PICTURES, TODAY | botrytis hands
Noralee Z.
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”PICTURES, TODAY” describes a pair of friends taking photos together, but is inspired by two separate conversations I had with my friends. In one, an old friend and I discussed mirages, the ways August suburbia conjures them all around us; in the other, my friend catches a pigeon with her bare hands. I wanted to encapsulate fleeting, abstract images blurring into each other, as well as the inherent separation between memory and reality. | ”botrytis hands” is a poem written about my grandmother (Ah-ma). She and her family are immigrants to America from Taiwan, and my grandmother has dementia; the two combined result in an impassable language barrier. When writing this poem, I hoped to depict the separation I feel around her in a physical sense. I explored this through my description of the garden, my choice of diction, and imagery.
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At its simplest level, creativity is the ability to create. For something to be truly creative, it has to be a manifestation of a person’s self. To me, creativity can be synonymous with resilience, artistry, and honesty depending on context.
