Author: Becky

This is as far as I’m going with this


I promised a friend that if Auburn won the National Football Championship, I’d make Summer an outfit in their school colors. Here she is: orange cotton tank, blue crushed velvet bolero jacket and skirt, orange stockings, and blue and orange necklace, all made by me. The belt and boots are by Mattel. I believe this fulfills my promise of a nod to the Auburn Tigers.

Roll Tide.

Hmph

Now I’m absolutely positive that Timothy J. Lambert sometimes dances in his apartment and that his dogs see this. So there was NO REASON why Pixie, Rex, and Penny had to freeze and stare at me like I’d lost my mind because of a little chair dancing. Everybody’s a critic.


Penny willing to replace Simon Cowell or Paula Abdul or whoever on whatever show.

I’m feeling very Thanksgivingy. Tonight’s menu: baked hen, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, beans, and salad. Wish you were here!

The sweet music of synchronicity

Yesterday I began a post I never finished, giving it a title that accidentally ended up on another post to which the title was completely unrelated. Maybe I’ll find the replacement title by the time I finish this attempt. Just ask ‘Nathan: Titles are hard.

I don’t know if many people are reading my Magnetic Poetry entries, but the poems are doing a couple of things for me. The first is in serving my original purpose: to help me refocus on creating with words instead of with paint or fabric (though I’m still doing that, too). The second is that I’m being taught–again–that while it’s wonderful to get reactions–especially from Helen, who’s using the words to make her own poems, which I love and and invite anyone to do–a writer must accustom herself to a most dreadful and wonderful silence. Dreadful because there’s always doubt–why am I doing this? it’s all crap. I am a big fraud. no one will ever read this or care.–and wonderful because….there’s always doubt. That doubt can be the impetus for learning to satisfy oneself, to create for the sheer pleasure of creating, to know that creation is its own reward.


When I began this project, I mentioned poet Austin Kleon as one of my inspirations. Here, I’m reading his book that I received for Christmas, Newspaper Blackout–in fact, I’m smiling because I just finished “The Ninja’s Chauffeur.”

After graduating from college, while looking for a job, Kleon sat at home next to stacks of The New York Times delivered to his future wife so she could remove clippings for her job. In struggling to write short stories, he realized the pages next to him had millions of words. He got the idea to black out all the words except those that created a new story from the news story. That’s how his blackout poems were born. I suggest you visit his site, linked above, to see some of the results of that original idea.

In learning more about him, I found that some of his work was for sale on another wonderful site, 20×200, whose mission is to help art lovers and collectors find new artists and buy their work at affordable prices. If you’ve read Tim’s or my LiveJournals for any length of time, you know how we joke about our agoraphobic-like tendencies. So it’s understandable why I was immediately drawn to Kleon’s poem “Agoraphobia,” especially when it made me think of Tim venturing into the world as a young man. I ordered the last 10×8 archival pigment print in stock to give to Tim for Christmas.

Unfortunately, that print somehow vanished during shipment, but when the great folks at 20×200 realized it was lost, they immediately offered a larger print of “Agoraphobia” at no additional charge. SOLD! I love good customer service, and I’m absolutely thrilled with this print, which is now in Tim’s possession:



(View larger version of photo on black.)

I discovered from the description included with the print that Kleon’s poem was taken from an article about a young violinist–a happy coincidence, as Tim has–and sometimes plays in solitude–his own heirloom violin built by his great-grandfather.