This morning when I woke up, my idea for “lost” was to take pictures in crevices, vents, drains, inaccessible corners, etc., but my camera battery was dead. That has been happening too often lately, so I ordered an extra battery. I’m surprised I never did that before.

While I waited, I did a Bing search of “lost” to see what came up. I was not surprised to see a lot of movie names. The only thing that came up that was interesting was “Lost in Random.” I clicked on it and it turned out to be a video game which looked like it might be my cup of tea except for the fighting parts. I get all stressed in the fighting parts of video games.

I then tried “lost” in Google and got many of the same answers as Bing except Google had “Lost Lake” which surprised me by not being a movie or a video game, but many places in Western Washington. People appear to lose lakes around here–a lot. I am surrounded by about sixteen lost lakes. But since I was looking at pictures of these lost lakes, it seems to me they were not lost, but found, named, reported, recorded, visited, etc. This got me thinking about the absurdity of naming something “lost” (and naming in general, an issue for me forever). And of course I have a whole new novel idea. This brain, I swear. But that’s for after NaNoWriMo. I guess it’s a good thing to know what I’m doing next. Not like I was lacking in things to do.

By then the sun had come out and I went out to enjoy it and saw those adorable little fungi growing out of the dock. They looked so out of place, they looked lost. Thus I ran back in and got the camera and my photographic challenge took a new turn.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge

The prompt is to write a poem with the title “(blank) of the (blank),” replacing the blanks with a new word or phrase. The idea of naming a lake Lost lead me to my title, “The Found of the Lost.” While taking my pictures, a little photo story happened that made me smile.

The Balls of the Fall

The Found of the Lost

Lost can be defined
in cost to the loser
but lost can be temporary
and lost could be good
like a pock lost by new skin
or a lock lost when you want in
or a rock lost while drowning
Lost can be defined as not knowing
where one is, these days its
harder and harder to do
everything and everyone
is lost in time
glossed over
moss covered
mocked
Lost can be defined as
the space place and time
before found which comes
around again more or
less often and then
less often
Lost is a feeling
when a wanted thing isn’t found
like a piece of saved fabric
or a purpose
or a soul
Lost can be that thing you thought about
but forgot about but suddenly want more
than anything
will die without
but can’t have
Lost is that scream I made
when I came home and the
only instruments I had left
after Katrina were stolen
and the police wanted serial numbers
they were my body, they weren’t numbers
those aren’t victimless crimes
those aren’t ensured
when they’ve only recently been
reattached because their sounds
made me cry
I bet they sit in corners
lost in dark shadows
because they are haunted
by my touch

NaNoWriMo

I put “word crawls” in the search bar on the top right of this sight and was taken to a post I did on November 11th 2019. The word crawl that day was The Joy of Painting Crawl, but then I noticed that there were some interesting statements about my main character. In 2019 I wrote the basic idea for the novel I’m re-writing now. I’m glad I hadn’t been looking at those posts during the first week, but today, the comparison is fun.

I went to the post that would correspond with today, Crossing The Threshold on #NaNoWriMo Day 8 and had fun looking through my past self’s thoughts. It’s fun to see that I’m more on track to write a full draft this time. I’ve set up so much more of the plot at the front end that many more things need to happen before I get to the scene I was working on that day. However, this morning’s scenes to be Crossing the Threshold for my Detective. She’s still trying to figure out who lived on the property, why it was abandoned, and why nobody seems to know. The simple task from 2019 could work in today’s scene when Naomi goes back to the property.

There wasn’t a word crawl chosen for Day 8 so I looked back through the posts. On Day 4 I found The Hunt for your Muse. I think I’ll play through that this morning. I’ll leave The Joy of Painting Crawl for Day 11.

Happy Reading and Writing!