right formula, with the big end pointing towards you. 1/3 × pi × r2 × h. The tip of the end is somewhere inside me, maybe at the beginning of the universe, or, more likely, connected to a fragment of mitochondria inside me x 1/3. I think you love me 1.7% more than I love you. But on other days, I love you more. Maybe osmosis has something to do with it.

Deborah

Equal

Equal music. Equal time. Equal score.
 Equal – that line where still water meets calm sky. Blue reflecting blue. Where distance means nothing. Above the same as below. A part of the other. All life and death in the same realm, part of the same story, mirroring the other. A small boat appears on the line far away, slowing making its way across the invisible separation. Which side is it on? The top or the bottom? The water a mirror. Which is the sky? Which is the water? For if I stood on my head and looked again from upside down, the image won’t have changed. Blue on blue, and a little boat, coming or going?

Angles

Ok then, I’ll meet you at the corner. The right angle. All things sharp, acute, rigid. We’ll have to then decide which way to go – to turn at 90 deg down the side-street, or keep on going straight up at 180 deg. This is the pointy end of things, where things come to the peak, the way you like it. Just decide and do it is the way you operate, go this way or that, and then it’s done. We will either go together, or you go one way and I go the other. Then we just do it. Logical and practical. All rulers and set squares.
My approach to things is more roundabouts and sweeping roads. Curvy lines. Gentle arcs and slow reveals of what’s ahead. Don’t force me in a direction until I’m ready. Driving around and around until I’ve decided which street to veer off on. Indecisive. The pencil in the compass. Drawing circles. Pirouette. We just operate at different speeds.

Vita

Angles

Eighties shoulder pads taking over my body like an alien invasion but mum says shoulders need to balance hips always. Prefer curves to angles because that’s what I’ve got in abundance. Angles are strict and overbearing like an angular nose yet somehow superior so I bow down to them … keeping something to myself…a silly putty of resentment moulded into an arrow (oh no angles so hard to avoid) to fire it like David against the angles with Goliath stature. Rise beautiful circles.

Equal

When something equals something it’s a good thing. A feelllinggg of mindless satisfaction and control. Like watching reality TV. But man and woman doesn’t equal child and that’s a bad feeling down inside that untouchable place. It is a lie then. And you don’t discover it is until you want it to really, really badly. Like when rain plus plant didn’t equal life and there I was in the dark waiting for rebirth and when I came out the sun was shining and maroon middles had shrunk into yellow flowers petals which dropped down dead. My three-year-old nephew said one plus three equals four and I said bravo. In time he’ll learn disappointment.

The flow continues

So much has been given in this writing. What gifts spring from five minute! So much contained and opened up. I’ve thought so much about love while reading these fragments. Lovers, children, parents, friends, families. And I see the beginnings of stories, poems, other forms of art in these small pieces. But they can also just be. Whatever the writer wishes.

Melissa, Deborah and Vita, when you read this writing what do you find you like, on an intuitive level, what do you respond to, what phrase or thought or sound?
It might even be something about the experience of writing it, rather than what is there. Think about this for your own pieces and each other’s.

It would be great if you put this in the replies to this post. Let’s see what happens. Think about my response as well, which I included in An Invitation to Write – an Update. I don’t want to miss out! Thank you. Merci beaucoup.

(The aerial image above was taken by Dylan Jones. All other images in this blog so far were taken by me.) If you want a nature photography fix you should check out Mt Majura and beyond …