Inspired by The Creative Process interview with Julian Lennon
Venice, Italy, 2013 © 2024, Julian Lennon from Life’s Fragile Moments (teNeues, 2024).
All rights reserved.

By Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Under the burnished branches of a silvering sky….as falling leaves collect at our feet, we are reminded of life’s many collections and recollections. How often, the pages of our own mind turn like withering leaves marked by unsung words that record the passage of our multi-foliate experience here on earth. At the very moment we are collecting thoughts on paper—paper torn from beloved trees—we may take comfort in the notion that you, dear reader, will read this That you, our mirror, may bear witness to our existence before we became one with the ether. Of course, as all things turn and return, one, cannot help but wonder where, exactly, does the sky begin? and whether it is we who collect the dust or the dust that collects us. Mortal beings, after all, share the same DNA as the incarnation of stars, and perhaps at their very core, that same burning desire to leave traces of themselves behind. 

In truth, do we not find traces of ourselves in all things? We collect and are collected. We photograph, we document, Mostly… we try to remember. We like to believe that you are not unlike me. Some of us may even take delight in the belief that we, a celluloid world, are forever coated with a thin translucent film of stardust. That magic is our inheritance. Radiant knowledge--our legacy. What is film if not energy from light? The transference of a memory projected onto a blank space devoid of image. That out of darkness, light however slight, obscure, dispersed or fragmented has the possibility of connecting us to one another in the bigger picture. That we, who both suffer and exalt in the human condition, may recognize ourselves on the widescreen of Collective Consciousness. That one day we shall, in our turning, never turn away from one another. 

Word, itself—arguably an ancient wisdom echoed from the cosmos--is imbued with light-energy; no doubt, in order that we might turn the bright spheres of our own minds. Each of us echoes and is echoed. Each of us recounts history--his and her story. One word dances with another to create a poem. Your poem dances with mine to bridge our two worlds that they may be as One. Each creates and is thus re-recreated in the Unfolding Image. All of us reveal and are revealed by the human camera—our inner eye— a living lens…rolling, focusing, capturing and re-membering the moving picture: Images that move us. Images and impressions which leave their imprint, which spark the imagination and nurture the spirit of expression. 

In this CosmicTheater of unravelling mystery, with miracles spinning into and out of thin air, we record, develop and transform our perceptions, raising the black and white curtain of night and day upon the Technicolor dream within the Dream. Here, in the darkroom of the soul, we aspire to burn into memory-- as singing meteors—negatives into positives--transcending the ordinary to the extraordinary. Here, upon bittersweet reflection, we come to realize that nothing in its revelation is ordinary, that we are the silver lining that we so often look for, the stuff that dreams are made of... the dust that knows the way.

A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) Jazz and Literature, XXI Century World Literature (which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the Poet in Residence. for SpokenWord Paris. Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available.

The Creative Process is created with kind support from the Jan Michalski Foundation.