Thursday afternoon

I'm waiting for my sister to come home so we can go to a family lunch together. 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon, but that doesn't mean much if you work from home.

I wrote an email today to my ex telling him that I am writingly constipated. It doesn't feel good, but it's not bad either. It just is, as faux Buddhist as that sounds.

I don't want to share my writing. I don't want to write because what's writing if you're not sharing? To paraphrase someone who said it better, little black marks on a page. Meaningless squiggles.

It's true, there's nothing like reading to keep you from writing.

I guess the trick is to take one's self less seriously. So what if you don't write?

In her most recent blog post, keri smith wrote:

"In fact nothing defines me, not even this amazing career that I have created. It feels really good to know that. I would in fact survive just fine without any of it. More important to me are the bigger things, my family, my health, my love of the world."

This is true; you just need to remember it. And I'm just not these days.

Shari3 Faisal Bling

Check out the bling due to a store opening in my neighborhood... Not bad huh? Not only that but there are flashing colored lights going all the way down the street. But thankfully no loud bass-heavy music pumping out because it's Ramadan.

Some quotes

"Drawing is about reaching for pure being. Not making pretty pictures to put in
frames and on websites. The world doesn't need more pictures. It needs peace
and connection. It needs people who can accept reality and don't feel compelled
to control their environments."
- Danny Gregory
Nice site about creativity and art, with a big emphasis on drawing and sketching.

"I'm just a guy with a graphite pencil and a spiral notebook trying to maintain
some of the small chunks of cerebral tissue still floating in my head."
- Jim Bumgarner on his blog Sketches & Stuff. "A compilation of bad sketches, good sketches and bunch of who knows what."


"some people
do not feel compelled
to push their heart onto a stick
and roast it over someone's fire.
well those people suck, i said.
what kind of passionless monsters
live their lives like that?"

excerpt from the poem "Advice for the Lovelorn" by Michelle Tea, in her book The Beautiful. Link takes you to fan site which includes some of her writings and interviews with her. Her book 3amatan is great.

Marker-on-cardboard thing

I'm into the marker-on cardboard thing right now. Maybe it's something about making my mark on the world, so the thick dark marker black appeals as it meets this ... requirement.

If you're bored, like me, you too can visit the US' "Postal store" and check out different stamps they issue.

Or. go to afore-mentioned No Media Kings site and read Jim Munroe's interesting idea about selling out to the mainstream after being "indy" (as in, independent). He says cool stuff about hypocrisy. Quote:

Nowadays, consistency seems to have replaced virtue... If someone kills children because he hates them, and is wholly dedicated to eliminating the toddler set from the earth, this person is somehow less contemptible than a vegetarian who wears leather shoes.


My advice, kind of in-line with what Mr. Munroe says, is to get over this obsession, or phobia, of hypocrisy.

Joys of Cardboard (links)

Interesting link on a site I like (Supernaturale) about the joys of cardboard. I like design things that re-use waste material... you know, save the earth. Poor victim earth in need of your saving. There, don't you feel special now? So anyway especially cool in this article is this cardboard chair that you use to build into your lawn and have grass grow over... Well go over and check it out so you can see a photo of it and get what I'm trying to explain.

Reading: Poetry by Emily Dickinson. I tried reading Emily's poetry before but didn't really like it, prefering mostly the poets Nikki Giovanni and Kenneth Patchen instead, but I think since I started writing more I was able to connect more with Emily's poetry.

Some things that stay there be,-
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.
(excerpt from Some things that fly there be)

and also reading: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

I'm not usually into the self-help thing, but you've got to be open minded, right? Experimental? Anyway I'm about half the way through and it's not bad at all. I'm just worried if I turn into a healthy person I'll be boring. I won't have anything to write and I won't be able to paint. How's that for a fear huh?