jaeleslie

I got this from replyhazy who got it from molesworth. While I don't have a lot of interests listed on LJ, I guess you might tell what kind of things I am interested in by the interests of the Crew I Keep An Eye On, which this little meme dealio has magically tabulated.

Edit: to put in an lj-cut, because replyhazy was just pointing out to me how some people forget to do this where it would be really helpful (like these weird tables). ( Read more... )

The daily push is hard. I don't think I've mentioned here how a couple of years ago I tried the November NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), to write 50,000 words in a month, and crashed within a week and a half, while I was traveling. And then there are the holidays at the end of November. Last year I thought, it just didn't seem that would ever work for me. But I liked the idea of making a limited-time push like that, and last spring while I was looking at my schedule on through the summer asked myself, Okay, so what month WOULD work for you? September is it.

I am trying to write my way through a subject that contains pain but such sweetness as well, and pain again now that the sweetness is irretrievably lost. So just a week along, it is wearing on me. But this is somehow what I want to do. What would I love to tell you about? What would you want to hear?

And why would I rather post another note here instead? Okay, back at it.

It's a big weekend here. I went to the supermarket yesterday and there was a big brat fest going on in the parking lot, the second this year, and a blood drive, which was all mayhem. Once I had a parking place I felt duty-bound to do some serious shopping and came away from favorite clothing store Rupert's with a couple of summer outfits at half price. Timely, since we are now enduring August heat & humidity in place of the September rains we got in August.

Then I wibbled over to JZ's to supervise where Mr S was digging a hole in her back lawn (then of course mowing the rest just to amuse himself) to discover what the problem is with the electricity to her garage, which goes out only occasionally. We sat on lawn chairs and visited, while he managed to grab the piece of corroded conduit that was causing the shorting out problem which naturally enough bit him. After JZ had turned off the power, he proceeded with repairs. We hardly noticed his little trip to the hardware store for repair kit, as I was gathering encouragement from JZ for my 2000 words a day project. (She seems to think I might be indulging in somewhat high standards for a properly shitty first draft, but just sticking with the dailyness of it is what I am really aiming for.) Being a busy person then I had to leave before the hole got filled in. My subsequent stop at the library branch two blocks from the stadium was perfectly timed to find a parking place while the 80,000 happy Badgers who had attended the first football game of the season were picnicking throughout the neighborhood.

Then we went to dinner at the home of She Who Must Not Be Named Online Who Has Sailed Around The World. While working only one job this summer she has also been tending to house projects, which needed lots of painting and new carpeting and insulation and so forth. It looks really spiffy. Quite a change for her though from a single bunk and constant fellowship I gather. Mr S had a load of wood planks for her that he had ripped from the trunk of the pear tree they cut down in her back yard, which she is thinking of making woodworking projects. There was lots to talk about of course, all the little things here among friends and fellow workers that she missed, and her stories about the trip which I imagine will be unending. She brought me a couple of pieces of printed barkcloth from Tonga, and from Fiji, which are just the right size for book covers (a limited edition of two, I figure).

When we got home Number One Son was back from the Taste of Madison festival where he had been listening to bands all day. Eating a bit too I gather. After he had finished watching Hidalgo I went in his room for a visit which is quite nice since he has cleared out all the old stuff (stuffed in my basement don't you know) and put in the comfy chair. We have been searching for his imaginary perfect desk, and just sorting out the design parameters of it is my concern. He is back at the Taste of Madison today, for the better bands. And we have a pickanick to go to at JZ's (must go make salsa and vegetable salad any minute now).

Tomorrow in spite of scattered showers forecast (I can only hope for some improvement in the weather as it can't get much more miserable as far as my roomatiz is concerned) maybe Marcia will come over and we are going to paint on our canvasses a bit more. I have managed to close in on the color of indigo I am going to splash over most of mine. Must order more gesso as I am running out, and find that grand huge piece of Tyvek of which I have only tried painting on an end.

So much social activity. This never happens.

I think this women Sheryl Oring has got the coolest project, and I was delighted with Peter Jenning's story about her.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/PersonofWeek/pow_sheryl_oring_040903-1.html

See also various googlings
http://www.writers-block.org/index2.html
http://www.iwishtosay.org/
http://www.landfallpress.com/oring.htm

Take the quiz: "What Kind of Soul Do You Retain?"

Free
You have an open heart and open mind and you chose not to let anyone get to you and the way you want to live.

Today is the first day of school for Number One Son, who is a junior in high school. We eagerly await the young warrior's return with news of his expotition.

Coincidentally, I have immersed myself in memories and notes from my own sixteenth year, to write about it. It's a little overwhelming, the whole catastrophe, just like it was, with four part harmony and stuff like that.

Do you remember yours?

I don't think I mentioned how much fun we had action painting last Friday. It was exhausting, but we got a lot started, all on unstretched unprimed canvas, very big pieces, which we hauled around the back yard, poured paint and sprayed it around with the hose, and had a hot day for it. I'd have more done if it hadn't been so interesting to see what the other three were doing with theirs. Afterwards I hauled three old canvasses upstairs to the garage and started working them over too. It is very cool to have a separate place to go to work, I find. And the weather has been lovely for it.

Also I had a couple of bags to paint. One is quite large with giant obnoxious logos on both sides, which are now covered with painting. I started painting gold gesso on the front of a white tunic, although I don't yet know what to do with it next. I painted my favorite sandals black, they used to be blue, then faded to dirty gray, looked terrible but they are still most comfy, now they look new! I thought about the poverty-striken artists of Paris (in Scenes de la Vie de Boheme) who used to do stunts like paint their feet when they had important interviews so no one could see the holes in their shoes. With all these crafty things I am kind of working up to the canvasses. Not spending much time at it, but trying for consistent effort.

On the other hand my feet have been killing me, and my back is as bad as it can be. Just the weather I suppose. The gym workout I had Monday afternoon actually was a bit of a strain. To add to the program of morning reading, I am going to try writing 2000 words a day this month.

Staying up too late in the evenings, watching the Olympics. Today there were a bunch of errands, and dear old Ludwig Van was Pastoral on the radio so I cranked it up.

In the mornings I've been reading. I'm back on the program. First I read some of the London Review of Books, which I have got just a teensy bit behind with in the last month. Then I read another chapter on Polymer Painting, from an ancient textbook that I picked up, from the seventies when it was all very new and the illustrations are pretty quaint. It's short, but covers a lot of possibilities. Then another chapter in a short but beautifully illustrated book on the painter Mark Rothko, which I got at the Tate Modern after making sketches of the Rothko room. Yeah, I'm a big Rothko fan, and this is making me more of one. Both of these books I have calculated to finish before Friday, when we embark on the large-scale non-objective painting program in the new garage studio. Mr S is even now spackling and sanding out there, as he likes his works to have a high degree of finish. Go figure.

So I was reading the LRB today, cover to cover in my obsessive way, and found a review of a British poet, Tom Raworth, of whom I know nothing, by another British poet, likewise. It's a big world. As the poetry gigs dried up and the bills (poll tax, petrol) mounted, those borderline anti-citizens, the poets, went back to radio. Listening, not performing... A medium and a transmitter. Poems were like interference, whispers of the dead. Who else but an insomniac poet would not only listen to Farming Today, but remark on the curiosity of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" being used as background music to an item on crop spraying?

In this epoch, poets were seen as out-patients, special-needs dependents on whom you could not depend. Their words, gabbled, glossolalic, were so much acoustic landfill. Poetry was a sickness. The excitement, looking through Raworth's Collected Poems, comes from recognising that, despite everything, somebody is paying attention. Staying on the case like a disenfranchised private eye. Listening, actually listening, to the hiss of the radio: translating noise into picture, making it readable... (Iain Sinclair)

Good heavens, and the thing I had to turn the page down for in this issue was the article about Christopher Marlowe, which also discussed how my favorite Love's Labours Lost actually is full of historic reference to Queen Margot, as in the movie and the Dumas that I haven't yet read, and the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day, 1572.

We've been watching the Olympics lately. My friend Chris who is also a calligrapher and painter and writer asked in email, "How does one get one's mind to behave? and even be able to focus and shrug off failures (like gymnast Paul Hamm). I want to have that I can do it attitude. Do you think it's a constant struggle?"
( Read more... )

My back is killing me today.

So I'm going to the gym. Right.