#uncoffeed...

Conceptual Skeleton is my new favorite thing, because it forces a match between two of my pre-existing favorite things, concepts and skeletons . This week's GEB book club reading - we're working through Chapter XIX - was really all about me and my methods in writing, especially poetry. I figured it out thanks to Sherlock . I see a pattern between disparate words or processes and I squeeze until I can draw a metaphor over them, forcing a match. The metaphor drawn and applied is a conceptual skeleton . Skeletons work nicely because the variety of bones and joints makes the concept flexible enough to drape over something unlikely, and then it can be pushed around until it seems to fit. I am not ashamed to admit I don't know how many times I've watched all episodes of Sherlock. While I was reading GEB, Season 3 Episode 1 was playing on the TV and something gelled. If this is about to be a spoiler, shame on you. You should have already seen this show. I think it...

Before you can accept people for who they are and what they have to offer you have to accept yourself and what you can offer to yourself. It can be a lonely place to start, but it's absolutely necessary.  If someone matters to you, tell them. They may ask how or why; you don't have to answer.  You can answer with, "I don't know."  Our culture tends to place an inordinate amount of value on romantic social relationships, pretty frosted decorations, when what we need is the nutritious meal. There are so many ways that people matter to us, some seemingly unimportant. They're very important. Eventually you may tell yourself why these people matter to you, and maybe you can share with them. Tell the people that matter to you:  You are not frosting. For yourself:  maybe you can't manage a full nutritious meal right now. Start with what you have. You probably have some fat in the refrigerator, flour in the cupboard (and you can't remember ho...

I was up shiny at 6:00 AM today.  I'm going to try to make this a habit - wish me strength because luck's got nothing to do with it.  I need to change the state of play and garner more useful results for my efforts. I say all the time that I'm allergic to waiting: it makes me itchy.  The submission process for publication is very itchy.  I try to mitigate by submitting on a somewhat regular basis so that I get some return in a steady flow.  It doesn't always work well; besides that I have to actually send something, there are many factors that affect the response time from prospective publishers.  Scratch.  I do love my rejection letters, but they are so long in coming.  Scratch, scratch. I have Delayed Gratification Challenges.  I am learning to measure time week to week instead of minute to minute, but it isn't easy for me.  As it relates to human connection the concept becomes infinitely more complicated. Just like with publi...

Processes are nonrigid, and resemblance to linearity is a mirage. Creative process has to alternate like electricity or cricket batters. I use input/output methods like playing the same song over and again until a painting is finished - the song builds the world and keeps the tone while I interpret what the universe has shown me. What I read is an important input to what I write, even when what I write is my own nonfictional experience. Favourite authors sculpted my understanding of what literature should be. Ray Bradbury is at the top of that list. I met him once at a book signing in Palm Springs, California, ca. 2001. He was more adorable than I'd always suspected he was: those red suspenders and khaki shorts, comfortable shoes and trouser socks. He'd just found out that  Fahrenheit 451   would be assigned reading in France, and he was so happy for his characters. They remained very real people to him, he told me. We had a great conversation before the media showed u...

 It is hard to dress your kids, send them out the door, put them on the bus, especially when they are your stories and poems. People are going to look at how they're dressed and judge your parental skills. You want to keep them home safe. Don't do it, though - find a new metaphor.  I  use Lottery Tickets - it's a gamble. At some point I had to give myself the credit I want so desperately from others (and sometimes receive.) I am good at things. I can string words together. Ask my daughter - I can tell a story. Her friends still drop into a conversation: "So what's your mom been up to...does she have any stories?" Remind me to tell you about the laundry room some time.   That's @lia's favorite. But submissions, though...this is something you have to do for yourself.  You have to do it because once you've sent out that story or painting you bled, sweat, and cried over - once the kid is on the bus - you get to relive all the thrill and trepid...

I'm wrestling, as always, with art - I have bruises. It's wrong to merely follow a set of instructions; it needs to rise from my gorge on its own volition, force me to vomit it out. These are too many words. But when you birth children, you want at some point for others to find them as wonderful as you do. And you listen carefully to the judg(e)ments made over them. And when they are not separate humans from yourself but things which live only in clay or on paper , you have the option to act on those judgments, or not. You have the opportunity which you don't with human children: you can adjust them, make them closer to perfect. It's tempting, and the struggle begins. A-grades were always easy for me.  I knew the correct answers: I gave truth and it met the parameters set forth by the instructors.  I felt the envy of my peers, and for one split second it felt good before it turned ugly. A part of me wants to recapture that feeling and I start craving, manipulat...