Tziporah and Debra Say It Perfectly: Why We Dress the Way We Do

This is exactly how I feel about the way I dress:

This Week's Give-Away

This week I have another--the last, I think--of the little ecosystem journals. This one is pink (their "watermelon") and lined. It's 3.5" x 5.5" with a back pocket and an elastic closure. This one's still in the package. It looks kind of like this, but smaller and with a hard cover. And pink!

Why don't I like it? Micro-perf pages. Aieeeee. But that might work fine for you, right?


Post a comment telling us what you'd do with this, and then check back on Friday.

Let's Talk about Branding, Shall We? Like I Have a Clue.

Kelly Kilmer said it for me:  all the talk about "branding" drives me nuts, too. So I sat down to find out when and why we started using this term to talk about the way we try to make ourselves famous, and I found some stuff about various books and writers and stuff that I don't care to go find again because I really don't want to give these guys a link and any kind of credit for what I think is a lousy idea, because I also found the note about how actual branding, which comes from the word for "burn" and has been in use since at least the 1400's, was something done not only to livestock but also to humans. 


Slaves. 


Branded with their owners' brands.


Now, see, this right here is enough to make me go, "Hey, people, let's find something else to call it, OK? Never mind the success of Proctor and Gamble!"

But no. Apparently a really nasty history of branding being used on unwilling human beings isn't enough to prevent people talking about branding themselves. Or actually doing it. Get this:


So I go in and ask The EGE if he knew that slaves were branded, and he looks at me in that way that so very clearly says, "Why, no, White- Woman-Who-Lives-in-My-House, I had never ever heard of that before. Go-o-o-lly!" 


[This last part channeling Gomer Pyle, of course.]


And then--get this!--he tells me what he learned last week while subbing. This 9th-grader was talking about branding, and since The EGE has heard me rant about people's obsession with it, he listened, expecting to hear, I guess, about social media marketing and an online presence. But: the kid was talking about his friend's brand as an actual brand--half a horse-shoe burned into his upper arm--and when The EGE expressed surprise that someone would heat up a piece of metal and press it into their own flesh ON PURPOSE, the kids said, "Oh, yeah, that's what we all do," and went on to explain that it's much safer than tattooing because the "fire kills the bacteria." That would be "tattooing" in the sense of "letting your friend tattoo you with India ink and that thing he made from an old VCR motor."


So kids are branding themselves. White kids, my husband specified. Hoping, that, surely, black kids might have at least enough of a sense of history to think this is a really, really crappy idea. But probably not, as "history" and "kids" is kind of like "peanut butter" and "chopped liver" = not something you usually find inhabiting the same orbit.


You wonder how it fits together. Kids hear their parents talking about branding, and that gives them this cool idea? Is that it? Or is it meant to be an "ironic" comment on cultural preoccupations?


Oh, wait. I'm talking about 9th graders here. What am I thinking, "ironic comment"? Even without the misuse of the term, it would still be way, way off the grid. No:  it probably has to do with the idea that branding increases your likelihood of getting laid. Now I remember 9th graders. . . .


But what about the rest of us, those who are not pressing glowing metal into our tender flesh? What about the women who attended the mommy blogger conference in New York City and learned about the importance of branding yourself? This was not a conference for people who were  working in a field where they needed a brand to identify themselves with a product--or however that's supposed to work. No. These were women who were staying at home, raising kids, blogging--and felt a need to learn how to brand themselves. For what? Well, to be famous, of course. To have a Following. A Presence.


Not too long ago, someone told me I've done a good job of branding myself. I kept the smile pasted on my face, but inside I was doing that thing you do when someone compliments you on how nice you smell, and you know you didn't put on any cologne that morning, and you think maybe they're being sarcastic, that you actually stink rather a lot, so you're trying to unobtrusively sniff yourself to see if you can smell anything. You know? Like that--I was trying to figure out if this person was really saying, "Boy, you've sure failed at every marketing strategy known to humankind, which would explain why you're wearing rubber shoes."


I never did figure it out, but my armpits didn't seem to stink, so I guess it was all OK.


I looked around online a little last night, trying to find something specific about personal branding in the non-searing-of-flesh way, and I couldn't. Oh, there's tons of stuff about branding, but I didn't find anything that laid it out simply, in steps, you know:  if I wanted to Brand Myself, where would I start? What would I do next?


I think, from what little I know, that it has something to do with figuring out what you want people to think about you and then being consistent in presenting that picture of yourself in every context--online, in print, in interviews (and we all spend our days doing interviews, don't we? Which is why we all have agents, which is how we all make The Big Bucks, right? And just in case my sarcasm is lost on anyone:  I do interviews, but I'm almost always the one getting to ask the nosy questions. I have never had an agent (and if I didn't know better, I'd say, "I have never and do not now have an agent," but fortunately I know how grammar works and so can spare myself that extra typing). And I do not, sadly, have The Big Bucks).


I don't know about y'all, but this idea of branding worries me a great deal. Isn't it what would once upon a time have been called Being Yourself? Being Authentic? That's what it seems like, right? But then, slowly, slowly, it begins to dawn on you:  this isn't about consistently being who you are. It's about figuring out who you want people to THINK you are, never mind if that has no more relation to your real self than you do to Paris Hilton (it's soooo easy to pick on her when an AP news alert about her latest arrest hit my iPhone yesterday morning BEFORE the alarm went off, meaning it woke me up. "News alert," to me, means an alert about, oh, I don't know: actual news, maybe? Disaster? Something I need to know about? I am still trying to figure out why Paris' arrest in Vegas has anything to do with me. But maybe, later on, once I get a clue, I'll be able to work it into my brand!).


I really just don't know. When people compliment me on "working my brand," that's scary. Like the blog banner up there. People think I staged a photo shoot for that. Yeah. The only time we "stage photo shoots" is when I'm showing y'all pictures of what's in my closet, and then I have to put on the clothes and go pose somewhere outside, like a dork, so you can get an idea of the actual colors, since the colors of our walls make everything look washed out. That photo up there was taken across the street from the George Brown Convention Center two years ago (hence the tie-dyed t-shirt; it was like a week before the election). The EGE said something to me, and I sassed him, putting my hands on my hips and giving him lip. I love the photo because it shows a bunch of my jewelry, plus it reminds me of a really good time--we love the quilt show because there's lots of fabulous stuff to see, but mostly it's because we get to hang out with some of our favorite people--not always the same people, but always fabulous people. Plus shopping! (I say I don't like to shop, but there's *some* shopping I can't resist. Duh.)


Am I branding myself when I dress up in my going-out-of-the-house clothes, as opposed to my regular-work-at-home clothes, which consist of a tank top and ragged cut-off Levi's? Am I branding myself when I dye my hair? Do people actually dye their hair as a part of creating a brand? What are examples of "branding," and how--and I really want to know this--is it different from just being a person living your life?


I don't know if I want to know the answer to that--it may be even scarier than I fear--but I have to ask, you know? If anyone can provide a link to something with sets of steps, so we can see exactly what the advice is--you know, From the Experts--it will be ever so wonderful of you. It may frighten us, but at least we'll have a clue~~

Living the Creative Life Doesn't Mean You Need a Tutu

Yikes! I feel a rant coming on! Before I get carried away, let me say this: because I'm going to argue one side of something does not mean that those on the other side are wrong. Holy moly, are we a bunch of either/or thinkers or what? I read a post on Facebook the other day where someone had said something (and, oh, no! you're not going to get *me* in the middle of it--this is all I'm going to say about it) that had only the most tangential political sentiments, but everybody went nuts. They were all wayyyy over on this side, or wayyyyy over on that side. So few hit any middle ground, and so few had any idea that things don't have to be one way or another way.


Anyway. I've been reading blog stuff this morning, and man, the blogosphere is one scary place! I feel like a lumbering dinosaur when I wander out into the savannah of it. The fields full of wild singing and dancing! The shimmering oases of the mommy blogs! The fresh-cut flowers and cupcakes and fairy lights everywhere!


And the messiness. Oh, the influences of Sabrina Ward Harrison, they will never cease. With Spilling Open (which I thoroughly enjoyed, and which I own, thank you very much), she unleashed this huge wave that just keeps rolling on in. Now everyone's journal pages and canvases are filled with illegible writing done with graphite and charcoal and crayons, and everyone wants to dance in a tutu in the grass, and everyone--everyone!--has a wild and messy life.


And let me just say this:  you can love something and think it's really cool and fine and a wonderful thing and *still* be disheartened when it catches on and everybody and their little cousin are suddenly mad fans of it and you see it everywhere for years and years and years. You know? I like it when Harrison does it; I can live without seeing it everywhere else.


OK--here's the part where you can disagree and still be a really wonderful person. If you have a wild and messy life and are happy with it, good for you! Go right on being wild and messy and loving every minute of it.


But somewhere in there, "wild and messy" has become synonymous with "creative," and people have come to believe--many people, although certainly not all of us--that to be truly creative, you have to embrace your wild and messy life, the one that is, apparently, full uncertainty and angst and doubt and much whinging about your thighs.


This is ridiculous. How do I know? Because I have never had a wild and messy life, ever. Well, maybe a few months back in high school,  but even then, it was a very tame wild and messy life:  even then, I have never awakened, not once in my life, to find myself on someone's bedroom floor. Or passed out in the backseat of a car. Or anywhere I didn't recognize.


Oh, wait. That's not true:  on our recent Big-Ass Eastern Road Trip, there were *many* mornings when it took a good minute or two for me to piece together the previous day's itinerary and remember exactly which crappy La Quinta was enveloping me. But I think that hardly counts in the Wild and Messy Life column. I have whinged about my thighs, I admit, back when I was very young and stupid and didn't know how to love my fabulous, blood-pumping, neuron-firing, upright-walking body.


And while there have always been many moments of doubt and uncertainty because--hello!--I am what is known as A Human Being, and doubt and uncertainty have kind of been with us ever since we ourselves roamed those savannas and were never quite sure what might be waiting for us over that next little rise and so maybe wondered if it might be best just to cease being a hunter-gatherer type of person and maybe settle down to raise soybeans. But continuous questioning and doubting and searching my soul? Eh. Who has the time? Or the energy? Because constant soul-searching seems to me to be pretty much just totally exhausting. I mean, it doesn't even leave time for flossing.


You might argue that I am not given to self-examination in this way because I am what you might delicately refer to as Of A Certain Age. As if maybe I were more introspective as a Young Adult, rather than an old one. Au contraire. I met The EGE when I was 19. We got married a year later. He was a teacher. We lived across the street from his parents. I did not spend my 20's and a good deal of my 30's being wild and messy and tortured and filled with angst, as it appears I would have done had I been a truly Creative Soul. Sure, there were times of doubt, ups and downs, times when I hated my job and times when I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up and times when I thought we should pack up and move somewhere more exciting than Midland, Texas, somewhere like, oh, Sapulpa, Oklahoma (motto:  "Oklahoma's Most Connected City"). But for the most part, I was just living a regular life, not one filled either with great soul-searching or with dancing wildly in a tutu amongst the cacti and mesquite. Somehow I managed OK with the whole creative life thing despite this lack of Authentic Creative Living.


Now you look at magazines and blogs and websites, wondering what life is like for other creative people, and maybe you find some regular people who are working at what they do and having a good time and being productive, but maybe what you mostly find is a world that seems as foreign to you as it does to me. It's a world where, if you are Creative-with-a-captial-C, you have to toss everything to the wind and paint words of affirmation on your body with poster paint. You have to scrawl your doubts on page after page of expensive water-color-paper journals and then post them for the world to see. You search your soul and then, omigod, TALK about it, write about it, post about it, ENDLESSLY. Because once is not enough. No. You do it, and then to make sure you don't come off as all Having Figured It All Out, you have to do it again. And then again, a couple weeks later.


And if you have no interest in this? Then maybe, just maybe, it means you can't be creative. And am I the only one who senses a subtle message that this kind of unbridled creativity is something reserved for the young? Like if you're too old to have any interest in leaping wildly about the fields and swapping body-painting sessions with a group of women you've only just met, you're too stodgy and, let's be frank, maybe just plain too old to even think about a creative life?


What I think is that there are two ways of going through life (and don't you just love it when someone takes a huge topic, like Going Through Life, and then posits a completely simplistic argument that there are only two ways of doing it? Yeah, me, too.). There are those who sit and think about it, ponder it and wonder about it, write about it and talk about it with their friends, post about it on their blogs.


And then there are those who just live their lives, taking this step, and then that one, and then the next one after that. We don't have a plan. I've never had a Life Plan. I have goals, sure. I am, after all, The Poster Child of Self-Discipline. But I've never been one to sit down and gaze deeply into my soul (or my navel, which just seems really icky) and try to figure out the big picture.  And so I'm not a fan of the current climate, the idea that being introspective and messy and wild is the only way to creativity, as if the opposite were stodginess and plodding and complete blandness.


I read something this morning:  young women starting blogs to "set their brand" and "develop an online presence" and form creative connections. The person writing about this then said that, at the time she was doing this, she had no idea what she wanted to do. No idea what her thing was. She wasn't a painter or a quilter or a writer or a photographer, but she knew she wanted to be creative and have a following and make a career out of "this," however poorly-defined "this" was, and I was gobsmacked. Is this what it's come to, creativity? It's not that you're passionate about making something--cakes or clothes or paintings or sculptures or pillows or all of those--it's that you see what you imagine is The Creative Life, and you want that, and you want to Be Famous, and you want A Following, and so you set out to get it, never mind that you don't really have any idea what it is you want to do with your life. 


Sure, some of them are going to become famous, and some of the will find their passion and get to dance wildly with their found group of like-minded women in the tall grass. Good for them. But for most of us who want to have this kind of life, this creative life of following our passion, whatever it is, it's not going to happen this way. It's not going to come from sitting around doodling about our angst and self-doubt, and it's not going to come from creating some sparkly on-line version of ourselves for people to friend. Because that's not really what it's all about. What it's all about is finding something you love, something that calls to you and makes you happy: learning to form that seamless line of solder or that perfect French knot or that one background of the perfect shade of blue. It's about being willing to give up the things that get in your way--the time-sucking things most people take for granted--to make time for what you love. The making, the exploration, the experiments--that's creativity. The fame and the dancing with friends and the public messiness and angst--that's not about creativity. It can be a part of someone's personal creative expression, but it's not at the center of it, and it's certainly not a requirement. 


OK. I'm wandering, aren't I? I'm getting a little scattered. Forgive me--this stuff makes my eyes cross. Any time people begin to take something, like how to live a creative life, and make it seem like there's only one way to do it, and there's only one kind of person who's entitled to it--and that almost always means "young," at least in our society--and, and, and--well, I get a little nuts, and it scrambles my brain.


Here's what I want to tell you:  You can be creative to your very core at any age, and you can live a completely creative life without ever having even tried on a tutu. 


Trust me on this. 

And The Winner Is~~

Pam Johnson Brickell, send me your address, please. I picked you because this sounds perfect:  you have students who'll benefit from what you discover, you'll blog about what you think of this journal, and you can provide feedback to the new store owner. Sounds like a good way to spread the word about these babies, whether good or bad. Who knows--maybe their version 2.0 will have some changes inspired by it!

My New Job

Remember Steve Martin in The Jerk, where he talks about his special purpose? If I'd never seen that movie, I wonder, would I still think of that in capital letters:  My Special Purpose? In a completely non-Jerk-ish sense of the word (and aren't you glad?), I realized years ago, albeit still rather late in life, that my Special Purpose was two-fold:
~~to inspire creativity in any way possible
~~to be a creative matchmaker


This latter has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with putting people together:  artists with editors, teachers with students, galleries with artists with event organizers with customers. If it has to do with 1) people and 2) creativity, especially as it pertains to mixed media art, that's what makes my brain hum and my soul sing.


So imagine my joy when, earlier this summer, F+W, the parent company of North Light Books, my publisher, asked me to be involved in creating a website for the mixed media community.


Now, before you snort and go, "You? Create a website?" and start imagining that perhaps I've been taking Geek Design Classes in my spare time, non. F+W, being an actual company and stuff, has its very own website design people. Thank goodness:  that means they're not relying on me to know code, which is a most excellent thing. "Code" is baffling to me--it's why I never had a Secret Club as a kid:  I couldn't remember a code long enough to WRITE the secret message, never mind remembering how to decipher it. I'd have buried the coffee can full of Important Stuff and then not only have forgotten where I buried it but forgotten where I put the note with the map AND forgotten the key to the code that explained the map. So:  no code for me.


No--what they wanted me to do is, basically, pretty much what I've been doing for years:  find artists, talk to them, write about them, blog about them, podcast them. Read their books and talk about those. All the same stuff, but on their site. Like as an actual job and stuff. Yowza. 


This is incredibly exciting for a bunch of reasons. Ever since I started this, I'd thought how cool it would be to have a larger, wider audience for these conversations, a way to reach more people without my having to spend hours and hours trying to get the word out that, hey, there's a really cool podcast with, oh, Jodi Creager. Richard Salley. Whomever.


It's funny the way life works. You wish for stuff, and then you kind of forget it, and then, at some point--maybe years later--you realize you've gotten exactly what you wished for. When I was in high school, what I wanted from life was 1) a real boyfriend ("real" meaning one I actually liked, without the drama, one with whom I could relax into a relationship that didn't require constant emotional turmoil. Oy), and 2) to be happy. I was a simple girl, much to the hair-pulling chagrin of my parents.


Somehow I managed to get there. I'm happy, and I have a most excellent boyfriend.


Another time, long, long ago, I thought that if only I had a certain amount of money guaranteed each month, I could relax a little and not have to scramble around for random jobs to fill the gaps. Not a lot of money, not by any means--just something guaranteed. When I settled my mother's estate, that exact amount--a very tiny amount, to be sure--began to appear in my checking account each month.


At another point, I thought, gee, if only I had a way to find artists and get them to talk to me about what goes on inside their heads, that would be perfect. And it turns out that writing for the magazines and books has done that--I can get almost anyone to talk to me about that most mysterious process, and that's fabulous.


And then, when I started doing podcasts here, I thought, wouldn't it be incredibly cool if I could turn this into a job so I didn't always put it down at the end of the list of things to do, down at the very end, where it often gets pushed out of the way because it's not Real Work? And if there were a way to get the word out there so that more people could find out about it?


And here it is. It just blows me away, how life works. 


But besides being a fabulous opportunity for me to keep doing what I love to do, it's a marvelous thing for everyone else, too. It's truly Right Livelihood, the kind of work that hurts no one and benefits everyone involved, as far as I can see. This website, when it's up and running, will help artists share their work and ideas, classes and tutorials, photos and little wonderfully goofy studio videos--you know, where their cat grabs the camera and all you can see is colored pencils rolling everywhere. It will allow students to find out how to do stuff, like what kind of wax to use for encaustic work and how to use gesso and what kind of marker works best on bristol board. It will allow event organizers to submit calendar dates so everyone will know when things happen and when registration opens and when it's time to submit proposals.


There will be podcasts and interviews, book reviews and blog posts, photos and videos. There will be a store where you can buy books and magazines and supplies. Because sure, the company has to make money to run the website. But you know what? If I'm going to support a company and help them make money, I want it to be a company I'd support anyway. Boeing isn't at the head of my list. Kellogg Brown & Root is not there, either. North Light Books is. I spent money on their books before I started writing for them, and I still spend money on their books. (Yeah, as one of their authors, I can order books from them for half price, but I don't always do that. How come? If I know the author, I'll go to Barnes and Noble and buy the book there, contributing my tiny little bit to their royalties. Silly, maybe, but there's also the thrill of walking out of the bookstore with a brand spankin' new book in my hands, too. There's a whole lot to be said for instant gratification, isn't there?) So, yeah, I feel good working with these people. I feel good supporting them. I want people to buy their books because I like the people who write the books and want them to write more, and I like the people who edit the books (Hi, Tonia! We really do adore you!).


How will things change here at The Voodoo Cafe? Not much, I hope. I hope that the podcasts will still go to my podcast blog at libsyn.com and still download from the same place on iTunes. They may not appear here on the little player at the end of the blog post, but we were having some real issues with that, anyway--even The EGE couldn't get that little player to show up on his netbook. I'll link to the website when I do blog posts and podcasts and reviews and stuff, so you can just jump over there and find out what's new. There'll be a button over on the side. The mixed-media-artists-related posts will go there; everything else will go here.


When it's up and ready to go, I'll ask you to help me spread the word around. Oh! Did I mention there will be give-aways? Oh, yeah! We've had so much fun with them here that I lobbied for them on the new site, too. Plus:  there should be even cooler give-aways here, as I get extra review copies and stuff. So stay tuned for that, too.


In short, just stay tuned! Exciting stuff is happenin'--I've been contacting artists, and dozens are on board already, excited and jazzed and ready to contribute. 


Sorry I don't have a link yet or anything more concrete. I was going to wait until everything was ready to go before I mentioned it, but y'all knew something's going on, and I hate secrets--I suck at keeping secrets. Plus tomorrow's my birthday, and it seems like the perfect time to share this fabulous new adventure. I'm so glad to have y'all along for the journey~~you're the best!


XO

More Utter Fabulousness from Ari Seth Cohen, My Hero

I love Ari Seth Cohen. Someone should subsidize his work, pay him enough money so he can devote all his time and energy to finding these fabulous people and bringing them to us. It's truly a noble calling, showing us that you can develop your own style and live it fully at any age, in any situation. It's not just about style or clothes or how you look. Of course not. It's about living your life your own way and living it fully for the whole lovely span of it. I watch his videos and am filled with joy, and hope, and excitement. They remind me that I don't have to quit playing dress-up. Not ever.


I thank him for that. Truly. Cos you know no one else is saying it. Everyone else is trying to convince us that, at A Certain Age, we'd better tone it down and wear beige. 


When I saw the following video tonight, I shouted, "Omigod, I LOVE her!" When Ilona says how old she is, my mouth dropped open. And then I grinned really HUGELY. Absolutely amazing. 


I hope you love her as much as I do, and I hope this video makes you as happy as it does me--here you go:

More Fabulous Style for You!

Another fabulous style from Ari Seth Cohen on Advanced Style. Go here to see more, but I wanted to show you this woman, for all of y'all who moan about how you can't wear artwear, or it's way over the top, or it's not your size, or it looks too weird, or blah, blah, blah. This woman looks "normal" to me, yet she looks fabulous:

Now I want you to go here and find out more about her.


Fabulous, yes?

Patricia Fox is Fabulous!

Yes, indeed, I *did* find more. I found Patricia Fox talking about her wardrobe. Oh, my, my. *Squeal* (Yeah, I know: I'm not a squealy person, normally; but some things? Ooooh!)


For me, the most important part is at the end, where she talks about what she sees as her responsibility to be approachable when she's dressed up and out in the world. As I was watching this, I was thinking about what I've always thought about this, and it was as if she were reading the script out of my head. I'm sure she's had some of the same snarky comments I've gotten when I'm out and about, but that's not what's important. It's about making the connections, finding like-minded people, and having fun. Most people take their clothing way, way too serious, as if wearing a rhinestone tiara on the subway would dramatically lower their IQ. Maybe if they wore it to a managerial meeting, it might lower their earning power. But then you'd have to wonder, how come? Why do we think we have to wear certain kinds of clothes? As long as they're clean and cover up the parts that need to be covered (and we all know those parts vary from person to person), it should all be good.


Watch Patricia and be inspired:



Patricia Fox from Stylelikeu.com from Stylelikeu on Vimeo.

New York Times Style Magazine: "Garb Fest"

Oh, sweeties, I can't even *begin* to tell you how much I loved this little article. I actually squealed when I turned the page yesterday, sitting out on the porch with The EGE. It had been a long, lazy morning of reading the newspapers (both of us--I'm giving it a go, never mind that it mostly depresses me) and stitching (me) and drinking coffee, and I was pretty much bummed by the endless stream of news articles that seemed to reinforce one major theme:  People Are Stupid. The one that tipped me off that this was the Theme of the Week was the piece in the Times about how personal technology has impacted (and don't you just love that as a verb?) the National Park System. One of the examples was the hikers in the Grand Canyon who had a GPS emergency device they set off not once, not twice, but three times. The second time they set this off, calling out the emergency helicopters yet AGAIN, was because they thought the water "tasted salty." They refused to be evacuated--they just thought, I guess, that someone ought to make a run to Trader Joe's and bring them back some bottled water. And maybe some pesto.


[Note:  the third time they called for help, rangers insisted that they get into the helicopter and Get Out, as in "Get out of our park before we push you over the edge ourselves." The rescue helicopters cost about $3500 an hour to operate. I hope they billed these guys.]


So:  People Are Stupid (And Amazingly Selfish) was the theme.


And then I picked up the magazine and found this:

And squealed. And wanted to know oh, so much more! I wanted interviews with each of these women, peeks into their closets, trips with them when they go to shop for clothes. All of that. Alas, it was a tiny little piece. But! On the NYT site, there are links. I haven't followed them yet--it's Monday, honeys, and you know how those are:  you're so busy you don't even know your own name until mid-afternoon, at least--but I'm hoping they're marvelous. 


Wouldn't you love to go through their closets? Yowza!


Which one is your favorite? 

This Week's Give-Away: A Strathmore Visual Journal. Yes! Really!

I guess I should pretend that, out of the goodness of my heart, I bought two of these babies with the intention of making one of y'all very, very happy. That would make me look so nice, wouldn't it? But no. I'm not that nice: I bought two of these because I had to order them, and I thought that, if I loved them and wanted to keep using them, I wanted to have a second one ready to go. 

As you know by now, I hate them. Oh, the size is nice. The spiral binding is nice. The paper is nice and thick, and none of my pens bleed through. Well, maybe the thick Sharpies, just a little. 


But the smearing! O, my god. As you may recall from my continued grousing about it, this paper hates every. Single. One. of my myriad pens. The ink pens. The gel pens. The markers. Every single one of them smears. Badly. 


Now, granted, I'm left-handed. And I drag my hand through what I've just written. So it wouldn't be as bad for someone who didn't do that. 


Anyway. Here's what I want do to:  I want this second notebook to go to someone who's been wanting to try the Strathmore Visual Journals but couldn't find one. This is the 5.5" x 8" Drawing Journal, with 100 lb paper (yeah, I can't figure it out, either:  the one with drawing paper has thicker/heavier sheets than the mixed media one). But I don't want it to go to someone who'll test it and then hate it and file it in a drawer somewhere. I want you to test it and, even if you don't like it, use it up and see what you can discover. And it would be nice if you'd write about your experiments on your blog and then post a link for us so we could see how it goes for you. If you're in my theartjournal group, I want you to tell us about it there, too. I think Strathmore needs to do a version 2.0, with lots of input from those of us who are actually using these things. They should have asked us in the first place, don't you think?


So post a comment. Tell us something. Check back on Friday. And good luck!

All I Know About Love

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately, about long-lasting love and partnership. (And let me just say, before I begin, that when I say "marriage," I mean any committed partnership between two adults, in the sense of "union," or "joining." I could just as easily use "partnership," except that it sounds so corporate, you know? And I'm just the teensiest bit ticked off and determined to define "marriage" the way *I* want to define it, thank you very much.) You may remember my writing about going to a family wedding last year, about how much fun it was. The EGE talked to the groom at the reception, wishing him the happiness we've had.


Yes, we have turned into Those People. You know them: the older people at the family reunion who go around giving advice to the youngsters, saying things like, "When I was in high school. . . ." But you know what? After 34 years together, years in which we've never separated or lived apart or tried to kill each other, and given that we still really like each other a lot (plus a bunch of other romantic, mushy stuff that I'll spare you, less you heave onto your keyboard), we feel kind of justified. Not that we're Marriage Experts, not at all. I'm sure other people would look at us and our relationship and go, "Huh?" But, on the other hand, we do obviously have at least some small clue. Hence, the wish for our nephew. Who replied, with the self-assurance of the young-and-in-love, that he was already there. That he had that already covered. And The EGE says, "Hey, great!"


Because there's nothing else you can say, is there? A wedding reception is no place to talk about what you need besides love, about the skills you're going to have to develop and the things that are going to baffle you, like how come she doesn't understand when you're out on the football field until 9 pm and don't have a chance to call home, or why he doesn't get that sometimes you just want to be in a room by yourself, with no noise and no one saying a word to you for at least the next four hours.


You know: the hard stuff. Because while you may think, in the beginning, that The Hard Stuff is being faithful and raising kids and making enough money to cover the mortgage, that's not the case. Those are the things you're prepared for. Those are the things everyone talks about, the things you've watched your parents or friends deal with. Those things are out there, and you know to expect them. Sure, they're tough, and sometimes they're the things that break you; but they don't blind-side you the way other things do. Like when she wants to spend every holiday with her family, who hates you, and she knows you don't want to go but insists you have to. Or when he wants to move to Alaska, even though he knows you hate snow. Those are the things nobody warns you about, and when they come up, they whack you upside the head. You need to know they're going to do that, and you need to develop the skills to deal with them. Adoring each other isn't enough.


So now this new marriage is breaking up in rather public fashion, as things young and new seem wont to do, on Facebook. Yeah:  Facebook, which is where I became aware that something major was amiss, something that's not at all any of my business but still grabs hold of me and both irritates me and makes me really, really sad. It irritates me because cocky self-assurance isn't the way to go into a relationship with another person. Amazed awe is the way to go into it. Hopeful wonder. A tiny bit of terror. Curiosity. Gleeful anticipation. Trepidation. Anxiety. Eagerness. 


Passion.


But not thinking you've got the whole thing figured out before you even begin. When you're right up there, day after day, with other human being who is most definitely *not* you, which is, after all, the whole point of being with them--that they are not you and, therefore, fill some space in you that needs filling--there is no way you'll ever have it all figured out.  Trust me on this. Thirty-four years, and I'm still learning. And changing. Adapting. As is my husband, bless him.


And it makes me really, really sad because there is nothing in the world like a good whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Marriage. Partnership. Relationship with another person. There's nothing like having forged a relationship in which you've learned many of each other's likes and dislikes, where you share the same memories and make jokes no-one else gets because they're based on your mutual misunderstanding of a line in a movie you saw in 1983, where you have someone with whom you can find motivation and joy, sex and comfort and an excellent traveling companion, all right there in your own house. How handy is that?


I hate that there are so relatively few decades-long happy marriages. I hate that so many marriages that have lasted decades are little more than partnerships in the corporate sense, where two people who don't really like each other all that much have stayed together and joined forces for the good of the family, or for financial security, or because they're terrified of change. I hate that. I want there to be lots and lots of old married couples, opposite sex ones and same sex ones, people who have been together forever and are still delighting in each other's company, shining that delight on the rest of us.


You know, that old couple at the mall, arm in arm, and you don't know if they're in love or just holding each other up, and then you see one of them reach back and pinch the other one on the butt and they both laugh like goobers. Those people. I want more of those people out there in the world.


It's all about love. Oh, sure, it's about kindness and consideration and flossing every day, especially before you kiss, and about not fondling the baby sitter. But, in the end, it's about love. And here's all I know about love. It's not much, granted. I don't have family or a circle of girlfriends, so there's a lot I don't know about love. But maybe how I feel about married love, about long-term partnership love, is valuable. In the last few years, all of what I feel about love and marriage has kind of distilled down to one thought that I try to keep in mind.


I'm a selfish person, used to having my own way. I'll admit it:  I'm spoiled. I have always been spoiled. I usually do what I want to do. But there are times I do things that I don't particularly want to do. Things that I wouldn't do if it were just me. What spurs me to do those things I don't want to do--and lots of other things that I might do anyway--is this thought:


What I want from life is that when The Ever-Gorgeous Earl is very old and ending his life peacefully, he will look back over that life and not be able to think of one single thing he missed. No regrets, no abandoned dreams, no missed adventures. I want him to look back at his life and say, "Man, what a ride!" Well, OK, I can't imagine The EGE using those exact words, but that's what I want him to think:  that he had one marvelous life and didn't miss out on a thing that mattered to him. Sure, he's not going to be an astronaut. The good news is:  he never wanted to be an astronaut. If he had? If he'd harbored a childhood dream of zipping into outer space, and if that still mattered to him in adulthood? I'd be reading all the info I could find about NASA, trying to find some way to get him to space camp or something, somewhere where he could at least whirl around in that little capsule and wear the astronaut diapers.


He's always wanted to chase tornadoes, so at least once a year I ask him if he wants to move to Norman, Oklahoma. I have no desire to live in Oklahoma again--three times was enough--but if that's what he really wanted to do, to go chase tornadoes, that's where we'd go. I do not want him to be 105 and going, "Dangnabit, I never did get to chase a tornado."


Most of time it's easy:  we've been together and grown together and changed pretty much in tandem, so many of the things he likes are things I like, too. But not everything. He likes to travel, for instance, just the tiniest bit more than I do. You know I didn't take that 8002-mile road trip because I was sick of staying at home. I thought about it long and hard before we did it, and what I'd think about was that, if I didn't do it, it would be something he would miss. If, on the other hand, I did arrange it and plan it and pack for it and somehow manage to get through it without being a total holy terror of a traveling companion, he'd look back on it and think, "Wow. What an adventure that was!" And, we hope, he would mean "adventure" in a good way.


That's what it's about, at least for me: not putting his happiness above my own (see above:  "spoiled") but looking at the long view, the big picture, and trying to do things that will contribute to his happiness and joy and to making his life--and, by extension, of course, my own--something we'll be able to look back at and say, "Nope. Didn't miss a bit of it."


And that's pretty much all I know about love.

And The Winners Are~~

The EGE has chosen, and here are the results:


The issue of Art Doll Quarterly goes to Purple Puffin


and the little journal goes to Linda Teddie Minton.


Congratulations, y'all! Send me your addresses--if I get them in time, the goodies will go out this afternoon~~

Happy Clarice

While The EGE picks winners for this week's give-away drawings, I got this little video for your Friday Smile:

Teaching a Cat to Fetch

Some people--and cats--would argue that you can't teach a cat to do anything. I would add the necessary coda: "that she doesn't want to do." The Ever-Gorgeous Earl can teach cats to do all kinds of things--he convinces them that's what they want to do more than anything else in the world. He's convinced the outside cats that they like the Cat Palace and want to go in and let him shut them inside every night at sundown. They wait outside the kitchen door, and he goes out and leads them in a line around the back sidewalk and into the Cat Palace, where they jump on their perches and he gives them treats. They've learned to like it so much that when he goes and lets them out (into the enclosed backyard) in the mornings, they sometimes lounge around on the shelves and ladder and perches for a while, waiting for him to brush them.


And now he's training Clarice to fetch. They started working on this after we got back from Phoenix last week, so it hasn't been a full week yet. When I get in bed at midnight to read, taking Lennie Lulu and Moe with me, he and Clarice hang out. He's teaching her to play soccer and to fetch. Tonight I stayed up to see how it's going, and I don't know about y'all, but I'm WAY impressed. Less than a week! Is this a smart kitten or what? And--even more--is this a smart man or what? Something he enjoys (sports with an enthusiastic team member) and impressing his wife, all in one fell swoop~~

Is It Just Me?

Or does this happen to you, too? I have a bunch of work I need to do--I'm into the heading-up-to-the-deadline part of working on the book. The next three months are going to be heavy with work, and it feels daunting. I keep thinking I've got to settle down and get to work. I sit here, dicking around with the chapter, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "You've got to get busy! You've got to get to work!"


And then I stop and realize: I *am* working. The "dicking around" has turned into writing, only I don't notice it because I didn't come in here and sit down and go, "OK. This is it. You're going to sit here until you write XX words."


This works for me. It has for years. If I force myself to march in and sit down and focus intently for hours--if that's what I've planned ahead of time--it seems like hard work, slogging work, impossible work. But if I come in, open a document, read it over in a casual way, something always pulls me in. I think, "Oh, I need to put that in!" or "That sounds wonky; let's change it." And once I start with that first sentence, I'm hooked. It's like I fall into another world. Let's see if I can describe it.


There's the regular world, where what I do is work:  I look at it from the outside, and it's deadlines and word count and pages and chapters and interviews and scheduling and re-writing and editing and cutting and tweaking. It's work, and it's like any other job:  there, waiting for you to come tackle it.


But there's this other world, and it's like once I touch the words--once I read the first sentence, or think of something I have to capture on the page--I fall into this world where it's not about work or deadlines, but it's about telling a story about someone or something, about following a thread that's the trail through the woods, unraveling the mystery of someone's life, discovering the connections between this thing and that thing. When I'm on the inside of the work, it isn't "work" at all--it's just the words that want me to follow them. It really does feel like that, as if the words are there already somewhere and it's my job to find them and work with them. Then it becomes a puzzle, finding the pieces that make up the frame and then the pieces that go next to those and the ones that go next to those. They're all interlocking, and you can't force them--even if this one looks like it should go with that one, if it's not the one that fits, it won't work. If you like jigsaw puzzles, you know how it is (The EGE loves them, and one of the coolest things: the summers we went to Santa Fe in June for the Arts and Crafts festival on the Plaza. We stayed at the Hotel St. Francis (before they ruined it), and on the landing on the second (3rd?) floor, they had a huge table that always had a jigsaw puzzle going. The EGE would go and work on this after I got in bed to read, and he met a woman there who was similarly smitten. She drove down each summer from Colorado, where she'd been, I think, the first female attorney in the state, way back when. She drove alone in her vintage Jag, and she and The EGE would stay up late working on the puzzle, with her telling him stories from long ago. Lucky me:  The EGE really likes Women of a Certain Age. (How much more convenient for me in the coming years than if he liked 20-year-olds, right?) Then we didn't see her any more, and we hope that it's because she's off on some grand adventure.)


Anyway, if you love jigsaw puzzles, you know how daunting it is when you look at all those 500,002 pieces, all laid out. But once you get the edges in place and kind of sort the pieces by color, you start to get a sense of how it will come together. If you look at it as a whole and think about all the work it's going to take to finish it, you maybe just drape a sheet over the whole thing and go, "Eh. Maybe this weekend." But if you don't look at it as a whole project, lying there waiting, you work on this corner over here, and then you maybe walk away. You pass through the room and don't sit down but stand over the table, moving this piece over here and then fitting it with this piece here, and the next thing you know, an hour has passed, and you've got a whole little section, all pieced together.


That's what work is like for me. On the outside, it's Work-with-a-capital-W. On the inside, it's just slipping into the world where all the little pieces fit together to make something fabulous.


What's it like for you?

The Skirt

Thanks for all y'all's hand-holding yesterday! I finished it last night and got some quick photos to show you. 


But first I've just gotta say, in case you are a normal person who doesn't have this kind of thing happen to you, that I drive myself crazy. I get an idea, and it won't leave. It's there, in my head, going on and on and on. It will NOT leave me alone.


On Saturday, we took something back to Goodwill--it was a dress I bought to alter, but then I decided I didn't like it well enough to mess with it, and I didn't want it hanging around the house, mocking me for being lazy. So I wanted to drop it off at The Home of Pee, Hairballs, and Cockroaches. 


And while I was there, of course I had to look, never mind the above. 


And I found this:

I do not know what it was about this that so intrigued me, but I had to have it. At $3.29, or $3.49, or whatever it was, it was a good deal. I can wear it over black leggings. But that wasn't it. For some reason, I was immediately entranced with the idea of making one like this in chambray.


Why? I do not know. Part of it may have been a conversation I had with Melanie Testa at Art Unraveled last week, wherein she showed me her skirt, one she made from a pattern she created from a skirt she bought. It was very cool--a little below knee-length, wide enough to sit cross-legged in, paired with a t-shirt with one of her quilt images on it. 


This skirt was nothing like hers, but for some reason I didn't understand, I had to figure out how to make it. I didn't want the embroidery or the cut-outs, and I wanted it longer and about an inch larger--I don't like things that hit me at my waist; I like them to sit a little below or around my hips. 


Maybe it was just the challenge of it.


I dicked around with this idea for a full day, thinking about how it might look and what I might do with it. The challenge for me was that, since there is no waistband, the top has to be stabilized with interfacing and, I decided, lining. How to do that *and* install a zipper? In my mind, I was thinking that I'd create the yoke-ish part and then put in the zipper, but I was seeing way too much bulk there. 


So I hied me to the fabric store and looked at patterns, which I always hate--there are always a couple women shopping together, and they talk and talk and talk and, 76t5b v5, scold their kids. When I'm looking at patterns, I need to THINK. I do not want to hear someone talking about what Martha said to Jill when she got home from the hospital. And goodlordalmighty:  if your kid isn't any better behaved than that, you should have left her at home tied to the bedpost. Holy moly. If our mothers (meaning mine and The EGE's) had had to tell us something more than once--"Sit in that chair and wait until I'm ready to go"--we wouldn't be here today. 


(Last night at the lawn concert at the museum this kid took a glass bottle and deliberately threw it on the cement driveway, the driveway where all the kids ride their scooters and run back and forth like crazy people. The glass shattered, of course, and his adults--three of them--hurried over to pick up the glass. The EGE and I looked at each other and shook our heads. We would have been toast. If either of us had done that? We would still be there, picking up every. last. shard. Why? Well, because our parents wouldn't have picked it up; they would have made us do it, under their watchful, glowering eye. And we would have taken our time--a LOT of time, like 50 years' worth of time--because we would have known that when we were done, we were dead meat. Deliberately shattering glass where the rest of the kids are playing? Watch that child. Choking puppies and setting things on fire can't be far away.)


Where was I? Oh:  the fabric store. I looked at a bunch of butt-ugly skirt patterns--not ugly patterns, but patterns for ugly skirts--many of which had elastic waists or drawstrings or other closure methods that do nothing for any of us--not even the most svelte among us--but make us look dumpy. Puffy. Pre-menstrual, never mind that that is far, far in our pasts. 


But! I finally found a pattern with a yoke-ish part like I wanted to make, and the instructions had you put the zipper in and THEN the lining/interfacing. Aha!


So that's what I did. I made the pattern:

Very simple. Longer. An inch bigger.


And then I made the skirt.

Very simple. I started to stiched the lining part to the side seams, but that got kind of puckery, so I had to rip it out. I still don't know what I'll do about that part--it sometimes doesn't lie completely flat. 

Plus the top needs to be maybe 1/2" smaller--it's a little loose. And I may go back and make the bottom more asymmetrical--I wanted it obviously so, and it kind of looks like I just didn't measure well. 

I'm not hemming it--I'm going to wear it a little to make sure I like it, and, if so, I'm going to embroider on it, starting around the hem.


(I'm trying to type this with Clarice lying in my lap, purring, licking my fingers. Ever tried to type with a kitten licking your fingers? And now she's biting the buttons on my pajamas/dress). Here's what Clarice says:   jjn jyhxcjc  hyogbl


She thinks she can type. I may be out of a job.

Give-Away #2

You remember these:

I bought a bunch of these, totally entranced with the colors, thinking I could get over my loathing of micro-perfed pages.


I was so wrong. 


So now I've got this one that needs a new home. There are a couple words on the last page--testing a pen--and, as you can see, the cover is a little scuffed. Otherwise, it's peachy and ready to hold all your ideas. Blank white paper, micro-perfed. Ribbon marker, elastic band, cool green cover--about 3.5" x 5.5"


Tell me what you'd use this for--and then check back on Friday. If I haven't heard from the winner by Monday, I pick someone else (and that will be someone I know will get in touch right away--theoretically, the few people could end up winning week after week, right? So don't forget to check~~)


And thanks for playing! XO

This Week's Give-Away #1: Art Doll Quarterly

This week I've got an extra copy of the current issue of Art Doll Quarterly with my profile of Marina Lenzino and her work.  Anyone familiar with Cherry Pie Art?

 Tell us something about that, or about dolls--tell us something interesting! And then check back on Friday so you don't miss out--if I don't hear from the winner by Monday, I pick someone else~~

Hey, Mary Dean!

You win the copy of Rubberstampmadness--congratulations! Send me your address, please, and I'll get it in the mail~~

What's Going On

That song is the ringtone for The EGE, so that when he calls, I hear this vague party noise in my purse before the actual music starts. It's how I think about my life:  what's going on right now?


And what's going on right now is pretty boring, as you maybe have noticed this week. There are three big things, actually:


~~the book, which I cannot talk about. You know how it is:  you're working, working, working on something, but you can't talk about it until you're done and it's ready to be Out There, and then you can talk about it, but by then you're already in the middle of some other project, a new one, also one that you can't talk about while you're in the middle of it. So when you're in the middle of something, you're kind of in the middle of it all by yourself, working along. I've got three months until the end, and it's going to be what I'm doing pretty much every day.


~~along with another project that's grabbed my imagination in a huge way but that I also--alas--cannot yet talk about. I am so not good at being secretive about things, and I never much am, when it's just me. I have no secrets. But when you're working with other people, there are things that need to be done in order and a schedule and steps and all that. So while it's very exciting and it's taking up major portions of my brain space, it's in waiting mode, too. Still in the planning stages and lots of fun. OK, here's a short story about it:  there have been some conference calls with people spread across all the various time zones, and coordinating these with various schedules has been quite a feat (luckily I was not in charge of figuring this out, or I'd still be sitting in a corner somewhere with a map and some clocks, going, "OK, if it's noon here, then it's 2 pm here, but not in the summer, because they don't have daylight savings time, and I'm here, but only until noon-ish, and then I cross into New Mexico, when it will be. . . ."). 


On the way to Art Unraveled, we have one of these calls, and it turns out the little bitty mountains we go through are enough to disrupt cell phone service, so I keep dropping the call. So on the way home from Art Unraveled, we make sure we're in a completely different state at the appointed time, thinking surely, surely, those even-tinier mountains won't interfere. Wrong. Even little hills cause the connection to weaken. Apparently this is what happens in The Wilds of the Desert Southwest. Finally we find a spot with decent reception and pull over on the side of the interstate and park. It's 100 degrees, so the truck has to stay on. The EGE gets out and goes off to take photos on the other side of the highway, and I sit in the truck, on the phone, and ride the rocking back and forth as the 18-wheelers zip by and blast us. We're in an Expedition, so I can only imagine how it would feel in, say, a Smart Car. Yikes!


The EGE gets back in the truck (100 degrees, remember--not the best photographing weather) and, without anything to do but listen to my end of the conversation, starts to look sleepy. I do not want him to get sleepy, as there's still a good 4-5 hours of driving ahead of us, and he's made it a point to drive every. single. inch of this whole year of travel. So I motion for him to drive on--surely the tiny little mountains have petered out and won't interfere.


Wrong. I miss the end of the conversation because not only is the call dropped, but I can't get service again for many miles. I can't even text anyone to tell them why I vanished. Perhaps they'll think we were abducted by aliens, which I think is supposed to happen in New Mexico. Luckily we weren't anywhere around Roswell, so we were safe. From the aliens; not from bad cell phone service. 


So that's another thing that's going on, this exciting -but-not-talk-about-able thing.


~~the kitten. Unlike people who get a new cat, buy a litter box, set out some food, and consider it good, we take this responsibility very seriously: it's our job to raise an animal who will fit into our household and be happy and healthy and know what's allowed (almost everything) and what's not (not very many things, but things about which we're very serious). There's a whole post about that that I need to write--this week we've been working mostly on socialization with the larger cats, staying off the desks, and sports. This last is something The EGE works on at night after Lennie Lulu, Moe, and I get in bed. He and Clarice are focusing on soccer and fetching. Laugh if you will, but he has successfully gotten a cat to fetch (go get the ball, bring it to him, and drop it in front of his hand, time after time--notice I did not say "taught," as that's not a word you want to use with a cat) in the past. It takes a while, but it's worth it. So that--the whole Kitten Thang--*is* something I can talk about, but I'm no fool:  I know you can do only a limited number of posts about kittens before you being to irritate your readers beyond all imagining. I don't blame them: I always dread it when someone I like to read gets pregnant. I know it's just a matter of time (about, oh, nine months) before it's All Baby Posts, All the Time. So I try to spare y'all the pain of the Kitten Thang every day, never mind that we're making good progress, like with the other two things going on in my life. Unlike those other two, however, this is one I can actually talk about. But only up to a certain point, right?


[No, I am not going to write, "This is one about which I can actually talk." No.]

Ideas, Ideas

Omigod, the ideas. Does this happen to you:  you're sitting there, minding your own business--maybe drinking that second cup of coffee, maybe listening to someone talk about something that's mostly totally uninteresting except for some one little word that sets off some unknown connection in your brain--and suddenly the ideas start flooding in? I LOVE this.


But I hate it, too. Even when I was younger and had a better memory--and here we're talking marginally better, as my memory has always pretty much sucked big time--my mother would ask me 20 years ago if I thought I might have early-onset Alzheimer's--so it's relative. And when the ideas start bombarding me, I know that, if I don't capture them and write them down, they'll be gone forever. Unfortunately, this is impossible. Capturing an idea is like capturing a moth or firefly or butterfly:  the very act of capturing it changes it in some fundamental way. It rubs off that fine dusting of powder on the wings, and then you're left with what is only the approximation of the original idea and all its wondrous beauty. 


It's tough. On the one hand, when this bombardment of ideas begins, you want to jump up and grab your notebook and start trying to capture them all, to put them in the glass jar with the holes poked in the lid (with an old-fashioned bottle opener, remember?) so you can see them all in there together, twinkling and giving off that wonderful glow.


On the other hand, you know this never really works. Sure, you can catch them. But that's not the same as sitting back and watching the zooming flicks of light, the flashes of wings and flight, the sparks that light up the dusk. 


Sometimes it seems that's the only way for me: to sit back and take it all in, ride with the flight and hope that some of it sticks in my memory. The moment I open the notebook and pick up a pen is like the moment you screw the lid on the jar. The ideas are there, sure; but they're already starting to fade. Much better, at least for me, to be left with only the vague memories of what it was I saw and hope that somewhere in that unfettered flight is one that will come back to flutter around in my brain if I'm very, very still.