tribute

15. The Tradition of Patriotism

“A nation, our parents believed, should be judged in much the same way as an individual: by deeds, not words. Politicians and the government show their regard for our society, our community, and our fellow human beings by what they do – by their efforts to stop trouble before it starts, and to restore order or repair damage when it’s over. Mother and Dad were aware that songs, symbols, and pledges, however sincerely meant, were often used as shortcuts, as substitutes for the hard work of democracy, the sweat it takes to pursue justice. And they would not be intimidated from pointing this evasion out again and again, in part because they knew that inaction plays into the hands of the barons of power and money. They intuited what Marcus Cicero said over two thousand years ago in ancient Rome: “Freedom is participation in power.”

from: The Seventeen Traditions by Ralph Nader

And that's about all I have to say about the election.

Now back to arting around.

early and often

pack a thermos,

set the alarm,

and

GET OUT AND VOTE TOMORROW.

If you don't vote, you can't complain,

and I expect

to be doing a whole heap o' complaining

no matter who gets in,

so look out.

ch- ch- ch- ch- changes

I've been away from this longer than I realized. A lot of mental and emotional energy has been caught up in trying to decide a direction for the next bit of time -- years, maybe. I've been an adjunct professor of writing at the Gallatin School for Individualized Study at NYU since September 10, 2001. I fell into teaching and was shocked to find that I love it. I was such a reluctant student, I never would have chosen teaching. An odd confluence of things brought me to it, on the day before 9/11, and despite frequent bouts of doubt, I've stayed ever since. The students are exhilarating -- talented, eager, daring -- but it's a part time job that can never be anything but a part time job, and that's not enough anymore. In the
7 1/2 years that I've been there, Gallatin has not hired a single full time writing teacher (not that
I would qualify, being without a PhD, a Pulitzer, or both) and the commute gets more frustrating and exhausting each year. I recently picked up a part time day job that's four miles from the house and that will go full time in January. I thought, I'd hoped, that I'd be able to keep on at Gallatin with a night schedule but I keep forgetting that I'm not 18 any more and I seriously overestimated my stamina. I was getting a lot of "tell us what you need for the spring term" email and decided the most honorable thing to do was to resign. So I have resigned. It is wrenching, and necessary. The students pay full-time prices and deserve more than flagging part-time attention.

So I've been preoccupied with that and not attending to blogposts and Moby Dick panels and such like. There is some peace in having made the decision but it was a tough road to get here. I hope there may come a time when I can go back, and I expressed that hope, and it was encouraged, so that's something. So now, I'll see what I see. And keep you posted.

perturbation

I find myself troubled by the recent phenomena of the "altered book." Part of it -- maybe all of it -- is because I still feel that the book is something close to a sacred object. When I was a kid, a book was something to cherish. I washed my hands before reading, had certain times and places for reading (NOT at the table, please!), kept it in stored in a safe place, used a special light for reading. It was a ritual of respect, respect for the physical object of the book as much as for the content.

Now desecrating the book is de rigueur. I can't wrap my mind around it. I have tried it -- I tore a page from an out-of-date atlas and did some cut stencils, like so:

but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around this particular kind of repurposing. Every time I see it in a magazine or suchlike, I recoil in distaste and a kind of horror. And having tried it hasn't ameliorated the feeling. (I won't be doing it again.) It feels a little too Fahrenheit 451 -- the willful destruction of the work and thoughts of others, the eradication of history, the painting over and massive whiting-out of ideas. It feels too arrogant -- your work is as nothing except a spur to my work. Bratty kids trampling the garden for the joy of destruction, with no thought to the loss of the necessary harvest. It just feels wrong.

Maybe I protest too much. I am all in favor of reusing and repurposing trash into treasure . . . but-but-but . . . 'Green' be damned. In this time when the book is an empire in decline, it troubles me that its glories are so far denigrated that the book is truly becoming only worth the paper it's printed on.

play time: marbling

One of my ether buddies, Vivian Blackburn, has a post about marbling. She didn't know about the ink-on-shaving-cream method, so here's a quick overview, sans step-by-step pics, but with a few 'results' pics (way below). If I tried to shoot this, I'd never get the post up, but the process is easy to understand in words and there are tons of websites with pictures (search for "marbling shaving cream" if this explanation baffles). And do link over to Vivian's site, her work is entrancing.

Basically you use shaving cream rather than water as the suspension for the ink. IMPORTANT: Get unscented foam, or the mildest scent you can find. When I learned this, my teacher (Jane Davila, whom I believe I may have mentioned here before...) wasn't able to get unscented and by the end of the session we were all a little woozy from the menthol. Of course, if you're inspired whilst woozy from menthol, have at it. Who am I to throw stones...?

You'll need:
-Paper or fabric (hereafter: p/f)
NOTE: the fabric should be washed to remove the sizing, and pressed to remove wrinklies
-A shallow roasting pan (disposable aluminum is fine)
It should be long and wide, but need not be especially deep (2 in./5 cm is enough)
-A can of shaving cream
-Inks in various colors
In class we used Tsukineko ink, but I've read it's possible to use thinned down acrylic paint and even food coloring -- essentially, any coloring agent that will rest on top of the foam
-Bamboo skewers to drip the ink and swirl it around; one for each color and some clean ones for the swirling
-A stiff card to smooth the foam
(Finally, a use for those "Apply Now! You've been PRE-approved!!" bank and credit cards that flood your mail box)
-The usual spread of newspaper and paper towels to keep things tidy
-A place to leave the marbled p/f to dry

Okay, all set, then it just goes like this:
1. Squirt enough of the shaving cream into the roasting pan to fill it about 1 in./3 cm deep.
2. Use the stiff card to smooth the surface of the cream.
3. Dip a skewer into the ink and scatter drips over the surface of the cream.
NOTE: the ink doesn't bloom across the surface the way it will on water, so you'll need a lot of drips if you want a lot of coverage
4. Lightly and quickly draw a clean bamboo skewer through the foam to pull the inks into lines and swirls.
NOTE: It is easy to overwork this step, especially if you have several colors of ink resting on the foam. Two passes seem to be enough -- for example, once across the whole length, then once across the whole width or on one diagonal.
5. Place the p/f on the surface of inky foam. Pat gently all around to ensure contact over the whole surface.
6. Lift off the p/f. Shaving cream will cling to its surface, do not panic. Scrape the cream away with the stiff card.
NOTE: Clean the card after each scrape by wiping it on newspaper or some such. This prevents transferring the ink in the foam to other parts of the p/f while scraping.
7. That's it. Put the p/f somewhere to dry.

If you want to do more sheets, scrape the top of the foam clean, or add more foam and scrape it smooth, then drip new ink, and repeat the steps from there.

If you've used acrylic or water-based inks or paints, everything can be safely washed up in the sink. If you haven't, you're on your own for disposal; my knowledge of these other things is severely limited and my experience with them even more so.

Almost all of the ink comes off in the first pull, so you probably won't get more than one very ghostly image if you press another p/f sheet down, but you can smooth some of the residual ink over the surface and get some background color from the first inking.

You don't get the beautiful amorphous swooshy swirls like you do on a liquid suspension but it does a credible job of imitating the fan-like patterns on Florentine endpapers. Like so:
(sorry they're blurry, my scanner is cranky about fabric)

This (above) also has some gold fabric paint spattered o'er the top.

This is the first one I did (above). On the second one (below) you can see a little of of the purple and yellowish residue that I left on the foam to see what would happen.
I think when I do this again I won't be quite so timid about the p/f and will try a printed or otherwise colored fabric rather than my stalwart workaday white muslin.

you make me blush

Seriously, dudes, as Shakespeare had some character or another declare in one play or another (I think Midsummer): I am amazed and know not what to say.

and also (this from 12th Night, most definitely 12th Night): I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.

But also, re Nellie's Picasa suggestion -- ooh, new technology, I'm not sure I'm up to it. It took several months of urging from my buddy Jane (Davila) to push me into a blog in the first place. (Who knew it would be so much fun? pas moi). Learning to upload images from my camera took about 4 months and much bluing of the air. Trying to get Howard's pictures of the BW2R from the disk actually required screaming and crying and pounding on the computer with my fists until a panel broke off and released drive D (or maybe E -- how you can tell?) and the disk with the pictures on it so I could take it to my job and use the computer there to email the images to myself so I could transfer them from the email to the blog because for some reason none of the 3 or 4 image programs that have erupted on my computer would acknowledge that there was a disk in that drive. Or that there was a drive. Or so it seemed. I'm not sure I have the emotional strength to assay more software just now. But now that I know what Picasa is (not Spanish for house of pi) maybe I'll inch toward that as well.

I haven't always been a Luddite. Honest. I just let too much technology go by whilst not having a day job and catching up is daunting.

ahoy

I was at a family gathering this weekend -- a bittersweet (but mostly the sweet bit) thing. Started home yesterday (Saturday) in the late afternoon, blew a tire on the highway, and because my spare is one of those balloonlike temporary tires and because home was three times further away than is recommended that you travel on one of those things, I spent the night at a Holiday Inn near Trenton.

In the morning, whilst waiting for New Jersey to open -- or at least for a fix-a-flat place near Trenton to open, I pulled out my trusty Penguin edition of Moby Dick and made some new sketches. Whenever I mention this series, people ask "Are you going to do a panel for each chapter?" And I mention that "there are 136 chapters" and that's usually the end of that. But I've been in the "why not?" mode for a while, so I thought: why not 136 (or so) images? what's the problem? You're only a month behind on your self-imposed one-a-day project... So I'll see. I thought I'd continue reading and noting and see what I see.

Meanwhile, here's the first batch, with the panel title, the source chapter, and a quotation from the text set after the image. These are all 12 inches square. The BW2R is part of the series (for the last chapter: Epilogue) and is approximately 30 in. x 60 in.
(photos by Dana Buckley)
Ahab
from Chapter 28, Ahab
Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. (page 134)

Baleen
from Chapter 75, The Right Whale's Head
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous “whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth; another, “hog’s bristles;” a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: “There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.” (page 365-66)

Duodecimo
from Chapter 32, Cetology
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both large and small. (page 148)

Sharks
from Chapter 67, Cutting In
You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods. (page 130)

The Pequod
from Chapter 16, The Ship
All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins. To fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. (page 78)