Hypnotic Slides
driftback
as soon as lunch
is under her belt
she adds eat lunch
to her to-do list
for the immediate
satisfaction
of crossing it out.
done.
she nurses the baby
into a nap,
grabs a book to read
to the toddler,
slides into reciting
from memory,
mumbles bits of improv
as someone pulls
the shades down
on the windows
of her eyes.
—dotty seiter
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2 x 2″; watercolor and ink on paper
inchie landscape
2026
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Notes about poem and art:
• “driftback” is a short free-verse vignette that I suspect is highly relatable to many. In fact, even now, the senior citizen that I seem to have become enacts just such a drift nearly every night while reading before lights out.
• Disappearing is another of the inchies I created during Amy Maricle’s 2026 Inchie Challenge in August. It’s essentially a mood-mini, this time in an even smaller size than what I played with back in the spring. I continue to enjoy putzing around with watercolor, learning as I go. Very relaxing and, as in the poem, allowing for drifting off, in this case into imagination, first with paintbrush and then with pen in hand.
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10 responses to “Hypnotic Slides”
LOL about the relatability! I have vivid and delicious memories of dozing off when my kids were little, with one ear cocked to make sure my nurseling was still tucked beside me on the couch and I could hear the other two talking back and forth.
Let’s head into the inchie landscape! … well, maybe after the rain stops : )
Those drifting off to sleep moments when my wee ones were still wee and all of us in one space together alive and in each other’s company were SOOOO delicious! Thanks for your appreciation of on the windows of her eyes, Carol.
The fun of that wide deep landscape on 2×2 inch substrate is that it started as water spread on that tiny space, with color dropped in from a brush; once dry, landscape was “found” with ink pen. Happy to have you on the hike into the woods and hills! We can go in the rain! (this is the most rain we’ve seen in a lonnnnnng time)
the immediate satisfaction of crossing it out.
Oh, how I chucked at those words! I have been a list maker for all of my life. And there have been many times I did just that thing exactly! Not anymore, though. Now I use the mental list of things I accomplished as a mental affirmation before I drift off to sleep at night…very satisfying indeed!
As always, I am so impressed by what you can do with a very small painting. I imagine a vending machine in your town where visitors can purchase these tiny masterful souvenirs and tuck them into pockets and bags to remember what can happen in the smallness of all things. xoxo
Lola, I’m laughing with delight at your experiential identification with being a list maker and with the immediate satisfaction of crossing [list items] out! My practice of many years is the adjacent one of starting my midday meditation with an enumeration, most often spoken aloud to myself, of ten highly specific gratitudes from the past 24 hours.
THANK YOU for shining light on my tiny painting and your imagined vending machine. I’m brainstorming an adventure of a similar sort in which I’ll tuck tiny art (and maybe also poems) in public spaces with a note saying FREE! TAKE ME! Your words, i.e. tuck them into pockets and bags to remember what can happen in the smallness of all things, help me clarify what I might include as a note to accompany these little wayfaring creations. THANK YOU THANK YOU!
The shade-closing that takes place when I sit in bed reading each night is SOOO delicious; it has just enough “wakefulness” to let me actively appreciate the feeling of being caught in the web of sleep!
I wish I could enact more K.I.S.S. in my life! I’m always grateful when I do. I appreciate your appreciation of it here in my tiny landscape, Sheila.
