Painting With Words

Karen Norris is an absent member of my Monday Night writing group, an attorney, a yoga-doer, and--as you will see if you go to her blog (written while she is working in Doha, Qatar)
an excellent writer:

Karmasdharma.blogspot.com.

Karen opens her latest post with this description of Bangkok:

"Bangkok. Big, bustling, crowded and dirty.  Beggars.  Children extending skinny arms clutching cups. Cynical me thinking, knowing, that there’s a pimp around the corner, using this sad child as bait to lure paper into the cup. Cripples, dragging their bodies across the pavement, or rolling prone on skateboards, through the crowds. Mass-transit trains hurtling by, above and below.  Taxis, tuk-tuks, buses, motorcycles, cars, pedestrians, clamoring and vying for an opening on the crowded streets.  Jumbo jets roaring and rising overhead. The rumble of combustion engines.  The racket of 2-cycle motors.  The chatter.  The clatter.  The smell.  Of food cooking, food rotting, digested food, discarded food.  Of gardenias, and cigarette smoke and petrol fumes. Of perfume and sweat and incense. The sights, songs, tattoos and breath of a human macrocosm.  A living city."

And she ends this post with a statement about writing a blog:

"I am trying to take bigger risks with my writing. Like using the word, urbanity, in a completely incorrect way, but a way that appealed to me. I sometimes imagine that I am a painter, playing with different brushes and paints and strokes and methods. So each blog is a practice painting in which I try some new or weird application. Then when it's done, I stack it on top of the others in the closet and wait until next time. When I will play with my paints and brushes again.  I also realized that if I was going to write, then I had to write about what interests me, and not try to write about what I think might interest someone else. Which reminds me of one of the things you quoted in your blog about no story so mundane that it can't be made interesting, and no story so interesting that it can't be made mundane. Very wise, and very true."

I hope you'll visit Karen's blog.  I think you'll feel like you're there with her on these pages!