Chickies

Occasionally (about once every year), I get filled with enthusiasm and try to write/publish a book. Actually, writing is the easy part. It's the publishing bit that I haven't gotten around to mastering.

The most recent creative effort along these lines involves a children's book about a pair of flightless birds that discover some berries and build a ladder to get to them. The birds are of a "chickie" breed, or a breed invented to amuse my baby sister. They are blob-like, short-limbed, and utterly silly.

This is the inking of the first page. The added text is: "There lived in the forest two flightless birds..."
Currently am on page 10 out of 14 with it.

Mama is wicked

"Mama Makes up her Mind"
By Bailey White
AKA- "The yarns of the anecdote queen."
Rating: 9/10
I knew a guy that told stories, once upon a time. He was a part of a larger group that beat each other up with padded weapons for the fun of it. He was known for occasionally being seen without his kilt during late evenings at various conventions for this group. Yet, damn it, when he sat down and began telling a story, a rapt circle of people would instantly form around him. It was difficult to tell where that audience actually came from- guess they were groupies. Bailey White writes along the same caliber, with wonderfully short anecdotal chapters and many references to alligators. Some of her stories are humorous, some are sad, and some just make you knit your eyebrows and say "Huh!". Wonderful recreational reading all around.

A friend asked...

A friend asked, "So what's going on with your life?"
I answered, "Finished one painting, started another."
We shared a laugh.

Both are 23x24 inches, acrylic on panel.

Monday again.

It is black as the inside of someone's mouth outside, and the sound of rain rules over the room, meshes with the glow of the screen. It's Monday morning again, which means a guilt-induced breakfast salad, half-day of cleaning house, another half-day of painting. Squeezed into there somewhere is cooking and coffee with a friend.

I've been thinking about the contents of the next solo show for a while now, and must sadly conclude that it will be about birds. Why? Because birds are interesting. Ever-present. Enduring. Symbolic. Birds are one of those things that are Worth Painting.  I'd even put them somewhere between houseplants and cats within the realm of personal understanding. (But, who would want a painting of a houseplant?)

Recently, one of those mega-flocks of starlings has been hanging around the trees in the front yard. It is no surprise that they've yet to move south- it was 50 degrees out here last afternoon, probably a record high for this timeof the year. The flock itself splits up every morning into smaller marauding bands, which waddle across lawns and plop collectively into privet bushes to eat the tiny blue berries. In the evenings, starlings sing much like they walk- with a great deal of enthuseasm and zest, but little grace. 

Starlings remind me of people- those gregarious, tenacious flocks of strangers in the cities.

A book quickie

Not as horrid as it sounds.

Been sick for the past two weeks or so, with what I suspect are two different strains of flu. However, thanks to coming back from the parents' (both of whom are avid readers, and from one of whom I've possibly caught the flu), a brand new stack of books had migrated to the local night-table. Here is one-

"In Defense of Food"
By Michael Pollan
AKA- "In attack of mankind."
Rating: 9/10
Got some bias here, since I was moderately fond of the author's "Botany of Desire". To summarize, Defense attacks the modern trends of counting nutrients, packaged foods, and lack of leafy vegetables in our diets. Pollan even provides helpful guidelines in the end, which are more useful to an old-fashioned one-person-working, one-person-at-home couple, than to most of the population. The writing itself is sensationalistic in the "Fast-food Nation" sort of way, as El kindly informed me after half a dozen read-aloud quotes. Still, this book is a worthwhile expenditure of your time, if only to make you think twice of what you eat, and how.

Passionfruit

My eyes open on a clear January morning, and I realize that there is a monster in the bedroom.

Wait a moment- what? Let's back up and start from a seed. There is nothing inherently wrong about growing houseplants from seeds. Seeds are the foundation of civilization. Hell, which of us hasn't tried it with a lemon? (The results may vary, but are often thorny.) Lemons, avocados, apples, even an occasional squash and pomegranate, all these could be easily started indoors and left out for the summer. Some die off, others come back in to crowd us during the winter months.

Yet others come back with thoughts of a hostile take-over.

Passion fruit is right up there with pomegranate in terms of exotic indoor appeal. Tastes mighty fine, too. Back in kiddie years, I used to have a seed-started one that even bloomed on occasion. It was tiny, and cute, and eventually passed away from some illness or another. Or, possibly, mom forgot to water it once I left for that boarding school. Regardless, it was a passable houseplant, so I thought I'd give it another shot.

The question to the masses is such: are they injecting passion fruit seeds with steroids these days?

 The plant above was started from seed in the first days of 2011 and left outside for the summer. It was then brought into the bed..er..plant room with the expectation that it would do the same thing as the seed-grown lemon- namely, sulk for four months and drop leaves by the handful. Instead, the passiflora tripled in size and is currently waging war on the adjacent jasmine. Needless to say, neither have yet to bloom.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a little update of a work in progress:

"Thoughts on motherhood". 23x24 inches

Weekly Readings

What with the holiday travels, there hasn't been much time to listen to audio books.

The two regular books I've managed to tackle were both acquired from the free bin at the local library, which says something about their quality. Possibly, it also says something about the quality of people who're presently moving, cleaning their bookshelves, or are recently deceased.
There is something extremely alluring about free literature. Not just the price, mind you, but the kind of second-hand aura- this time you hold in your hand? Someone's already picked it up. Read it. Cast it aside. Unfortunately, the selection leaves something to be desires-- about 70% of all books that end up in the free bin are romance novels.

"The Mother's Day Murder"
By Wensley Clarkson
AKA- "A treatise on dumb people."
Rating: 8/10
I picked this up with a handful of romance novels. The romance novels were barely glanced at before being returned to the free bin, but this little guy was actually read through. It's your basic true-crime novel. If it carries any moral to it, it is this: "Asking teenagers to murder your husband is a Bad Idea". A tale of a mildly insane woman with a deceased daughter, a living son, and a string of younger lovers takes a turn for the worse when the woman realizes that her husband's worth more dead than alive. The stupidity of it all burns the retinas, but it's not a half bad read, if you're looking for something light and inconsequential.


"Selected Poetry of Lord Byron"
Edited by Leslie A. Marchand
AKA- "Literary bliss."
Rating: ? (In progress of reading.)
When I was a kid back in Russia, I thoroughly enjoyed poetry. It was somewhat of a tradition in my family to memorize long un's and recite them on the long trips, or when an occasion arose. However, I'm not at all familiar with English poets; my stock of memorized English-language verses consists merely of "Crusader's Return" from Ivanhoe, that Durin ballad from Lord of the Rings ("The world was young, the mountains green/No stain yet on the moon was seen), and a ditty from The Last Unicorn. Which means that I'm overdue for another, likely by this Victorian Englishman. He writes like other people sing.