The Pumpkin Shorts Dilemma

I own a cloth canary with six pockets. It is the color of overcooked pumpkin pie. Why, you ask, are these  shorts likened to a caged bird in cave? They are an early warning signal for explosive adipose activity. Or rather inactivity. Months of sitting and working have led to weird leg cramps, puffy ankles, and er, gains in the areas of my body that fit into the pumpkin shorts. The shorts are tight. My ass is a pumpkin.

This has lead to a revolutionary new approach to fitness in Carlcheff Studios. For the first time this CENTURY Jim and I decide to go jogging. But Jim has no sneakers.

"I thought we got you sneakers ten years ago," I say, rummaging in the dusty underside of the bed. "They were blue."

"I don't remember owning any sneakers, I had volley ball shoes, but they wore out." A moment of silence for the departed shoes and volley ball season.

"But I do remember one of the girls throwing out sneakers a couple of years ago that none of us could figure out who they belonged to, those must have been yours," I crawl out from the closet.

So we set out on a journey to find a Foot Locker. An iPhone shopping app suggested one was right on 117th Street and Morningside Drive. I never walk on that avenue. It climbs a cliff that overlooks a small park and as we walked up the hill from 110th street we saw worrisome amounts of shattered windshield glass in the grass. "Not a good place to park a car," Jim notes. Since this borders the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I have to conclude that the church has no armed deacons patrolling the grounds at night. Soon the church gives way to lovely apartments with trailing roses and views of Harlem. No doubt filled with professors. At the top of the hill, no Footlocker, only a statue of some dude. We are too lazy to walk over and find out who was cast in effigy. Where is this Foot Locker? Apparently it is somewhere INSIDE the portals of Columbia University and we cannot get in without ID. Although we could probably fake being parents looking for a graduating offspring because young men and women in long pale blue gowns and flat square caps are milling about today with parents who often look as if they should join us on a jog.

We decide to walk up Amsterdam Avenue, and look for a shoe store. WOW has Amsterdam changed! It is lined with yummy looking bookstores and restaurants: tapas, sushi, pastry, bars, bistros, and more...but no shoes. Then at 125th, a shoe store and Jim walks home in bouncy black New Balance sneakers.

I researched my knees before we take to the promenade. For years I've winced through sharp pains and heard loud crunching noises when I climb stairs...I think the three years we lived in a 5 floor walk-up I suffered from meniscus tears in the cartilage that didn't heal until we moved to an elevator building. My knees are still aware of the stairs and do complain in rainy weather, but I may be able to run again. Web experts told me to take it easy, build slowly and run forwards and backwards to build muscles evenly. Strong muscles make for happier joints. Evenly developed muscles hold the knees in place better.

We jogged in Riverside park. I will admit I walked more than jogged. Gasping was my signal to walk for a bit. But I can proudly say I engaged in exercise that kept my heart beating fast for half an hour. The dog outran both of us, she weighs 1/10th as much and has twice as many feet. Jim is in better shape than me, cardio-wise. I suspect he has the body type that puts on muscle easily. I clearly have the pumpkin shorts type that turns thin mint girl scout cookies to width easily. Maybe in a few months I will have lowered my cholesterol and weight and put aside enough $ to join a gym with a POOL because honestly, I'd rather swim than run.

Day one: feel the running in shins and rear. Resolve to wear hat next run. Run past doormen who make cutsie noises at the dog "Sooooooophiiiiiiii, heh heh,"  and are no doubt amused by my red faced efforts. Listen to Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run. Good mood after run.
Day two: now feeling muscles ache in inner thighs, shins just fine. Run past cheerful volunteers cleaning up garbage from the AIDS walk. Enjoy chewing gum as I listen to Sara Bareilles' Little Voice. Good mood after run. Shorts still too tight.

A great reading: Terrance Hayes & Natasha Trethewey at 92nd St. Y

My friend, prize-winning poet Sharon Dolin, teaches poetry at the 92nd Street Y and is in a position to take folks like me to great poetry readings as her guest.

We hailed a cab in a cool April drizzle and were soon catching up on our lives as we splashed through Central Park.

I was moved and transported by both their works. Terrance Hayes is tall! He speaks to the audience as if you were sitting comfortably at a table with him. I started to draw and soon was so absorbed by his narratives, his moves, his cadences, that my pencil stopped and time went into that alternate reality that too rarely happens. I loved his bubbling excitement with language even as the subject matter pierced me. He's good. Really really good. I ran to the library and took out Wind in a Box, and the voice is there. Best read aloud, I can almost hear him whispering behind my flat midwestern vowels.

Natasha Trethewey is assured and polished, I had the impression she prepares every word she says. Her invocation of Gulfport reminded me of the social fractures across my childhood years in Baton Rouge. Her poems are lyrical and wrenching. Of course, I was on the white side of town. Being the child of a white and a black parent, and having an appearance that can "pass," Trethewey had an uneasy position in the deep South. She has the most expressive eyes. I loved drawing her. She draws on history and myth. I took out Native Guard (won a Pulitzer in '07), which also has a series of poems about civil war black troops on Ship Island. 

Read them. If you haven't already.
And yes, more autographs.

When book design gives you bragging rights

So how cool is it to have Dick Cavett and Sandy Marshall lean on me? That is DICK CAVETT's head on my shoulder! Very cool. Made we want to whistle the overture to Candide.

Cavett interviewed Marshall, in the performance space at the Drama Bookstore near Times Square, about the biography he wrote, BEATING A DEAD HORSE, on the life and times of his father, Jay Marshall, a highly respected master magician and big personality. I designed the book, including photoshop adjusting & repairing the 700 or so photos and ephemera for print. All 69 chapters plus illustrated front and back sections. A lotta work on a very tight schedule. Of course, the biggest amount of work was writing the tome. And it is truly a great read, I kept getting distracted as I built the book in InDesign. I worked closely with Sandy and his wife Susan getting the images selected and placed. Susan and I worked on the cover design. She had the idea of featuring old and young Jay, showing his career span.

While at the event, I also sketched JC the camera guy on my left and the two guys talking in front of me. And collected my autographs, natch.

Jim and I were treated to a dinner with Sandy and Susan, along with several magicians that kept making cards, cups and preconceptions appear and disappear across the table. I was in open jawed wonder at the tricks. Could not see how any of it was done and I was THIS close. I did ask the quieter half of a magician couple if her husband was like this at home. "He never stops, never," she said, with a hint of a sigh. Hmmmm. I think I will stick to my lyricist. He occasionally taps beats and syllables on a table or thigh, but never pulls honking red noses out of his pockets.

Fruity-G Featured in National Zine! (click image to see all of it)

Fruity-G, Second Interview "Snow Day"

Our roving reporter caught up with F-G this Sunday as he was sun bathing on his penthouse ledge.
---------------

Q: I hate to ask, what's with the white stuff, are you getting a bit of Christmas this April?
A: I'm not chillin' this is powdered egg shell. My personal trainer says it'll give me strong roots. And my personal parole officer can tell you it ain't that kinda snow.

Q: I hear your hit single "Growin' Into My Pot" has swept campuses across America. What is your secret Fruity-G?
A: Yo yo, I got one word for you: Green. I spread the leafy mojo power.
Plant a seed,
grow a weed,
plant a pit,
get my wit!

Q: Any truth to the rumor that you have been seen with Miss Tangerine?
A: We just friends, I got no main squeeze.

Q: Well listeners there you have it, America's most eligible citrus is still up for grabs.

Fruity-G, small Grapefruit Tree, The first interview

My daughter Caitlin handed me a germinating citrus seed on her last visit home. I planted it. In more ways than one. The story of this intrepid tree will be recorded in this blog.

------------------

Q: Well it's great to have you in the big apple but how does this compare to your birth state?
A: I'll always love Flo bro, but this city ledge gives me edge.

Q: Some say grapefruits are too sour to love, what do you say to that F-G?
A: Yo Yo, I'm sharp and sour, big and bad, sweet to eat when you call me daddy, honey.

Q: I understand you can grow up to 30 feet (10 meters) high?
A: I'm high right now man.

Q: And your trunk will sprout thorns?
A: I'm Fruity-G, I'm already thorny!

Q: So...Ah...F-G, I hear you have a new single out this fine Spring day?
A: Yeah I do it's "Three Leaf Love" and it be hot!

Q: Well, Fruity-G, it has been a real pleasure having you grow on us, any last words for your fans?
A: I'll just sing the refrain from my platinum hit:
Take the sun with the rain
Take the sun with the rain
Take the night with the day
Take the night with the day
I'm growing your way baby
I'm coming to stay!

The big "It's me" ah-hah moment

You know the friend who spends years complaining that the kids/job/parents/mortgage/spouse/bad knee/ADD/PMS  are the reason they were never a writer/painter/composer/athlete/actor/messiah? I have news for all the excuses. It's you. It has always been you.

Or more correctly, "It's me."

I used to think that if I only had time and opportunity I'd finally figure out how to write prose and paint in oils. Not to mention develop good work habits, amaze the critics, and work off that bit of a tire around my hips. Now that I have more time, have I used it wisely? Lovingly vesting my finite hoard of hours on every long frustrated yearning? Nope. And the only person I have to blame, utterly and irrefutably, is me.

I'm the one who read books instead of doing push-ups. 'Twas moi who wrote a hundred first chapters to various novels and nary a last. I'm the one who felt transformed by the William Kentridge show at the MoMA (here's to pressed and vine charcoal and really dirty fingernails!) but didn't actually dig out my charcoals and do a self portrait. It's me. It has always been me. Call it nature, nurture, or proof that free will is slave to hidden sloth. It's me.

Consider the other friend who sets out to do things and virtually nothing stops them.  They open art institutes, businesses, travel the world, perform, become philanthropists, and earn PhDs; they do this by not getting in their own way. Instead of excuses, they have puzzles to solve.

So how do I go from dreaming to doing? Bypass yearning. Yearning is a mix of regret and daydreams; past and future. Yearning takes me out of today. Today is the blank page, the hands on a pen or keyboard. Every day, practice craft, be it writing, designing, or drawing and forgive myself when the results aren't great. Give the muse room to show up. Pay attention to how it feels to learn. Celebrate the small achievements. Keep going. Part of saying "it's me" is finding out what I really love, and honoring my choices. A day at a time. In the time of a day. It is me. My choice. That's  liberation.

When everyday is Tuesday, the freelance life, part 1.

I get a call, a friend asks "can you join us at this great [fill in the blank] tonight?" I ask, "is this Tuesday?" "No," they reply with withering scorn, "today is Saturday!"

I understand their annoyance, really, I do. I too used to work in an office and the weekend release program was what I lived for.

But honestly, every day is Tuesday in my freelanceland. I work every day. The sun comes up, the computer goes on, some coffee and eats go in, and my fingers keep busy until the sun goes down, I take the dog on a walk, food gets made, news, prose, or flicks are consumed, and suddenly it is time to go to bed and do it all again. Add in the occasional hours in the laundry room and a monthly meeting of my writing group and there you have it, my life.

I brought up this Tuesdayness to the writing group yesterday, was that Tuesday? No, no, it was Friday. The office jobbers looked at me in a kind of horror. The other freelancers nodded knowingly. "You need to make the weekend different, make one day you don't work at all, really, it is important to do this," said Andrew Kaplan, sagely. This advice has its precedent in genesis, so I suppose it is a universally acknowledged mandate to the freelancer.

Maybe I will make Tuesday my new Sunday, a day of non-work, when museums are open and I am free to contemplate this human condition, on walls and on walks far far away from my keyboard and deadlines.

Red Letter Day!

A

No, this "A" is not borrowed from Hawthorne; it is for Alimentum. As you may know, I co-design this literary magazine and lay out all the issues. Last issue (number 9), Paulette Licitria, the publisher, invited me to illustrate the interior. So I did the spot drawings. And I agonized over them. I don't wear the artist's smock as often as I do the writer's overalls. Paulette sent me a lovely review of the current issue in New Pages and there were really nice things said about my art!!!! CLICK HERE!

I will excerpt the best bits:

"Like a still life painting, the fiction pieces, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, interviews, and illustrations gathered in this issue are artfully placed to bring each piece into the best light....One of my favorite poems is “The Origin of Fruitcakes” by F.J. Bergmann. This is partially due to the illustration (one of many) by Claudia Carlson, of two jitterbugging fruitcakes with strawberry eyes. The poem itself is equally animated in its attempt to understand the genesis of such an unusual food." 

So thank you newpages.com and reviewer Melinda Rich!

B

Now here is the second red letter. The "B" is for Benu Press. I was invited to submit a poem for a new anthology forthcoming from Benu celebrating social justice, many months ago. I sent in some work that was gently rejected by Steve Fellner who asked me to please, try, try again.

I tried. For months I wrote ponderous or flippant verse. I can't come at it directly.

Then today, to the sound of jack hammers and crews pouring new sidewalks I had the angle I needed. I thought about the street artist Hani Shihada who arrives every spring and paints chalk portraits of both saints and his heroes, from Obama to Michael Jackson... I wrote the poem in half an hour. Sent it to Steve who accepted it right away, and now I have a contract to sign. WOW.

(back to) Shaped Poems

OK, I know it is sort of silly to write poems in shapes, like angel wings or diamond rings. I get that it has the tang of the effete, as in a goose quill humanist script penned by a hand encased in an ink-flecked flocked-velvet cuff. The words locked in the vise of a vase or crammed in a crate... but... I digress...

I can't stop. 

Calligrams. Word warps. Shape shifters. Visual poems. What would you call them?

And like anything I take time with, the obvious is fading and I'm considering my rules of play with this enterprise. I won't call it "form" since the form is the shape. So what are my rules?

HOW TO WRITE A SHAPED POEM

1. Like a joke, move beyond the obvious punchlines and tame set-ups. Go ahead, write the first ideas that come to you and agree they are lame and write more. And more after that. Riff on a shape. Aim for exploring the unexpected.
2. Use meter, rhyme (both internal and slant), and pauses to make the poem read aloud as if it existed full and complete outside it's assigned shape.
3. Accept that line breaks are more arbitrary once the poem is packaged, so build suspense in other ways.
4. The "thingness" of the shape must be used to flavor the poem but not direct it.
5. After many a rewrite, give up when the foot won't naturally fit the shoe, it just won't be worth the blister.
6. Accept that only 1 in 25 shaped efforts will be worthy to move on for consideration for publication or inclusion in my as yet unnamed chapbook (soliciting title ideas from friends).
7. Consider the folly of assigning cookie cutter shapes to ideas; shrug, write more.

Get a grip and Flash on the Whoopi

Yesterday Flash needed an assistant to operate a mic at a live event. I am, of course, not world renowned for my skills in audio capture, but game, I am. So imagine me, dressed in black, in the elegant glass-domed Bartos auditorium, pre-show, trying to look like the grip of the century. I occasionally gave a thumbs up to the professional dude filming the event on my left. I suspect he could tell my skills weren't up to his when the mic demonically spun upside down several times and I tripped over the feet of our tripod.

This from the official press release after the event : "Live from the NYPL presented an evening to honor the publication of George Carlin's posthumous “sortabiography” Last Words (written with Tony Hendra)... an evening of warm and lively remembrances of late comedian George Carlin on Wednesday, March 24 in the Celeste Bartos Forum. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, the tribute featured special appearances by Carlin's family, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller, Kevin Smith, Lewis C.K., Dylan Brody, Floyd Abrams, and Lewis Lapham." Not to mention an impressive list of performers playing the role of audience in the front rows, including Steve Martin.

Flash is Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library and she draws responses to the spoken events they host, which are projected onto a screen as she does them. Later, she creates  videos, a.k.a. Conversation Portraits. Last night she tried adding a new approach, by inviting audience members to step up to the mic, tell a joke, and she'd illustrate it for them and the entire audience would see the joke drawn and written in real time and projected over their heads.

Sadly only a few stepped forward to tell their jokes. But given that George Carlin was one of the funniest guys ever, and the main event, who would feel equal to adding their brand of humor as a warm up? Precious few. For those that came forward, I managed to walk them to the mic, press the record button and laugh at their jokes, usually in that order. Luckily Flash had brought a slew of Carlin jokes and illustrated them.

Dressed in her usual black and white patterns, she sat and drew madly, using pens, watercolors, and expressive moves of hand, zoom and paper to make the art of her response the main show for me. Until they ran the Carlin films. Then I was laughing so loudly the video guys will have to edit out my hoots and wheezing snorts. Flash and I laughed until we cried during a live recitation of Carlin one-liners looking at each other the way you do when it is that funny. After, we agreed Carlin was a master of language, a poet of humor, with inner rhyme and rhythm.

Great to see all the Stiller family on stage, not one of them demure. Whoopi is totally natural. Lots of cussing all around. But hey, this is for George Carlin after all. They played his 7 words bit. The lawyer who protected his right to use those words spoke, and everyone said how much he had helped them and other comedians. 

Flash and assistant (me) were invited to the after party! Of course we had to pack up the pens, pencils, duct tape, brushes, cables, earphones, and papers first. When we got there, we didn't see Whoopi. I was so hoping to hear someone introduce Whoopi to Flash. "Flash meets Whoopi!" or "Whoopi meets Flash," Sounds like a vaudeville act. I may need to change my name to a verb soon. Although "Enjamb" (or would that be "N-Jam") doesn't have the same ring, does it?

As I walked in I reminded myself to respond to celebrities like real people and avoid the empty fannish things that can blurt out of my mouth and kill conversation. So over the chopped veggies I recognized performer Caroline Rhea and instead of blathering about Sabrina or The Biggest Loser, I said what I would to someone I didn't know, "Hi, I'm Claudia, what's your name?" because actually, I really didn't remember her name, just her face. We talked about the food, she loaded my plate with carrots and cucumber saying after all the years of catering it was hard for her not to serve. She introduced me to someone I didn't know, Scott Blakeman, saying his classes in improv helped launch her and Jon Stewart's careers. He was both modest and self-assured and has the ability to listen in a way that makes you feel interesting. The three of us had a lovely conversation punctuated with flashes from cameras, which I am guessing, weren't focused on me. I told them about Natalie, just finishing up at Actors Theatre of Louisville and most likely coming to NYC to pursue improv instead of Shakespeare. It is always great the way people who know, give a little start, when you tell them your daughter is in the best acting apprentice program in the country. Like saying junior got into Harvard. We talked about political humor and Scott's role as the liberal minority on Fox. I likened it to my year working at Lehman Brothers with very conservative folks that were smart, often sweethearts, even though their politics were so different than my own. I told them I was a poet and reading my poems was as close to performing as I wanted to get!

I met several editors of the Latham journal (love talking literary press talk), Ben Stiller's good-looking sister Amy, library important persons, and then I met a very very tall woman who told me she is in a tall person's club. I mentioned I was the shrimp of my family, with my 6'4" brothers and daughters of Amazon heights. You aren't short she exclaimed, you must be 5'8" or so. No, really I'm average, just under 5'6". Nooooo, no way, you must have heels on. No, no heels I assured her, I just stand tall. She peered at my sneakers with disbelief. Apparently they serve very tall cakes and record their adventures on very tall newsletters. I felt a bit like Alice in Longerland.

The whole evening was dreamlike actually. I walked Flash back to her studio and we couldn't stop laughing. She has an ability to respin the world and words, I have never heard her use a cliche, ever. We passed the windows of Lord & Taylors featuring spring frocks. "That one, only the skirt is worth wearing," she said, then to the next window "that one, only the color is good," and finally, "in that one only the window is good!"

And then I took the subway home, happy my career as a grip passed without a gripe.

Echoes and eclairs...

When I was a girl and visited my grandparents in their third floor walk-up apartment at 1908 Newkirk Avenue, I had several great things to look forward to. Well, besides being made to feel I was the most original, wonderful, grandchild to ever eat an eclair or learn to read Dr. Seuss. But in addition to my doting grandparents, the adjacent apartments had welcoming neighbors, each living utterly different lives.

To the right, in apartment 3B, was a Brazilian (or was it Colombian?), family where I would visit, soon affect a Spanish accent and play with a girl about my age who had, I think, my name too! This girl arrived in Brooklyn periodically. I am left with the taste of their food, so unlike what white folk were eating in West Hartford in the 60s, with fragrant meats, rice and beans. Their apartment filled with family members, all talking at once. The colors were sharp—definitive reds, starched white lace racing around skirt hems, waving black hair, snappy pink dresses. I remember getting letters, with flamboyant postage stamps, from her for several years, and when I opened them I could smell the lemon furniture polish, perfume, and hot pepper that suffused their living room.

To the left, in apartment 3D, a refined elderly woman had a very well dressed child named Cordelia come visit. We would sit on the carpet attempting to fill our grandmothers with the joy of watching us play together. And while I admired Cordelia's carefully waving hair and pale blue wool coat, I don't actually remember talking or laughing very loudly. And yet I looked forward to seeing her. I did my best to hold the teacup very properly and eat the tea biscuits without getting too many crumbs on my favorite pilled orange sweater. The colors in this apartment were as if a faint blue gray fog had rolled out of the seascapes on the walls. They told me that they were related to the very Hudson who gave the river its name. I couldn't believe The Hudson had been a Mr. Hudson once. It was clear that no rivers had been named after members of my family, who being Jews, had needed to move often throughout history and took their names with them.

If I were to write and illustrate a picture book based on this memeory, I'd like to revisit the wonder of being an ambassador of cultural exchange in Flatbush. And how I'd patterned myself, like human silly putty, on the lives they projected. Given my penchant for fantasy and science fiction, perhaps the neighbors would live further away than South Hampton or South America? You never know.

Of course, the best part was the welcome in 3C, where the rituals of mutual delight still make smile. Here's to the mushroom barley soup, the scrabble games, and the well-told stories. It is wonderful to have grandparents who adore you, I don't need to remember any of the details exactly to know that one thing completely, with all my heart.

How to recover from too much new technology

After my mighty swearing learning curve with ePub, I had to recharge with the stuff that is fueled by imagination and requires nothing more complex than ink, pencil and paper.

I simply had to eat visuals. 

I absorbed some of my favorite illustrators of all time,William Blake, John Tenniel, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, Frank C. Papé, Maurice Sendak, Pauline Baynes,  and more currently Posy Simmonds (who does terrific social satire in graphic novels that make adroit reuse of 19th century plots) and Shaun Tan.

I discovered Tan is working (as director, artist and author with a team) on an animated version of his picture book The Lost Thing. See this, and this. He too is adapting work into a new technology. He is turning the drawn by hand into its CGI incarnation. Paper to moving image. A picture book is a series of moments stilled on a page and it must be tricky making it merge into one moving picture. Plus when I read or look at illustrations, I can slow down as much as I want, the pacing is controlled by reader vs pacing by film maker. But it is even more than the transformation of full animation, the technology itself shapes the artistry. And with every aspect having to be created, the suggestively fuzzy must be harder to hold onto.

I can see the advent of technology in photoshop, illustrator, and indesign. Each new release of the software offers new "tricks" and graphics reflect their use. You can date design and artwork created on computers by how most people have used the available technology. Of course, having a strong vision will keep the tricks from taking over. Tan speaks so thoughtfully about the differences between the two mediums. How the possibilities of animation can easily overwhelm what is at heart a simple story.

I am sure Tan's adaptation will be terrific, and stay true to his vision, looking at the video and images in the article. But I am willing to guess it has had its technical frustrations and negotiations. Of course, spill your coffee on your drawing in progress to meet the technical oops of "by hand."

There is also this, a pencil sketch is subject to areas of smudge or faintness or all scribbled-in-ness that means it is not fully explicated in those areas. And this is good, the mind likes to fill in or ignore, just as we do when walking down the sidewalk. And about those walks, I come back refreshed from every one I take. It is as if the mind finds the increased oxygen, the rythm of walking, and the unfolding perspectives of urban and natural under the sun, the mist, or the night, all trigger something deep. Or at least burn off the calories from my chocolate habit.

To illustration! To walks! To the muse of the streets!

the perils of (e)publishing

Good thing you weren't around my work area the last few days.
I have been learning how to turn perfectly nice poetry books and publications into hideous ePub files.

Helpful white papers and how-to-guides have led me into a dark dark place.
I have been saying things like "goferkiketyblanging-son-of-a-varmish!!" The cat backs away from my vincinity and even the husband spins on his heels and exits the blue static.

"Why won't the grab-dang-fickle images show up?" I ask the computer as once again all artwork but one disappear when I convert.

"Where the fluke did the table column heads go? Where is my table?" I scream at the monitor. "Give me back my table cells you dastard!"

It reminds me of the mid-90s when I was working as the lone graphic designer in the IT department for MTVN/Showtime. I didn't know how to program, let alone how to do the simple boo-boo mark-up language of html. But as the Indian and Russian programmers kept telling me it was not possible to do the visual improvements I asked for, I started going on the web and finding examples of what I wanted. They shrugged (for some reason programmers don't see the value of graphic design when their code is working fine). So I then began to learn how to do it myself so I could say to the guys, "oh yes, you CAN! Because I (artsy-fartsy English major type) just did, look at THIS!" Of course, back then designing for the web was all about fakes and work-arounds because the browsers weren't set up for graphic design. I found the whole process frustrating and then after awhile, I knew how to do it. For about 5 minutes. The web kept expanding, the browsers improved and the plethora of new software to learn soon made me yearn to return to print design where the pace of technology was glacial.

So I worked at Oxford University Press for seven years mostly ignoring the web. Hah. It caught up with me.

And now I have to learn how to do it again. The electronic world is gobbling up the printed page and regurgitating it in pixels. And not so strangely, e-Pub is like the web was in the mid 90s. Books for Kindles or iPhones just can't do a lot by way of layout, there are work-arounds today, then it will get more functional amazingly fast and ePub books will get much better looking. Like a kid going from 13 to 16.

I may even have to buy an iPad if this becomes the place poetry books are co-published. And at some point, how many publishers will keep issuing paper editions? The horseless carriage becomes the car and the horse goes to the knackers.

I went to a lecture sponsored by the InDesign Users Group. The informative and perky Gabriel Powell spoke about eBooks and how to make them. Yes, I said to myself walking home with the confidence only fools can get from a well-organized demonstration, I just know I can do it... and here I sit in a mist of ire. How I wish Gabriel could do my work for me, he made it sound so easy,

Beijing Calling

My husband Jim is in Beijing getting work writing for musical theatre. I am getting mouth-watering reports of great food, culture, and calligraphy. How hard would it be to learn enough Mandarin to be able to travel to the correct destination in a cab, order the food I want to eat, and say culturally appropriate things to the people I meet?

For me, very very hard. I had many years of French, from middle school to college and I can't do much more than "parlay-vooooo" which just proves my brain is only good at writing poems in English and even then I wonder if my grasp of language is enough. But if I love reading poems in translation, how much better would it be to be able to read them as written?

I think I could learn to read it better than speak it. Years of graphic design and differentiating type faces have made me sensitive to the slightest curl or straight in a letter shape. I have painted watercolors for decades, I know how a brush moves, the slick and stick to paper, the thick flow to scumble finish as the pigment goes from bristle to pulp. I've taken a lot of calligraphy classes... I know this. I also like the idea that the written language is independent of the sounds--pitch can't change the meaning of a written word-- I could learn to read and paint some word shapes. I think I shall try. When Jim gets back with ink and brush and a book for little kids to learn their letters.

CBIG

I went to the Childrens' Book Illustrator Group meeting on Sunday wondering if it could be at all useful to my errant freelance fancy, as in, earn a buck. While Regina Griffin of Egmont did a most informative overview of her new (start up) American branch of a large European publishing company I looked around the packed living room of our host and saw the eager, hungry, talented, and skilled hoards of illustrators, I asked myself the key question.

What sets me apart?

I haven't actually illustrated many books or magazines for kids. I certainly am not a name in the business. My style is not cutting edge or going to change the way an entire generation thinks about the way we see the world (Sendak). But...

I combine skills in a way that does make me a bit unusual. I've studied calligraphy, cartography, poetry, life drawing, book design, cartooning, painting, adobe illustrator and photoshop, color theory, perspective, anatomy, and I know how to develop a narrative and tell a story in words as well as images. One of the ways all this combines is in creating decorative/illustrated maps. Maps always have a narrative implied.

So during the Q. & A. I asked if she had need of such maps. She does.  (I have done many--for fantasy books, kids' books, YA, historical, travel and whimsical.) I hope that she gets back to me, I left her my card and sent an invitation to view my website. Sometimes it helps to know what I can offer to a client, something I am uniquely qualified to do, that nobody else in the room is mentioning.

After that I leaned back and enjoyed the wonderful work my fellow members were presenting in the portfolio review. Here's to all of us.

Tasters' Choice

You know how some friends send things back to the kitchen, "I wanted my coffee in a proper mug with a handle, not a glass cup, please" and others would drink dish water from a dirty can without saying a word? The world divides into two camps, the resenders and the takers. So too in my house.

I woke up to a clear message that the cat (resender) had objected to both her wet and dry food by resending it onto the floor near my bed, by the human toilet, and finally in strongly worded contempt, the interior of my loafers. The dog (taker), on the other paw, had not only eaten hers, but had not objected to eating what the cat didn't want. Which isn't so bad but the high calorie cat food gives the dog a colonic cleanse which resulted in the dog turning solids into liquids in areas where my foot landed first stumbling from sleep to day.

Ah, the joys of pets.

The Tim Burton MoMA Show: brain afire

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my friend Jeannie. Thanks to her membership, I got in for $5.00. Thanks to her company, I had a wonderful time. It was a good thing we went at the relatively unfashionable time of one-ish on a Thursday. It was pretty full, from school trips to tourists, to fans from everywhere. I can't even imagine how packed it is on a Saturday.

I learned I am only two years older than Mr. Burton. Made it fun to walk through and check off the influences. In his early years: Disney, Dr. Seuss, Grimm's fairy tales, Mad Magazine, horror movies and Houdini! Then Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, Van Gogh, Al Hirschfeld, Ralph Steadman, and on and on. But really, anything I was devouring visually, he was too. The show had several walls and cases showing his development as a kid with some (not remarkable) talent into someone who would --with drive and obsession-- develop his themes and vision into a fully realized creative institution.

When I was a girl and teenager I could not keep my hands quiet. Along with a strong pull to my own daydreams in the classroom, I doodled. I drew on any piece of paper in front of me, on the desk, in my school books, on my skin. And if I couldn't draw, my hands couldn't stay still. I tapped my pencil, chewed my nails, rubbed the student inflicted initial scars on the desktop. At home I filled notebook after notebook with drawings in pencil, magic marker, watercolor, and gloppy poster paints. But here my path begins to diverge from Burton's. He never stopped. And in that time after high school he kept drawing. The themes are all there in the early work but they become distinctive, creepier, deeper, more wild as he goes through his 20s. His show made me wish that I had not let myself be diverted, that I had kept pursuing the drawing... but it is never that simple. I had good reasons to quiet down my hands and start paying attention in the classroom. The real story is not why people stop, but what makes them keep going. I don't think talent is the engine really. Artists like Burton have a compulsive need to keep doing the things they do and the will to make it viable to themselves and others. And then there is that mysterious extra ingredient that an artist can't control, call it talent or communication, that makes the effort compelling and marketable. I had art teachers tell me I had great gifts and would end up a successful or famous artist. I also had college professors who informed me my work was listless with precision and no vision. Who was right? Doesn't matter, if I had kept going I might have gotten somewhere as an artist, you can't get there by stopping. And Burton didn't stop.

The best thing was watching his themes devour the influences and grow into his unique vision. He is smart, funny, and able to tap the creepiest fears that rise up from nightmares and shame. I love his approach, a sky is not a color but a radiating energy of lines. Fears become fantastical recognizable monsters. I was laughing out loud through much of the show. Then in the final room, the movie props, wonderful proof that he has been able to make teams of other artists see what he sees.

I am now getting out a sketchpad. I remember how much FUN it was to doodle! Don't worry, I won't give up my poetry and graphic design, but the best thing about seeing a show like this is how it inspires. Like a virus, I've caught the Burton bug.

IMAGININGS poetry/prose contest

Here is the flyer for this contest,  write up to 500 (probably won't need more than 200) words to go with a slow motion video. 4 videos, 4 chances to win. Winners get $500.00 Poets welcome! Go to: http://vimeo.com/channels/69858. I entered. Deadline extended to January 31st. And since you ask, yes, I designed the flyer, careful to use web safe fonts...

Crafty moments

Getting good comments on my design work for both the Madeleine L'Engle and Jay Marshall biography projects. Yay.  Mostly reviewers don't comment much on design, so when they do, I am delighted:

"Although I expected a wealth of detail from the page count, I was unprepared for how bountifully the book is illustrated and how exquisitely it's laid out, not only with rare photos of Jay but with all sorts of posters, letters, and personal memorabilia."  --Steve Bryant

Since I spent months laying out this 69 chapter book and color correcting and repairing (mildew, rips) the 700 old photos and memorabilia, great to have the work noticed.

And in the evenings, been having fun making beaded gifts for family, friends, and my very own self.

My Avatar after party, not

Jim and I went to see the wonderful 3-D Avatar and I deeply wished I was blue, ten feet tall, and able to leap onto the back of pterodactyl-ish transportation. I recommend the film, who needs the plot to be more than it is? It was pure fun.

You would think after all that visual excitement I'd have dreams of the imaginary world, Pandora, and continue the adventure using my own high maintenance avatar unit--my sleeping brain. And I did, but not exactly. Instead of finding myself in the body of a superhuman with a neural telecommunication device growing in my hair and romping through a rain forest (amped on helium and steroids),  I was a balding middle aged, middle management MAN going to work and feeling as sluggish and gray as the office park I entered. I had to sit through meetings, sort out the departmental internecine squabbles, and think about my mortgage and depleted investments. Yes, it was startling to go to the men's room and experience the different plumbing, in both senses, but I felt terribly cheated. This is the true avatar experience, I thought as I rubbed a patch of beard stubble under my right jaw I'd missed in the rushed morning shave, this is how it feels to walk in another man's shoes, literally. And I didn't like the shoes. Dang-it, I shouted at the dream, let me be George Clooney or Viggo Mortensen at least. Although, who knows what's truly fun in an actors life (boring waiting around sets, for instance)...let me be president Obama...oh, wait, talk about a tough job...Never mind.

The cool thing was, I didn't walk or talk like a woman when I was a man. So whoever you are, in whatever world, thanks for letting me borrow your body for eight hours, I have just proved to myself I'd rather be me, thanks.

Those fabulous book parties

Speaking of which, except for my wardrobe, I have been part of some terrifically sophisticated Manhattanish book and arts celebrations. Consider me your book party avatar and be sure to imagine me in something quite stylish, and while you are at it, make me 3 shoe sizes smaller.

At the legendary midtown club:
First was the launch of Gardner McFall's poetry book Russian Tortoise (disclaimer, I designed the cover) as well as an opera she wrote (I remember the theme of flying) at the Century Association. Into this legendary club I showed up hauling a 2 by 3 foot mounted poster in a huge, now wet, black plastic bag. Gardner's husband had me create, on the sly, the poster with her cover altered to read "The Tortoise Has Landed" and I added the parachute from a Russian soyuz to show the tortoise is not crash landing. This party was upstairs in a well proportioned dove gray room room lined with interesting artworks owned by the club. An open bar and frequent tidbits made me happy. Opera singers with classy voices sang a short selection from Gardner's opera as the composer played the piano. I quickly discovered half the room was lawyers and the other half poets. This led to me writing a poem about the singular way we are alike, as both poets and lawyers know the crucial importance of a single word. I enjoyed talking to poets I know as well as some lawyers that were, no surprise, well read and lovely to chat with. Melinda Thomsen and Martin Mitchell sat at a table with me and my husband and the caterers soon realized we were voracious and always swooped by.

At the NOHO Bowery Poetry Club:
My next party was the annual Brevitas reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. As the title suggests, the Brevitas poets, all two dozen or so of them, only write short poems. However with a music interlude of half an hour, the guest poet Harvey Shapiro!, two open readings (disclaimer, I was in the first open reading) and some Brevitas readers that felt the need for explanations that sometimes took longer than the poems, the event that started with me fresh at 1:30 ended with me rather droopy by 5:30. The Bowery Poetry Club is so unlike the Century Association that I feel Dante would have to feature them in two different books. Here the colors were black and the textures scuffed. I was especially there for my friend, the talented Flash Rosenberg, who not only read her poems but drew the bright and witty cartoon cover for the anthology of Brevitas poems that the $7.00 cover charge entitled one to. (Disclaimer, I helped her place and trim the artwork for the cover.) Because I read in the open mic, and am a pal of Flash, I got invited to an after party in Bob Holman's art and book inspired penthouse. The floor was painted with poetry, even the hallways. What a brilliant thing to do. Poetry books filled the walls of this airy lovely space. Did I mention Bob runs The Bowery Poetry Club? Well then, he does. Since I was utterly charmed by most of the work I had heard that night I was hopeful the group would consider me when they need to reinfuse their membership. There were tidbits to eat, including chocolates, and wine and lovely conversations. I even bonded a bit with a large plump gingery cat that lived there.

At a fabulous artsy residence in the Village:
Our friend, and my collaborator, the talented Carly Sachs, had one of her delectable food poems included in The Poet's Cookbook: Recipes from Tuscany, an anthology of food poems in both English and Italian edited by Grace Cavalieri and translated by Sabine Pascarelli. To celebrate the publication of the book, both poets and recipes from the book were enjoyed in a brownstone that is inhabited by a painter with helpful children (selling books) and walls replete with tongue-in-cheek collections of art. A wall of dog hunting paintings, a wall of delightful whimsical drawings! But honestly, I was far too distracted by the FOOD! Oh my god, Tuscan cooking, prepared by Alison of Alison's Restaurants, via the Village, a marvel. Olive dips, mozzarella so fresh it practically moooed, and pignoli cookies. The reading was sponsored by The Bordighera Press and the Vermont Studio Center Writing Program so there was a mix of poets, patrons, painters, and program directors.

Again in the Village, another lovely home:
And finally, a party in celebration of the publication of Patricia Carlin's new book of poetry, Quantum Jitters from Marsh Hawk Press. This home spoke of taste, spaciousness, and comfort. In fact, it was the home of the former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, now the President of The New School, and his wife Sarah Paley who hosted this lovely event. As I was looking for the address, I noticed a man outside busily listening to a cell phone and asked him if I'd found the place with the book event. He kindly nodded me in and later I realized this was Mr. Kerrey. Inside I found many of my fellow members of Marsh Hawk Press, all looking spiffy, and soon other dear friends arrived. Jeanne Marie Beaumont (poet) and Bob Mendelsohn (video), Lynne Saville (photography), Philip Fried (poet/publisher) and more. I met a fascinating woman who studies game theory. I was suddenly struck by the thought that once, back the the 1970s, my mother taught at the New School. Had she too been to any events at the president's house? And here I was eating bitty bits and sipping excellent wine and also celebrating the life of poetry. Raise a glass again!


While the lawyers dressed impeccably at the club reading, the poets just as expected in the Bowery, the most interesting outfits winked in and out of view around the trays and platters in the Village affairs.

Remembering and Designing Madeleine L'Engle

I just created my first design published on Lulu, A Circle of Friends: Remembering Madeleine L'Engle. There is an expensive all color interior first edition and the far more affordable grayscale, (black and white) interior.

The remembering part I did as well, I have an essay in the book. I took a writing class from Madeleine in the early 90s at the Episcopalian convent on 113th Street. Despite the palpable hero worship surrounding her, she had a very directed, concise, encouraging, and witty/tart presence. The book is full of wonderful examples of her advice on writing and warm personal memories from close friends. I wasn't part of the inner circle, not being nearly as interested in the Christian aspects of her writing as in the narratives and characters she sent through familiar and imagined worlds.

Designing the book happened sort of by accident, the editor Katherine Kirkpatrick needed help with some things and before you know it, I'd sunk into the project and did it all. Lulu was rather difficult to navigate. You simply cannot speak to a human. I discovered a cover could not be one point too narrow! Not one point or the whole thing was off. Argh! But once I got that it was an utter perfectionist and could not comprehend human imperfection (which may in its own way be an explanation of why the infinite and finite seem to have so much trouble communicating) the job uploaded and declared itself published. In the old days, when I worked inhouse at publishing companies, after a book was published we generally met and hoisted a paper cup with an undistinguished vintage and made noises about effort and talent and thanked everyone. So let me raise a cup to all the people who wrote, edited, designed, and coaxed this book into existence. Especially Katherine Kirkpatrick who always believed it was a book that needed to happen.

Illustration: Say Ahhhhhhhhh for Alimentum

The Winter/Holiday Issue of Alimentum: The Literature of Food is in my hands and looks grand. All my spot art printed just dandy! The ink line (scanned) and pencil smudge (via photoshop) turned into a real live journal and I am walking around the apartment with that aren't I something glow. My spouse reminds me I need to vet a job proposal and think about what I want for dinner. As if such things could interrupt my cloud, my cloudia of euphoria. It is also fine to discover this issue is sold out wherever I go. The cover, which I didn't draw but did design--picking very cherry pie colors for the issue--looks yummy.

Also I did the small deconstruction of the slice of pie on the back, turning the cover's whole pie slice into a single cherry in 4 steps that hopefully won't annoy the artist Marilyn Murphy. When the next delivery of the magazines arrives at my local independent bookseller (Book Culture) I will buy them as holiday gifts. Because as nice as some of my small illustrations are, the real charm is the content, Alimentum is simply a good read. See, the dancing fruitcakes are happy!

Laying out the House

Despite having a professional service come in and haul away absolutely everything that didn't sell at the tag sale or get shipped by the movers, my stepmother feels the need to go in and do a final sweeping and mopping of the large, now empty house on Long Island that was their home for so many decades.

I was going to tell her this isn't necessary. The man buying the house isn't going to need it cleaned to perfection. And then I realized this is what we do to the shell of things that were important to us. Bodies are bathed and cleaned for burial, as if earth or flame needs them clean. Even the tiny deaths of change bring out the need to honor a place by leaving it well tended.

She needs to mop. I need to mope.

-----

And I am happy to report that I'm up to 5,211 words in my novel. Right on target. This time the writing is more directed by plot. As I walk to the places I go to do my writing, I talk to Jim about the mechanics of getting my character from one situation to another, racheting up the stakes, what to do with some of the peripheral characters, and above all, ask important questions such as what sorts of martial arts would a werewolf girl take?

During the day I find myself thinking of my book as if it were something I'd taken out of the library and wanted find it so I know what happens next. I can almost see the cover under the glossy library jacket. Then I ask myself what a cheesy writer would do and beg myself to do better than that, throw in a wild card. And dialogue, and tell them what it looks like, and make it feel real.

Last year I based my novel on a fairy tale, setting it in 1911. The historical demands combined with my inability to trust hasty research really inhibited me. This time, no such problem. I know all the settings, the time is now.  As I navigate the skills needed to construct a novel, I am thankful I eliminated some of the clutter. Maybe after I finish this book, I'll feel confidant enough to go and finish the other one. But for now, I hear the dogs howling. Time to write.