Things I want to make, vol. 1

A Hermes mailbox. But not the mailbox part--I mean I want to make a sculpture of Hermes that will stand next to my driveway and hold the mailbox on his shoulder.

Dinosaurs out of leftover electrical wire. Hermes has been in the works (aka in my head, not worked on at all) for months or years, but the dinosaurs have just occurred to me. Or rather, dinosaurs in this form. I have been known to make dinosaurs out of other things in the past, such as papier mache

or rice krispies treats.

Christmas excellence.

Tonight I came home from tutoring, ate some baked mac-and-cheese with my dad, and went Christmas caroling with Mom, Chloe, Hartley, Lael, Celeste (H&L's daughter), and Bill and Lynn-Ellen, who are the pastor and pastor's wife, respectively, of the church in which I grew up. We all live within a couple of blocks of one another, and when Mom and Chloe and I caroled with Hartley and Lael (and possibly Celeste?) last year, Bill and Lynn-Ellen opened their door and asked why we hadn't asked them. We love them, so they came with us this time. It was fun, and it's nice that people in real life tend to be more excited about carolers than people in movies. After about two blocks (and we were only really hitting one side of the street) everyone went home, and Chloe and I went tot Hartley and Lael's house to hang out and have hot chocolate. I ended up sitting in front of these:

which Hartley has made as Christmas presents for various family and friends. They are (with the exception of the hook, upper right) steel oyster knives. (He's a freelance carpenter and blacksmith.) You can't tell very well on the cell phone picture, but the tempering colors on the blades are beautiful. I think I'd like to commission a cutlery set someday. Hartley said, "that would be fun."


Lastly, this.

We had one of those long, mostly substantive talks.

Some lessons learned via said conversation:


I am doing nobody any favors by aspiring to become a career receptionist. That's idiotic.

Mutable schedules? No. Things happen When They Are Scheduled. Even if I am the one who scheduled them. Period.
      I will get up at 9 or earlier. Period.* This "sleeping until I have something to do" thing has got to stop.
     Art Time will be from 10-noon.**
     Other things can be scheduled around these.



On another note, the palette of the river has been so lovely lately. All made up of the most delicate shades of purple, blue, pink, and grey. Every time I cross it I wish I could just stop on the bridge and get out, and stare or paint or at the very least take pictures. I love going with people to the river, but I always feel pushed to move on more quickly than I would to the next thing. Left to my own devices I will sometimes just look at the water for an hour or more. Usually, of course, there is something else that needs to be done before so much time has passed. I sat with David by the river once, the powerful Rappahannock, a week after we broke up. We just watched the water rush by, and talked very little as I remember. That night we were rushed to dinner only by the cold of a March evening.


I left my tea like an idiot while I got dressed earlier, and I let it steep far too long. It's bitter. And I have promised myself to cut back on the ungodly amounts of honey I use in tea, so I am just drinking it bitter. English Breakfast tea, too. What a shame. Still, it's nice to have time to drink tea in the morning. And all because I got out of bed at 9ish. Mmmm.































*Well, my alarm went off at 9 today, but I actually "got up" about 15-20 minutes later. But that's a start, right? Particularly considering that I don't have anywhere to be until nearly 11.

**I felt a lot more adamant about this last night, but I am going to try to stick with it, even if only for the sake of having some structure in my day, and particularly something to get up for. For discipline. And I think  better when I spend time painting. I breathe better. Maybe I'll add "blank stretched canvasses" to that Christmas list. And Bailey's. Did I say Bailey's before? And dark brown Uggs. Don't judge me. They're the warmest things I have ever put on my feet.

This is post #301.

Cupcake time?

But here is the point: why I love Flickr; why I am not totally sold on trying to sell my own prints.

Observe.

A bunch of tabs I have open

on the desktop and don't want to close because they are cool, even though I already looked at them. So I have decided to share. Enjoy? They are mostly photo galleries from telegraph.co.uk.

Pencil sculptures.

Chicken wire sculptures

Digital photographer of the year contest

Signs, some of which are amusing.

Micro sculptures!



In other news, week-old border collie puppies are cute. The Alleghenies are beautiful. Weird, right?

Statute of limitations?

My throat hurts from crying. What the hell? How long has this been? Six months? And my throat hurts and head aches from wailing near the top of my lungs to this empty house. What happened to me feeling like this was bad but bearable, and all for the best? Can I get that back? Not that I want to, but I'd probably thank myself for it later. Sometimes I want to grab him by his ear and drag him to this desktop, throw him in a chair and say, "read this fucking thing. Read what you have been doing to me with all your 'you're so awesome, but we can't be together' bullshit," in true prima donna fashion.

Because he doesn't read anymore, except very rarely. Because it's unhelpful, because evidently I am "still" some sort of obsession. Just not the dateable kind. Listen to me. I am ridiculous. Why should he be reading this at all? The whole point anyway is that it's optional for all involved, and there is certainly no reason that David should torture himself (much less be expected to) over doing what he thinks is right. And anyway, when I read back, the things I've written are so far from measuring up to what I actually felt that they feel dry and emotionless to me. I probably need a slap in the face. Someone to yell "snap out of it!" and shake me by the shoulders, and hope I don't punch them in the kidneys and then knee them in the face as they go down.




In other news, here is some mold-breaking, boundary-crossing, pigeonhole-destroying art. This guy is not a skateboarder, he's a dancer. (And evidently best friends with a filmographic artist.)

Skateboard Tricks That Shouldnt Be Possible - Watch more Funny  Videos
My friend Aby Page posted this on facebook earlier, from break.com.

Aaaand I am 24! Happy birthday to me!



For some reason this year I am suddenly very excited about my birthday, but at the same time I don't really have any plans. This is upsetting to me--more so than is probably normal and more so than I'd like to admit to myself. I just am bad at planning things, at knowing what I want, etc. It doesn't help that (no guilt trips here, I promise) most of the people I'd most like to spend my birthday with are unavailable to me. It happens, I guess. But Kelly and Jr and I took the dogs to the park today, and that was fun. I'm hoping not to wake up covered in poison ivy--but at least if I did, I feel like Sara and I would be sort of even. Jellowjackets and poison ivy are comparable, right?





I caught a frog today--first of the season.
I heard a cicada yesterday--same deal.
Tonight we have the exhaust fan on, for the first time this year. I get excited about these kinds of things. Happy. Happy about anything that means that summer is coming again. (Everything, that is, except ticks and poison ivy.)



I was writing the other day, and posted it somewhere else, about how I want to make paint, and paint my face and my body. But for what? To do what? To go where? I don't know, and I don't know why. I just do. I just want colors all over me. I want colors all over everything, and I want to sculpt some stuff. This is a thought that has just come into my mind, so please excuse the unformed (no pun intended) nature of the idea. Just stuff. Clay, paper mache, wire, I don't know. I want to take things in my hands that don't look like much of anything, and then I want to bend and roll and squeeze and mold them until, possibly, they do look like things. I need to do something with my hands.