“In the morning when I walk to work, I try to think up stories for everything I see along the way. Three birds sitting on a bag of trash behind the used record store. A waterlogged ball cap in a parking lot. A turtle gliding past sun-bleached beer cans in the stream that winds its way through downtown. Each has enough story in it to fuel an entire writing career. There are stories upon stories in the peeling paint of an empty storefront’s façade: the lives of the people who painted it, the store owner’s excitement when opening the front door of the new enterprise for the first time, the joy of children hiding in the racks while parents shop, the landlord noting the declining condition of the building as he stops by to serve an eviction notice. My morning walk—without music, without computer—is a chance for me to remove myself from the landscape and to see everything—bugs, gravel, garbage—with compassion and interest, especially those things that I usually ignore. The goal isn’t to think of a story and to tell it, but to remove myself enough to see the story that is already there and to help it surface. I want to relinquish control—of the story, of the sentences, of the sounds—and to serve the work, to be the instrument and not the song. A morning walk is an opportunity to find the innumerable stories within each fallen thing.”
—David Connerley Nahm, author of Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky (Two Dollar Radio, 2014)
Photo credit: Jennifer Connerley