Addendum and Tangent

First, an addition to my last post:

Something that was a catalyst for dumping such a majority of my reading list was the sheer quantity of information offered by some of the art and design feeds. I had previously justified my subscriptions by saying, "I'm an artist, and I need lots of references to study style and composition and inspire my own development." And, true, those blogs were instrumental in helping me amass a visual library 40,000 images strong.

On the other hand, I'm like Mona in Figgs and Phantoms, knowing the contents of a library but nothing of its substance. My focus is so much on acquiring quantity I haven't put any time into grokking my collection or learning from it by adapting what's in there for my own art.

Unintended tangent: Ellen Raskin, author of Figgs and Phantoms (and The Westing Game, which I prefer) not only died the exact day before I was born, but also did the original cover art for another novel that made me who I am: L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time. I'd never claim in public that I was the heir to her spirit, but I might like to pretend it from time to time.


Intended tangent: In 2009 I'm going to try moving to a system of getting things done that does not put exact deadlines on personal goals. Instead of saying "accomplish X and Y every day", I want to structure time limits on my working hours each day. It's a subtle distinction to say "These are the things I have to do. I'm stopping work at n'o clock" instead of "These are the things I need to do by n'o clock", but I think it might work for me. I think it'll give me more freedom to relax when I'm having a bad creative day.

Those are my thoughts.

Limbo, Revisited

Or, as I wrote down on my blog post cheat sheet* while making brinner**: 2008.5

* there's actually a post that belongs between the last one and this one, but I'm getting fat and sassy and out of shape, even in these few days of not posting. It's an important one, so I will get around to it.

**brinner is making a snack of dinner food at an hour when most sane people are having breakfast. or sleeping.

New Year's Eve was a spectacular end to 2008 and beginning to 2009. New Year's Day was good, too, and I'll post about both soon. But this new flavor of limbo is bitter and awful and I want to beat my fists against the keyboard about it first.

It's difficult for met to accept the weight and grand importance of a changing calendar year under normal circumstances (I have more respect for winter solstice), but this year I'm embarking on a grand, life-changing adventure less than two weeks into January. I've come to see the 12th as the real beginning of my year, the time when everything will be shoved out of complacent patterns and open to a large-scale reordering of life. New state, new people, new living situation, new things to occupy my time...

Unfortunately, I'm not there yet, and I'm having a hard time calming down and focusing in the interim, or deciding how I want to structure the coming months.

Certain projects are coming to a close... most of them, in fact. My blue sketchbook is nearly full, my full-size sketchbook is nearly full, my moleskine and scratchbook are nearly full, too. Even if I didn't take a bit of hiatus on the posting of poems, I'd be winding down the project I initially started. And Scannies, the bread and butter of posting fodder, will go the way of the dodo, as the scanner will be left behind when I leave.

What, then, am I left with?

Before this moment, I wasn't aware just how stripped down my life will be come Jan 12. The physical cut-backs, they roll off me, but losing so many of the familiar things I spend time on really shakes me up. Not to mention the lack of husband that will accompany it.

One choice that remains is if I kick my internet leg out from under myself or not. (Warning! Familiar theme approaching!) I have a cozy den of RSS feeds that I immerse myself in when I want to find inspiration or lose myself. Two hundred-ten of them at last count. Well over half are visual in nature, whether flickr pools, the blogs of individual artist, or artist collectives. The remainder are... writers or groups of writers, with the occasional "things of interest" feed thrown in.

Without much pain or spitting I can cut it down to 45 feeds of required reading and viewing, but even doing that much I have to "lay off" blogs that I absolutely have benefited from--individuals, even! Despite how impersonal the internet is most of the time, it's not easy for me to dismiss someone's work, thoughts, and efforts. Playing favorites is hard. Phasing out anything with potential is hard.

I'm going to do it. For my own sanity, I have to go cold turkey on the 80% of the feeds I subscribe to. I'll save them all to a folder first, in case I discover the elixir of life and have the rest of eternity to trawl the internet for sparks of delicious thought. I'll do it quickly, holding my breath. Out of sight, out of mind, I'll contemplate the tip of the iceberg that remains within view, and eek out as much beauty from it as I can.

Hopefully this will mean less clutter, fewer things to stumble over as I try to find a clear direction and path for myself.

Put simply, there is no replacing books.

Skimming the internet for information about the internet makes my brain explode. It's the end of the year so there are posts all over the place recapping the developments of 2008 and predicting 2009. I wish I had two brains so I could write about books/blogs/my dream development and the pace of innovation at the same time, but unfortunately I don't have two brains. I'm not being academic in these musings, either. All opinions are informed purely by experience and reaction.

One thing that makes books a great medium is the fact that they have beginnings. Not just a point at which they come into being, but honest-to-goodness, ground floor beginnings. Most books have no prerequisites before you open the front cover, no backstory, no need for familiarity with a particular industry or topic of knowledge. Such things help in many non-fiction instances, but books have the ability to start laying a foundation from page one and build on that foundation as it progresses.

In comparison, periodicals (blogs as well as magazines and newspapers) don't have that luxury. Each member of the audience has a different level of understandings of the topic at hand. Every item in a periodical has to take into account that the audience contains first time readers and loyal, well-informed readers. Depending on substance and style, this diversity of readership can be an issue of varying size; the more continuity involved in a publication, the more glaring the ignorance of a new reader.

I'm most aware of my own ignorance when reading a blog in which the author talks about their own life, and when I'm reading a magazine that might have had more useful tips in the previous issue. (The "relevant tips" bit crosses over into blogs, too, though a different sort, and the internet has archiving and search function.) I wish these things were more organized and linear.

Instead of a personal chef or trainer or shopper, I want a personal information curator that I can point towards a blog or two or four and have a distilled bundle of knowledge returned to me. I'd give it a link to memoir blogs like Waiter Rant and get back the full evolution of the idea, the voice, and the person; all the developmental highlights. I'd point this curator to Get Rich Slowly or Lifehacker or Wired and get all the strong posts from the past that weren't obsolete three months later, and also integrated versions of posts on those familiar topics that keep coming up over and over again. Best possible world: the comments would also be mined for data that supports or refutes the original post.

I've heard that if you subscribe to Cook's Illustrated long enough the content starts to repeat itself. The same thing happens with children's magazines (at least Cook's probably puts everything into different words!), and I wouldn't be surprised if original advice in magazines targeted towards writers get rarer over time.

Wouldn't it be more efficient for the readers if there was a starting point for all these publications? Then it would be my own choice to skim or read every word, but at least if I was feeling clueless it would be my own fault for not absorbing information. And the redundancy factor would be reduced, too.

No, it's probably not practical, but it seems like it could make my life easier.

I think the next great innovation for the web should be a system available to netizens at large to create something like.... well, basically "This Week In Your Pregnancy" for any topic. Essentially a book in which a chapter is delivered each day or each week. I don't want to embargo information, just let the timing of each delivery be customized to each subscriber.

Right now I'm gearing up to write about my experiences of being left behind while Reagan's at boot camp. It'd be nice to get a daily or weekly email with ideas and support for my situation, through which I'm reminded of my husband's progress and given a slew of ideas for what to do when he graduates at appropriate times. Like an advent calendar. For military wives.

Yes, my other blogging project, The Beginning, Boot, and Beyond, aims to be five parts memoir/journal and two parts ideas/advice for navigating all the "firsts" of being married to someone in the armed forces. "Aims" is a bit of a lofty word considering I've only posted twice so far, and am still mixing the cement that will become the blog's foundation. Ultimately, I want it to be something that can easily be read from the beginning, as the progression of this story intrigues me. Of course, it is my life, so I am a bit biased.



Reagan is my muse. Especially while he's sleeping*. It gives me a chance to consider him in both concrete and abstract ways. His body is here, a tangible reminder of his reality and of our relationship, but he is still, his mind journeying in the dream world.

Of course, as soon as I write anything like that, he takes a noisy breath and shifts in his sleep to get more comfortable.

This poem, like Geography, comes from the weary moments between preparing for bed and actually climbing between the covers, when my mind, full from a day of gathering information, is at its limits. I originally wrote this one a number of weeks ago while he was still working his retail job.

Nightshift

Spooning we will slumber
yet I don't hurry towards that time
as sleeping will obscure
your reailty from mine.

Though dawn is nearly breaking
I press my cheek against your skin,
listen to your breathing
and your heart beating within.

I wonder what you're dreaming,
hope to make the good parts true.
I sink to sleep, reluctantly,
knowing I'll wake--in dark--alone.

---
* he might be better for poetic inspiration while he's asleep, but he's much more fun to hang out with while he's awake. :):) I'm going to ink a portion of that scannie (after I get a little rest) and prove it!

Who am I?

Warning: plate of beans ahead.

On the heels of yesterday's post about language not yet catching up with the experiences of the Internet, I'm taking a moment to look inward as I am wont to do after a period of not blogging, however short or long it may be.

As I was starting up the previous post with noise about status updating, I began pondering in the back of my mind what kind of blogger I am, how my style fits in with the "culture" of blogging, and what sort I might like to be.

While I post art, I'm not a sketch-blogger. Most art is vastly overshadowed by words. Words about what? My life, usually. My thought-life, to be specific, as my offline-life is a tad rusty these days (though not for long). I don't do very topical or news-related posts, nor am I at the deep end for any particular hobby, lifestyle, or what-have-you.

The reflective questions boil down to "If this wasn't my blog, would I read it?"

That raises the question "What kind of blogs do I read?". Primary answer right now is "not many". For all the RSS items I clear out these days, they either don't require reading or are saved in open tabs to be consumed at some proper future moment. I muchly enjoy blogs that have a personal mixture of diary, correspondence, and art.

Some periods of time I do a good job of performing the "would I read this?" test in mind as I write a post, other times, not so much. Perhaps that should be something I strive for in the future.

I'm calling this a plate of beans because whatever I decide doesn't truly matter. I'm keeping this blog for myself, and can't foresee this ever becoming a destination so popular that I where I care to cater to my readership. The goal, then, is to cater to the more demanding aspects of myself and try to please my harsh internal critic.

--

Today held the celebrations of my mom's birthday, my immediate family's Christmas, and the Winter Solstice. The only one it actually was was Solstice, which Reagan and I celebrate privately.

We're not pagan or druidic, but I, especially, like taking notice of the moment when the night is longest. Festivities involve cheese, fruit, something tasty to drink, and making a nest of pillows and blankets on the floor to feast by candle light. We use the time sans computer, tv, and other digital interferences to talk about everything and nothing. In the midst of worrying about family this and other family that, it's very nice to devote some quiet time to each other.

I took a moment to think about Hanukkah today, too, while setting fire to the wicks of pine and apple scented tealights.

Between the celebrations of Christmas and Solstice, Reagan and I went to the bookstore where I quickly spent my gift card on poetry books: The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. I believe both will challenge me and give me a lot to think and write about in the coming months (which is a lot of why I didn't pick up a novel).

I hadn't heard of either book before today, and I haven't heard of most of the poets in either until today. With my limited experience with poetry, both points contribute to my interest in these volumes.

The bookstore trip also made me devastatingly interested in getting a e-Ink eReader. Technology. Wow.

Other, less amazing technology brings you a washed-out scan from my sketchbook, mostly of bunnies. These were practice for pencil sketches that Reagan turned into watercolors, which I turned into frame watercolors, given as gifts to my parents and my brother's family.



And last of all, a small stone of a poem devised as I was falling asleep last night. Oddly enough, it goes to answer the question posed in the title of this post. At least to a small degree.

Who Am I?

As I'm
a poet
my lines
should
be just
long enough to point.

That's your official poem.
Here's the collection of words inspired by writing it:

awake in the wee hours
just light enough to write
a burst of words on a post-it
(thankfully near by)
before more sleep

Merry Solstice. See you in the longer days.