I can't keep truth out of my writing.

I spent the first part of the day doing one kind of nothing, and the second part of the day doing another. Both of them online, and both of them totally worth it. Despite not being in a poetry-reading mood earlier today, I am now, after having written the following:

In The Empty Hours

I clutch the stubbornness
inside my chest
heft it in my hands
the immense weight
miracle of density
compacted hopes and
driftless dreams
migrated from imagination
doomed to sink
but stubborn, clinging
to my heart
like stalactites
stabbing as I feel
the edges of my stubbornness
its grooves and tumors
metastasized
to obligations
but also to desires
held in stasis as I
trace and squeeze
and curse and finally
meditate
on my stubbornness.

I really like it. (Stubbornly, perhaps.) Maybe I'll feel the same tomorrow, maybe not!

Today I want to set up a crafter's studio that runs like a gym, except instead of weights and treadmills, you pay membership to use space and sewing machines and paper cutters and printers and printmaking stuff*. Ceramics classes instead of cardio, selling specialty paper instead of specialty powders. And have a library of crafting books and magazines.

Another dream I had today was to spend my free 3 months next year focusing on writing (especially poetry) rather than drawing. One thing that keeps me from it, though, is that my husband doesn't get into poetry as much as I do. I'd rather reunite with him and have something I can show that he'll be as enthusiastic about as I am. Is that strange?

I currently have no plans to abandon poetry, just a firm desire to keep it in the Number-Under-Visual-Art spot. (Prose is under no such restriction.)

Dang. 7am. Spent a couple/few hours pushing pixels around and watching Kojak. Still life painting of some things on my desk, tried out a shading method Reagan works with sometimes.



I realize that the background might not make sense (I didn't do a meticulous job), so here's a cell-pic of the set-up. Bluetooth is a beautiful thing.

*and light boxes. and a photo studio. and a darkroom. and a few computers. and light tables. and drafting tables. and spinning wheels. and sergers. and long-arm staplers.

similar things are being done in other places! They're making it work!
IPRC
esty labs
Radius Studio
Stumptown Art Sudio
... but some are less "open house" than others.

and kilns. and field trips. and dressforms. and copiers. and typewriters. and every tool imaginable. and a kitchen. and KNOWLEDGE. and jars and jars and jars of buttons, beads, and ribbons... i should stop thinking about this...