itesser ink: progress, uncensored

Somewhere in my brain there's an imp that thinks that as long as I post faithfully, every day sharing a poem, some drawings, and some interesting thoughts, that the internet loves me. (In spite of myself, I am interested in the fact that my self esteem is tied more to posting [quality] than to getting feedback thereon.)

That imp tells me that I am loved and respected less when I take off days from blogging, or fail to post art and words and poetry. My rational mind does not understand the imp.

I cried today. It was the first time I shed tears about Reagan's impending departure. My rational mind does not understand that, either. My rational mind does understand that it's past midnight on December 31, which means we're down to 13 days.

December 31, 2008 is also exactly 3 years from the first day I met Reagan for the first time, and the first day I became a real person to him.

Non-sequitur: I am going to banish the imp for a while, posting only what and when I feel like it. Blogging is in my blood, and writing is an integral part of who I am. Most certainly I will still be journaling over the next week-and-six-days, both here and at Boot & Beyond, but I am going to do my best to live in the moment and not pressure myself to be perfectly faithful to my posting ideals.

I'll just have to hope that you all still love me anyways. :)

L&L
Annie

ps: and if you can forgive that, can you forgive me falling behind in keeping up with my reading list, too? -.-

Labels: blogging, excuses, memo, memories

There is some kind of whispered magic going on today. I can smell it, but I can't taste it, like the flavorings in those fruit-waters Glaceau used to make (my favorite, Lemon-Cucumber, is long discontinued).

Like an egg, today's secrets are hidden beneath a bland exterior that is both stronger and weaker than it looks. And, my, are those insides nourishing.

I glow with the diffuse celebrations of tiny victories (like making the bed) and brilliant moments of beauty (like watching Reagan take his shirt off and do pull-ups).



I was worried I didn't have any old poems to post today that would fit my tone and mood (without requiring a ton of work), but then I found this one. It reminds me of my room in San Marocs, and how carefree and joyful the days I spent there were.

Courtship

I left your heart in san diego
then God fell in the sink
I listen to the sunset
and it tells me what to think
remind me not to wash this coat
before it starts to rain
and tell my mom to make that soup
then pour it down the drain

you go rolling in wild pastures
caught up in a great laugh
shake the trees and scold the moon
sayin' they watch you in the bath
I'll chase you round her silly world
and deeply through the night
but even if I catch you up
I can never do you right

Labels: happy, memories, mini world, poem, scannies

Reagan and I use "Coyote" and "Jackal" as affectionate nicknames for each other. In some doodles, especially my mini-world compositions, I throw in these angular stick-coyotes and -jackals. When they're not colored (ie: most of the time), the best way to tell if a given canine is a coyote or a jackal is to see if it has whiskers on its nose. If there are whiskers, that's the yote.



((If you find jokes funniest before they've been explained, here's the link at the bottom of the post. You can skip the rest. ))

I hate most pickled things. Eggs might be the only exception. But I definitely hate pickled cucumbers. It's a waste of a perfectly good fregetable.

A couple days ago Reagan was standing near me, holding a sandwich that had a pickle on it. We exchanged whatever words needed to be exchanged, I made a gross-out face in regards to the pickle, then he left to go to his computer. A second later the pickle smell hit me and I made another grossed-out face and comment.

Reagan says to me, "If I need to hide something from you, I'll just put a pickle on it."

Then I drew the above doodle. It makes me laugh like crazy.

Speaking of coyote-related things that make me hapy, I love The Daily Coyote to pieces. It makes me think of my husband. :)

Labels: bonus post, details, digital work, low hanging fruit, memories

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.

Labels: books, holiday, memories, meta, poem, poetry, scannies, solstice

1.
I finished Fahrenheit 451 a few days ago and haven't posted about it yet. Maybe that's for the best; a couple extra days gives me more time to turn it over in my mind.

It was never assigned reading in school, so for many years the bulk of my understanding of the book was "it's about burning books". Some time during my year in Savannah I read an article about Ray Bradbury which discussed, among other things, his take on F451. That take being that to him the book is more about technology's effect on humans, not burning books. After doing my own sit-down with it, I have to say that I don't see how anyone could say it is about book burning.

The main lesson I took from Fahrenheit 451 was the value of giving your brain time to idle. It's something I need to remind myself to do every so often. I struggle to get so many things absorbed, so many things done. It's easy for me to lose sight of the benefits of slowing down and daydreaming. With a sketchbook or notebook near by, of course, but in releasing myself from obligation to them I allow my mind to make new connections and go new places.


2.
In middle school, I think, we watched a video one day that touched me deeply. It told the story of a class of school children living on some gray, gloomy, and perpetually overcast planet. Only one girl has ever been on Earth, and she is the only one who has seen sunshine and all the wonderful things it does. The plot unfolds around rumors that there is going to be a little bit of sun on this rain-soaked planet.

I didn't know until a week ago that the short film was based on Bradbury's short story All Summer in a Day (full story text).

Even better (for my nostalgia), the short is on YouTube in three parts.

The story is more nihilistic than the video. Today I wonder for the first time if there's a tiny sliver of Plato's Cave in the story.


3.
I love Ray Bradbury's writing style so much it makes me want to scream sometimes. The stories are great, and well adapted to film, but his wordsmithing is incredibly in line with my own quirk. What gives it so much life, to me, is the aspects of metaphor and imagery that can't be translated to visual media. I have a list of (children's) stories I'd like to adapt into comics/graphic novels, and while I'd love to honor Bradbury's work in that way, so much of what makes it special to me would be lost. I'll illustrate it, though. I'll illustrate the heck out of it. :)

A couple examples from All Summer:

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
...
It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering this brief spring...
...
A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran.

So much love for that. Bradbury's writing is an inspiration. Because he writes the way I think, it gives me confidence that I have the potential to be a good and successful writer.


4.
In closing, some of my favorite Bradbury quotes. I don't agree with him on a lot of topics beyond life, philosophy, and the arts, but sometimes those are enough.

All that stuff that's collected up in my head -- poetry and mythology and comic strips and science fiction magazines -- comes out in my stories. So you get to a certain age and you're like a pomegranate, you just burst. And the ideas spill out.

Bonus points for the mention of a pomegranate there. :)

First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.

is growing on me.

A new find:

I have two rules in life - to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done

And my most favorite of all, words I try to live by:

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

X.
That was fun. I should read more books so I can do it more often.

I'm going to do something scold-worthy, but Mr. Ray inspired me (guess how!), and I, personally, need it.

to hell with it (whatever it is)

.
looking over
creation
without
comprehension

.
when my face
was hidden,
insincere

.
screaming
screaming into
a favorite pillow

.
abruptly
shaken out of
deep meditation.

.
in the kitchen
waiting for tea
giving up

.
bawled through snot
and hot tears
against his chest

.
under my breath
a final
invisible
resolution

Aaaah.



(ooooo! ;D )

Labels: books, memories, mini world, poem, quotes, reading, scannies

When it was time for urgency
I did not act accordingly
Now it's time to say goodnight
but still I'm here and still I write

Tomorrow is my next-to-last session with the drawing kids. After Reagan and I came home from our evening out, I didn't start putting together the pamphlet quickly enough (although I knew what my plan was), and now I'm more than an hour late for bed (though hardly tired).

HOT DAMN

Next week we'll do perspective! If I go Wednesday or Thursday, they'll have gingerbread houses to draw. Rock on.

Another good day, though not productive as I'd like it to be. Too much time spent daydreaming about possibilities outside my control.

The poem today's offering is based on was written in high school, and I was so incredibly proud of it. It was one of mine that made it into the school's literary magazine. I remember we had a hard time laying out that page because the poem is a diptych... or whatever poetry word there is for two columns of poem side by side.

Recall

She says, "Broken."
Then after a pause

asks me what
I remember.


She says, "Red,"
and waits

for me to say
if, behind my
veiled eyes,
I see the autumn
forest, or that
violated house
that used to be
a rosy home.


"Yes," I say,
noting the color
inside my eyelids.

... and more drawings. Today I did better at doodling in a bookstore cafe. Probably because I never want to spend money at Borders, but I'm always anxious to browse at B&N.

Labels: drawing class, excitement, memories, mini world, poem, scannies

DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT.

Newlywed

i.
So deeply wanting
this moment
--captured--
to go perfectly
on and on.

Take hold of this memory,
cast it into columns
and save it for
decades to come.


ii.
Home from the grocery store we begin working,
sharing the stove and the sink.
I hand you an open bottle of Guinness.
We pause twice--in tandem--to drink.

I at my chopping block, you at your oven,
ready our meals for the next week.
Between drying the spinach and baking potatoes,
sniffs and spoons of the dishes, we sneak.

Past midnight in the kitchen, tangling hands
as we stand hip to hip to stir the curry.
Soon we'll seal the food and scrub clean the counters
but I, for one, am in no hurry.

May I repeat "first draft"?

I'm still not sure what's going on within part 2. Or part one, for that matter. Mismatched shoes. I am childishly fond of having a meta section and a concrete details section. Drrrrrraaaafft!

--

Earlier today I got super lucky and accidentally bought The Muppets: A Green and Red Christmas album on mp3 for $0.99. I think the offer expired soon after that. I'm not usually one for Christmas music, but it's the MUPPETS.

I said I bought it "accidentally"... When Amazon says "Buy this with 1-Click!(r)", they are not kidding about the "one click" part. Learning experience!

--

Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme. Need I say more?

Calvin Trillin (author) on The Daily Show and NPR.

--

Reagan and I hit a budget goal today, so we promptly went out and spent a bunch of money so we can hit that goal again next paycheck.

. . .

That amuses me. (And isn't really true.)

Observing the people in a grocery store after 10pm in the suburbs is fun, especially the couples. A lady and her man-friend who walked in behind us were joking around about one of them being a hooker and what different pay rates entitles the buyer to. "Seventy dollars for special requests" is a phrase that sticks out in my memory.

After coming home, Reagan and I talked for a while before even getting out of the car, then brought our bounty inside and spent a couple hours in the kitchen together, something that doesn't happen often enough. The poem is pretty accurate. I wrote bits and pieces in my head while washing the rice, then other bits and pieces while cleaning up the rice cooker. Sharing the kitchen--any kitchen--with him is the kind of memory most precious to me. I want to affix as many as I can as many ways as I can. Poetry is just one I hadn't gotten around to yet.

When it's really late and R and I are out of our room, it almost feels like we have the house to ourselves.

Labels: memories, mini world, poem, scannies

Today started alright, if a bit late. I had the best intentions of making up for yesterday's epic headache with an early post, some writing, a good bout of drawing, and other productive things.

I ended up spending most of the day chasing my tail. But did do token amounts of writing and drawing.

Here's somethings for yesterday:

Tasteless

Living in a half-baked world
built of gingerbread,
a person only ever finds
an oven for a bed.

Hospitals are bakeries,
they have drives for dough;
when you loose your cookie head,
that is where to go.

Sugar, spice, molasses
make both girls and boys,
frosting is their clothing,
candies are their toys.

We're having Gramps for supper,
'cause Grandma was for tea,
and if you are not tasteful,
that's immortality!

Gingerbread is my traditional holiday treat, passed down from my mother. When I was a kid she had these parties where she would make a gingerbread house for each kid in the neighborhood. All the kids would come over to our house with bags of candy and we'd make a day of decorating them. Now she makes a gingerbread house for each student in her class, and in the good years I mail boxes of cookies to friends. I wrote a storytelling game about gingerbread men, too.



For today, I offer poetry and image combined into one. Pushed some digital paint around with my beloved Kojak for company.

Labels: digital paint, excuses, memories, mini world, poem, scannies

Today marks seven years of bloggity goodness. Three thousand three hundred and sixty six posts spread out over two sites and eleven projects. Wow. Nearly 2500 of those were on LiveJournal. Take that as you will.

Here's that very first post, no editing or alteration. *cringe*

12:10 AM, 30 November 2001

*sigh*. . . for the past two days... I have beeen haunted. Maybe the story starts before that, but the "haunting" is what has occcupied much of my mind since then.

It's a litttle strange to walk downstairs in the midddle of the night, turn on a single light, and seee someone you hardly know sittting at your kitchen table. I had beeen reading East of Eden, as my boook report was the next day, and I decided to make myself something hot to drink, hoping it would keeep me awake a bit longer. So... my book was laying open on the counter, I flippped the light switch, and there he was, as casual as can be. He said to me, "You said you wanted to talk to me. So talk." It was a litttle freaky, since his appperance was alll in my head, but I answered. The words started, and I told him some of the thoughts in my mind. I don't think if this person had actuallly beeen there he would have stoood for it, but the version in my head merely sat and listened.

Freaky, I say. And that's not the end of it. This acquaintence of mine didn't go away. In a chair in my rooom, in my truck as I drove to schoool, walking me to classs, nearby as I sat to eat lunch...

He's not a ghost, and I don't get creeepy feeelings when I "seee" him, but it stilll seeems right to calll it a haunting. Or else I'm totallly crazy.

L&L,
me

*raises tea mug* Here's to another seven years.

Labels: bonus post, memories

You see, this post was written and put up about 12 hours late, and this post (the one you're reading now) was written directly after that and will be posted 12 hours later (if the post-scheduling feature goes well).

Normally this space is used to ramble about something on my mind, or the events of the past day. All I could write about Wednesday's events thus far is the stress of needing to get a bunch of things done and wanting to drive down to San Diego as soon as possible. Although taking time to write on any theme right now would be counter-productive.

Nightcap

The ice is in the freezer,
The rum is in the car,
But I'm here with you, baby,
I don't wanna go far.
Your sweet kiss so exciting,
Never flat or stale.
I never want to leave
My dearest ginger ale.

The silly poems are most likely to come out right the first time around, I think. While I probably wrote that while alone in my San Marcos room, it reminds me of something that happened with Reagan, probably within weeks of penning that poem.

He lived in a rather rural area in San Diego county and the most nearby place we could go to get food and hang out was an Indian casino/hotel/resort. We liked that it was open all hours of the night because sometimes I got out of work at 11pm and had to drive nearly an hour to his house.

One day before we were officially dating we bought Thai iced teas at a noodle shop in the casino, and I realized that I had a big bottle of rum in the trunk of my car. We walked out to the parking garage, topped our drinks off with rum, then wandered around the casino for a few hours, slightly tipsy. Sitting on the wet grass by the abandoned pool and talking about life, the universe, and everything is one of my favorite memories from that period of time.

Here, a 10-minute digital speed painting (along side reference photo). Amy took it on a recent trip to Italy. Probably one of my favorites of the 600 pics she and Kazu brought back.



Alright! Should be back to regular late-night posting on Thursday. Lots to catch up on now, and there will be even more then!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Labels: memories, poem, poetry, speed painting

In 2001 or so I saw a short on Cartoon Network's O Canada and while it impacted me deeply, I managed to not take note of the title. It, along with Kenna's Hellbent video got a shout-out on my "quests" page on the very first website I ever had.

Tonight I started searching again, and after finding this description on the teleportation page of TVtropes

A Canadian cartoon, spotlighted on the extinct Cartoon Network show O Canada investigated the philosophical issue of teleporters. In it, a scientist shows off to a crowd a teleporter that functions by making an exact copy of someone elsewhere then destroying the original. A woman in the crowd, horrified by this, suggests to the scientist that he test the moral ramifications of the process by stepping through himself, and delaying the destruction of the original by five minutes. Thus, the scientist has an exact clone. They find this wonderful and exciting, until it comes time for one of them to be destroyed, whereupon each claims to be the copy. After the issue is resolved and one scientist is zapped into nothingness, the scientist changes his mind about the usefulness of the teleporter. The woman feels guilty for possibly impeding scientific progress, and atones for this by stepping through the machine herself, claiming that her new copied self is free of guilt for what her original had done.

decided to Ask MetaFilter if the hivemind knew the title or director. I get insecure about asking stupid questions, though, so held off and tried once again to see if my google-fu could pull me out of the jam.

Lo and behold! The next search got me a result of "I think it was called 'To Be'" and two searches later I was at an IMDb message board that not only confirmed the title and gave me John Weldon's name, but included a youtube link:





It's a philosophical 10 minutes I happily spend over and over and over again.

And me helping the internet?

I went back and added John Weldon's name and the title of his short to the TVtropes page that mentioned it. :)

Labels: bonus post, excitement, memories