the thing inside our sock

book excerpt (not random)

If a person leads an "active" life, as Wiggs had, if a person has goals, ideals, a cause to fight for, then that person is distracted, temporarily, from paying a whole lot of attention to the heavy scimitar that hangs by a mouse hair just above his or her head. We, each of us, have a ticket to ride, and if the trip be interesting (if it's dull, we have only ourselves to blame), then we relish the landscape (how quickly it whizzes by!), interact with our fellow travelers, pay frequent visits to the washrooms and concession stands, and hardly ever hold up the ticket to the light where we can read its plainly stated destination: The Abyss.

Yet, ignore it though we might in our daily toss and tussle, the fact of our impending death is always there, just behind the draperies, or, more accurately, inside our sock, like a burr that we can never quite extract. If one has a religious life, one can rationalize one's slide into the abyss; if one has a sense of humor (and a sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised), one can minimalize it through irony and wit. Ah, but the specter is there, night and day, day in and day out, coloring with its chalk of gray almost everything we do. And a lot of what we do is done, subconsciously, indirectly, to avoid the thought of death, or to make ourselves so unexpendable through our accomplishments that death will hesitate to take us, or, when the scimitar finally falls, to insure that we "live on" in the memory of the lucky ones still kicking.

from Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins, Bantam 1984, page 249

(drawing by Tilden Smith Pitcher, february 2010)

How to feel miserable as an artist

I had a recent inquiry about the list below, which was a part of The Artist's Survival Kit. So I thought I would post it again here in case you didn't see it already. This piece has been more popular that I ever imagined. It seems to have own life now.

I love that this list has been somewhat controversial to some, it garners a slightly hostile response in a few people (who wrote me expressing upset with it's "negative" feel). You should probably know by now that I love any work that provokes a unique response from every reader. All of my work is based on this. When I wrote it I felt it was innately positive so the response is interesting to me.

Hand's Dance

by James R. Murphy aka Black Fox, 1990

a trace

To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precises scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.
--George Perec

thinking about
-starting a writing group with some friends.
-how I'm going to meet my book deadline when my husband was just called for jury duty
-what to make for dinner
-immortality (reading "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins)

meet kate

hey everyone,
i think you should all meet Kate. For the month of February she is going to be doing all of "This is not a book" via her blog/vlog. I think she is really great and talented and funny (and she should have her own show). well, I guess she already does. You have to see the first video in which explains what she is doing and why.

go kate!

p.s. my publisher thinks you are great too.
p.p.s. let's cheer her on, shall we?

our new favorite toy

I'm not sure who likes it better, me or my two year old son. (German I think? I can't decipher the brand name.) Our neighbor/friend gave it to us, a childhood toy of her son's (who is now in his thirties). A quick search revealed they still make this thing, along with new versions of it and you can buy it on amazon. We really can't get enough. This variation is referred to as "the super crane", made by my talented husband. It can be pushed, pulled, raised, and reconfigured as needed. Now if only we had more parts. I'm thinking of buying another set to give us more configuring abilities. Just imaging a whole house of this stuff. You could use it to make your own furniture, create new inventions, affix pulley systems, reinvent household tasks.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

look what showed up at my house today

the korean version of "How to be an Explorer of the World"! Now in several languages. whooohooooo!

I stole this from the RPI library

I think it's beautiful and so antiquated. Can you imagine a world where everything was done in such a physical way? It reminds me of one of my favorite books, "All the names" by Saramago, in which the main character is a clerk for the Central Registry of births, marriages and deaths. He is endlessly filing cards in a building that is so big you have to hold onto a string every time you enter the stacks so you can find your way back. Reportedly another clerk was lost in there never to be seen again.*

*written while enjoying a cup of Lung Ching Dragonwell and an Ines Rosales torta from Seville, (one of my current vices). also with a beautiful package, wrapped individually in waxed paper. see remnants here:

this pretty much describes my desk right now

"Complicate your garden so it's surprising, like uncultivated land." --John Cage

random book excerpt #39 -we are the authors

And with these, the sense of the world's concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible, of something clear and closer to us: of the world, no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the one pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, nor as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.

-Georges Perec (fr. the Species of Spaces and Other Pieces)

I made these a while ago and forgot to show you

instructions here.

also:
I am giving away some of my books through The Bright Side Project. Still a couple of days to enter.

scribbled while not working on book

random book excerpt #38

from "Wandering" by Hermann Hesse, translated by James Wright

say what you are

hmmmnnn

random book excerpt #37

There are many ways to make sculpture. One way is to put things together.

Matchboxes, a paper cup, a cardboard roll and an egg box are all being glued together.

Another way to make sculpture is to build up a form, using materials you can shape yourself. Here an elephant is made with bed springs, a watering-can, an old metal table and chicken wire. the are put together to make the elephant. Newpapers are stuffed under the chicken wire to keep the cement from falling through the wire. The shape is then build up.

You can make many objects like this elephant from old pieces of junk.

from Children Make Sculpture by Elizabeth Leyh (published by Van Nostrand Rienhold Co. 1974) out of print.

point form

-terribly unmotivated
-the sky is grey, snow is falling
-I have two hours to work and can't get focused
-time to throw in the towel and read instead
-but I have deadlines
-maybe tonight will be better
-cold green tea in my mug
-cold snow
-cold feet
-the dog scratches at the door to be let in and the sound makes me jump
-as i watch the snow I daydream of spring in california, flowers, strong coffee, sun
-this happens every year

a perfect qupte

random book excerpt

The Contemplation of the Stars

When it is a beautiful starry night Mr. Palomar says, "I must go and look at the stars." That is exactly what he says--"I must"--because he hates waste and believes it is wrong to waste the great quantity of stars that is put at his disposal. He says "I must" also because he has little practical knowledge of how you look at the stars, and this simple action always costs him a certain effort.

for those of you currently on secret missions