... and I won't ignore yesterday

Today marks seven years of bloggity goodness. Three thousand three hundred and sixty six posts spread out over two sites and eleven projects. Wow. Nearly 2500 of those were on LiveJournal. Take that as you will.

Here's that very first post, no editing or alteration. *cringe*

12:10 AM, 30 November 2001

*sigh*. . . for the past two days... I have beeen haunted. Maybe the story starts before that, but the "haunting" is what has occcupied much of my mind since then.

It's a litttle strange to walk downstairs in the midddle of the night, turn on a single light, and seee someone you hardly know sittting at your kitchen table. I had beeen reading East of Eden, as my boook report was the next day, and I decided to make myself something hot to drink, hoping it would keeep me awake a bit longer. So... my book was laying open on the counter, I flippped the light switch, and there he was, as casual as can be. He said to me, "You said you wanted to talk to me. So talk." It was a litttle freaky, since his appperance was alll in my head, but I answered. The words started, and I told him some of the thoughts in my mind. I don't think if this person had actuallly beeen there he would have stoood for it, but the version in my head merely sat and listened.

Freaky, I say. And that's not the end of it. This acquaintence of mine didn't go away. In a chair in my rooom, in my truck as I drove to schoool, walking me to classs, nearby as I sat to eat lunch...

He's not a ghost, and I don't get creeepy feeelings when I "seee" him, but it stilll seeems right to calll it a haunting. Or else I'm totallly crazy.

L&L,
me

*raises tea mug* Here's to another seven years.

I can't ignore tomorrow

Great day of drawing today. It's about all I did for six or seven hours. The rest of my time was spent in a haze, trying to recover from the mental exertion of drawing for such a prolonged period of time. I'm sadly out of practice with the marathons.

Here's one page hot off the scanner:

A Public Service Announcement

When the world sends a message
it will use a postage stamp
and deliver through the mail,
unless you are a tramp
avoiding the whole system,
in which case it sends a fax.
But when the world sends a message
it's not important, so relax!

A few awkward lines directly from my period of demi-absurdism.

No reason not to

This is the last thing I must do today, and there's no particular reason I can't do it now.



Drawing has been really hard today. Sometimes reaching it involves pushing through a wall of stress, but today getting to that place wasn't good enough to dissolve the tension. And ugly output didn't help either. I'm taking the rest of the night off and taking tomorrow to be a day to really sink into my sketchbook and work some kinks out. I'm actually looking forward to it.

The list of things to read won't get any smaller, but it's not so important. They'll still be there Wednesday.

Stress Fracture

This is me
taking my time
This is me
changing my mind
This is me
closing my eyes
This is me
have no surprise.

Self barricaded
against the riot sound
floors and doors and windows
busting open all around
I cannot stop the menace
keep the howling wolves at bay
I won't ever buckle under
but I will run and run and run away

Another old one with some minor tweaks. Like using scotch tape on a broken window mirror. I wish I could imagine a worthy application for these emotive snapshots. All that comes to mind is storyboarding a wordless comic to go underneath, depicting some scenario that would justify this particular brand of melodrama.

The opposite of bleeding

Hm, I need to use that title sometime. *makes note that turns into a long detour*

I mentioned IndieFeed a week ago, but today Scott Woods gave my ears a transfusion, so I'd like to give a link-out to the former's feature of the latter that went out today.

The poem being performed at a link from that link is called "Queen Takes Black Knight". It weaves a solid story at the beginning, but what really made an impression was the imagery at the end. Carefully chosen words move the piece from the details of here and now to ideas tinged with fairy tale and archetype, while keeping it grounded.

I may be trading one vice for another when I let my flickr trawling fall to the wayside and subscribe to a dozen more podcasts, but at least when I listen to podcasts I'm free to draw. There's little else I can do! Podcasts and drawing are a good match. Let's wrap up this post so I can get back to it.

Observing

Sometimes in life
my pulse slows

It happened before
and now again
the familiar sensation

my pulse slows
the branch snaps
I carve too deep
more strong, more steady, more slow

I find my robes
layers of comfort
smelling of beast and death
of instinct, survival
and ancestor memories

satisfied, sleepy
nod to the fire
my pulse slows
slows

slows

This has 0% content in common with the poem I picked earlier today. The poem I picked out, one of the earliest I considered salvageable, was a lot worse than I expected once I got it to my workspace. I liked the opening lines and the theme of November being a transitional month, but it was really a shoddy application of language.

"Observing" is brand new, inspired by the inner mood that led me to pick out "A Lady's Song" (the poem you do not see). If I did it right, I shouldn't need to say that inner mood includes things like a heavy sleepiness, being full of tea, and bundled against the relative chill outside.

Finally! More about the classroom!

Top of the pile today, the high holiday of consumerism for our religion of capitalism, is making art with kids.

Last Thursday was my second day in the classroom talking to 5th graders about drawing. In the 30 minutes I have, it's hard to slow down and really teach. As exhilarating it is to get out there and impression young minds, I tend to worry I'm doing it all wrong.

I spent the first hour and a half putting together individual sketchbooks for the kids




And bound a few of the extras as proof-of-concept that, should a kid exceed the bounds of their first sketchbook, I would be able to collect multiple volumes together in a single compendium



Stapler binding for the win!

The first page has chatter about drawing in the form of Frequently Asked Questions [img]. The last page has suggestions for How and What to Draw [img].

What I wanted them to take away from the lesson was the value of quick, light lines. I demonstrated by doing rough gestural drawings on the whiteboard, and instructed them to do four in pencil and four in pen, to try different mediums. When our time was up, I collected their sketchbooks and spent another ninety minutes giving individual comments and suggestions via sticky notes.






This coming week I have Monday and Tuesday available, we'll see what my mom offers me. It's pretty clear to me that some time with basic anatomy would be well spent, I'm just not sure how to do it. Reference photos and sketching each one twice while talking about it? My mom suggested that I give more time for individual demonstrations to sink in.

I think my main talking points will be

+ Identifying the torso-shape
+ Head/chest proportions.
+ Doing those things in life drawing

The handout will also include notes on shoulders and spines, plus some fresh drawing mantras. (ie: "draw what you see, not what you think you see")

More about how awesomely productive today is, plus your daily poem/sketches after I make all those things happen.

I wasn't even thinking that positive

Oddly enough, today ends on a note much more familiar than I have hummed in a week or more. (Drawing!)

On the topic of positive thinking (or not doing so intentionally, and still having things to smile about), two opportunities have come my way in the last two days. One is short term and you'll hear about that next week. One is longer term and more tentative. The latter involves trying my hand at screenprinting. Two exciting projects I don't want to jinx.

Here is a brief photo essay about the 30 hours I was gone. A few more in the Flickr set










In the interest of keeping things chronological, in this gap of time I wrote today's poem.

Foraging

Merlot in hand
I stumble
into the rain-soaked grove
guided in circles
by birdsong

I marvel
at fading remnants
of the citrus crop

when high heels
betray me
mud on flannel pants
chilly earth to skin
I abandon
my search for yesterday's
memories

I follow the rooster back
to pick up
where last night left off

Some commentary below




More here at Flickr

The above poem is a high context daydream based on reality. Odd relationship with linebreaks in this one. I wish I could end that one line with "yesterday" and somehow indicate the possessive right before "memories". Or is that trite? What keeps me from shortening it to merely "yesterday" is sentimental attachment to the context that inspired the poem.

Last of all, a good old fashioned scannie:

Timing is off, part II

You see, this post was written and put up about 12 hours late, and this post (the one you're reading now) was written directly after that and will be posted 12 hours later (if the post-scheduling feature goes well).

Normally this space is used to ramble about something on my mind, or the events of the past day. All I could write about Wednesday's events thus far is the stress of needing to get a bunch of things done and wanting to drive down to San Diego as soon as possible. Although taking time to write on any theme right now would be counter-productive.

Nightcap

The ice is in the freezer,
The rum is in the car,
But I'm here with you, baby,
I don't wanna go far.
Your sweet kiss so exciting,
Never flat or stale.
I never want to leave
My dearest ginger ale.

The silly poems are most likely to come out right the first time around, I think. While I probably wrote that while alone in my San Marcos room, it reminds me of something that happened with Reagan, probably within weeks of penning that poem.

He lived in a rather rural area in San Diego county and the most nearby place we could go to get food and hang out was an Indian casino/hotel/resort. We liked that it was open all hours of the night because sometimes I got out of work at 11pm and had to drive nearly an hour to his house.

One day before we were officially dating we bought Thai iced teas at a noodle shop in the casino, and I realized that I had a big bottle of rum in the trunk of my car. We walked out to the parking garage, topped our drinks off with rum, then wandered around the casino for a few hours, slightly tipsy. Sitting on the wet grass by the abandoned pool and talking about life, the universe, and everything is one of my favorite memories from that period of time.

Here, a 10-minute digital speed painting (along side reference photo). Amy took it on a recent trip to Italy. Probably one of my favorites of the 600 pics she and Kazu brought back.



Alright! Should be back to regular late-night posting on Thursday. Lots to catch up on now, and there will be even more then!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Timing is off, part I

There is no particularly good reason that I've taken so long to do a make-up post this morning. I've been up for at least three hours. I think I'll blame it on staggered muti-tasking.

Posting didn't happen last night because I've been falling asleep unexpectedly early. Perhaps all the sleep lost when I had my cold is catching up with me.

Last night Reagan and I spent some time together at the bookstore. It was almost like a real date. We shared coffee and a brownie, talked about drawing, did sketching from life. Two things I did on my own: look for a recipe for martini cookies and read Poetry East. (No luck with the cookie recipe.)

But the literary magazine was something of a revelation to me. I liked a lot of what I read (flipping through at random), and didn't get annoyed or sick of it before it was time to leave. Granted, it might have only been twenty minutes at the outside, but it was still an experience that made me want to sit down with a notebook and really study the things I enjoyed, making note of the imaginative devices and phrases.

Don't tell Reagan, but when we came home and watched the last bit of No Country For Old Men, I dozed off. Fortunately it's on the Netflix website.

I thought that after a nap I'd be able to get up and do some writing and/or drawing, but that didn't happen. Here are the two very last un-posted scans I have.




And something appropriate for yesterday:

April, 2006

one way ticket to love
the blood through my heart
only has one way to flow
when you look at me
only one place for me to go
I drop everything
and I cry
and I sing
and I buy
my one way ticket to love

The beginning of the end before the beginning

No! Now I want to go back to drawing!

While I didn't pull out any of my workbooks today, I moved closer to being back in the swing of things and moving beyond the comfortable internet triangle of LiveJournal, gMail, and Twitter.

My burgeoning affection for One Night Stanzas encouraged me to visit the site directly and peek at updates before my official post-sickinesss reading of it through my feed reader. (The official reading is when I study a post and make notes about how it influences and inspires me.)

In that cursory reading, I noticed that the most recent featured poet, Simon Freedman (link might be broken?), said in his featured poet interview that he has been writing since February of 2008. He's collected a surprising (to me) number of publications since then and made me think about the beginnings of my own writing. I didn't do it for competitive comparison, of course, just to practice how I'll answer the question when the time comes.

I think maybe this month of revising and reposting archaic works of mine is an attempt to give a concise answer to "when did you start?". I remember writing poetry as long ago as 7th grade (1997), but it was obviously dreck by my current sensibilities. Taking time now, at the beginning of this new attempt at poetry, to revitalize old scraps that have some value to them, is my way of tying up loose ends. By renovating the relics, putting a more mature eye to them, I say "Now is a new age, and you are part of my now."

This isn't simply a matter of spring cleaning and deciding what to keep, what to put in deep storage, and what to sell at the yard sale. I'm coming back to an abandoned home and seeing what can be salvaged after the war, the flood, and the animals that came through and nibbled on things.

Here's something that didn't break down too much. Didn't have too much time to break down. If I ever become a singer/songwriter, this will be among the first songs I work on. In 3/4 time. (First two thirds are revised, last third is all new.)

Today's Kiss-on-the-Wind

It's six in the morning, it's cold and it's raining
I don't want to get up for work or for school.
I reach for my laptop, it needs no explaining
the blogs, the news, and sweet email from you

You've got a star in my gmail inbox
shining away on my internet view
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
days are so long but your words pull me through

Stuck between overdrive and out-of-gas stalling
I stumble around and it's not even noon
The phone is ringing, I ignore the calling
I re-read your letter, can't write back too soon.

You've put a star in my gmail inbox
twinkling there on my internet screen
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
in morning and evening and times in between

Get home late, it's dark out, my dinner is cold
Been days since I've seen you, feels like a full year
Although reading your words will never gets old,
You whispering to me's what I want to hear

You've lit a star in my gmail inbox
It's all I can see on that internet site
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
And If you come over we'll stay up all night!

:)
All of these are at least a month old, but they'll have to do. Hopefully tomorrow will be an amazingly productive day so I can get posts for Wednesday and maybe Thursday ready ahead of time. We'll be out of town visiting family and I won't be taking my laptop.

Other matters

I haven't been posting, or doing much useful internet at all, for the past couple days due to high concentrations of congestion and low concentrations of sleep.

Most of my time is spent wishlisting kitchen gadgets, watching old Marx brothers comedies, and blowing my nose. The only drawings I've done are in my tiny blue sketchbook.

Did pick up a shiny new phone yesterday to replace the one that went missing Monday. This one has a camera, bluetooth, and a picture of a jackal as the wallpaper.

I could have scrounged and such to keep posting, especially since I'm not so ill I have a fever, just obnoxiously distracting amounts of congestion.

Will be back when I can breathe properly.

The internet is forgiven

In 2001 or so I saw a short on Cartoon Network's O Canada and while it impacted me deeply, I managed to not take note of the title. It, along with Kenna's Hellbent video got a shout-out on my "quests" page on the very first website I ever had.

Tonight I started searching again, and after finding this description on the teleportation page of TVtropes

A Canadian cartoon, spotlighted on the extinct Cartoon Network show O Canada investigated the philosophical issue of teleporters. In it, a scientist shows off to a crowd a teleporter that functions by making an exact copy of someone elsewhere then destroying the original. A woman in the crowd, horrified by this, suggests to the scientist that he test the moral ramifications of the process by stepping through himself, and delaying the destruction of the original by five minutes. Thus, the scientist has an exact clone. They find this wonderful and exciting, until it comes time for one of them to be destroyed, whereupon each claims to be the copy. After the issue is resolved and one scientist is zapped into nothingness, the scientist changes his mind about the usefulness of the teleporter. The woman feels guilty for possibly impeding scientific progress, and atones for this by stepping through the machine herself, claiming that her new copied self is free of guilt for what her original had done.

decided to Ask MetaFilter if the hivemind knew the title or director. I get insecure about asking stupid questions, though, so held off and tried once again to see if my google-fu could pull me out of the jam.

Lo and behold! The next search got me a result of "I think it was called 'To Be'" and two searches later I was at an IMDb message board that not only confirmed the title and gave me John Weldon's name, but included a youtube link:





It's a philosophical 10 minutes I happily spend over and over and over again.

And me helping the internet?

I went back and added John Weldon's name and the title of his short to the TVtropes page that mentioned it. :)

Skimming the surface of sleep

I can't tell where I am relative to the beginning or end of my day. Since my last post I...

+ Spent a hectic 30 minutes with about 10 kids from my mom's class. Description and after-thoughts posted here.

+ Thought some about my plan of attack for Thursday's class, crashed around 3pm and got 6 hours of sleep

+ Woke up, spent some time online to catch up with friends I hadn't talked to for a couple days

+ Wrote the first half of the drawing advice I'll be including in the sketchbooks. Devised a drawing-as-your-personal-visual-language metaphor.

+ Tried to sleep more, watched Red Dwarf. o.O

+ Slept about 20 minutes. Woke up and wrote the second half of the drawing advice, including 67 ideas of things to draw.

+ Snuggled with Reagan, dozed more. I feel like I haven't spent time with my husband for ages.

+ Sketched and brushed the dog.

+ Got ready for day 2! (printed things out, gathered more of my sketchbooks for show and tell, etc)

I'm currently remote posting from my dad's computer downstairs to avoid bothering Reagan with my light and noise. He'll be sleeping another 4 hours.

... I just realized that this remote posting means no scans to upload. I'll include some with today's debriefing, as I'm sure I'll want to talk about it and be more alert than I was yesterday.

Busyness and being out of sorts means I haven't gotten time with my poetry. So here's something from high school I really don't understand:

Forgiveness

It doesn't matter the style of your clothes,
Only who designed them, and that they are your own.

It doesn't matter where you got them from,
Only where you wear them and why you go those places.

It doesn't matter how many places you go,
Only that you try not to get stains on yourself.

It doesn't matter that you did mess up those clothes,
Only that you notice and try your hardest to clean them soon.

It doesn't matter where you go to clean you clothes,
Only that you do it yourself and use lots of bleach.

What was I thinking? I think it fits with a quote I found on a sticky note while gathering sketchbooks. If you can't convince them, confuse them. -- Harry Truman I love quotations that encourage absurdity.

To make up for that lameness, I urge you to go listen to Danny Sherrard perform his poem "We Are Prometheus" over at IndieFeed. I caught the podcast of it recently and it blew me away. Incredibly inspiring and incredibly humbling.

I'm off to teach children about drawing! :D

Nervous + tired = bad!

Early last week I talked to my mom about doing a drawing workshop for her class, then spent several hours writing an outline. I didn't hear back, so I reminded her a few days ago and she told me it had slipped her mind and she needed to clear it with her principal. Yesterday around 11pm my mom asks if I can come do my first session today or Thursday.

We start discussing the bigger and smaller questions I have about what to expect, and what schedules look like daily, weekly, and for the rest of the year. As I haven't been around 5th grade kids.... since I was in elementary school... I decide that I should use one session to acclimate myself, like leaving a new fish in the bag when you first put it in the aquarium so the water temperatures can equalize. Except me and 11 year olds.

As there's no school next week (they get a long Thanksgiving holiday!) it means two full weeks between the first session and the second. With each session only being 30 minutes, my expectations of retention are low.

Short story long, I decided to use both Wednesday and Thursday to make my impression. That left me with under 12 hours to prepare and made my classroom debut coincide with my projected bedtime. Hijinx ensue.

In reality it was more like, stress induced mood-swings ensued.

I spent much of the first 8 hours trying to calm down and concoct an elegant plan to both pitch my workshop to the class at large in the 10 minutes before their lunch break and fill the 30 minutes of time we'd have for chatting.

Needless to say, there have been few opportunities in my day to do my own drawing, polish up today's poem, or write tomorrow's hand out. Well, after some yoga and a shower, I will be drawing before going to school.

Despite how neurotic I feel right now, I think this project is going to be good for me over the next few weeks.



With poem posting, I wanted to start with revising the old stuff that had potential or posting stuff that induced painful laughter. But, again, today didn't go as planned, so here's some ars poetica I meant to post when my site was down. It probably needs a little more tweaking. It belongs to a hypothetical chapbook called "A Self-Aware Collection". This all happened before I learned about the term "ars poetica".


Sentience

I start blank
with no dimension
then a dot
and then a line
a paragraph
a rounded thought
then I expand
to take up time

But that is
my last performance
can't turn a phrase
save plane or face
no back up trick
no animation
a fritter of time
a filling of space

No annotations
lines and arrows
strings to make me
dance and sing
I lack allusions
uncolored, unshaded
Do I lose depth
with history?

Bonus post

* Twitter and LiveJournal are down for server maintenance at the same time.

* It only took me about 90 minutes, but I updates my link list. I nearly broke down and moved over to a blogspot.com address so I could have fancy widgets, but that would mean my archives and such would no longer be stored on my own server. Strange things we choose to have pride about.

* In the course of minor updates to my template, I added a link to my blogger profile and discovered I've been at this crazy business pretty consistently for SEVEN YEARS.

* At the tender age of 17, I racked up 450 posts (with some help from my best friend) in seven months. Just a factoid.

* On that fateful anniversary near the end of the month, I'll repost that inaugural blog update that launched what may be by now a million-word-career. It tickles my nostalgia bone as I still remember the events described.

* My 7th blog-day is one event. Another, ongoing one, will be the daily posting of poetry along with my usual sketches for (hopefully) the rest of the year. Much of it will be sourced from bouts teenage poetry (2002), but some from 2006 (at 21) and this year as well. Yes, I'm being picky. Yes, I'm cleaning them up. No, I don't plan to look for stuff from high school ('99-01).

* .... Yes, I'm looking at my high school work. Curse you archive.org! Most of it was awful (a poem in pig latin), but I think I showed potential, in an adolescent way. A couple years I had an embarassing amount of work in our school's literary magazine. I'm pretty sure this one was included:

To whom it may concern

It seems you were concerned
About my attitude,
Not knowing what I've learned,
My mental latitude.

You rate me as "depressed",
Or at best "pessimistic",
Poetry brings out "suppressed".
That's not realistic.

So I write some aches of heart
But that's not all of me
My poems can be quite tart
I'll show you else, if you'll see.

I find joy in writing, writing
Till my fingers nearly bleed
In my room with candle lighting
From an idea mustard seed.

You read little of my works
Many are full of laughter
With my true personal quirks
That are remembered days after.

My happy side is not favored
In the sight of the world
'Cause it's often silly flavored
And I am the Girl Who Twirled.

Away from paper, pen and ink
I am free to be up-beat,
To not care what others think,
Skip to class with bare feet.

My glass is not simply half-full,
It is really overflowing.
My energy has not a lull
If I try to be outgoing.

So what you read that I have writ
Isn't all of who is me.
It contains one-tenth the wit
Of the me I'd wish you'd see.

* Lastly, changing the subject again, someone from this project contacted me on flickr asking to use this photo in exchange for a copy of the book:


Interesting!

Get out of the way

Not in my usual desk chair tonight. I was woozy after tonight's James Bond flick so I curled up on the bed. Reagan's getting ready to settle in, and I figure I should do one useful thing before having to reshuffle. (Thinking about and writing poetry might be useful, but posting is accomplishing a concrete objective!)

Is it odd that I feel conspicuous posting links to other people that end up with them coming by? It's like talking to a friend about Michael C Hall and he happens to overhear me and walk over to us to say hello. It's not that I get overly starstruck and can't communicate, the way it comes about is not something I'm used to. "Speak of the devil and he shall appear" for the digital age. Yes, everyone more famous than me, from slightly successful bloggers to stars of screen and stage are equally unexpected visitors.



And because I already shared this with Reagan...

Not Counting This

Two lines: a jingle
Four lines: a charm
Eight lines: an anthem,
A badge on the arm.

Twelve: four haiku
Sixteen lines: a song
(Fourteen was sonnet
But that went all wrong)

Twenty lines: free verse
And twenty four: ballad
I once tried an epic
But thirty's all I had.

Same as it ever was

I don't want to go to sleep, but rumor has it that I've got company coming this afternoon/evening and we'll be seeing Quantum of Solace once Reagan's off work. The rumor sounds so reasonable that R and I watched the new Casino Royale with dinner, and I enjoyed it greatly. The opening credits were amazing, and the cinematography throughout the rest of the movie impressed me.

I'm having a hard time pinpointing where the rest of my day went. Hours of drawing, definitely. More thinking about poetry, too. I opened a myriad of tabs via One Night Stanza, a poetry-related blog. Most of those posts were related to submitting poems for publication. It sounds attractive to me, and is definitely something I'd pursue if I put effort towards writing verse. I just don't know if I have the time or energy to walk that path.

I wonder... if I could get around on my own time and my own dime... would I be better at self-management? If I didn't depend on the mountain coming to me, would organizing my life be easier?

Those questions are mostly rhetorical, but I will ponder them as I do some yoga before bed.






Most pages of my sketchbook end with something like this. A doodle that starts with a frame and I compose without referencing anything. It's a challenge for me to come up with one or two every day, but they're always fun once I get a concept down, and usually rewarding once I'm done. Bizarre landscapes, moons, and silhouettes are common visual elements.

Redacted

I changed my mind about some of what I said last night. I heard a performance poetry performance (...) that made me rethink some of my feelings about the translation between words on the page and words aloud. What I heard was definitely poetry, but I would not have been able to put it in any standard poetic form on a piece of paper. Is it reasonable to believe that somethings that are poetry aloud would be simply wonderful, beautiful, moving prose on the page?

Another related thought that's been churning in my head is the idea that choosing a tone of voice while reading a poem to yourself (mentally or aloud) is a valuable aspect of poetic experience. One that is lost when the author reads it for you.

Despite all the time today spent thinking about furniture and apartments and moving and decorating, I took steps forward. I did yoga and retrieved the journal i like to write important thoughts in. I listened to things while drawing instead of just watching CSI:NY*, and did a full page of unreferenced doodles.

Reminder: scan pages tomorrow.



* I did spend some time watching CSI:NY, and for a good deal of it talking to Draco about how outrageous it is. That was fun.

Blistering

Stepping back a moment and realizing I'm so upset because I have nobody to talk to about poetry amuses me a bit.

Through my usual blog reading I stumbled into a two month old discussion about rules in poetry. Some of my anger comes from the use of "discussion" to describe what happens in the blogosphere. My favorite kind of discussion, and in my opinion the most useful kind, has a finite number of people in a shared space for the duration of the conversation. An internet discussion takes place on several pieces of paper with no continuity in the audience and little sense of dialog. Reaction and feedback are important to me, and those values are harder to hang on to in the virtual realm.

It strikes me that the party I was at last Saturday was (in a couple ways) a good simulation of an internet discussion. There was a lot of background noise that hindered clear communication, and many forces begging for attention. I can't count the number of times I had to step away from a conversation for a moment and the other participants disappeared before I could return.

I have achingly strong opinions about poetry and I want someone to try to persuade me that these opinions are misfounded. I feel that rhythm is an essential element of poetry and want someone to show me how to find it in poems it's not evident to me in. I feel strongly that anyone should be able to read aloud a poem and be able to naturally give it the same flow that the author would. Most importantly, I have a stranglehold on the belief that line breaks and stanza breaks are invisible punctuation, and if it's easier for me to read your poem when I take out the breaks, you're doing it wrong. (And if I hear a poem and completely miss when putting the breaks in, you're doing it wrong, too.)

Someone sit me down and go over some examples and prove that I'm being a simple minded commoner and here's now to read these things properly. Not that I want to be condescended to; I just want to find out what you see in those types of poems. Is it really just chopped up prose, but nobody publishes or gives prizes to artful paragraphs?

Be still my heaving bosom.

If someone said to me, "Didn't you get worked up about this a couple weeks ago, too?" I would not be able to answer with confidence, but I wouldn't lay odds against it. I'm going to keep getting worked up about this until I get a satisfactory discussion about it. That satisfaction may not come from the web, I realize. You poor, helpless readers.

Of course, I could write an email to a blogging poet and ask them to help me, or bring it up in the comments of a related post, but I don't know any poets well enough to go to their homes blogs upset and be that emotional stranger. I am emotional about this. Plus there's still that block about not hearing the text properly in my mind's ear.

(Also, Universe, if this kindly soul that leads me kindly through the fields of poetry could also look over some of my verse and help me gain some objectivity about it, that would be lovely.)

Moving on.

I am achingly in hermit mode.

At least I was achingly in hermit mode two hours ago when Reagan went to bed. Beyond being the insular self concerned only with my own whims, I also had a profound "lost-my-way" restlessness, and spent 20 minutes or more trying to properly explain myself to sleepy-Reagan. The metaphors started out in the vicinity of not being able to hear my own true voice and ended up close to "the road turned but I kept going straight and now I'm lost and disoriented with no sense of direction".

Earlier, during the last tea-break of the day, I took my mug and went into the backyard to sit on decorative rocks and look at the moon. My ipod was with me. I tried listening to the Fresh Air podcast I'd been folding laundry to, then tried listening to a favorite song. Neither of them felt right. Considering the lyrics of that song are

Time and space stretch out before you
And the universe implores you
To take your place
Amongst all things
And to see what the morning brings
To your own self be true
There's nothing more to do

that's saying something.

Even with my headphones off, I couldn't find peace in the moment. The feeling I was missing something--an opportunity, a piece of myself, who knows what?--persisted.

The anxiety only subsided noticeably when I was in the middle of this post. It started retreating well before that moment, but I didn't realize at first, being too busy concentrating on the five day backlog of blogs I was sifting through.

It is paradoxical that dipping into a medium that gets me so riled up on one front (see the first part of this post) could also quell me so well on another. Recent restlessness and disconnection is blamed on my lack of "internet study" in the past week. Hopefully it sticks.

Back in action

My webserver was having issues. I wrote a post each day, but couldn't publish. Now I'm not uploading them because I don't have enough scans.

I'm really not feeling like myself. The pure fact that I don't have more than that to say is a datum in itself. I feel disconnected, unable to hear myself or see inside myself.



I wonder if staying up longer would help. I'm exhausted enough to fall asleep within minutes if I relaxed. But do I really want to?

100% miss!

Saturday got not post at all. Within a couple hours of me getting up, Reagan and I were on our way to Long Beach, and an equally short amount of time after returning home (after 11 hours of fun, joy, and happiness), I crashed out again.

Draco stayed over and the three of us hung out around town today.
He picked up the most recent issue of Psychology Today, and I read the articles. when we got back.
I spent about two hours in the evening opening poetry tabs.

Still feeling somewhat exhausted and slow in the head. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Tiny sketchbook scans. I know two tiny ones don't make up for a missed day of posting, but it's all I've got!

46 Things (cross-posting is EASY)

Wrote this yesterday on LJ, but I still feel this way...

I'm melancholy because I'm listening to Modest Mouse.

I want to draw, but I'm really tired. If I went to bed I'd be less tired, but new days and waking up in them usher in a slew of (nonproductive) habits and routines. The past few days have been horrid for productivity, with me not even attempting to draw until I'd been up for 10 or 12 hours. Boo, me.

Since the presidential election's inspiring conclusion with President-Elect Obama's acceptance speech I've spent a lot of time and energy thinking about what I want to do for my country. Right now the thing I want to contribute to most is the rather meta-cause of volunteerism: encouraging other people to get involved. Other things strike my fancy, like art education, election reform, and alternative energy, but keeping the momentum of community involvement and enthusiasm for government participation is at the top of my list.

This might be bandwagon-ing, considering that I wasn't involved in the campaign, but I'm not partial to partisan activities. (Generally, I'm a left-voting independent, and my husband is a right-voting independent.)

As I consider my current situation to be an impermeable barrier to community involvement (and that point isn't really up for discussion), I'm of the mindset that I won't be doing any digging-in for another 6-9 months. That frustration gave rise to "what can I do between now and then? how can I prepare myself for what I want to do?" And so the hours-long research and pondering session began. Naturally, it strayed from volunteerism and activism (and learning about them) to searching for advice on independent study in general, then finally to ask metafilter discussions about what to do with excessive interests (with a dash of coping-with-information-overload).

Some good new advice (and reiteration of old wisdom) came from that, and I finally spent some effort writing down a list of my goals and interests. Or a partial list; I keep adding to it, even as I write this entry. I've gone from 33 to 42, and, as you can see, it didn't stop there. The list is a real mish-mash right now, ranging from goals with definite endpoints to ones that are such general pursuits they hardly even have start points, to others that have high replay value (like publishing).

While getting them out doesn't help me focus any better, or assuage my fear that I'll never get to enough things on the list, having a copy of my goals and dreams outside my head lets me examine them in a more objective way. Now, you see, I can sort them into 'career' goals, skill goals, knowledge goals, experience goals, lifestyle goals, and still have a couple left over to throw into "misc". A month or so ago I had a "system" of examining what I was doing at the moment and asking myself "does this fit the path I want to walk? Does it hinder or encourage my progress?" It somewhat fell by the wayside before the roots could really sink in, but having a more definite view of what I want piques my desire to work on self-discipline again.

I recognize that there are pitfalls in doing things this way. One of them is finding myself spending too much time on things that encourage progress but only small amounts of it. Another problem could be pushing this goal-pursuit to mania and losing my grasp on the value of doing slow and simple things.

I am an infinite sculpture.
I am only an egg.




A drawing egg.

Be still my bleeding heart

After more thinking, I've recovered somewhat from this mornings deflation. I've also climbed out from under the massive pile of laundry-to-sort, which is a weight off my mind in other ways.

But I'm still working on my own identity and future plans. Right now I'm very gung-ho about wanting volunteerism to be part of my life, but lack the means to do so for the next 6-9 months. Once Reagan's through training and we're settled in one place for multiple years, it'll give me a chance to work, go back to school, get involved in a community, or whatever else. I'm inspired to the point that an art degree is losing its appeal.

No, I'm not to that point yet. But journalism, communications, and political science are cropping up in my mind and will need to be dealt with. At the same time, I'm dealing with more interest in being a diversified artist than ever before. And a better artist. And a person who knows more. This is all very frustrating.

And then I spend 40 minutes reading about it. Hopefully some good old fashioned drawing will help clear my head.

Arg, Wednesday post

I've spent the past 2 days working up a soapbox speech about public service, but all the wind came out of my sails (in a good way) when I saw this:

http://www.change.gov/

More specifically I saw this MetaFilter post about the site.

Now I can't complain about flailing and needing to find my own map to involvement and related support.

Although in some ways this relaxing means I'm less likely to actually do anything.

Rarrrggagar

Yes, election and excitement.

I've spent the past 12 hours knitting with few breaks. Reagan works the early shift Wednesday and his head is usually cold, lacking hair. Tuesday, after we dropped off our ballots and I sent him to work, I went for another walk to get knitting needles; mine are in storage?

Anyway, came home, knit and watched TV of various sorts.

My hands hurt, so I'll be quiet now and get some sleep.



Rabbits are not rodents... but they could be.

*shuffle*shuffle*

Today I inaugurated the moleskine notebook--

--I commissioned from Sarah Frary. (love it to pieces. although I hope it doesn't go to pieces any time soon.)

While I mused that I'd use it for "themed pencil sketches" two months ago, the pages I marked upon today are filled with something much more resembling... poetry. In pencil.

I probably haven't written more than 4 lines since early 2006, and despite lyrics from that period actually being turned into a song, I haven't really cared about the medium in any significant way since probably 2001. In the lifetime arc of an artist seven years isn't really much time at all. For me, however, it's more than half of the life that I count, especially since I have changed so much in the interim.

Don't infer that I'm returning to verse. Fifty-three lines is hardly anything to write home about. But between spending more of my internet time with poets and spending mental energy searching for a slower internal rhythm, I'm not terribly surprised that poetic expression... happened.

In this intersection of theme (slowness) and form (poetry), I consider the possibility that my long-standing aversion to poetry has had a lot to do with me not wanting to take--to make--the time it requires to steep myself in the words, to equalize pressure, temperature, and salinity. Slowing down, the details are easier to access and dwell on.

The subjectivity is difficult, too. I see poetry as the least formulaic type of writing. When I write something, I find it nearly impossible to judge if it's worth anything or not. With drawing I can see in my head, or see on paper where I went right or wrong. With a story I can paraphrase the plot and pick apart so many different elements to work up in different ways; it has an abstract. Poetry... I don't see the same way. It's wholecloth, stand-alone, drawn with a single line. And temperamental.

I'm never insecure about posting my art (here) because 1) I know it's practice and I'm getting better, and 2) Reagan usually edits out the really bad stuff. And I haven't been insecure about posting whatever fiction I write because I'm familiar with how to communicate about it and within it and I'm familiar with being objective about prose. I am terrifically insecure about posting poetry; I'm prone to expressing personal thoughts without my customary adornments of tangents, clauses, and, generally, extra words. I can't tell when, if ever, something I write is more than the poetic equivalent of uneven, crayoned stick figures. That might be why the first lines I wrote today was about this renewed interest in writing poetry being a secret. :P

Here, have two scans to distract you. And me*.




---
* In the course of looking in places I might find my old poetry, I found some really embarrassing, silly rhymes from 2006. Stuff like

When I was small I tried to be taller
and now that I'm taller I want to be small
The wishing and dreaming
the stilts and the scheming
but when I'm asleep it means nothing at all.

and

The night is a blanket pulled close around me
never been a sinner or saint who has found me
just to their liking or they just to mine
but if i keep moving, then I'll be just fine

Evidenced by the latter, much of what I wrote in those days was poetry of a songwriting persuasion. I'm only comfortable posting these because they're so old. Not that the new stuff is decidedly better, but it's definitely fresher.

This post has already taken an hour longer than expected. To sleep with the sounds of rain!

Sad Sauce

With this tasty spaghetti sauce (which was more like stewed foods, but still tasty) we watched the Grizzly Man documentary. My estimation of the director, Werner Herzog only increased throughout the film, but my feelings for the subject, Timothy Treadwell, went up and down, ending about where it started, but with more wisdom. Talking with someone pro-Timothy, I would stipulate many points, but primarily play devil's advocate. With someone anti-Timothy, the same.

At the end... even though I don't know him at all, I only know what I saw in the film, I feel like I know him better than I know the people who are actually in my life. It seems that Warner showed Timothy in all his wartsy glory, but did so with much respect and love. So incredibly human. Treadwell was equally full of love and contradictions.

Tomorrow I'll watch it again and draw some grizzlies (I love me them brown bears) and make note of the quote near the end that trails somewhere along the lines of Timothy's footage, life, and death saying more about humanity than bearocity. I wish I had bears to post tonight.

i just did that...

Today I went to a stranger's house... actually the house of two strangers. Three if you count the dog. Two and an eighth if you consider that the dog was about 4 pounds.

After Reagan was dropped at work I shopped for groceries, spent my allowance on Apples to Apples, then came home to prepare myself and some zucchini. I had exactly enough time to shop, make food, shower, and drive out to La Verne. I think that if there was any wiggle room for me to sit down, internet, or dilly-dally there was a chance I would've chickened out and not gone, but it didn't happen.

Once there, the four of us (me and three new people) had the right amount of time for Apples to Apples, Trivial Pursuit: 90s Edition, Clue, and two game of Uno before I had to dash off into the night and retrieve Reagan from work. All I won was the last game of Uno. Good sportsmanship to win a game and dash off into the night, eh?

Now I'm home, on the floor, blogging about it. Eight hours ago I was on this cleaning kick and pulled clothes out of corners and drawers, prepared to resort and fold them all. Now the bed is covered with things to be dealt with and the floor is covered with trash (from opening Apples to Apples).

Sighway. This is life, huh? I don't recognize myself today...

possibly because I haven't drawn anything. Also stressed about the clown-car situation going on with these living arrangements. Sleep should help loads

Late Friday Post

Spent yesterday doing Halloween things and party game things with Draco. Baked pumpkin cookies and drank cider. I got a $2 witchy hat that made my black clothes a costume. Reagan played a mummy (groaning and stumbling when he stood up for too long), but I wasn't able to convince Draco to go werewolf to complete the set.

The classics are so overlooked.

Did some drawing there while the guys played Smash Brothers, then came home and crashed early.

All my words got used up talking, and I've got new people to meet today. Even if it's not for 6 hours, I'm already distracted and nervous about it.