Daily Nourishment for July 9, 2024: Tension in Art and Story with Guidance from Words by Jamie Quatro and Art by Matt Kleberg (Part 1)
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 10-15 minutes
“My paintings are increasingly concerned with the tension between doubt and anticipation. When I first encountered Jamie’s writing, it was the not-knowing that resonated with me, the blurred boundaries between the sacred and profane, scandal and sacrament. Her stories are full of yearning and short on answers—something I hope my work conveys as well.” - Matt Kleberg
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale while looking at the art below by Matt Kleberg.
Ordinary Time
By Matt Kleberg
oil stick on canvas
84" x 58"
2014
shared with permission from the artist
Prompt.
Read the excerpt from “The Day of Big Trouble” by Jamie Quatro published by Image journal:
“The Prophet sat on his porch watching darkness climb up out of the field. It was cold enough to see his breath, all the trees showing their skeletons again. He missed having a dog at his feet. Lately he’d been noticing something like a little thumb, baby-sized, pressing up into his bottom rib. No matter how he shifted around on his mattress at night or rubbed the spot, the thumb was there, pushing back. Now, on his front porch, he sat very still and took deep breaths. It was like being on a boat with his fishing line, trying to feel through his hands what might be down there. He wondered if the little thumb might be loneliness.
“His son was gone all the time now, ever since the Day of Big Trouble at the country club on Lookout Mountain. Zeke had a job there doing trim work. The Prophet told him he should be framing and hanging drywall, but secretly he was proud his son did the trim. How a thing looked was important. Not just Is it useful, but Is it nice to look at. Trees made fruit, and fruit is useful, he’d said to Zeke. But before fruit comes flowers, and there’s not a thing to be done with them but look.”
Practice.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and journal or take notes on the art and words above or the questions below:
Where do you sense tension between doubt and anticipation in the excerpt above?
Where do you sense tension between doubt and anticipation in your current circumstances, difficulties, and various things you’re navigating right now?
What are some examples of things that are useful and nice to look at in your home, yard, neighborhood, community?
Want More?
-Pre-Order Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro
-Explore more of Matt Kleberg’s art and Jamie’s story in “The Day of Big Trouble”
-If you’d like to subscribe to Image, here’s a discount link for $30 for a full year’s subscription.
Jamie Quatro will lead a fiction workshop at this year’s Glen Workshop. During the month of July, Spiritual Direction for Writers® Daily Nourishment will feature Glen Workshop facilitators and other Glen-ish people, places, and things. Enjoy!
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Here’s more about Jamie Quatro from her website:
“Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. A new novel, Two-Step Devil, is forthcoming from Grove Press in September 2024, to be followed by a story collection, Next Time I'll Be Louder.
Quatro’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her stories are anthologized in the O.Henry Prize Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Ann Charters’ The Story and Its Writer (9th ed.), and the Norton Anthology Mix. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, she is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, and Maison Dora Maar in Ménerbes, France, where she will be in residence in the spring of 2025.
Quatro holds an MA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program and lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—The July Co-Writing Schedule is live.
—July 21-27: Charlotte Donlon will provide a few spiritual direction offerings at the Glen Workshop in Seattle
—July 27: Online Revision Stations Designed by Lauren F. Winner
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
*Please help us protect our intellectual property, our creative process, and the integrity of our work. Spiritual Direction for Writers® Daily Nourishment is covered under the Spiritual Direction for Writers® trademark. You are welcome to share this link with others, but any other use (written or spoken) is prohibited without written permission from Charlotte Donlon.