For writers who came up before the digital revolution, and many who were born later, nothing ever will replace the little paper notebook. Nothing to charge up, nothing to turn on, no lights, no sound, nothing to distract or alarm, just the pen and the paper and that comforting little presence in your pocket. But the smartphone, with its camera, can sometimes be another kind of notebook.
This photograph replaces a written note that would have gone something like this:
“on the brown cardboard box under a display of Ray-O-Vac plastic lantern flashlights (bright yellow and process blue), these words, off center in a blurry sans-serif font: Lanterna Flotante. prob. Spanish for “Floating Lantern”. Very pretty, sounds like words from bossa nova lyric. Flashlights are a good price too– $3.97. Didn’t buy one. White peg board shelf.”
The picture covers all of that, including the price which got cropped out for artistic reasons. But it is there in the original image. So while a thousand may be a bit of an exaggeration, a picture is certainly worth 57 words. And “Lanterna Flotante” is a very pretty phrase, which is the point of the whole exercise. Sounds like part of the lyrics from an particularly elegant bossa nova.
