Byzantium

Misheard Lyrics of Byzantium (In The Nursery)
Or, What Annie Heard While It Was Playing In The Other Room


She was the warm Aquarius I always wanted in the dark and cavernous parts of my heart. Everything about her I recognized, but my eyes could not remember. Each soft color and curve was there, solid, instead of echoing in darkness.

Rising out of mist and tragedy, she confronted me at the waterfront with words that made all circumstances fall away.

I forgot my vigil when she took my hand. I forgot my loss when she led me away. I forgot my family when she entered the cave. I forgot myself when she took me inside.

The warm and wet and heat and tears were more than could be contained, and all the strength and wisdom between us could not stop the water from flowing back to the ocean. We were carried away. She was still holding my hand.

After that, I remembered, but my memories were as cold as the currents wrapped around me.

My body joined the wreckage, on the shore, and in the graves. When my name was remembered, nobody spoke of the fishers or the waiting. They only spoke of the storm.

Swimmingly Sunday

A couple things from the archives. One from last month, one from November of last year.

Last month's: Outside Inside Me

I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, an Outsider.

The term first started germinating in my mind when I read about Outside Art on Wikipedia. No, it's not art that people do on fences, in public places, or out-of-doors for virtue of those spaces being well ventilated. Outside Art of this type means the artist had no formal training and little input on their craft. Primarily the piece on Wikipedia refers to painters.

I first applied the term to myself in reference to how I design role playing games. Thanks to my mother,I've grown up with board games, card games, and puzzles, and added some influence from video games in more recent years on my own. Role playing games differ from these more mathematical types in a number of ways, one of the largest being the quantities and qualities of player input. When I learned about them in 2003, what set role playing games apart in my mind was the emphasis on stories told through the players.

That's the history, here's the Outsider part. When I had only played three or four different RPGs, at most six months into my involvement in the hobby, I was already designing my own. Not from the basis of other games, either. Of the first four (three of which are currently published), one used cards instead of dice, one was designed to be played inconspicuously in public, and one was about cookies. No other game that I knew about had any comparable qualities. (The fourth was also innovative, but in ways that are difficult to explain in lay terms). (Read more...)

It's not all about games. Later on I get into why I struggle with poetry, and why I don't get out much. ;)

On a related note, when I started poking my head around new places on the internet, notably around Marly's place, Robert asked a question on a defunct blog of mine: "What are art games?"

I plan to answer him (here) soon.

--

From November, Composition from a Moving Vehicle: The "State Prizes and Signatures" Episode Or, Thoughts of 11-07-06

This is a longer piece because right now we're on the road and the batteries in
the DS are dead. It's too dark to take pictures (good ones, anyway), and I have/had a splinter in my finger that keeps me from knitting. It feels gone, so if I'm not driving when I finish typing or run out of laptop juice, I may go back to that.

As we drive, our standards for civilization change. I know it comes from a suburb-centric California viewpoint, but we need something to comment on as we drive.

In New Mexico, we did a long stint where there were no towns to speak of. When we ran into a place with a Home Depot, one of us said "Wow! a real town!".

Here in Texas, the standard is higher (lower?). There are a few Home Depots, but we knew we were in a "cali-style" suburb when there was an Office Depot.

For some reason, these big chain stores are comforts. The familiarity, the predicability are what stabilize us. In a HUGE Wal-Mart somewhere in Texas (I don't remember the town name) I knew exactly where in the store to look for the hand sanitizer I needed. While in that department, i met a lady looking for tweezers. She was looking near the hand soap. I said, "Look in the cosmetics department". Granted, I didn't know where cosmetics are in that store, but it was bound to be in the same general area as my home Wal-Marts, yes? (Read more...)

I have a number of similar bits of writing from our journey. Some of them were posted on my Livejournal, most were not.

--

Also added 18 more fabric styles to the Fridget store.

Guest Post

The rest of this post is good news brought to you by my husband and his total awesomeness.

gear_halo: "Remember that big mysterious job opportunity I hinted at a while back?

I got it.

It's doing Avatar: The Last Airbender comics. Bryan Konietzko, the show's co-creator liked my stuff.

Dave Roman, thank you so much for hooking me up with this. In an age far beyond the ken of mere mortals when I have grown to my full cosmic overlord potential and have devoured this solar system along with many others, I shall look back upon this day and remember you.

Here's some of the sample drawings I did for them.

Sokka

Aang

Comic test page

I'm so proud and happy to know, much less be married to, someone so awesomely talented. :D

Eventful things

I've been in the sweatshop for a couple days getting this done:
.

Also finished up the link boxes, and a few more tagging pages. There shouldn't be any broken links anymore.

But more important than either of those, is a concept I was introduced to today by way of Rachel's Velveteen Rabbi blog. The particular post is here, in which she introduces me to the idea of ekphrastic poetry. Rachel's known about it for a long time (months at least), but it's new to me. I mentioned it over on my linkblog (really, it's just for my own amusement, I like the sound of my own typing (and I'm not being sarcastic, I'll die the day I get a comment there)) in the following form:

Ekphrastic Poetry Page

This is a page that describes something I do, but did not know there was a name for.

I wonder if ekphrastic poems can be sprung from other poetry?

I've had an idea for a long time to have a group of artists in a chain of inspiration. You see the previous piece, respond to it, then your bit becomes the "previous piece" for someone else. I'm sticking a pin in that for later.

Those thoughts are a couple hours old, but I come back around to it with the same enthusiasm now as I had then.

It's going to be a busy busy weekend, and thanks to Mario going right, I think the busy of the weekend will be good.

One last update... If you've got some free time, I flickr'd a ton of photos Reagan and I took on our cross-country trip last November. I have a lot of writing/journal essays from those days that I want to revisit and share.

Hm, flickr is holding some of my photos hostage. I'll have to do something about that.

Fresh Cookies

New to this location!

Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men pages are up. Someone emailed me about it, and I took a couple hours to get it situated in the new home.

Still some details to work out, like the tag pages and seeing if I have any web-specific content to add from G2F, but no big deal there.

And since it's not on the other pages... the cover!




--
And in case you missed it, I updated the Haiku post below to a round 14.

Haiku

I was waiting until I had 15, but stalled out (as you see in the post below). So here are 14 haiku, and links to where I posted them. If more fall out as I keep internetting, I'll add them at the bottom.

spring, bursting from cold
though in more temperate climates
warm eases to hot

-

fleeting chances seen
encounter present and past
save quick for future

-

hued layers of thought
unfolding to breathe sunshine
bountiful live art

-

colors in riots
dyeing for beauty sublime
find new hues and heights

-

weaving wildling
twist your branches round my wrist
winds jealous, we dance

-

to study is life
growing new thought and knowledge
not to die, to dye

-

ideas spring forth
bookshelves deeper than eyes
soaring wishes thrive

-

spring growing hasty
she blossoms into rainbows
lady pink tulips

-


humanity revealed
false points to damage destroy
creation of pure thought

-

reminder to look
examine each as another
always time to seek

-

Actually, that was only 10. Four are missing for want of approval, including the one that started it all.

*le sigh*

edit: One more, and it would be an appropriate ending note

-

such similar sights
first and last symmetrical
your dawn is my eve
-

Of a sudden, I wonder if I'm mistaken about the timing. It's 11pm here... and that was posted to my RSS reader at least 5 hours ago. So mayhap I am mistaken. But forgive me, the photos did look like sunset. I'm not familiar with this "dawn". Check the link, and if you disagree with me... keep it to yourself. ;)

edit again: Three from earlier have been approved. With just over 30 minutes left on the clock, I bring you back to the former total of 14 haiku for this springy Sunday. Tell me if you notice any themes
-

from hard science truths
ode to loss of golden light
our sad, sticky state

-

animatronic
city with and stage without
changing of our arts

-

and last of all, the one that started it all...

a sea to swallow
eye and I, truth reflected
twins of no difference

Meanings and understandings

I spent the early parts of the day doing light hearted things, such as commenting on blogs in haiku form. Except when I got to Marly's latest post, I was seized to go beyond that form and flap my fingers. Then I started reading Velveteen Rabbi posts for this month that I've put off for quiet moments. Good thing I waited for quiet ones, although I hope I won't delay Rachel's blog so much in the future. This post is what I read most recently, and it made an impact.

While most of the Reading I've done this afternoon (not to be mistaken for small-r-reading which is just the normal internet stuff that flows easily, this is big-r-reading which takes time to settle and digest and cannot be consumed lightly) has been Judaism related, it's started me thinking about what I seek in religion and in life.

When entering the realm of spirituality, what do I seek? what do I want it to feel like? And how much of myself should I be putting into these questions? Would it be right to seek avenues outside the Christian soil I was grown in just because it doesn't feel right to me now? Or should I persevere, stick with one thing, seek out the best in these waters even if it doesn't resonate with me?

Truly, I find resonance in component parts, in themes, more than I find it in the trappings of specifics and rules. That's where I am right now in any case.

Three Scoops

Today I was steeply pondering the "A clean home is a sign of a misspent life" quote. If it wasn't 2am, I'd see if it could be attributed. Specifically, I was looking at dust in a corner just five minutes after complaining to myself about needing to sweep the hall so I get less crud on my feet when going barefoot. I don't know if it's related or not, but we also spotted a monster spider in the house today.

Life has been spent doing other things, but it very well may be time for some serious spring cleaning, little as I'd like to step away from the many projects I have going on.

Both of those previous paragraphs are nearly invalidated once I bring up the rough week I had. For most of it I was neither cleaning nor projecting, just sleeping extra, working extra, and being extra grumpy about life. We're talking about giving writing, drawing, crafting, and even giving up the possibility of school. Quite a bleak few days.

But I managed to pull through the worst of it. And all the angels rejoice! To celebrate, we tried out new dishes at a restaurant we've never been to before. Turns out when two people order 1 appetizer, 1 entree, and 1 loaf of naan bread at an Indian restaurant, they get enough food for two days. (You know the food's good when it breaks my "don't blog about food without either a recipe or pictures" rule.)

And being back on the horse of working on my website (even if I have a heap of blog reading to catch up on, the third scoop is mentioning that I updated all the Fridget pages. It could be reasoned that some of my depression was due to trying to work out a fancy storefront. I ended up biting the bullet and using paypal, fees or no fees. A couple pages are still missing, as is a link to my etsy store. The latter would be easy to add, but Reagan's waiting on me to go to sleep.

Thankfully, there is tomorrow (hm. it's 2am. technically "tomorrow" is monday". And the vast expanse of hours between now and tomorrow, which is Sunday.

Time, and those who know her (Not I)

(Warning: this post is a revving engine that ultimately fails to go anywhere.)

I like thinking about the genders we assign to various Ideas (like Earth, Oceans, the Moon, and so on). In this addled state, I can only think of Time referred to as male. For the immediate purposes, I'm breaking type and calling it by feminine terms. Somewhere in the great human unconscious, there are long lists of adjectives (sometimes contradictory) that imply one gender or another. At the moment, I cant really think of what to ascibe to Time, but perhaps my strange state of mind is evidence enough that she's one whacked out dame.

But I only have myself to blame, broken mirrors.

Right now I have a hard time saying what is one day and what is another. Perhaps this is some play on "time is an illusion" and "days are artifical".

Not that the rising and setting of the sun (aka: turning of the earth) is artificial, but our perception of it.

For the past week, I've pretty much been going to sleep when I'm tired and waking up when I'm not. Not only is my sleep schedule at odd hours, it's also inconsistent from day to day. "Day to day" I say, when one period of waking straddles midnight fairly evenly.

It's 9am, and I'm preparing for bed, having been up since about 6pm. How many hours did i sleep? Have I gotten more or less sleep than usual in the past week? I can't really answer these questions, but a point has been reached in the experiment that I'm not sure I want to go back to "normal". I have a job, so I will eventually, but not quite yet, I hope.

While I maintain that I am primarily a nocturnal creature, I also maintain that my prime sleeping hours are also my prime should-be-at-work hours. Even if I've only gotten about five hours of sleep, I find myself waking easily at sundown. Waking and, while I might be tired, I'm not sleepy.

I get up. I work. (Not job-work, but project-work.)

These days (how do you count them?) I'm in a phase of complex, geometric, physical work. The kind where I focus best with the TV on for companionship. (L&O, Dead Like Me, CSI. House is next.) In my way, I'm prolific. The fruits of my labor impress me. I want to take photos, but I'll be sleeping through the sun's prime hours again. Rue the day! (again that word I cannot connect with! I know I work "tomorrow", but in some ways it's still yesterday.)

"And so it goes/nobody knows/how to get to the sky/how to get to the sky"

I wonder if I do more work this way, or if I do less. Both are true, and both truths are illusions.

Somebody quantify personal time, and get back to me. Then I'll decide if I want to live with my uncertainty and illusions.

---
This is an update blog, and updates are that I still have a couple things to do before we're out of beta (namely catch a strong sun while my batteries (biological and camera-related) are charged). But I started a blog of links. None of this deep stuff, but the silly, the cool, the interesting, the thought provoking, and the et cetera that I wander across.

URGENT!! I AM A HORRID BLOGGER

Boy, is my face red.

I've been spoiled good by Livejournal, and spoiled bad by WordPress.

Until today, I haven't gotten comment notification, or even checked for comments.

While I was busy with administration Lucy, Marly, and Jan (and Marly again a couple times, she's so sweet) dropped by and gave me an impromptu blog-warming party that I completely neglected to attend.

Thank you, kind neighbors. You give me encouragement to go on!

Happy Easter

Other than sleeping from 8am to 6pm and not working today, the day's not so unusual.

My "about me" page is just about posted, there are just a couple kinks in the system that need to be worked out.

And I received/sent this email, and was terribly amused both at my response (as it so fell out), and the website I was pointed to.

On Apr 8, 2007, at 6:46 PM, Dev wrote:

This is very clever:

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

I don't know why, but it stuck me as Annie-esqe.

-d

On On Apr 8, 2007, at 7:14 PM, Annie wrote:

Brilliant, Joe, thanks a million for thinking of me.

XOXO,

Camilla.

Inside tears

I cry a little bit each time I have to close a window without reading every single word in it. It breaks me up when I have to put Knowledge out of sight and out of mind. Even if it's to tone down the clutter a little bit, to clear off my plate so I can tackle the work on my list instead of forever flipping through three dozen web pages and another half dozen windows to find the it of information I'm looking for.

The Internet really needs to invent a "search local cache" feature. Web 2.0 is supposed to make this easier, not harder. The longer it takes for me to get things in working order, the worse I feel for even beginning to let people in to see the progress and everything New.

I am a very impatient person at times. But this desire to please is what makes me adorable, huh?

*deep breath* *close a few more tabs of css tutorials*

My stress, excitement, and caffeine are out of proportion to my ability to relax.

When I was in my "productivity" phase, during which I read so many productivity blogs that I was unable to be productive myself, I learned a rule about cleaning up and organizing, specifically in reference to putting a crafty room in order. For each item you have to put away, ask yourself, "How will I get to this?" not "Where can I put this?"

All in all, a good idea, even if it makes me want to have walls filled with small cubbies so everything is in sight when I look in the right direction.

It pains me to put webpages away (oh, you toys of the computer literate in this day and age), and it pains me at least as much to put away the magazines, the bundles of fabric, and the skeins upon skeins of yarn.

It also pains me to sort and put away the bills, but in a different way.

When I grow up

I'm going to move away from here, to Oregon, maybe, and buy property. In our expansive back yard, we're going to install a couple vintage cars and turn them into garden sculpture, with our vegetables growing in the truck bed, and flowers sprouting from the vacant windows.

I'll do it, just not for many years.

As for a regular site update, things are progressing slowly. My eyestrain has induced a persistant headache for the past few days, so I'm trying to keep down the computer time. Hard to do that and get computer things done at the same time.

However, I enjoy this "getting out there" activity I've been trying for a week or so. Building tentative relationships with cool people is fun! Something about the atmosphere of the web these days, or the circles I'm finding, is much more pleasant and welcoming than previous attempts.

I think I'll keep at it.