wordy wednesday

Youth could win,
but had not learned to keep:
and was pitiably weak
against age.

--T.E. Lawrence,
               Seven Pillars of Wisdom

even wordier Friday

In 1999, as part of my thesis for my MFA, I wrote an essay about the death of my brother. People ask me about it from time to time, so I thought I'd post it. It was published in The Threepenny Review in the Spring 2001 issue and cited as a Notable Essay in the listings in that year's Best American essays annual (not reprinted, just cited, but that was sufficiently startling when I picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble, scanned the listings, and went "Wait a minute, that's me" ).

If you decide to read it, be prepared for it being l-o-n-g and sad, because it is.

wordy wednesday: a favorite song

I have always loved the John Sebastian song Darling, Be Home Soon. Simple, direct, doesn't try to do too much, says almost everything worth saying.


Come
And talk of all the things we did today
Here
And laugh about our funny little ways
While we have a few minutes to breathe
Then I know that it's time you must leave.

But darling be home soon
I couldn't bear to wait an extra minute if you dawdled
My darling be home soon
It's not just these few hours but I've been waiting since I toddled
For the great relief of having you to talk to.

knows all, sawzall

I decided to have a little more work done in the studio before I declare that bridge open. The floor had some termite damage, so the carpenter came, cut out about half of it with his handy Sawzall, and put down plywood.

And then I thought, as long as I'm doing this, let me really do it. When the closet was installed the first time, I said I wanted the closet door to run floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall so I wouldn't have those awful dead spaces at the sides and top where Stuff Goes to Die. For reasons not worth getting into, that didn't happen, but now I thought: "Splurge." So the carpenter also sawzalled out the closet wall and then I went to Home Depot and ordered a fancy folding door that will run floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall. O!, frabjous day.

Meanwhile, the carpenter's assistant was busy screwing the plywood to the joists. At day's end on Tuesday, I had this:


 I went immediately to the flooring place to order something pretty. On Friday, Richie came and put down an underlayment   

Friday, 2:00 p.m.

and cushion-backed sheet vinyl that looks like bleached planking



Friday, 3:30 p.m.

I think it's pretty - and the cushion backing is very cushy indeed. Take my word for it.

The fancy closet door is due in about another fortnight. When that goes in, the baseboards will be put back in and Things Will Be Lovely, Secure, and Organized. In the meantime, I can start configuring the closet interior and move some things back into the room, which will clear space in the other rooms that need attention. . .
And so it goes.

wordy wednesday

Just don't give up trying to do
what you really want to do.
Where there is love and inspiration,
I don't think you can go wrong.

--Ella Fitzgerald

progress, of a kind

There have been men in the house. Plumbing and carpentry have been represented. Soon, a cameo by an electrician. Then Men with Chain Saws for the yard. Then the grotesque house my grandfather concocted from determination and packing tape will be ready(ish) for winter, and I will be able to walk around in the studio without hearing the floors crackle and splinter -- which is very distracting. ka-ching, ka-ching, but not as bad as I'd feared. Not even close to what I'd feared, which was more like ka-ching, Ka-Ching, KA-CHIIINNG!!

Meanwhile I've been working on something. Inspired by a course description for a class that will focus on crosses and Xs, I made some Xs. The Xs became kind of petroglyph-ish.

Initial pencil sketch (right)
Sharpie tracing for projector (left)

Then, emboldened by my recent foray into dyeing, and empowered by my newly neatened stacks of fabric, I immediately found something in my closet that would work as a background. Except it was pink. Here followed a flurry of trying to turn pink into ochre.

Test swatch 3 or 4
Acrylic paint (ochre) on pink commercial print cotton.
Too yellow.

Test swatch 6 (or so)
Overdyed (tan) painted with acrylic (ochre and burnt sienna).
Much better.

I was thinking of the sueded, hand-dyed Cherrywood fabrics for the figures (the dark rectangles pinned on the background sample, below), but I think it maybe the wrong texture. Not to mention that it's wickedly expensive and I have a boatload of things on hand -- one or another of which surely could be made to serve. . .

So, on to roughing in the figures. This will be much, much larger than I'm used to -- in the range of 45 inches (115 cm) square -- so I put up some big paper and fiddled with the projector until I had something not too scary, then splashed on some paint for a very, very general idea.

It never hurts to have a professional share her expertise.

And that's as far as I've gotten. Which is further than I've been in a while. It's a good feeling.

wordy wednesday

Silence

is the element

in which

great things

fashion themselves.

--Thomas Carlyle