Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“Art is the illusion of spontaneity.”

—Japanese proverb

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Kamala Harris was right in the Democratic debate to bring everything back to Trump each time. He’s the real enemy here. There were Democrats on that stage who I like better than others but any one of those people would be a better president than Donald Trump. But I think I’ve watched my last debate. I’m sure my Twitter timeline will be relieved, as I couldn’t stop live tweeting. I’ve watched all the debates so far and my opinion hasn’t changed much. I have certain people I’d be quite unhappy to vote for but several of the remaining candidates I’d vote for happily. #AnyDem

An interesting side note: I’ve said uncomplimentary things about several of the candidates but the only time trolls have come after me is when I’ve said uncomplimentary things about Tulsi Gabbard. I am not the only one who has had this experience. And I am such small potatoes on Twitter. They must be very well organized. Good thing I don’t respond to trolls. It’s no fun for them if you don’t engage and they stop playing.

Russian bot, Russian bot
Fly away home—
Your pants are on fire
And you’re all Putin owned.
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Yes, there are many tragedies in the world we need to pay attention to, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a day to remember the murder of nearly 3000 innocent souls. Politicizing that is pretty reprehensible, no matter which side of the debate it comes from. Especially since 9/11 is an ongoing tragedy. People are still dying as a consequence of what happened that day. In honoring the fallen of 9/11 we are also honoring those who still struggle with illness and death because of it.
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Every act of artistic creation is also an offering to the Universe.
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Dear Everybody Who Needs Money From Me: I’d love to donate to your project/cause/campaign but I’m on a fixed income. Doesn’t mean I won’t donate when I can but if I donate to one thing I probably won’t be able to give to another thing that same month. My sincere best wishes to you.
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Even at my advanced age I can still sing all the lyrics of every Beatles song. You never forget the things you memorized in your youth. Unfortunately, this is also true of every commercial jingle I heard when I was young.
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Whenever I’m doing a piece of art and I say to myself, “I’ll just eyeball it,” every time I hear Louis Gossett Jr. saying, “Don’t be eyeballin’ me, boy.” Every. Fricking. Time.
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I was reading about the psychological theory of behaviorism one afternoon, but each time the notifications rang on my phone I picked it up to look. The irony of this was not lost on me.
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I hit the wall of character motivation on the novel and had a painful slog trying to get through it. I wasn’t believing this character’s reason for acting as he does so I couldn’t expect anyone else would. I did a partial re-read and reorganization to see if that would shake anything loose and after some reworking I came unstuck—at least for that particular problem. I’m not sure that part of the novel works, but it works for now, and I’m moving forward.

But not quickly. I pushed through a major hump a few days ago so at least that section of the story is finished. I’m past the 90k mark and closing in on the end of the book, but I still have a ways to go. I’ve never worked well from outlines. They usually kill an idea dead for me. Part of the problem with the current novel is that I know everything that happens until the end rather than making it up as I go along and that’s turned it into a real slog. However, I feel I have to finish this one, not only because I’ve come so far, but for the sake of my own spirit. I need to finish a substantial piece of work. To prove something to myself, I guess. That I’m still a writer?

I look forward to typing The End and putting this one in the trunk for a while and moving on to something else. It’s not my best work. Most writers I know feel that way at the conclusion of a novel, but in this case I may be write. Er, right.

Until I reread it many months hence, of course, and temporarily suffer from the “this is the best thing I’ve ever done” delusion.
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Euphomet, Jim Perry’s high strangeness podcast, has become my very favoritest. There are many fine podcasts out there, but I love Jim’s sensibility and his openly inquisitive tone. Check it out here.

Random quote of the day:

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

—Orson Welles, quoted by Henry Jaglom in The Movie Business Book

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

No, not that closet. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that closet.)

What I’m talking about is the closet of my own mind. Or spirit. Or something. See, I’m an introvert who has always needed a certain amount of alone time in order to stay sane. Far from the madding crowd and all that. I like reading, and thinking about what I’ve read, and consuming media, and thinking about what I’ve consumed, and above all else, freedom from the horrors of small talk. I like talking to people, I just abhor chit chat. Elevators have always been an especially torturous circle of Hell for me. I like having real conversations: sometimes silly, sometimes serious, but real.

I wouldn’t say I’m a wallflower, exactly, because I also like to dance, even if I have to dance by myself—like nobody’s watching. But at any party not featuring music, and not featuring a number of my friends for real conversation, I am likely to be the one sitting next to the ficus benjamina in the corner.

I can fake extroversion when necessary—which explains much of my working life—but if forced to an excess of it I tend to collapse like a soggy noodle at the end of the day. I’m never so glad to shut the door and commune with my solitude as on those days when forced to overplay the extroversion card.

I used to think there was something wrong with me and the way I am. I was certainly told this enough times by extroverts. One time I and a close friend of mine, L., who is also an introvert, went to a “psychic” for a reading. She read us separately, L. first, and when she got to me she said, “You’re another closet person, just like your friend! You both need to get out of yourselves and become part of the world!” L. and I completely took this to heart, berated ourselves for being such mutants. But you know what? We were part of the world, not just the same world this so-called psychic inhabited. We went out and did things, saw things, had fun, but sometimes we just needed to go back to our rooms and think over all that stuff and regenerate our energy. We weren’t extroverts. So fucking what?

Of course, it took me a long time to get that perspective. Perspective is a funny old thing that can change many times over the course of a life. L. and I were talking about this just today, how in high school we spent a lot of time in our rooms listening to music or reading, doing our art, thinking about music and reading and art, peering deep into the strange heart of existence, occasionally going out and doing stuff and having a good time, then circling back to our solitude. And I, for one, was not unhappy with that except when teased about it by the extroverts. All those pom-pom girls and rah-rah boys.

In our twenties, L. and I thought we needed to change the way we were, to get out there and live life like that psychic told us to do, like the pom-rah crowd said we should. I can’t say it ever made me happy trying to force myself to be something I wasn’t, always thinking I was wrong for being who I truly am. I’m glad my perspective has changed again.

There is nothing wrong with the closet I inhabit. After all, good friends and good conversation are just a text away. My closet is messy, but other than that it’s a place where I can read and think and do art and listen to music and podcasts and try, now and again, to have a real and meaningful conversation with the numinous.

Random quote of the day:

“Crime is art for lazy people.”

—CeeLo Green, Everybody’s Brother

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I was having a conversation with my friend in the comments section of one of my older posts and she asked me whatever became of the found paper box folding project that I mentioned here. Because I know everyone has been desperately curious about this (haha), I’m posting about it here.

Mainly, I said to my friend, I’m feeling shame about this. I did complete my mission of folding one box a day for a year but all the little boxes are now sitting in a large box waiting for me to do something with them. I’ve had several ideas, but whatever I produce to incorporate them all is going to be rather large so I haven’t had the drive or the will for the next phase.

I had thought to weave them all together with fine copper wire, even bought some wire and started that process—and it promised to look quite smashing! But I soon realized that 1) it would take an entire wall to display, and 2) I don’t currently have a large enough workspace to incorporate that process.

Then I bought a small airplane propeller (like one does) with the idea of hanging them from it and suspending it from the ceiling. But again, so many small boxes and not enough room to work on it. I hung the propeller on the wall instead.

(In case anyone is wondering about the rocks in that basket—because sometimes people do—I found these lovely slate grey pebbles and these lovely snow-white pebbles and they looked so lovely sitting side by side that I filled the basket with them sitting side by side. 😉 My cleaning people gave me the side-eye the first time they saw them, but they didn’t say much. They have long-since given up questioning my many odd decorating choices. And they’ve been much happier since I told them not to bother dusting the mantelpiece.)

After the propeller debacle, I remembered that I had an old Japanese-style three pane folding screen covered in rice paper which had been damaged (the rice paper) in the Great Rat Invasion. (Apparently, rice paper is tasty?) It was composed of many small wood-framed rectangles. I thought I could remove the rice paper and display the boxes in the rectangles. It would be compact enough for display, plus I wouldn’t need to lay it flat to work on it. I got most of the rice paper off—though not as much as I remembered (as I saw when I photographed it) (Did I mention what a pain in the butt it is to cut out hundreds on small rice paper squares?) (It was one large sheet of rice paper, but glued thoroughly to each square so I couldn’t remove it all at once.) (And it occurred to me just now that I might have been able to steam it off, but oh well.) The problem with the screen was that there were only 200-something rectangles and 365 boxes, plus some of the boxes were bigger than the rectangles. So that stalled.

But that idea may be coming back around again. I think I can come up with a work around. It’s just a question of my ambition coming back around again.

So many projects, so little ambition.

Random quote of the day:

“The greatest art symbolizes not those things that we have observed so much as those things that we have experienced, and when the imaginary saint or lover or hero moves us most deeply, it is the moment when he awakens within us for an instant our own heroism, our own sanctity, our own desire.”

—W. B. Yeats, Samhain: 1905 from The Collected Works, Vol. VIII

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.”

—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I’ve been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.”

—attributed to Steven Wright

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.”

—Henri Matisse, Notes of A Painter

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.