Portal (a koan collage)

This collage is a response to Sue Vincent’s mysterious photo (she has many of them…) below.

It started with a photo of a sparkly dress draped over a chair.  I searched through my collage boxes, trying this and that until the world inside of the portal appeared.  Then to the word boxes…

because of
not knowing how, there’s
always room
for catching
almost anything you want
between what isn’t.

Like the Magnetic Oracle, the Collage Box Oracle has its own ideas…all you can do is keep pulling words out and rearranging them until it’s satisfied.  This started out to be Postcard Fiction, but first of all its size makes it more like Poster Fiction.  But really, although I tried to tell a story, the Oracle usually has other plans.  My daughter liked the art, but as to the words: “I don’t understand it.”  Postcard Fiction has morphed into Koan Collage.

Here’s an explanation of the koan from the Pacific Zen Insititute: “Koans go the other way.  They encourage you to make an ally of the unpredictability of the mind and to approach your life more as a work of art.  The surprise they offer is the one that art offers: inside unpredictability you will find not chaos, but beauty.”  Read more here.

And if you want to see some of the Postcard Fiction I’ve done (mostly for Jane Dougherty’s prompts) you can go here.  Many of them are actually Koan Collage, they just didn’t know it at the time.