itesser ink: progress, uncensored

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.

Labels: mbear, poem, poetry, projects, snooze sketch

Click the sketchbook pages to enlarge.

Reagan claims it's a good thing to have a familiar default character, something to fall back on when I don't want to draw anything else in particular. He mentions a couple other reasons, but you'll have to talk to him about those. The thing I fall back on these days is mbear. Mbear is the default character that I draw to try out something new or attempt a new pose.

Head of a bear and tail of a monkey, mbear is more avatar than ego. The body is neither here nor there, and not specifically intended to be human, but human is the most useful and comfortable form to draw. He's not the most developed character in my head, but an old favorite, combining my affection for bears (and interest in their ancient cultural importance) with a story I read long ago about how Fox (I think) tricked Bear out of his tail. This bear, however, was smart enough to keep his tail.

Mbear, usually the quiet and solitary type, doesn't usually have a mouth. I haven't figured out how to work the jaw. On an earlier page, for some reason, mbear needed to say something, so I put a mouth on the side of his muzzle. That led to the exchange seen at the top of the first page.



Save for drunken stick figures above, and some jackal-doodles below, and the scattering of mbears, only a few of the other sketches are fully unreferenced.



The bulk of humans with their faces in these pages are from the oh-so familiar Great Italian Films.

I've got 48.5 pages of sketchbook to go, and 12 days to fill them.

Labels: italian film, mbear, sketches