chronicled & illustrated

first sketchbook-sized gel pen doodle,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

This is by far my most popular piece of art work on flickr, and very close to the top of my most popular images. Just today another sweet person found it in the depths of my photostream and favorited it. I’m so surprised by the response to it.

I do not have good instincts about what people are going to respond to. Of course on an individual basis, one can never predict what a stranger is going to like. Because of this, artists—in my opinion—aren’t doing themselves any favours by trying to please others. But it does seem as if it would be useful to be able to predict in a broader sense what might be popular.

The only thing I’ve learned for sure on flickr is that cute animals will always rack up the viewers. Photos of my dogs are among my most viewed and most favorited though they are certainly not the best photos I’ve taken. Two golden retrievers of different shades are naturally lovable.

I suppose this drawing is popular because it’s accessible. I call it and think of it as a ‘doodle’ but of course, it’s an elaborate one and one that took many hours to draw. But most people can relate to doodling, so on a doodling scale, it’s probably *high end*.

The main thing I’ve figured out is that what people like has nothing to do with how much care and time I took with it or how much skill did or didn’t go into the creation of it. Sometimes I feel frustrated that I can’t get any attention for the things that I’m more proud of, things that I regard as having been more difficult. I need to get over that! It’s the finished product that matters. No one else can know or cares what kind of blood, sweat and tears went into to it. In fact, if the bodily fluids show on it, it is doomed to failure. It needs to look effortless whether it was or not.

I’m finding that the same is true in my writing. It’s just possible that I tend to over-think, over-complicate, over-work my writing. Unfortunately, there’s no flickr for the written word, but I should probably keep this image in mind as I write. The finished work needs to be accessible, at the high-end of what’s expected, and with no evidence of my personal DNA on the page.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Erik Fosnes Hansen
Planning: A short story about a computer game designer who avoids real people
Collaborating: On editing an anthology of short stories
Writing: Words of Paradise, a novel set in the 60’s
Suppose to be: Finishing the EPIC website
Travelling: To Maine for my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday
The Roller Coaster: Just barely on the way up

deep pink blues,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

The photograph is a mock-up cd cover that I did for a utata project last summer. The guitarist is my son Carson who is a singer /songwriter in Albuquerque. He’s been slowly working on a web home for himself and his music all this year, and is, in fact, my inspiration for moving my website-family to wordpress. I THINK it’s been a good move. He’s on my mind, because I just took a look at techornati tags this morning and found that he’s put in a link to my zine. The “web” is indeed a fine metaphor.

I brought this fun project out of the archives because it relates to one of the themes of my life this year. That of self-promotion. I’m terrible at it and always have been, but I have accepted that as a fault; something that I must overcome. Even as I do it (mainly on the web, at this point) I feel that others won’t like me. It’s an old primal tape running in my head. Mustn’t draw attention to ones achievements. Particularly if one isn’t absolutely sure of that those actions/behaviors/products can be counted as “achievements.” Yes, there are always doubts.

And yet, I’m pushing myself to make connections, promote my sites, feel happy that my photo was the needle found in the haystack of flickr for the german beer ad. Perhaps age has taught me a few things—usually three or four words at a time: Things take time. Little things add up. Life is too short. People like success. Pride cometh before a fall—

Oops.

Old tapes.

I titled this Pridefall because those two words are firmly associated in my mind. I have experienced the relationship many times. Pride makes us boastful, boastfulness makes us vulnerable to tripping because our nose is in the air? I don’t know. It’s a firm relationship, but not a useful one.

I’m proud of my son and his music. I’m proud that he’s hung in there with his creative endeavors even as he works so very hard at his academic and teaching careers. And in that, there is no fall. Being proud of others is ok.

By the way, the title of the album and band on my mock-up cd cover are not my son’s.
His site is carsonmetzger.net. Go. Find out his names. Read his words. Listen to his music. Go see him perform. Understand my pride.

Tobago,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

“Poetry…making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”
Allen Ginsberg

This photo and this quote coincided in my life today. The photo is one I took four years ago on a wonderful vacation in Tobago. I posted it on flickr two years ago when I was in my first frenzy of uploading. There was something so freeing and new about having my photos online for a lot (or even some) people to see. It was a rush.

I’ve always liked photography and wanted to do more of it, more seriously. Digital photography was the spur I needed to make taking photos a part of daily life. Then flickr came along and I was hooked. It’s changed for me over the two plus years I’ve been a flickr member. Now I upload several photos a week at the most. But for a while, I uploaded EVERYTHING.

The Tobago photos were done before I had a digital camera so I scanned in a few and put them on flickr, too. I was proud of them but knew that the real credit went to the island of Tobago: the land, the light, the sky, the water. It’s possible to take a bad photo there (I know because some of mine were bad) but with so much glorious scenery to work with, I felt I couldn’t go too wrong.

Today a fellow from Germany who’s working on an ad for a “Mexican-style” German beer asked if he could use this photo in a collage. Here’s a mock-up of the ad with my palm tree and sky barely showing in the background:

Of course I said yes. I’m pleased. I’m pleased he found it. I’m pleased he picked it. And more than anything, I’m pleased he asked. As we soon find out if we put anything on the internet, it can easily be taken for free. That he needs a higher resolution may be the reason but whatever it is, he’s offered to pay me for it and I hope he does. If nothing else, I put in a day’s work just trying to get a high resolution scanned on my home scanner!

So what does this have to do with Allen Ginsburg and the quote about poetry? It’s that online photo sites and blogs and so much more, have—for those of us who choose to be involved in it—made our private lives public. It can definitely have a dark, down side to it. But, such as for me today, it also has it’s upside.

My little vacation photo is my first foray into *professional* photography. Whether it’s the last remains to be seen but I’m happy I had the opportunity to make the photo public rather than to have it sitting in a box in a cabinet in my house where no one ever saw it again.

Cheers!

old words,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

This list looks old because it is. A vintage list of words compiled and typed on an honest-to-God typewriter because no one had a home computer in 1975.

A year or so earlier, I had asked my sister and a couple of close friends if they would be interested in getting together weekly to *talk.* I made it clear that my idea was to have a group where we could discuss personal life issues in a deep and real way. My sister and friends took me up on the offer, they asked a few people they knew and soon seven of us were meeting weekly, taking turns at each others home.

In our living rooms with husbands, boyfriends and eventually children politely asked to Leave Us Alone, we talked about our lives. This was no ‘koffee-klatch’. We tackled big issues like how to deal with anger and confrontation. How to change ingrained bad habits or alter those traits we were born with but didn’t like, into more adaptive ways of behaving insofar as that is possible.

We called ourselves simply, Group. Membership changed. Some of the original seven didn’t stay long. Others came in and some of those lasted and some didn’t. I moved away and came back and moved away again, as did others. But we met —looking back on it—with astounding regularity. At first we always had wine and cheese and fruit and crackers and later as we matured, decided that the wine was getting in our way and switched to tea. In later years, we find wine is acceptable once again.

The list, though. The list was an exercise that we did. We kept finding ourselves dealing with feelings, emotions. We encouraged each other, in turn, to talk in depth about how we felt about whatever issue was causing us a problem and repeatedly we realized that we didn’t have the vocabulary for expressing exactly what we felt. So we came up with The List. It was fun to think of every emotion we could. There were debates about whether a certain thing was, in fact, an emotion or a behavior. It was instructive.

Later, if someone expressed feeling MAD, we could refer her to the list where she might find that particular MAD was more precisely, alienated, hopeless, ignored and frustrated. This seemed helpful. We realized that the big widely-painted emotions were not just one simple emotion but a unique set of emotions that felt predominantly mad, sad, or glad.

To be able to express the nuances of what we felt led us to know ourselves more fully and to ultimately know others with more insight. In order to deal with complex emotional issues (that affect all the practical issues: jobs, marriages, parenting, family), we found that it helped to first name, then untangle all the emotions involved.

There are four of us who survived several decades together. We no longer get together weekly in each other’s living rooms but we email and get together when we can. We still call ourselves “Group.” The earnest exploration we did all of those weeks, and the wisdom we accumulated still informs our lives in profound ways.

When I forget what was learned, Group is there to remind me.

We don’t have to look at the list anymore. In fact, we never used it that much. Like so many things in life, it was in the process of doing it that the learning took place.

three pitchers and a feather,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

Some days chickens, some days feathers.

I have no memory of where or when I first learned that expression. But when I repeat it, I say with a Texas accent so I must have heard it growing up there.

It came up today, because I am feeling that I might have only “feathers” to offer. Inspiration seems to be in short supply. Pesky outside (non-creative) issues peck at my consciousness even while I try to focus on my day’s goals. Shoo, chickens!!!

The thing is, I’m more than a little fond of feathers. I began a collection of eggs when I was in my teens and that collection led to collections of bird’s nests and feathers. I have several ‘bouquets’ of feathers in my home.

Feathers are extraordinary. The words that come to mind show just how extraordinary.

Functional. Beautiful. Detailed. Soft. Strong. Flexible. Useful.

The thought that they were once used as pens draws me to them even more. Quill. What a wonderful word!

I once used a large feather to do a faux marble surface technique on an old bathroom countertop. It turned out great but you’ll have to take my word on it because unfortunately, that was before I had a digital camera. If there’s a photo, it’s in one of the dozens of boxes that have accumulated over the years.

This post seems to have led me to the poultry equivalent of when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Whether it’s chicken today or feathers today, finding the extraordinary in life is what makes the difference between a life of full good days or not so great ones.

I leave this post with my favourite feather image.

One single feather laying on the beach, left undisturbed except for a stolen shot. I treasure this one for my own personal inspiration:

Reading: Tales of Protection by Eric Fosnes Hansen
Writing: Words of Paradise – a novel set in Canada, the US and the island of Tobago in the 60’s
Working on: EPIC’s website
Upcoming: a trip to Maine for Cadi’s 2nd birthday and to see Ty and Carson
Mood: distracted
Progress since yesterday: Got a new page done on the EPIC site

Eyes cracked open at 5:27 am today to see a thin layer of snow on every little branch outside our window. By the time I got up several hours later, it had begun to rain and wasn’t as pretty. But—as a relative newcomer to Nova Scotia—this is my record for the latest snowfall of the year.

My husband tells a story about his first summer here in Cape Breton, back in the early 70’s. He was, for a short time, living by himself in the country and because he’d come here to farm, was putting in his first vegetable garden. He woke up on the morning of JUNE 17th to find a layer of snow breaking the will-to-live of his fledgling plantlets. The short-term ending of the story is that he—having absolutely nothing else to do with his time—propped up each and everyone of the bent seedlings and about 80% of them survived the snow!

The long-term ending is yet to be written but over thirty years on, the weather in Nova Scotia has changed. Whether for better or worse, is a matter of personal opinion, but few can argue that it’s rapid and scary.

A week ago this was the view outside our window. Those are firetrucks in our driveway at 3am. It’s a tradition locally for kids to set fire to the grass and woods in the middle of which our old house happens to sit. The spring has been very dry and these fires literally made the national news because of the sheer number and the toll it was taking on the island’s volunteer firefighters. Yay for volunteer firefighers! Come to think of it, Yay for paid firefighters!

This is the second time the fires have come close to our house but the first time that I seriously considered packing up those things that are most valuable to me. I found that a worthy exercise.

One surprising thing to me was that my journals (there are dozens of them!) are more important to me than my paintings. I’d hate to lose either but found that the journals represent my history, the art represents momentary self-expression. I guess for me “chronicling” beats out “illustrating.”

What I learned:
• Keep all stored photographs in one place.
• Have a box with the VIPs (Very Important Papers): wills, birth certificates, insurance policies
• Mark files in the filing cabinet that are irreplaceable. How about a gold star?
• It takes longer than you might think to get THE most important things together.
• Better safe than sorry.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Eric Fosnes Hansen
Writing: Words of Paradise – a novel set in Canada, the US and the island of Tobago in the 60’s
Working on: EPIC’s website and this one
Upcoming: a trip to Maine for Cadi’s 2nd birthday and to see Ty and Carson
Mood: calm
Physically: achy
Progress since yesterday: this website—do you like my new beaded curtain?; the book for Book Club on the 26th