jaeleslie

Started the day by finishing a Nancy Springer book, and then read another, Plumage, straight through. It was great fun, and another thing, it was the proper length for a novel. I find a great many books don't really need to be more than 300 pages long. It is possible that I have gotten over-tired, and sitting around reading my library books is a good thing. (I did have a workout Monday, after a whole week off.)

Then I finished most of the bookkeeping from the art fair, which was much easier than usual because I actually had half of the desk next to the computers cleared off to spread out my work papers. However it was more complicated than usual.

It was really hard to get to my drawing table. "Just fifteen minutes" I said to myself. Then once I got going it was fun and two hours later it was done. I was using my favorite quarter-inch automatic pen with sumi ink and making very large letters. Tried doing the same thing with a couple of smaller pens but one was old and too bendy (should I throw it out???) and then another was either too wet or too dry and then another nib had the same problem with the ink feeding and also had no reservoir, so instead of struggling along with those any further I went back to the favorite automatic pen, and did the whole project on two sheets of paper instead of one. And then it was easier to just finish all the smaller lettering too. I have to cut and paste a bit anyway and reduce it all quite a lot at Kinko's tomorrow to make it fit in Chunga.

The first try yesterday, sort of a warm-up, I put in the sink while it was still wet and rinsed to make swirly sumi marbling patterns among the letters which improved all the mistakes quite a bit. It's too big to go on the scanner tho.

Edit: see detail at http://www.fotolog.net/maryread/

It is possible that I was a little lackadaisical in my preparations for the art fair, as I pointed out last week, and the result of that was that my sales were very poor. That is the best construction I am able to put on the situation. Yesterday I was really very down about it, because it is hard not to take a poor sale as a reflection of one's personal value.

Friday I fooled around with putting new and much more suitable frames on a couple of old pieces. They look much better now and so I am hanging them in the living room for a while to look at them. Because of course they did not sell. Then we went up to the square to help a bit with setting up the booth, and worry about the weather. Saturday I was up at six and hanging all my stuff and so by ten or so I was completely done in. So I left my friends to take care of the booth and handle most everything, sat around a bit visiting, and then took off in the middle of the afternoon to have a nap. Slept for a couple hours. Sunday I didn't have to go in until eleven, although I started on the bookkeeping. And then it rained a bit late in the afternoon, which was a nuisance and drove away the crowd. Luckily it stopped, so we just had to dry everything off while we were packing up, and tear down the booth. So I took more meds.

Then we all went to dinner at Firefly. It was a highly successful sale for the other four artists in the booth, who made three times as much as I, or five times or ten times. Of course they all have much deeper inventories than I do. As I pointed out at dinner, this is the hardest way I have yet found to earn $300.

But I got lots of ideas, and made note of them. I like having a place to display my works, and I like working with my friends. The bookkeeping is not such a nuisance as I am really pretty quick with it, and have been doing it so long it is all on automatic pilot.

What really got my goat yesterday was that I received the newsletter from the local calligraphers' guild, announcing the art fair, and demanding my annual dues. The person who does the newsletter is not at all interested in the art fair, and it shows, doesn't it? She is quite the professional though. As I am the one volunteer in the group who is not making much money at it, although I am writing the checks to everyone else, this was a little annoying to say the least, and I sent my $15 dues off pronto with a little rant enclosed. I spend that much mailing zines every month! but I don't ask anyone to cover my printing and postage costs. That is the difference between a gift and a service.

If I didn't have so many other things to do I would write a calligraphy zine, and it would be far finer and more interesting and lively and beautiful than her stupid newsletter. So there. But I have to work on title art for Chunga now, and the letter column for Wabe.

Instead of worrying about the Art Fair On The Square this weekend, and feeling bad about all the work that I haven't done, I am lurking around LiveJournal and commenting to my friends. It is fun and good stress relief, even though it has been a while and I am way behind. Fortunately no points to lose there. I have been doing all the stuff on my calendar, and making notes of other stuff for later when I might be able to fit it in. And if not, it's all better than not doing anything. I have tried that, believe me.

I have not yet finished the highly patriotic painting I wanted to have done, but I can't frame it right now anyway as the plexi I had for that size frame is scratched. Instead I have two other pieces of the same song, "Over the hills and far away", just not the one with the red & blue and sparkly bits and King George commands and we obey. I just cut a dozen mats for pieces I could mount and wrap etc today or tomorrow. I ordered a couple frames in time that they might come in tomorrow and then I can use them. And all my usual stuff is already packed up.

As usual I have been kinda busy. Reading a lot, more Emshwiller stories and most of Nuala O'Faolain's memoir Almost There. Finished another apazine and mailed it off yesterday. Went to lunch with a friend from high school. Had some friends over for dinner last night, which never happens. Mr S said I could have a week off of going to the gym, which I am enjoying. Today at least I am not on drugs. Think I need to spend at least a half hour or so on the deck in the sun this afternoon, instead of in the basement, and read some more.

Then fall in lads behind the drum
with colors blazing like the sun
along the road to come what may
over the hills and far away

As I mentioned I had finally finished Carmen Dog, after taking much longer with it than I usually would with a novel of that length. It just didn't suck me in the way some do. As for instance did the same author's Ledoyt, which I have just finished this morning in about three days all told, maybe it was two. I sat on the sofa this morning and finished the entire second half of it, smiling or laughing and with tears running down my face in a couple episodes, and then when it was done, checked the online library catalog and drove immediately to the public library to take out Leaping Man Hill which is a sequel even though I have read it before. I don't remember it nearly well enough, and want to stay with those people a while longer. Unfortunately the library was closed. So here I am instead to tell you about it.

These are called Western novels, only I think because they are set in the west. They are not action adventure type novels, although plenty of action and riproaring adventures occur. Ledoyt is told largely through the journal of a young girl living on a ranch, who loves and hates her stepfather, and sometimes does not believe her mother to be really her mother. And then you know how sometimes in close family matters you think What on earth could they be thinking? In this novel you find out exactly what they are thinking. The point of view shifts to the parents, who are much in love. They are kind but terribly damaged people, damaged just in the usual run of human damage, and absolutely true to their period of the early twentieth century, in the things they tell themselves about their own shortcomings and failures and how they view what befalls them. So the story is not only of the young girl making trouble as she grows up, but of the whole family.

Parents sometimes carelessly share their troubles with their children, and sometimes succeed in sheltering them. And with luck they grow up.

There was something important. I was going to continue scribbling. But then we took the cat to the vet and etc and so on and I left the good idea in the car.

I had just finished reading Carmen Dog, a short (160-page) novel that took me far too long to read, what with one thing and another. It's written in the present tense, except for the epilogue in the future, which gives the impression that it's current comment, which of course it is, swiftian satire. I am trying to sort out why it reminded me of Paul Goodman's The Empire City, mostly a matter of style and tone I think. But Goodman's novel is likewise set in current time, and likewise third-person omniscient, and not a novel exactly but a tale, although historically it is a personal view from "Between Two Wars".

Yesterday. Eventually in the evening we watched Cold Mountain on DVD, and then some of the attached matter. Quite excellent, visually beautiful, truthful about how human beings are and probably were. Riled up all my own Civil War material (must actually plan visit to battlefields in Mississippi and Arkansas). It was shot mostly in Romania which was interesting, the landscape was a fooler, and all those soldiers hired cheap and milling about just like soldiers.

The good thing, or maybe the bad thing, it's a thing anyway, about writing anti-war poetry and stuff, is that it never goes out of style. Just when you're thinking it's hopelessly dustbin-of-history it can start to seem startlingly relevant again.

Anniversary of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, 1991
(at the Desert Storm victory parade)

The forbidding breathy drone of a few
airplanes in formation, scraping against
the air high above the Capitol dome,
the foolish people happily applaud;
then descending thunder of the choppers
out of Apocalypse Now; the Shriners
clowning in their kiddy cars, two Keystone
cops and their prisoner handing out little
flags; the woman in front of me offered
to pass the flags back into the crowd, which
made a political statement of my
quiet No thank you. Then all the fat men
in their fezzes and green polyester
pants on their grunting red motorcycles,
absurd psychedelic nazis, sitting
in wait. The color guard of old veterans,
just like all the parades I've seen before,
but some real soldiers in camouflage
on their way. A high school band was striking
up the march, up the hill, and I couldn't
wait and stand for it,
their plodding brass and
the bombastic drums.

It was very interesting moving someone else's boxes into storage last night. All sympathy to the person whose boxes they were. Moving is not easy at best.

As replyhazy pointed out, it was rather more difficult than unloading the truck into an empty living space would have been, because not only was the truck packed quite full but the storage spaces had to be packed again too, like several simultaneous games of tetris. Fortunately they will not be moving and shaking on the back of a truck but just sitting quietly until someone comes for them again. I was glad that I was able to influence Mr S and Number One Son to come along to help with all that heavy lifting of book boxes; but I am rather concerned about that particular locker they packed being a bit precariously balanced for the next person to come along. With a stepladder, I would advise. I told them to remember they would be helping with that operation too if there is any justice I can offer.

It has got me looking around myself for likely boxes of my own that I can give the FlyLady treatment. (Do I love this? Do I use this, or need it? Do I ever want to lay hands or eyes on this again?) Remember, just one box at a time is quite sufficient. Slow and steady.

Putting everything you have been playing with into boxes to move and store is a peculiar modern experience. One hopes to open them up again on some Christmas morning of the future in a home of peace and serenity where everything will fit and be just what you wanted and find its best and highest use. This does not usually happen, in my experience. But one always must hope, maybe it will work this time. At least partly.

I'm feeling much more alert than usual at this hour, not that I don't usually stay up, just that I usually am not so perky. Also I got a couple of things done today, in much busier fashion than I have shown of late. (Spent an hour on my feet -- it's a cement floor -- cutting mats, which is really pretty tedious work, and also managed to move all the frames and art supplies you don't want to know about away from the furnace so the filter can be changed.) You don't think this might have something to do with the large cup of coffee I consumed after lunch? I've been drinking tea in the morning instead for the last month or more, just one teaspoon loose Assam, sometimes a teabag of something else later on. The good news I guess is that the coffee doesn't seem to have really disagreed with my digestion. Oh yeah, I remember now, I stopped drinking it so that I could go to sleep before two in the morning and get more than five hours sleep. The other good news is that I feel better on the non-gluten diet. The bad news is... also... that I feel better on the non-gluten diet.

Another day, another piece of software. Does this client thingy work? The window is too small, oh yeah I can fix that, and the letters more than usually tiny, drab and boring.

The software geeks will absorb all life as we know it, and be the death of literature. Another stick for the bonfire. Move along there, these aren't the droids you're looking for.