zen_kick 的个人资料PoetasterSalad - M e l o...照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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6月12日 Where's Daddy? He's in a box.In my family I frequently find myself playing infrastructure support roles. Making sure the car is unloaded, the washing machine is still running, picking up and cleaning off the lawn tools - all the things that pile up if you don't stay on top of them. Since there is always more to do, I frequently find myself getting distracted - I start moving some stuff out to the shed and before you know it I am loading the truck for a dump run or hanging a coat rack. From my families perspective I seem to periodically disappear. "Where's Daddy" is a refrain my wife has taught the boys to remind me that not everything needs to be done *right* now.
I come from a long line of savers and I don't move often. These can be a paralyzing combination as I tend to amass projects and boxes which follow me around and whisper enticingly for endless organization. Of course much of this stuff is priceless treasure or something my kids would find waaaay cool...if I could find it. Too many times now my older boy has said something along the lines of "I'd like to fly a kite/read this book/have a compass etc." and my response has been "Oh, I have one of those...it's in a box somewhere". This has been a consistent enough refrain that I have sketched out a whole series of children's books based upon the idea of a son and father finding cool things in the garage that dad has squirreled away. Unfortunately the caretaking of my collection has pre-empted any efforts at writing or illustrating said books so far.
This week my youngest came up with a refrain my wife decided will go on my headstone should I pass before her. I came back inside from some crucial sojurn to the shed to my wife and son playing the following game:
Wife: "Where's Daddy?"
Son: "He's in a box!"
I think I'll clean out the storage shed this weekend. 1月2日 Lid came back!About a week after the windstorm, the lid magically appeared back on the trash can. I had forgotten that all cans issued by the city have house numbers painted on top and one of my kind neighbors obviously discovered the wandering lid in their yard and returned it to it's rightful place. I thank you neighbor!
The crows are mad. 12月15日 Lost the trash can lid.Big windstorm in PNW last night. Everything is standing in the current and next houses. I still have the justification to buy a chainsaw though to take care of the last tree that went down. Worst effects of the 55mph gusts were 1) lawn chair blew across the deck outside the bedroom and I thought the BMW had fallen over again 2) trash can lid is just gone. No sign of it up or down the street and now the darn crows are digging in the trash can. I am not even sure how to get a new trash can for the current house since there are all sorts of rules and regs concerning what size and type. Guess power is out all over where the new house is. Good justification to buy a generator. 12月12日 I got Carhartt.For my recent birthday the over-riding gift theme was Carhartt.
Inspired by my wifes love of the functional fashion of work clothes and the impending move to the country - Dad told me I was on my way towards being a 'gentleman farmer' and my longtime carpenter Gramps asked me if I was finally going to start working - I ended up with jeans, coats and the first pair of overalls I have worn since about the age of three.
Of course *I* see these - overalls especially - as my uniform for some sort of bohemian, anarchist, art collective - to be worn with boots in the pursuit of building livable treehouses and bowling-ball topped hay-bale fences. Feels almost like being 17 again. Must be my mid-life crisis. 5月22日 What's up!Been a busy month+ here. Couple of trips to SF, trip to AZ, working on the cabin, cleaning out the garage (will it ever be done?) workworkworking. I have some updates coming - snaps etc. Stay tuned. 3月13日 Box score for the weekend: Lots of sleep.Had a pile of projects planned for the weekend - the least of which was to straighten up the main floor after a crazy week of little sleeps and lots of schedule coordination. No dice. With Miss Yvonne running her workshop this month, shipping product, the in-laws taking position of thier new place and the eldest boy being sick we were worn out. Additionally the bug our eldest was wrestling with may be taking hold in the rest of the family.
I fell asleep laying the baby down at about 7pm, woke up at 10:30pm and staggered back off to bed. We all ended up taking naps both Saturday and Sunday and I fell asleep again Saturday night laying the baby down. Upside is that I am feeling functional again and don't think I am contracting the sickness. Downside is that I still haven't finished he laundry and the lawn isn't mowed. Did get the trash/recycling backlog cleaned up, the laundry is now downstairs and the kitchen is clean. Every little bit helps. 2月22日 Time to get crackin'!Been a busy holidaze season. Bit of travelling, bit of working, bit of decorating, bit of celebrating, bit of cleaning but now I am back on a reasonably regular schedule and expect to clean this place up a bit. I must say I am happy to see you again. 11月7日 Where am I?Been super busy. Haven't had time to post too recently. Seems like this is a common refrain in blogs but I really mean it. Read the last couple of posts and you'll understand. Am seeing a break in the clouds up ahead and expect to increase my updates. Watch for more soon... 9月12日 Good to remember.Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling, in addition to comforting. From The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, M.D. 9月7日 Art vs. CommerceWhen I was in college I had the privilege of driving Adrian Piper - an artist lecturing on my campus - from and to the airport during her visit. She had many fascinating things to say during the lecture and car rides, but the one that sticks with me to this day had to do with her motivation to create.
Adrian has been a practicing conceptual artist since the mid-60s. She had put together hundreds of pieces before finally selling one in the mid-80s. It's common for monetary exchange to be considered a type of validation of someones status as a 'true' artist. Adrian said she was pretty excited to have this type of recognition but then she realized it was a trap.
Problem is that without money in the equation, she created the art she needed to create. Once the possibility of selling the products of her artistic process entered the picture, Adrian began focusing on what type of art would sell the best. The prospect of money shifts art to product and artist to business. There is nothing wrong with either state. The problem arises when an artists intent is to be the one they are not aiming towards.
Adrian's solution to her dillemna was to get a day job to pay the bills (although her 'day job' was professor of philosophy at Wellesley college) and do the art she needed to do outside that job without worrying about selling the end product.
Before this conversation, I had never considered the incompatibilty of business vs. personal expression aspects of creative endeavors. I always assumed that unique expression would find a market if it demonstrated some quality that I couldn't quite nail down with a clear definition. Being required to consciously make a decision for art or business was liberating in that I realized that art=perception on the world rather than an end product and being an artist is merely a matter of choosing to lead a life of art and then doing so - whatever the medium. 8月28日 Best phrase of the weekend.Part of a dinner conversation on Saturday:
"Now I'll admit to selling donuts to the nurses but I never let the minks out of the cage!" 8月24日 Hide-the-cellphoneGrrr. My wife has gone to bed sick and her cellphone has a message on it. Unfortunately I can't locate the darn thing and it's beeping aproximately every 2 minutes to let me know about the message. I must be sleepy because I can't locate the source of the noise and I swear the phone is moving under it's own power to a new location before each beep. When I get my hands on it the phone will be sleeping outside in the car. 7月13日 Bird in the house!Two weeks ago:
Cleaning up house.
Late for work. Saw cat climbing on game shelf.
Took out the recycling.
Heard scream upon returning
Saw games pulled off the shelf.
Saw cat chasing bird into rec room.
Bird hid in corner.
Pulled stalking cat from under futon frame.
Bird across room.
Cat right after it.
Locked Cat in bathroom.
Bird in gap between wall and shelf.
Finding stick to flush bird out towards door.
Wife went after bird with gardening gloves on.
She thought it was dead.
Put in box.
Took outside.
Waited a few minutes and bird recovered.
Bird flew away.
Cat indignant at being locked in bathroom. 6月28日 Literary channel surfing.I updated the books I'm reading list. Given the state of my past month, I have abandoned the denser tomes I was working through and have taken to re-reading sections of books I have already read - sometimes multiple times. This allows me brief moments of escapism while brushing my teeth, waiting for the shower to warm up, eating breakfast, before falling asleep etc. My wife of course is delighted at the trail of books I have taken to leaving about the house. While I sometimes can't immediately locate an abandoned volume, it's not an issue since I may be reading up to 5 books going at once. I usually start by hunting for a specific passage. Soon I am reading to the end and then starting from the beginning to arrive at where I came in.
A funny side effect of reading this way is a cool juxtaposition of prose snippets over whatever is going on during my day. Since I already know what happens in the story, this is feels like the literary equivalent of channel surfing where I pick and choose the choicest bits from each work and then think about the piece in context of whatever I head off to do next - fold laundry, play with the baby, drive to work. I am finding I can still be moved by sections of books that moved me within the last 5 years but books that seemed earth shaking before the 5 year mark tend to pale.
The overall effect reminds me of using Brian Eno's oblique strategies or listening to good sampling. Puts my head in a whole new place and makes the mundane more entertaining. 4月6日 As dictated by my wife.<Because she writes more humourously than I> My wife is a delicate flower. If she were a product a stonemason would use, she would be a pretty, rose-colored brick. My wife has creative hair. Always, always bringing me new thoughts about what hair can do. Just like her cooking. My wife is most like the camel. Not because she can spit far - she can. But because she doesn't like drinking. I like that she doesn't have corns on her feet. Oh wait, she does. I like that she doesn't mind that I am corny. My wife is like an inventor. She likes to take plants to the brink of death and bring them back - like god. In fact, my wife is plant god. If she were part of a bicycle, <"and now honey, here is where you can use some creativity"....she says sweetly> she would be the little bell on the handlebars. If I were a piece of living room furniture I would be an ottoman because it sounds so tough. |
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