Heading towards Luddite

I used to have five blogs that I tried to write on a regular basis. Two of them were co-authored with a good friend. One had only two postings for months before I finally deleted it. The two that I've kept up with mostly are this one and my children's book blog. But it's been months since I posted on my children's one. Months. I still get hits on it but I haven't bothered to write a new review in almost half a year. I'm beginning to think that it is dead.

But I've tried hard to keep up with this one. I've started strong and then slowly slacked off (love the alliteration). I went from posting four or five times a week to only once or twice a week. Now I find I haven't posted in almost ten days. It's beginning to worry me.

It's not that I haven't been writing. I have. But I've been doing most of it in a different format. My journal is getting a good workout lately. I've inked many, many pages over the last 10 days. I'm moving back towards paper and pen. And not just any pen, a beautiful Sailor fountain pen that my dad gave to me years ago. It's been sitting in a drawer gathering dust and clogging up.

So this week I dug it out and cleaned it up. I filled it with fresh ink and now I can't stop using it. I sat at Caribou this afternoon with both a book and my journal. Normally the journal gets neglected while I read. Not today. I put down my book several times so I can pick up that glorious pen and write more. I love the sound that it makes as it scratches across the page. I love the flow of the ink and the way it looks in my hand. I love the way my words look more elegant from the pen. On the computer they suddenly seem duller. So this is just to say that I'm apparently stepping back into the early 1900s to focus on paper and pen again. I'll be back soon. I'm sure the luxury of this beautiful writing instrument will wear off eventually. But right now I'm not in any hurry for that.

Passion and Madness

I've been drinking cheap red wine in the bathtub which means that this will be more maudlin and romantic then I mean it to be. It never fails. Give me a bottle of red wine and I will write you sonnets. Or at least feverishly slave away with words like the great poets of old. I wonder what's in the wine to make me do that.

I'm reading a book about reading (my favorite subject) and the author is talking about poets. Not just any poets but the masters of romanticism. Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire. Poets that I used to read (in translation of course) and dream of passion and madness. Years ago I bought a greeting card that had the phrase "passion is a form of madness". I bought it for the saying. I was a young romantic. I wanted that passion. I wanted to be that starving artist living in a garret, selling poems to buy cheap red wine and a meal that night. Some night (like tonight) I still do.

But as I read this book I remembered a picture. I don't know if I've posted it here before and I know that tonight I won't be able to describe why this photo pierced my soul. Why I printed a copy and moved it from house to house. Why it used to sit above my writing desk. The simplest explanation is that this photo (by Felix Nadar in 1856) captured the passion and madness of Charles Baudelaire. I've loved this photo my entire life. From the moment I first saw it I loved it. I knew I needed to have a copy. I can't really explain way. It's terrible quality. It's blurry and odd, but I love it. Something about it speaks to me. And some days I understand what it's saying.

The Start of Something Wonderful

I have a three foot long by one foot deep "garden" in which I can plan whatever I like. A good part of the land is taken up by Roderick, my lion (thanks for the name Keith! I can't think of him as anything else) and the other part I am starting to experiment with. The lilac bushes that the association pulled out are starting to come back and I'm leaving them. The lilacs were some of the main reasons I moved here. I planted a nice looking hosta that requires almost no care from me. But the last planting is the one I'm the most excited about (Jeff would say obsessed about). Strawberries!!!

I planted a half dozen strawberry plants last year in April. They were still too new to bear fruit last year so I "patiently" waited through the year for this spring. Three of them survived the winter, although two others are trying. Suddenly I'm starting to see a mixture of the little white flowers that strawberries grow, and another kind of stalk. The berries are still green and very small but they are the start of something wonderful. In May I will have fresh organically grown strawberries. I'll be able to harvest my own food, which has been a dream of mine for years now.

I'm already thinking about planting more strawberries and trying to do some potted raspberries. My father learned how to Bonzai an orange tree, with the possibility of full size oranges. I tried planting spinach last year that failed miserably. But these little plants, so green and beautiful, make me want to plant more food. To actually produce a crop of something. Until then I'm going to gorge myself on homegrown strawberries. Well at least once they become ripe.

A Love Letter to a Love Letter

Jeff and I unboxed books for a book sale this past week. We were assigned the paperback romance novels which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Some of the titles were pretty cringe worthy (The Greek Billionaire's Forced Bride). We were discussing good romance novels at knitting last night (think Gone With the Wind and Pride and Prejudice) and discussing if we had ever swooned at a book.

So this morning I'm thinking about swooning moments. Moments that are just so romantic and wonderful that they capture your emotions. And I thought of one. One of the few times where I've actually swooned at a book. It's from Jane Austen's Persuasion. Persuasion was the last book that Austen wrote, and her most sad. It's about unrequited love, something I have some good experience with. And it's my favorite of her novels. At the end of the book there is a love letter that made me weak in the knees when I read it. It's a love letter filled with passion and hope and a bit of pain. It's some of the best romantic writing I've ever read. So I thought I would quote it here. Sorry for the spoiler. If I destroy the book for you, I apologize. Although it is still well worth reading, just for Austen's wonderful phrasings.

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

The Risk of Cables

I'm a non-risk taker by nature. I'm not a fan of failing so I tend to be slow to try things. And I often overthink things, meaning that more often than not I won't even try things because I'll decide that they are too difficult before I even start. It's a flaw that I keep working to overcome. My hobbies are no exception. I'm slowly learning a lesson about knitting. For years I've been overcautious in my knitting. I work on projects where I know most of what I'm doing. I like projects that are mostly mindless knitting. I've learned a lot over the years but I tend to stay mostly within my comfort zone.

In October I taught a friend how to knit. He was visiting and had been interested in trying so on the day before he left, I taught him the basic knit stitch. He went home and worked on his first scarf. Then he got bored and knit a little hat for his niece. Then some mittens. Then a belt. Then a cowl. Then...you get the idea. He taught himself how to bind off, how to purl, how to yarn over. In six months he's tried techniques that I hadn't tried within the the first three years of knitting. I'm a bit in awe of how willing he is to take risks and how good of a knitter he's become.

And I'm learning that nothing in knitting is as hard as I make it out to be. I learned how to make tiny fingers for a sackboy doll I made. I learned how to pick up stitches for mittens. I learned that I can read some pretty scary looking patterns. And this week I learned my holy grail of knitting, cabling. I had been terrified to cable for years. I just didn't think I would understand it so I didn't try it. This week I started this cowl which happens to have some cabling. It took me a bit of coaxing from Jeff but now I can say I know how to cable. And it's way easier than I thought it would be. Everything in knitting is easier than it sounds. That's my lesson. It may take me a few times to get things, but everything is learnable. It's a good lesson for knitting...and really for life. Everything is learnable.

Reconnecting

About two weeks ago my aunt and uncle were in Des Moines. Jeff and I had dinner with them and spent two nights playing games and enjoying their company. On the last evening they were here, my uncle mentioned an old friend that he had just gotten back in contact with. He said that there was another old friend he was looking for and hadn't had a lot of luck finding. So I offered to help him look.

I have access to some great public records databases and can find a lot people information without a ton of effort. So I started doing some digging to find his friend. It took me less than an hour to find his friend and to confirm that it was the man he was looking for. I had found an old email address, a current phone number, and a current address. I sent it over to my uncle to do with as he would like. He tried the email and it bounced back so he cold-called. And after a couple uncomfortable minutes, the two friends were talking. My uncle sent him some pictures and figured that was that.

He emailed me this morning to tell me that he'd gotten a letter from his old friend. It was an in depth letter describing the friend's life and talking about his family. And then this friend dropped a bombshell. The man was dying. He had about a year or so left to live. When I read that in my uncle's email I was shaken. I was so sad for this man, who is on the edge of death. But I was also happy that my uncle had reconnected at this point. That it wasn't too late for him to say that he was thinking of this man. I was happy he would have a chance to say goodbye. If he had waited a year, my uncle would never have gotten to say anything.

So today I've been thinking about all the people I've lost contact with. All the friends that I've let drift away. I'm suddenly interested in getting in touch with them. Of telling them how much their friendship meant to me, even if it never rekindles. Because you never know when it will be too late. I'm both happy and sad I could help my uncle. But more than anything it has made me think.

Charles Santoso

I'm not sure where I saw it, the image above. I'm sure I had been doing an image search for art or illustration or Totoro (because I do those kind of things regularly...probably more regularly than I should admit). But I saw this image and my heart melted. This is a wonderful piece of Totoro work. It has the same sweetness but it's not just ordinary fan art. This has extra character to it. This is the kind of piece that grabs my attention. So of course I had to see where it came from. The link led me to other tribute art, some for Peanuts, some for Calvin and Hobbes, some for Harry Potter. But all of them had the same soft softness and sweetness to them. I was hooked.

So I went to My Mini Tree House and discovered that this was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Charles Santoso's work. And I love every bit of it. Santoso is a Sydney, Australia based artist who has done film and TV work. But it's his little character sketches that make me the happiest. On his website he describes himself as a concept artist who focuses on creating whimsical characters and scenes. He certainly does that. His draftsmanship is very good but it's the character and humor that makes me love his work.

 I subscribed immediately to his blog, and then started going back through the vast archive of art that he's already posted. As I read back, I grew to like his work even more. Santoso is willing to play. You can see the joy he takes in his work jump off the blog. He'll post concept art or strange dreams he's had. He'll try colors out and then post. He's having fun. I found all different types of art and so many characters, most of which are his own. Some artists leave me intimidated and Santoso certainly is good enough to do that. But looking at his work I just wanted to play and that was actually very inspiring. Incredible artwork and inspiration make for a new favorite artist.

P.S. I just went to Acid Free Gallery and purchased this print. Now I'll have some new artwork to hang on the wall.

The Only Animation I Don't Like

I'm going to sound like an anti-progress curmudgeon with this statement but I hate animated gifs. Hate them! Nothing will get me to leave a webpage faster than an animated gif. I see that movement and I'm already clicking on another link to get away.

This shouldn't really be a problem for me but I'm seeing them more and more frequently. A drawing blog I follow has had two or three posts including animated gifs recently. A couple bloggers I follow have used them. It's a good think I don't follow any of the cute cat websites anymore because they seem to be the number one producers of them. It hasn't happened yet but I could see myself narrowing down my blog list if I find the author uses them frequently. I hate them that much.

You would think I'd be okay with them (not love but at least be okay) because I'm such an animation fan. Okay I'm really more of an animation junkie. I can't stay away from the stuff. Given my choice of movie it's always animated. But there is something about the repetitive movement that turns me off. The ads that use them will never ever ever receive a single click from me. And the artists who create animated gifs, even if they do amazing work outside of that, will never end up profiled on this blog. I know it sounds grouchy of me. But the next time you see one, just watch it for a couple minutes. Tell me if you feel nauseated. Tell me how fast you click off the site.

I Want a Daemon

I broke my series streak when I picked up a bound three book edition of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Philip Pullman has been a polarizing figure for years, with a fever pitch after the movie The Golden Compass came out. The books have been condemned and banned all over the world for being anti-religion. I knew of the controversy before but knew little about the books. So when I found this edition, for a decent price, I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. I figured I'd just read the first book, as is my usual trend.

But after sitting down and getting twenty pages into the first book, I was intrigued. The concept of other worlds and dust and the church seemed so out there. So odd. I was hooked. I looked up at Jeff and made the understatement of the week. "I'll be in this book for a while". What I meant is that he wasn't to bother me. What I didn't realize is that I was going to read all three books in a little over 48 hours. I read while I ate. I read while I got dressed. I read late into the night. I simply couldn't put the books down. I won't even try to go through the plot here. I could be here for days trying to describe and explain everything that happens in these books. These are plot and character rich books.

And although I loved the characters, the concepts, and the settings, it was the idea of the daemons that drove me to finish. In Lyra's world (the main character) a daemon is a being that is tied to you from the very earliest days of your life until the very end of your life. It is a creature that is constantly with you. It can hear your thoughts and you can hear its. It cannot be separated from you without pain. It's a companion in the closest possible sense. And the bonds between the people and their daemons are emotional at their finest level. The thought of separation between a human and their daemon (something brought up frequently in the book) was enough to make me cry. I broke down on numerous occasions not because a character had died but because of their daemon's reaction to the eminent death. It was heart-wrenching and reduced me to tears.

I loved the books for a number of reasons but the biggest one was to see what would happen to Lyra and her daemon. To share in the bond between them. I found the book mystical and spiritual in a way that made me question all the hype about it. This was not an anti-religious book but an anti-established church book. It was about not giving the church too much power and to see the rest of the spiritualness around you. But for me this was a story about companionship. It made my heart ache to know that I'd never have a daemon. To know those kind of bonds. It hurt me as much as it hurt Lyra to be separated from her daemon. It was a set of books that made me feel more than anything.