An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff)
I guess Tiny Tuesday is a good occasion to offer a decent goodbye to this pencil that’s becoming too short for me to scribble notes to myself without discomfort (arthritis in my fingers). So long, Peewee, and thanks for your service. Notice I’m replacing you with another of your kind because you Ticonderoga Noir No. 2 Pencils are the BEST.
Another little journal I found last year sometime and plucked off the shelf today, having forgotten it. This one I’ll call “Hey Thanks” is a guided gratitude journal. There are some exercises provided to help the journal keeper record what s/he’s grateful for, and sometimes topics are given.
I flipped the book open at random and did this one. I mean, there are a ton of wonders in the world, and most of them I haven’t seen. So I tried to come up with a geologic feature that stirs me emotionally, and animals in general and one specific, and then something purely selfish that might not seem like a “wonder” to others, but would open new worlds to me and help me write.
Hope this is readable. Any wonders you’ve dreamed of experiencing?
…when one can get over a hump? Time will tell.
The “Be Positive” coloring and writing journal that Lynne gave me–May of 22?–that I use for coloring and speculating about what I’m writing or should be writing and the inspirations and challenges involved. Today, after I wrote next to the page I’d colored, I closed the book and laughed at that name…be positive. Gotta say what I wrote today in the journal is maybe one of the least positive things I think/feel. The words I almost never say out loud because they would likely be misunderstood or else prompt advice or guidance that I’m not looking for. That’s not my Aries resistance to being directed or told what to do. It’s only that this Aries knows herself–myself–too well to pretend I’m looking for answers from outside when the answers within have been hard won.
On the other hand, the drawing I colored is pretty and untroubled.
Plus I have written today, and every bit of writing nourishes the Muse who in turn nourishes my creative drive.
While writing, I listened to really good music all the way around, meaning of course, music I like/enjoy/admire/feel.
Kicked off with Brighter: A Duncan Sheik Collection from Duncan Sheik, and great liner notes from James Hunter (from Rolling Stone magazine). Certain parts of Hunter’s notes resonate with me, and the music is good to listen to, write to, think to.
Tom and I were on a road trip many years ago when we stopped somewhere and bought a bunch of CDs so we could hear music we didn’t know, and that’s when we got Shinedown’s The Sound of Madness. I used to hear it a lot because I uploaded it to my iTunes library, but after my main iTunes computer stopped working early in the pandemic, the only songs that will play on my iTunes are ones I’ve actually purchased from Apple. We still need to either get that Mac fixed or figure out what we can grab from its backup drive. That task has been “on the list” since the world reopened in 2021.
Finally, The Best of Simon & Garfunkel. No explanation needed, right? WAY BACK when I was given my first record player, a Simon & Garfunkel album was one of the first three I received, probably for a birthday. They never get old, and their song “The Boxer” still does battle with Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” as my favorite song of all time. There’s a nod to the duo in the first novel in the Neverending Saga.
Shared before but always happy to show Becky’s First Record Player. There were times it felt like the only thing teenage Becky could count on. In the current novel in progress, a character has just received her first record player and a collection of 45s. Lucky little nine-year-old. I was a few years older when I got mine.
Three tiny books for action, thought, and fun.
The second week of August, I recorded some intentions in my “Inspire” Journal and posted them here.
A couple of weeks ago, I remembered and decided to revisit those. First off, I stared at the list and wondered, What is TC craft? What is TC song? What was I talking about? I don’t write songs. I have characters who write songs, but… Then I realized. Something happens with one of those songwriter characters in Topanga Canyon in the third or fourth book of the Neverending Saga. “TC” unlocked!
To update:
1. I did finish this craft piece based on the novel and gave it to Lynne when she was here in September. I think it’s hanging in her house.
2. I haven’t written the song, because I haven’t written in that character’s voice in a while. I’ll get to it maybe in the seventh book, or when the time is right.
3. The MagPo box is restored. More about that in a minute.
4. I’m not using the inspiration journal (different from the “Inspire” journal) to plot the seventh book because I’m using a big yellow sketch book Lynne gave me that I’ve been using since… 2019? to tape photos and jot thoughts and ideas for the series. Currently, it’s staying next to me when I write.
5. Schedule physical (routine annual exam). Completed in December.
6. Schedule fall vaccines. Done and received in September.
It feels good to know I completed almost all these goals I set for fall.
About the Magnetic Poetry box. It took water during the Harvey flood and subsequently began to rust.
I knew Tom was taking vacation time the week between Christmas and New Year’s and asked if he thought some Rust-Oleum® would help if he had time to work on the box. I explained that I wasn’t looking for perfection. I didn’t care if it was obvious the box had been restored. In fact, imperfections are part of its history. I just wanted the rust to become a thing of the past.
And so it has.
It made me happy enough that I pulled out my Healing Words MagPo kit to create a poem, a reminder to myself that it’s great to set goals; the challenge is in the work. (Sometimes, even if it’s asking the person who’s right for the job.)
I use that phrase a lot–“create everyday”–and I generally follow it. For a few random reasons, September is proving to be a high-anxiety month for me. There’s really no method like snapping one’s fingers or finding magical thinking to make it vanish. The best I can do is try to manage it. Some of the ways I once would have done that would only give me more anxiety these days.
But anything creative can occupy my thoughts and settle my feelings a little. I follow an artist on Instagram who provides quick and easy craft projects, mostly using watercolors, and I finally tried one of them. She drew a rhino last month, and for a dollar donation to her that would go to a rhino organization, I could download him. Her rhino had more of a space theme, but I did one I call “Boho Rhino.” I don’t have watercolors, so I improvised with watercolor pens and water.
Today, I wrote in the journal I use to discuss things related to the Neverending Saga, and then I colored the page opposite my thoughts. The reassurance is timely.
Here’s a photo of the journal page and the rhino. Whatever your circumstances, I hope you can find a creative way to get a little of the mental, emotional, or physical balance you need.
I keep several of my journals handy in case I want to use them for different things, and among those is a journal I labeled “Inspirations.” I created that one quite a while back, and here’s what’s in it.
The inside front cover page decorated with these stickers, because various birds in the corvid family are part of my inspirations.
The first page has this postcard of a Rothko painting. Seeing Mark Rothko paintings in person, reading books about his life, and collecting art books with photographs of all the paintings I haven’t seen all fall under the category of “inspirations.” I put a Rothko painting in Three Fortunes in One Cookie as an homage to Rothko’s work.
A couple of weeks back, I ordered some stencils with small patterns or shapes that I wondered if I could use on some of the wee canvases I paint, and I practiced with a couple of them on this page using gel pens.
That’s it! Those are the only pages with material in the “Inspirations” journal after all this time. Recently, as if I needed another one, I picked up this journal that appealed to me, also with the theme of inspiration.
The gel pens weren’t working that great, so I decided to try my fine point Sharpies.
And use the new journal to organize all the various creative projects I have in mind to do, working them into my writing schedule as well as other non-creative activities I need to take care of.
I knew Sharpies would bleed onto the following page, so I put a plastic sheet between pages. I don’t care if the ink shows on the page backs, because I’ll probably use those pages for mini collages that provide visuals of things having to do with characters or plot lines in the Neverending Saga.
Time will tell if this more disciplined approach toward balancing my creative projects works. I have lots of ideas of things I want to write, paint, collage, etc., and one thing I know about myself is that creativity begets more creativity. For example, there’s a project I began in 2021 related to one of the books in the saga. I’d put it aside to do other things, and this week, two years later, I finally finished it. I can’t share it because it’s a gift (as yet ungiven).
I can share this. Last Friday was Marika’s birthday, and since the first Spirograph painting I did (using INXS lyrics) was for her birthday in 2021, I was game to do another. When she asked about a possible painting using lyrics to “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I decided to do something similar on a couple of small (3-inch by 9-inch) rectangular canvases.
I really enjoyed painting those.
I like the way so many of the things I attempt: doll fashion or dioramas; painting, coloring, and collaging; and the journaling, fiction, poetry, and lyrics I write, can all blend and overlap to inspire me.
New book! Writing prompts. You know what that means.
Okay, students, sharpen your pencils and return to your seats. Here’s today’s assignment. There’ll be no grade, and I won’t even see it unless you write in comments.
Begin…now.
I’ll just be at my desk binge watching “Suits” thinking about what you’re writing.
Yesterday was a challenging day, and it’s just so freaking hot here, like everywhere, that when I finally settled in last night, I decided to open up my ebook of Carolyn Haines’s latest Sarah Booth Delaney mystery set on the Mississippi Delta, Tell-Tale Bones. I just kept reading and reading and finished to realize it was around three am. Oops!
Still woke up a bit early, so I decided to make it a gentle kind of work day in front of the fan with lots of water nearby.
For one thing, after that big writing sanctuary reorg and cleanup a couple of weeks back, I put my day planner, for which I use Patti Smith’s book as a reflection point, above my eye level. Thus I was something like eighteen days behind in making entries. But there were lots of things I wanted to make note of during those days (like, for example, the birth of our grand-niece!), so I applied myself to getting everything up to date.
On a whim, I pulled the 300 Things To Make Me Happy book off the shelf, too, and flipped through it until I came to this page and answered the questions.
Recently, when I was organizing some craft bins, I found a bunch of 30-year-old iron-on transfers that I’m sure are way past their usable date. Instead of tossing them, I decided to save them as coloring pages.
I colored this one today and kinda love him.
Now I’m ready to read and make small changes to the first book in the Neverending Saga. I hope this is a fast process for all first five books. Then I’ll be ready to input my edits to the sixth and move on to writing number seven!
Hope you’re all having a comfortable Saturday, whatever the weather’s doing where you are. Please stay hydrated!
Usually when I use the journal Lynne gave me last May, I color a little, write a little, etc. It means that if I want to take a photo of it, I have to block out whatever I’ve written because that journal, at least, isn’t meant for public consumption. So this time I colored, photographed, then wrote.
If my coloring choices are too subtle or are unfamiliar, let me be clear. The top colors are from the transgender flag. I absolutely support transgendered people and am appalled at the hate, lies, and vitriol being directed their way by an ignorant, cruel public and by legislators and courts. Once again, a person’s right to privacy, particularly in medical matters, is being violated, but even worse, there is a blatant call to eliminate transgendered people. This is fascism. This is inhumanity. This is immoral.
The middle colors should surely be familiar after decades of LGBTQ+ activism and progress, which is also currently under attack in terms of privacy and equal rights. If you don’t know where I stand on this issue, you’re new here.
I chose those last colors for all the people over decades who attended Sunday school or Vacation Bible School and sang, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Some of y’all had a lot more sense as children.
Also, I’d like to make note of my belief that if you think a child is too ignorant to recognize when a person is in costume, then maybe you need to avoid or end: Santa Claus; the Easter Bunny; Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas pageants; Halloween and every costume from Super Heroes to witches, to cartoon or video game characters, to ghosts and zombies and skeletons and vampires; high school, college, and professional sports team mascots; Chuckie Cheese and other characters in costume used to push products (Ronald McDonald? Hamburglar? that Buc-ee’s beaver? Mr. Peanut? Tony the Tiger? the Michelin Man? the Jolly Green Giant? the Chick-fil-A cows?); all characters in costume at amusement parks (yes, even princesses); the musical Cats (is that too easy?); and military, royal (real or Game of Thrones), religious, angel, fairy, gnome, hobbit, magician, wizard, circus, bodybuilder, hunting, role playing, chef, police, firefighter, nurse, doctor, judge, race car driver–whatever costume aka “drag” of all types that will ensure that you’ve stripped the world of everything fun, whimsical, imaginary, and creative.
I only wrote all of that because it isn’t what I wrote in the journal with the coloring pages, and I needed to put it somewhere. You’re welcome.