Well, what do you know? I was up in the attic searching for glass beads to anchor an iris that I'd rescued after the winds and slugs had bent it, when I found, a small water pump.
So I guess not buying one yesterday was a blessing in disguise.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Late April Musings
Ah spring. That time of year when I obsess on purchasing a water pump and setting up a fountain. Or wind chimes. The theory being that if I do I will sonically sequester the yard and it will become an oasis of serenity. With tea.
Despite the inevitability of much more rain, I have pulled the indoor/outdoor carpet and the two wooden chairs out of the garage and installed them at Cafe John. Cafe John needs something, though; either a screen or a string of party lights or a mediaeval or classical statue or something. Je ne sais quoi... but the BBQ grill, garden hose spool, and saw-horse workbench ain't it. I want to sit down with tea and scones and feel fantastic -- in the fantasy sense -- not like I'm in the garden section of a hardware store.
Oh! And in related news, Mark made home-made strawberry "Pop-Tarts" this weekend. They were a touch on the salty side, but very good.
It's official. Second Life is bad for my writing. I've been spending way too much time on it translating a kind of history of Neo-Paganism into a museum display and logyrithmic timeline of written texts and artefacts. It's sort of like doing reseach on the holodeck, which explains the appeal. What is iteresting to me how everything clumps together around 1900 CE, 350 CE, and 400 BCE, and how modern cultural values of identity, society, deity and nature are used to interpret ancient artifacts.
Perhaps I should be a museum curator in my next life.
Anyway, the challenge for me is to say, "I only have a 20 minute span of uninterrupted time, I should write (instead of hop onto Second Life).
Despite the inevitability of much more rain, I have pulled the indoor/outdoor carpet and the two wooden chairs out of the garage and installed them at Cafe John. Cafe John needs something, though; either a screen or a string of party lights or a mediaeval or classical statue or something. Je ne sais quoi... but the BBQ grill, garden hose spool, and saw-horse workbench ain't it. I want to sit down with tea and scones and feel fantastic -- in the fantasy sense -- not like I'm in the garden section of a hardware store.
Oh! And in related news, Mark made home-made strawberry "Pop-Tarts" this weekend. They were a touch on the salty side, but very good.
It's official. Second Life is bad for my writing. I've been spending way too much time on it translating a kind of history of Neo-Paganism into a museum display and logyrithmic timeline of written texts and artefacts. It's sort of like doing reseach on the holodeck, which explains the appeal. What is iteresting to me how everything clumps together around 1900 CE, 350 CE, and 400 BCE, and how modern cultural values of identity, society, deity and nature are used to interpret ancient artifacts.
Perhaps I should be a museum curator in my next life.
Anyway, the challenge for me is to say, "I only have a 20 minute span of uninterrupted time, I should write (instead of hop onto Second Life).
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Ratios and Design.
I was flipping through a design book earlier and I read that the designer liked the ratio 1:3:9. I thought of Arthur C Clark's Monoliths -- which, now that I think more about it, were 1:4:9. What the designer said was that it was an "important ratio" used to direct attention. I wonder, why 1:3:9 ? Why not 1:4:9, or 1:2:8 ?
And why is 1:3:9 important?
On the shoulder front: The physical therapist thinks I have only one more visit to go.
On the writing front: I think my challenge is writing not when my optimal writing time is (the afternoon and evenings) but when my current schedule dictates (the mornings). It's irritating; especially when I don't have enough sleep the previous night (either through circumstance or through lack of discipline).
And why is 1:3:9 important?
On the shoulder front: The physical therapist thinks I have only one more visit to go.
On the writing front: I think my challenge is writing not when my optimal writing time is (the afternoon and evenings) but when my current schedule dictates (the mornings). It's irritating; especially when I don't have enough sleep the previous night (either through circumstance or through lack of discipline).
Friday, April 16, 2010
Life, Don't Talk To Me About Life
OK. So - it's been a new new moon; so that Prosperity Check experiment thing is over. Guess what, (surprise) I didn't get $1000 from selling short stories. In fact, I got my usual quota a rejections. So much for Prosperity Checks. Ha. I laugh disdainfully at your greedy superstition from my impoverished, artistically exalted, moral high-ground.
And the rest of this post is probably going to be a long whiny post. I'm having a bout of ennui and existential angst. Singing "The Ladies who Lunch" doesn't seem to help. Writing sad-high-school-thespian-girl haiku doesn't help. Listening to high-drama, dance tunes in a minor key with ambiguous lyrics (or Aqua) on Pandora seems to help a little.... It's messing up my writing, because I look at the stacks of manuscripts and the blank computer screens and even the finished manuscripts and I ask myself "Why Bother."
Yes, we all have stories to tell, our stories, blah blah blah... I feel like Kepler from Carl Sagan's Cosmos: "He couldn't make it work, and he couldn't leave it alone." (Insert scene of Kepler leaning back wearily from his intricate model of the solar system with planets and Platonic solids, putting his hands to his eyes, leaning back more, whapping the model, and returning his hands to his eyes)
And then I look around at the rest of my life.
Which probably explains the anxiety dreams about last-minute discoveries that I'm failing college chemistry.
I think the typical thing to do is to run away to Monaco, take a lover, or sign up for the new studies on hallucinogens. Which, to quote Judith Viorst, "seem rather impracticable."
(bing!) And our time is over. See you next week.
And the rest of this post is probably going to be a long whiny post. I'm having a bout of ennui and existential angst. Singing "The Ladies who Lunch" doesn't seem to help. Writing sad-high-school-thespian-girl haiku doesn't help. Listening to high-drama, dance tunes in a minor key with ambiguous lyrics (or Aqua) on Pandora seems to help a little.... It's messing up my writing, because I look at the stacks of manuscripts and the blank computer screens and even the finished manuscripts and I ask myself "Why Bother."
Yes, we all have stories to tell, our stories, blah blah blah... I feel like Kepler from Carl Sagan's Cosmos: "He couldn't make it work, and he couldn't leave it alone." (Insert scene of Kepler leaning back wearily from his intricate model of the solar system with planets and Platonic solids, putting his hands to his eyes, leaning back more, whapping the model, and returning his hands to his eyes)
And then I look around at the rest of my life.
Which probably explains the anxiety dreams about last-minute discoveries that I'm failing college chemistry.
I think the typical thing to do is to run away to Monaco, take a lover, or sign up for the new studies on hallucinogens. Which, to quote Judith Viorst, "seem rather impracticable."
(bing!) And our time is over. See you next week.
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