Doodling with new wacom tablet

When the words see and the pictures say

I am finding in writing and drawing there is a furious give and take between the two. As if they were two powerful nations declaring ownership over uncharted land between them. The country of Writing gives names, histories, and descriptions to every feature and plaques of local interest sprout from every hill, house, and pond. Then the country of Drawing comes along, caring nothing for all the site markers, brings plows, landscapers, and architects and reshapes the scene for dramatic vistas, urban oomph, and pleasing gardens.

"I don't need you to shift everything around, I already noted in plenty of prose what everything is, its history and meaning!" shouts the Writing explorers.
"Feh, words," sneer the Picture morphers, "Show, don't say."
Then the plot rises and illuminates likely paths and casts shadows on everything.

What can't be shown in words? What can't be said in pictures?

I know picture books and movies have to figure this out. In a more subtle way, poems do too. How much do you tell? Where can an image suggest all you need to say?

It's a land grab. I'll let you know which flags get planted.

The new way to draw on my computer

My new Wacom Intuos4 tablet arrived last night. [drum roll...]

It came in a huge box the size of a mini-fridge. After assaulting the cardboard and filler...
Inside was a smaller well designed black box holding the new toy, er, professional device. It was pretty much plug and play, er work. I made this doodle with it.

Here is the good news, it is much much more like actually drawing. When I start to make a mark it shows up pretty much right away. That means the first strokes aren't lost. Which is ever so nice. The tablet is much more responsive to my hand. It feels more like paper and less like tupperware. It is black too which might show fingerprints but since I was working at night, no problem. On top of that, there is much smarter use of buttons and a round wheel, think Apple iPod. And even better, once I select what I want each of the buttons to do (shift key or zoom or help, etc.) there are little LED lights that spell out the functions of each key, right next to it. And depending on what program I'm using, the keys do different things and announce it. How cool is that?

Now all I have to do is use it well. Why isn't there a way to program ME to draw at hyperspeed with utter skill?

The new cool

My first laptop cooler was a nifty plastic device we got at Target. It was the size of magazine and about 1 inch thick. I put it between the laptop and me. Then I plugged it into one of the computer's USB ports and two tiny flattened fans whirred the heat down and out the back. This stopped me from getting 3rd degree burns on my thighs from the toasty bottom of my macbook pro--a fine machine, a lovely program wrangler, but indisputably hot. My dog made sure to cuddle up to the vent side to catch the summer breeze. Daschunds are cold all winter.

A year later the cooler has cracks in the outer case and bits have come off the fans. Even worse I am starting to suffer from scrunched thigh syndrome due to having the laptop flatten my leg tops for too many hours.

So I bought a new cooler cooler, it has a mini-fan, yes, and holds my laptop, yes, but get this, it also has legs. Adjustable legs. I can make it work on the couch or flatten it to sit on a desk. It can swivel and hold the laptop over me in bed. It is essentially a transformer device. I am wondering if it can scan and do surround sound too. Nope. Just legs and cool.

There is still the problem that I wrenched my shoulder from carrying too much gear to my caffeine-rich office away from the home office. Poor me, I can't carry anything at all. My shoulder twinges when I breathe and yells when I hoist my computer bag. I had to bring just a pad of paper and a pencil to work today. And an eraser, small scissors, and scotch tape. It was just like the old days. The era before Adobe Creative Suite...

I am hoping Apple will please make a new macbook pro that weighs 3 lbs max, uses a chip that runs far cooler, has a big finger pad that can also function as a wacom tablet, and can somehow telescope from netbook to laptop screen size. Oh, and while you are at it, could it please make me a rice milk latte?

Am I the picture book dummy?

No, I don't mean I'm stoooopid. The dummy is the first stage, rough stick figure drawings and placing blocks of text. Pencil and paper. I got through that today. I am deeply happy I stuck with it and finished. I kept wanting to quit and walk away from the Starbucks and double latte I was sipping. But no, I made myself do spread after spread until it was done. All 32 pages.

I'd hit another page and think, "how can I make this one exciting, different, when it is the same characters and a similar set up?" Some of the time an idea would c0me, change perspective or point-of-view, do it as a map, focus just on the objects...etc. The rest of the time I shrugged, drew the most boring obvious solution and promised the page that I'd dream up something better. Invite the muse to do an overhaul.

I did all this despite wearing the brand new glasses (weird brain adjustment to new prescription) and having an old man sit next to me and cover his face with a napkin for an entire hour, he wasn't sleeping or crying. Just covering his face. Holding the napkin in place. It was very very odd. But I wouldn't let myself start spinning the possible speculative fiction narratives, no, I had stick figures rotating in two dimensions to hold my eye and story-making-mind.

My new glasses are tres cool. They remind me of the Paris Metro station ironwork. But in a more face dainty way. When I walked in the door my husband said, "do I know you?" I asserted that he did. "Are you sure you have the right apartment?" he asked again. "I am sure I do, I am your wife." ""Ooooh," he said with a small crease of thought between his eyes, "are you that funny fella who doesn't shave?"

Leave it to Jim to compliment me via George of the Jungle. Later he said the frames were just the thing, artsy designy, now when am I going to get a haircut to go with them? Tomorrow actually. Spring and I'm making a new woman of me.

Daily Poetry Prompts

Well I've been doing the P&W daily exercises. And I want to thank the online editors at Poets & Writers for posting them. I've riffed on traffic signs, art, snippets of other poems, and Prufrock. I can't say that the results are any more than exercises but it is good to flex the muscles--daily. In fact, it being 1:08 of a Sunday night I went to the site to see if the Monday one was up yet and it wasn't. I felt, well, a bit let down. How dare they wait until dawn's rosy alarm clocks herald their duties? Are they getting lazy? Out at literary soirees drinking martinis while devising devious ways to get us to write more? Or just doing nothing at all? Images of the editors snoozing and drooling on their pillows isn't fair, no, no..it is the weekend...I guess they have a right to take their time. I may have to write a poem on my own, willy-nilly. After all I'm in training now, the muscles want to be used. Pass me the weights, the laurels, the puns, the sweat band, the thesaurus. Cue up the music. I'm off...

Poetry challenge exercise

This is national poetry month. The folks at Poet&Writers magazine have offered a daily poetry exercise writing challenge. The first one was to read a T. S. Elliot poem, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and then "Internalize the music and rhythm of the poem, and freewrite for a page, interpreting those elements in your own language. Read what you’ve written, circle three to five phrases that you like, and use them to start a poem."

I just couldn't resist a parody. Later I'll have to extract bits to write my own poem. Here it is:

The Prufrock Dog Walk

We shall take a walk with the dog
In the park where fisted green fogs
The sharpened twigs and life pokes
Through dirt and shit
To say this is spring, I exist
And the dog follows the path
Like a commuter,
This is our break from the computer
And the clenched air and rattle of our feet
Leads us to the usual relations,
You speak of theories and equations
And I ask for demonstrations
Of a different intent.

In the facebook the lists come and go
Talking of bulllshit I already know.

The roots of my hair are brown and gray
More gray than brown and I can’t stay
This leach of time. Shall I wear a hat?
That sits upon the dome of thought, a hat
which shall declare what I forgot to mention
I suffer from wandering attention
Will you serve me chai or coffee
Offer me a kiss or worthy advise?
I will not know, should I bite?
Which choice is right?

In the twitter the tweets come and go
Talking of mish mosh I don’t know.

The bare winter city is invaded by spring
A green mold furs over flooded things
The view I had from the street fades into green time
Interstices of sky growing into occluded mullion panes
Until there is only a thin line of sun panning
These multi-storied ovens of brick
I had better be quick
To decide what comes next—
Will someone notice I need to dye
My hair, or fix my teeth? What shall I text?

In the linkedin recommendations come and go
Talking of people they barely know.

My children are grown, I wear a hat,
Now it the time to be bold
Here in April’s damp cold.
But is the hat a habit worn like the path is worn by the dog?
Should I dye it red, do I risk it?
The fisted buds are known to the tree
But what about you and me?
My sneakers are blue, my jeans stone washed—
[They will say: “She looks so Midwestern.”]
How did I get here, how do I turn
To the time for you and me?
Maybe we should stop for another coffee.

I should have been a slink of padded claws
Pacing across the veldt of sibilant grass.

I grow old…I grow old…
I shall write graphic novels and get extolled.

No, I am not going to be a prodigy
It’s clear at best I’m just an oddity
I do so many things rather well
But what exactly do I want to sell?

In the blog the blather comes and goes
Talking of myself to nobody knows.

Will I follow the same path out and back
As the wind blows off my hat
Blows back my hair to its furious white roots
I run to catch the brim and fist the air
And the hat fumbles from here to there.
And you and I speak in metaphor
Until we open the usual door.

New eyeglasses frames tres French, fast forward illustration

I went with bold. But I am slightly worried the shaggy unintentionally 70s mass of my hair may need a fashionable coif when I get these on my face. Time for the summer haircut, short short.

I'm off to help Flash Rosenberg today, she had a client who wanted her to create an 18 page heavily illustrated book, based on the client's poem, in just a day. I was helping her last night, scanning the drawings, adding type set stanzas, and making PDFs to send the client. Most of all, watching Flash in a frenzy of creativity, with no time at all to let her internal editor slow her down, she created simply brilliant drawings, full of her verve and fun and sensitivity. This woman simply must write and paint her own picture books, they'd be a huge hit. She also kept me laughing as she talked to her hand (understandably aching) and foot (in a cast). She will have stayed up all night painting and drawing color on scans of the black and white art. Painting on high quality watercolor paper for scanners. Then I will scan those for the final book files.

And Script Frenzy started today. Are you writing?

A week of change and joy

I know it is only Tuesday but it has felt like several weeks have gone by. Since Friday, two friends have had surgery, one of them for her heart and the other for her foot...worry, worry. They are both recovering. I found out my eyes (along with all the rest of me) are getting older but I let that lead me to a new prescription and some amazing bold French frames selected with the help of my friend Delia.

Yesterday I got an email from a man who had seen my drawing online at the CBIG site and he wanted to hire me to do some drawings. Wow. I've spent years wanting to do this and now, one week after posting my art, I have a client. Wow.

And my daughter Natalie will not be moving home after graduation, because...
Natalie Allen got into the Actors Theatre of Louisville!!!!!!!!!
I was sitting in a Starbucks when she IM'd me in Gmail. I shrieked with joy and the entire table was happy for her too. She's in this program. It begins August 9th for 9 months. She is one of 22 acting students to get in out of 2,000 applicants and it is really prestigious. And intensive. She will come out having a much better idea of what aspect of drama--acting, directing or writing--she wants to pursue. And will have plenty of new contacts. It is all good. Natalie will waitress all summer to save up the money she'll need to cover her costs in Louisville.

Caitlin is hoping to get an internship at the Center for Book Arts here in NYC over the summer. I hope she gets it, she loves making artists' books and one that she did last semester got selected to be in a show in some state far far away, Nebraska?

My daughters are starting to lead their own interesting lives. How amazing it all is. I may need "progressives" to see now (as if middle-aged eyes were a political party) but it isn't hard to keep my eyes on them, they are becoming the adults I shall soon know. People I'd want to know even if they weren't my girls.

Why point-'n-shoot is your friend when eyes dilated

On Monday I had an eye check-up and this meant the dreaded pupil expanding drops.
"Look at your feet as you walk," said my eye doc as I was leaving, "be careful, maybe take a cab, you won't see well for about an hour."

I clipped my shades to my busted eyeglass frames, pulled my coat hood over my eyes and headed West. The world was, indeed, blurry and light expanded and made everything look overexposed. I passed the Metropolitan Museum and thought, oh, sad, I can't see the art. And then I realized I really couldn't see any of it as the museum is closed Mondays. I carefully crossed the street and headed into Central Park.

I just love that moment when it still looks like winter until you look closer at the buds and crocuses beginning to dot the twigs and earth. The sky was a deep pure hue, no grays. It was cold, but not cold enough to kill the first sprigs.

But I couldn't see worth a damn. Blurry and overexposed eyes. Then I realized I had a point and shoot camera, as long as I could frame it, decide if all or only part of it should be in focus, then I could take shots and reasonably expect them to come out OK. And I did.


I recognized Pale Male, or was it his mate, regarding the baseball fields for scampering or flitting lunch morsels, I found a tree with red buds, a bush with yellow ones, and somehow, it was fine. Except that I couldn't tell when the hawk's face was in profile (yes, looks like a hawk) or not (could be a very large pigeon).

So, now I know I don't need to be able to see all that well to snap decent pix. As I get older, this may be good to know. Especially if I keep doing maps which are elected most likely to make me go blind from squinting and squiggling.

Alimentum at the 2009 New York Book Show

Yes, I am very proud. Alimentum came in 1st place in the quality paperback series category at the 23rd annual Bookbinders' Guild New York Book Show. Kudos to my co-designer Peter Selgin and visionary publisher Paulette Licitra as well.

I ate strawberries and chocolates and sipped wine as I looked at all the books on display. Was happy that the talented Jason Fortuna (Adventure House) won an award for his design of the ESL catalog for Cambridge U. Press. Happy that my pals at Oxford U. Press won for the Oxford Picture Dictionary series.

This year's crop of books was terrific. My favorite kid's book was Mark Rogalski's Dream Machines, it is printed amazingly well--perhaps with 6 colors? Despite being digital, which can sometimes feel a bit cold, the images exude pure playful fun and the accompanying text panels have an old-fashioned charm, almost 1920s design, that plays well against the art. And the jacket on the cover unfolds into a board game on the reverse. How cool is that?

The simple charm of Patrick McDonnell's illustrations, for his picture book South, are also something I just had to touch and read. Was white a 5th color for this book? I didn't have enough light to tell if the color of the paper it is printed on is tan and white a spot color or the tan was printed...

Then there was this amazing die cut slipcase/cover for a trade book about design, Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far, by Stefan Sagmeister, lots of little holes in a photo of a face, with nose, eyes, mouth, hair not cut away...and inside a series of unbound signatures, a collection of 15 mini-book essays. Once can play endlessly shifting the insides around to change the feeling of the face on the case. Loved it. Here is a video of it. Go Abrams.

Good weekend in the Brook

My daughter Natalie did a great job directing her first full length play, Sailor Song by John Patrick Shanley. With her grandparents, we saw the matinee in a small theater in the arts building at Stony Brook University. She met us as we were going in. For a moment I didn't recognize her. Tall, thin, and dressed in a black skirt, heels, and nice gray top, she was, well, elegant.

"Where should we sit?" I asked her. Peering gracefully around the entrance door she whispered, "If you don't mind, front row center please." And we did. And were pleased.

"You were a great, intelligent, responsive audience," she told us later. She'd watched us from a hidden location. We let her know that her intelligent and engaging treatment of the play made it easy to enjoy ourselves.

I am amazed that she was able to take freshmen and sophomores, some of whom had never been in a play, and showed them how to turn themselves into believable characters. And, she told us, they taught her as much as she taught them. Now she understands the work it takes to be so very much in charge of the entire show.

I got to meet teachers she'd told me about for years. Kathleen who heads up the Swallow This troupe and Val the acting guru. We agreed how far she has come in the last few years. How nice a way to mark her last semester.

Back at my parents house, Natalie arrived between shows with a load of laundry and cards to write to all the members of cast and crew. Last performance tonight.

This weekend was also a Model A Ford convention, on a street near my parent's was a long line of parked, shiny, antique cars...

How is this for computer drawn art?

I drew this in photoshop (cs4), used some copyright free old newspapers and a snap of an old floor, and there it is, an illustration.

Feeling it isn't loose enough, cute enough.

I need to develop digital brushes that feel good to use and are responsive to my hand using the wacom tablet. It still feels like I'm drawing on tupperware with a barbie doll leg.

Comments? Advise?

Getting back to poetry

I had first-book-itus. The condition whereby one realizes the heroic fanfare of writing and getting a book published is closely followed by the equally deflating sound of it falling noiselessly into the forest of almost no reviews and as yet no second print run. This led to a writing slump.

But at some point I just had to say, yeah, I'm no Billy Collins, or would that be Billie-Jean Collins? His name is a household name, my name is known in my household. My book is not likely to spark the poetry dialogue in this country, impress any Russian poetry masters, or even make it to more than one or two college classrooms... but what matters most is still there, I have the beginnings of poems bubbling up inside of me. I write them down. I'm rereading Shakespeare's sonnets and Kay Ryan and Barbara Hamby and enjoying the incredibly different ways they say "I am paying attention." With wit, lust, precision, patter, and ears attuned to the smallest and largest things. Shakespeare gazes into his lover's eye and riffs on his own reflection. Ryan imagines life is like having your living room be on a raft slowly heading down river enjoying the view on the way to the Niagara Falls, Hamby manages to address "you" in every poem and still makes it immediate and full of the rich tumble of her revved up inner chatter.

I had a rock tumbler as a kid, I put in craggy stones, it churned away in the basement for weeks, I'd change the grit that went in to ever finer sand, and then a rich glitter of polished sediments was revealed. Right now I'm still finding the fistful of stones.

There is a (writing) life after the first book. And someone just asked to "friend" me on facebook by asking if I was The Claudia Carlson that wrote that Elephant House book. Yes, yes I am.

Happy news for the acting life

My daughter Natalie drove to Boston today and was one of a thousand people to audition for summerstock and theater acting intern programs through the NETC (The New England Theatre Conference). With a two minute limit, at 2:30, she performed a monologue from the 10 minute play, Quiet Torrential Sound, and Shakespeare's sonnet 65 (When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes) to a room full of producers and artistic directors. She was delighted that they laughed when she wanted laughs, sighed when she wanted sighs. She just called to say that out of 13 possible programs she got 10 call backs. Whoa.

The call backs kept her running the entire afternoon and early evening. Some prestigious and some fun sounding theater groups interviewed her and urged her to take the next step and apply to their programs. She soon decided to not tell any of the fellow applicants just how many call backs she got, people were saying "Oh I'm lucky, I have one call back," or "I have two!" She went to each, answered questions about her experiences, hobbies, personality, and aspirations, and felt lucky, hopeful, and is realizing there will most likely be something to come after she graduates in May.

She is now driving back to Stony Brook for a rehearsal of Sailor Song, by John Patrick Shanley, the play she is directing. Go Natalie.

Cover I designed for THE SAME

Here is the photo of Central Park on opening day of the Gates project with a background photo of the actual flag material. We decided to compress the width of the photo, it adds a sort of magic realism to this wide shot.

This will be the cover for the Winter/Spring 2009 issue.

Wine tastings and other adventures

It has been sad that I've been too busy to blog for awhile. I temporarily went to work in an office--nice pants and button down shirts instead of jeans and silk pajama tops--for a client this past week. While the project has been fun to work on and everyone lovely to work with, I am reminded of why I work for myself. So many meetings and projects going at once. Rush rush rush. How do people do it? I work best on one project at a time. Everyone seemed to be working on a gazillion things at once.

Some of the best things in life happen with an unexpected call. Last week a friend of mine had been invited to come to a wine tasting and asked if I could come too. The founder and co-owner of the Cornelia Street Café, Robin Hirsch (also an author, performer and poet with a British accent), was in the midst of his once every 6 months tasting and buying of wine for the restaurant. Apparently having someone like me and my friend along, the average (read ignorant) cafe patron, was helpful.

"Great, sure, I'll be there," I said. I went over the few things I'd learned at a wine tasting I'd been to a few years ago. There was something about sniffing it and swirling it in the glass before you took teensy sips. Rather like the cat approaches food: Poke-poke-sniff-sniff, what is it? Is it dead yet or twitching enough for playtime? And I remembered that people spoke of legs and aftertaste, which doesn't seem at all appropriate for a mealtime beverage but who am I to challenge jargon?

When I arrived in the decidedly upscale offices of the wine wholesaler, Monsieur Touton, Selection, Ltd., near the flower and fabric districts, I was led to a back wall with an enormous room-wide counter that held a thicket of wine bottles and a view of New York sky and brick. A tray of french bread and plates of tasty cheeses were on the right. Robin and his sales rep Allan Trelford, in yellow, were on the left sipping and spitting wine into beautiful round copper sinks that dotted the counter at regular intervals. A large glass urn held a cord of corks.

I was amazed by the wall decor, porcelain spittoons and antique wine objects that I can't name. The center of the large office was filled with desks and hooded computers, even the desks held some bottles of wine since everyone here was in the business of selling it. They spoke on phones in hushed voices with various accents, wine being an international enterprise.

We were given glasses and tasted the various types of wine along with Robin. Whites and then reds of many varieties. I have to admit that I didn't seem to find any of the wines objectionable and most of them tasty. Maybe it was the novelty of drinking in the middle of the day but I swallowed. No spitting for me.

Robin and Allan have a working relationship that speaks of years of respect and ease. Robin was witty and Allan affable. Their discussions on place and product sometimes flew over my head.

At one point two tall young merchants in impeccable suits with French accents stopped by and one of them was able to name off the cuff the nine varieties of one French vintner. This was part of a lively discussion of how different one variety of grape, grown in the same region, can taste. I supposed out loud that micro-climates and the vintners taste buds had their effects on the product. The experts politely acknowledged I'd uttered a basic truth and moved on. After that I kept to a more general "yum, delicious" or "sticks to the roof of my mouth dry" for me. Also noted that the California wines tended to a sweeter and blander "Disneyland" mix that I didn't like as much as the more subtle and sophisticated tang of the South American bottles.

I discovered the taste difference between a good wine and a very very good one was not an exponential leap. Only the price took such a jump.

The best part was when Robin and Alan talked about wine pairings, rather like setting up a dating service for a red and a white wine. Since I can attest that the food at Cornelia Street Café is excellent, I will now have to go back and have it with that pair of wines, I'd love to see what meal would compliment the two Robin selected. He staggered out with a box filled with the opened bottles of the wines he had bought, to share with the staff and to help them devise the latest wine menus.

My friend and I walked out and complimented ourselves on being such excellent representatives of the average customer. We were like the non-foodies that help judge the meals on Iron Chef. Except we weren't twenty-something Japanese actresses. And I didn't giggle until the very end. I estimated I'd had one very full glass of wine. How sparkly the plants and cheap jewelry looked through well scrubbed windows, how light, how red and white, my mood.

Strange fluffy cold mush

My dog demanded I take her for a walk today. A beam of March sunshine crept in the window and smacked her between the ears and she recognized it as a sign that I could be convinced at that very moment to put on her coat and mine.

I told her it had snowed and it was just beginning to melt and would splash coldly on her undercarriage and the salt would pickle the pads of her feet. She scratched the front door and would not take a no.

I particularly enjoyed watching her manoeuvre, or is that hund-oeuvre, around icy footprints and three inch drifts in the small triangle of Strauss Park.

But neither cold nor ice nor slushy blasts could deter her from her duty. Her small contributions steaming on the snow.

Nedra Carlson wedding quilt in another show

My amazing step-mother Nedra Carlson finished the stitching on our wedding quilt and it has made it into yet another quilt show "Quilt Extravaganza," in Lancaster, Penn, April 2-5. I don't doubt we will sleep well under its prize-winning warmth once it wins more admiring gazes and maybe some ribbons. Look at all the roses she is quilting onto its pieced pattern of compass roses.

A photo of mine sold to lit mag

I am delighted to report that one of my photos of Christo's Gates project has been selected for the literary magazine The Same. For the cover. This is really cool.

All those layoffs everywhere

Yeah, the bad news just keeps on rolling. Where are all the unemployed baby boomers going to go? Some huge tent city Woodstock for the creaky hippies? Can you see them starting communes in abandoned office parks? Will they sell old apple iPods from carts? Will they achieve flower power by moving off the grid and recycling, as in living under the underpass and snacking on dumpster scrapple?

When I recently went to a networking event for media types, so many of them were skilled, smart, well spoken and unemployed. And, not just the boomers. Gen X, Gen Y, and whatever else you wanna call them. Smart people with no paycheck.

Newspapers folding, restaurants closing, bookstores shrinking, and the luxury shopping emporiums fading into the gilded age of three months ago. At least my dog doesn't know what is going on. Open or closed, hired or fired, what does a hound care when the curbs and fire hydrants smell just as, uh, sweet.

I wonder how many edible garden veggies I can grow in my window?

Post Pierre Bonnard in Adobe Illustrator self-portrait

The question is, what to take from Bonnard? His boisterous colors, centering around a clementine orange? His willful yet selective disregard of perspective? His devouring of pattern? The way the scene is not clear for awhile, things resolve from a blur into a disquieting narrative hint. His relegating people to outlines, unresolved shapes, on the edges?

Well... working in adobe illustrator, I don't have the benefit of oils, and my "rules" forbid shadows, gnarly brush tips (increases file size too much), and gradients. I'm looking for an illustration style and process that I can use for sales to stock houses. So I picked color. And paint outside the lines. Bonnard it is not. But maybe more trips to the museum are necessary.

The show, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is worth seeing. So many of the paintings were new to me. And he lived a long long life, painting, drawing, all the time. These are from his later years. Deprivations of war and loss and age add gravity to the flood of color. Impressionism all grown up.

Adobe Illustrator self portrait 2

My father suggests I make myself look too old. I think it safe to say my father still sees the child, and I see some of my father when drawing my self-portrait.

Starbuckswars, or the benefits of a home officeship

Can you imagine Han Solo writing poetry or designing graphics at that intergalactic cafe? The one filled with multinational species with hyper animated expressions and tenticles. Nah. And yet, here we are.

I'm at my local Starbucks. Crowded, as usual. But add to this that one older gentleman is using his laptop to watch something without headphones. In French. La Vie En Rose just came on over the jello toned medley on the Starbucks sound system. Usually white noise but not when laptop and lyrics are competing in a language that nags my ear with the one word in ten that I recognize.

I believe I came here to concentrate. What I have learned is how the posters on the phone booth, just outside, are changed. A van arrived, a youngish guy in a hoodie got out with rolled paper and a drill, he took the frames off the two ends, carefully pulled free the translucent rigid white backing, placed them gently on the pavement, took the old posters into the back of his truck, and in movements balletic from repetition, spun, unfurled the new ads, pressed them against their support, lifted that into place against the glass, kneeled, screwed the frames in place and stepped into this coffee shop. I looked up again and he and the truck were gone.

I could not actually hear the drill, but I felt as if I had. Not to mention the several conversations in English over cell phones with words like anyway and um popping into my peripheral ear.

The older gentleman is using a magnifying glass to decode his keyboard while discussing something with himself. No, oh god, he is singing along with Jacques Brel. I think my socializing hour is over.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

for putting on a great show. Very classy. But apparently I haven't been going OUT to the movies, I haven't seen ANY of them in a theater except for Wall-E. What does that say about me? Don't answer that. Save the movies, attend the theaters. And attend musicals as well. And while I'm at it, three cheers for the triple threat that is Hugh Jackman, singer, dancer, actor, and now MC of the decade. Not to mention adept at playing the superhero wolverine. Didn't he look lovely in a tux?

Wrote 2 poems this weekend. Watched 6 hours of how-to videos for Dreamweaver and Illustrator. I wonder if I will start to dream how-to nightmares? "So, we left the monster here, behind the basement door, now! you look at this panel of guns to your right and pick the one that is third from the left, for PC users that's the one that is 4th from the right, so, now! you can see that you need to aim the gun as the door..."