15 February 2004. Yesterday, I really struggled during my Paint Shop session. The first two specimens below were the result. I disliked the first so much that I erased the top two-thirds or so of it and started a wholly new one, the one that turned into my second piece of the day. I continue not to be verbally inspired but came close in my "wheat" one, I think. I have a title for it: "Archaeomathemaku No. 1." I think I can make it work. Right now, I don't really think I can make the other one work.

I made "Division into the Letter A, No. 1," the other piece on this page, this morning. For once, I thought fairly lengthily about its verbal elements. Because I recently contributed a numeral to an alphabet project mIEKAL aND is running on the Internet, I had the alphabet on my mind. The inspired the thought of dividing into each letter of the alphabet! I doubt that I'll do that, but A is both a word and a letter--and a beginning point--so has more possibilities for poetry than any other single letter, I would think. Well, maybe the O as letter and zero has more.

I went with the idea of "a radiant start of something," an expedition, a morning. The image of a map occurred to me pretty early--a map being the start of so many journeys. I originally had, "map of island," but suddenly saw that it'd work better as poetry to have a map of something maps didn't often, if ever, map. "Yesterday." (A torn "map of island" is still in the piece, behind the newer map, but not legible, I don't think. I feel it's a good if failed try at a juxtaphor via superimposed text, though.) As a proper treasure map, my map had to be messed up, torn, not terrifically easy to read.

This piece is definitely my first in this series that I consider word-based. I may tinker with it some more, I'm not sure.