Our power went out in August from a Sunday until it returned on the following Wednesday, and although dark at half past seven, I was able to finish "The Year of the Flood" by Margaret Atwood and revive interest in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." I say revive interest because remarkably I own this book but had rented it from Booksfree, having neglected and forgotten my own copy.
These are not uplifting books, and certainly reading them during a hurricane probably made them, not more sinister, but more credible.
Yes, The Year of the Flood is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, and somewhere it appears a third volume is in the hopper as the word trilogy is mentioned on the flyleaf.
It wasn't until page 306 or was it 308 that it became clear that where Oryx and Crake ended the human race with the exception of the Snowman did not. But what will become of the survivors of a scientist's gone mad experiment is unclear at the books conclusion. Unlike "The Road," another dystopia, the reader, or this reader finished the book with a sense of a potential tomorrow, Atwood's book left me questioning if this last lot of humans would possess the fortitude to reproduce.
I closed the book with doubts and questions, and although there is enormous humour and much satire in Atwood's novel, it is still a book about the calamity of man's foolishness, and our foolishness is unparalleled these days.
Gaiman was introduced to me by way of Dave McKean and I soon found myself reading or rather devouring Neverwhere, one of my favourite books filled with creative imagination. Neverwhere is about an underground world in London; American Gods is naturally about the States. The two books however have a certain symmetry and so clearly come from the same pen (yes, Neil Gaiman is a fountain pen user).
What Gaiman and Atwood have in common is a unique genre in literature: neither true science fiction or magical realism, they imagine our world, often in the present, differently. To some degree, Gaiman reminds me of Robertson Davies and his Deptford Trilogy--filled with myth and magic and some Jung thrown in.
If Atwood's book is about an experiment gone wrong, Gaiman's book is about an experiment of birth. His principal character and the unlikeliest of characters, Shadow, is we learn at the book's near conclusion the son of a God, but not an American God.
Like Neverwhere, we encounter some of the strangest characters in some of the most outrageous places with often unpronounceable names. The book is often a riddle, but things do get sorted out and the conclusion ends on a positive note.
As Gaiman dedicates the book to Roger Zelazny, another of my all time favourites (The Amber series, in particular) I reckon he wouldn't mind having his book(s) described as science fiction. Ms. Atwood, however, blanches or did once, at the notion that her work was of that ilk. I understand her reaction if one thinks of science fiction as a series of outer space novels, but as I've explored the genre in the last dozen or more years, I've come to truly appreciate some of the better writers and novels that easily fall into this category as on par with any work of fiction, including classic literature.
If anyone enjoys the unusual, with a message, both authors are well worth reading.
16.2.12
15.2.12
The Six Day War, Revisited
It's took me two days, on and off, off and on to read this magazine piece in the New York Times. It is not always easy to read on line, and the Times doesn't deliver to my house, but it is the title itself, its implications and history that had me hesitating over each page and leaving the article altogether to read about cheap cosmetics, or other banal subjects.
War is not banal? The Middle East is not banal? This headline is frightening and too close to the reality of 1967.
In 1967 I was a starry-eyed women (or girl) headed from Amsterdam, first to the South of France, and onward South. In Lugano (Ticino, Switzerland) where I was meeting some retired friends (escapees from Nazi Germany), I met a fleeing man from Aden. In 1967, Aden was still a country. Today it is a region of Yemen.
The young man, barely older than me, held his passport firmly in his hand. It read, "Landlord." Now he was landless, alone and on his way North as I headed into the fray South. He had friends in Lugano and together we visited them for tea. I thought I was already in the Middle East when we arrived. Their living room was festooned with draped swaggers, and the low upholstered furnishings were mounds of carpets and huge pillows, the cups tiny silver goblets, the pastry fresh from a local downtown bakery, the very spot where I had met this young man hours earlier.
How this young man and I took up an acquaintanceship is quite a different and more Italian story, so I won't digress, but we did meet downtown at a pastry shop.
I learned a great deal that afternoon, enough to know that my trip South would probably end short of Brindisi, and perhaps only take me as far as Rome.
The Middle East was on fire. This young man, let's call him Aaron, was Jewish, a landowner's son, and escaping the war that surrounded his land and his country. Living in a country that was (and remains) predominantly Arab, it was no longer safe for him to remain, as Israel fought its neighbours on all sides and Jews would not be very welcome. The Jewish Diaspora in Arab countries is little known, but this war certainly aided in its expansion and the expulsion of the remaining Arab Jewish people.
Aaron and his friends were gracious and spoke impeccable English.
What I learned is about war first hand, not in a history book. Moreover what they shared contrasted and diverged sharply from the imaginative mind of the 20-odd year old I was who thought that fighting a war was a grand adventure. These Arab Jews from Aden and/or Yemen were retreating from mayhem. What had earlier influenced my idea of war was the shared experiences of the brave men and women I knew in Holland who had fought in the underground, and although many were visibly scarred, continued to espouse the virtue of the fight as if we all had and were living in Leon Uris ' "Exodus." My principal role model was James, who at the start of World War II was 17-1/2 and less than five feet, six inches tall. Although a Belgian national and Jewish, he volunteered and was accepted into the US Army, survived the war on many fronts, and proceeded to go on to become the director of a prestigious medical publishing foundation. During these years James was my primary mentor and father figure.
Now a day doesn't go by without an article about the Middle East, and it does unnerve me.
Then this in at the Washington Post: a bleary headline to chill me on this already chilly day.
War is not banal? The Middle East is not banal? This headline is frightening and too close to the reality of 1967.
In 1967 I was a starry-eyed women (or girl) headed from Amsterdam, first to the South of France, and onward South. In Lugano (Ticino, Switzerland) where I was meeting some retired friends (escapees from Nazi Germany), I met a fleeing man from Aden. In 1967, Aden was still a country. Today it is a region of Yemen.
 |
| Aden and Yemen (Middle East overview) |
The young man, barely older than me, held his passport firmly in his hand. It read, "Landlord." Now he was landless, alone and on his way North as I headed into the fray South. He had friends in Lugano and together we visited them for tea. I thought I was already in the Middle East when we arrived. Their living room was festooned with draped swaggers, and the low upholstered furnishings were mounds of carpets and huge pillows, the cups tiny silver goblets, the pastry fresh from a local downtown bakery, the very spot where I had met this young man hours earlier.
 |
| Shoreline of Lake Lugano, Switzerland |
 |
| Porto di Brindisi (Wikipedia) |
I learned a great deal that afternoon, enough to know that my trip South would probably end short of Brindisi, and perhaps only take me as far as Rome.
The Middle East was on fire. This young man, let's call him Aaron, was Jewish, a landowner's son, and escaping the war that surrounded his land and his country. Living in a country that was (and remains) predominantly Arab, it was no longer safe for him to remain, as Israel fought its neighbours on all sides and Jews would not be very welcome. The Jewish Diaspora in Arab countries is little known, but this war certainly aided in its expansion and the expulsion of the remaining Arab Jewish people.
 | ||
| Lago Lugano (Switzerland) |
What I learned is about war first hand, not in a history book. Moreover what they shared contrasted and diverged sharply from the imaginative mind of the 20-odd year old I was who thought that fighting a war was a grand adventure. These Arab Jews from Aden and/or Yemen were retreating from mayhem. What had earlier influenced my idea of war was the shared experiences of the brave men and women I knew in Holland who had fought in the underground, and although many were visibly scarred, continued to espouse the virtue of the fight as if we all had and were living in Leon Uris ' "Exodus." My principal role model was James, who at the start of World War II was 17-1/2 and less than five feet, six inches tall. Although a Belgian national and Jewish, he volunteered and was accepted into the US Army, survived the war on many fronts, and proceeded to go on to become the director of a prestigious medical publishing foundation. During these years James was my primary mentor and father figure.
Now a day doesn't go by without an article about the Middle East, and it does unnerve me.
Then this in at the Washington Post: a bleary headline to chill me on this already chilly day.
Poinsettias and the holiday season
 |
| Euphorbia pulcherrima,Wikipedia |
I've always loved the cheerfulness of poinsettias and this year for the holidays I managed to find white and red versions in two sizes. The two larger ones are still in bloom, but the smaller ones that I had in the bedroom had faded and lost their blooms.
I put one of them in the kitchen window and it seems to be recovering and growing a new bud. Wonder of wonders.
What a terrific boost to a women's day: Wendy Hale Davis & Rice Zachery Freeman
The other day Roz (of Roz Wound Up) alerted her readers that Rice was interviewing Wendy.
While I generally go over to Notes from the Voodoo Lounge podcasts often, I hadn't done so until Roz' morning alert.
It made my day. So much so that when I went to hear the Upper Delaware Writers Collective poets read on Saturday afternoon last, I took out my wee, wee sketch journal from Aquabee and swiftly sketched, in general form not content, all of the poets.
What a terrific interview between friends who are in the same State of the Union and of a similar state of artistic mind.
While I generally go over to Notes from the Voodoo Lounge podcasts often, I hadn't done so until Roz' morning alert.
It made my day. So much so that when I went to hear the Upper Delaware Writers Collective poets read on Saturday afternoon last, I took out my wee, wee sketch journal from Aquabee and swiftly sketched, in general form not content, all of the poets.
What a terrific interview between friends who are in the same State of the Union and of a similar state of artistic mind.
14.2.12
Review: Pelle Journal
Some things are so luxurious you only have to say their name and you can almost taste, feel or smell them. Leather is one of those luxuries, and the Pelle Journal is a luxury but also very practical.
I haven't owned a beautiful leather journal since my daughter bought me one for my birthday in 1991, or I bought myself the Charing Cross with pencil (pencil now lost) in 1990.
I still have the Charing Cross in the right hand drawer of my desk. It contains several notes I've not wanted to transfer elsewhere. It feels as decadently wonderful today as it did the day I bought it in Wayland Square, Providence, Rhode Island twenty years ago.
It is my hope that the Pelle journal in Burnt Cognac will prove as memorable. It already seems like a small treasure to both touch and admire.
Not since I received the Canteo journal has the packaging itself been something to rave about. In cello, in a linen or muslin bag and in a flip carton with some simple instructions, and two elastics--one in a beautiful shade of lime and the second in a dark, but matching brown. Then voila: the journal.
I tested four pens, three fountain pens and one roller ball. The three fountain pens are a Reform with a narrow fine and Noodler's Violet Vote ink; Noodler's Ahab with Rohrer & Klingman Bordeaux ink; the Namiki Falcon Resin housing a soft fine with Noodler's Kung Te Cheng ink, and finally one of my favourite on the go roller balls, the Rotring Tikky (available at Jet Pens).
All of the pens were used normally, and there was only a trace of a shadow on the plain paper. Refill inserts are available in plain, lined, grid and drawing at Pelle or Jet Pens.
Jet Pens has been carrying the Pelle for quite sometime, and recently had an exclusive interview with Andy Park , founder of Pelle Inc. And Office Supply Geek did a great job posting photographs, something I am struggling with now as my camera appears to be more and more uncooperative.
Disclosure: This small Burnt Cognac Pelle was supplied by the manufacturer; however, the review is as unbiased as a user can be.
I haven't owned a beautiful leather journal since my daughter bought me one for my birthday in 1991, or I bought myself the Charing Cross with pencil (pencil now lost) in 1990.
 |
| Bottom to top: leather journal 5x7; Charing Cross; Pelle Burnt Cognac 3x5 |
I still have the Charing Cross in the right hand drawer of my desk. It contains several notes I've not wanted to transfer elsewhere. It feels as decadently wonderful today as it did the day I bought it in Wayland Square, Providence, Rhode Island twenty years ago.
It is my hope that the Pelle journal in Burnt Cognac will prove as memorable. It already seems like a small treasure to both touch and admire.
 |
| Pelle Burnt Cognac journal 3x5 |
Not since I received the Canteo journal has the packaging itself been something to rave about. In cello, in a linen or muslin bag and in a flip carton with some simple instructions, and two elastics--one in a beautiful shade of lime and the second in a dark, but matching brown. Then voila: the journal.
I tested four pens, three fountain pens and one roller ball. The three fountain pens are a Reform with a narrow fine and Noodler's Violet Vote ink; Noodler's Ahab with Rohrer & Klingman Bordeaux ink; the Namiki Falcon Resin housing a soft fine with Noodler's Kung Te Cheng ink, and finally one of my favourite on the go roller balls, the Rotring Tikky (available at Jet Pens).
All of the pens were used normally, and there was only a trace of a shadow on the plain paper. Refill inserts are available in plain, lined, grid and drawing at Pelle or Jet Pens.
Jet Pens has been carrying the Pelle for quite sometime, and recently had an exclusive interview with Andy Park , founder of Pelle Inc. And Office Supply Geek did a great job posting photographs, something I am struggling with now as my camera appears to be more and more uncooperative.
Disclosure: This small Burnt Cognac Pelle was supplied by the manufacturer; however, the review is as unbiased as a user can be.
Poetry is made in bed like love and Emily Dickinson
Last weekend several members of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective read at the Sanctuary of Oils on Commercial Street in Honesdale (PA). It was one of the more memorable readings, and at the end one of the group asked, "what is poetry?"
Charles Simic's piece in the Review reminded me of the question, and how I feel about poetry, where I write and how, and Emily Dickinson. While Simic writes in bed, I write on buses, tramways, at cafe tables, in cemeteries, in the garden and in fact at Dickinson's house in Amherst (MA). I don't often write poetry at a desk or on my bed. I don't chose to write poetry. Rather poetry calls to me unbidden, infrequently, and often in sudden bursts.
I can write long passages of non-fiction, and even write thousands of words in a morning of fiction, but poetry grips me like a vise or fondles me like a lover, but either good or bad, I have no apparent control over the impulse.
A Dickinson poem:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
It's that impulse that made me think of Dickinson. Did she think about all those poems that streamed and streamed and floated on her pages? Did she have control over the words, the subject matter? Did she, too, walk into her garden, sit on a stone and write with her fountain pen?
Knopf sent this poem out today for Valentine's Day, by Leonard Cohen:
When I Uncovered Your Body
When I uncovered your body
I thought shadows fell deceptively,
urging memories of perfect rhyme.
I thought I could bestow beauty
like a benediction and that your half-dark flesh
would answer to the prayer.
I thought I understood your face
because I had seen it painted twice
or a hundred times, or kissed it
when it was carved in stone.
With only a breath, a vague turning,
you uncovered shadows
more deftly than I had flesh,
and the real and violent proportions of your body
made obsolete old treaties of excellence,
measures and poems,
and clamoured with a single challenge of personal beauty,
which cannot be interpreted or praised:
it must be met.
Charles Simic's piece in the Review reminded me of the question, and how I feel about poetry, where I write and how, and Emily Dickinson. While Simic writes in bed, I write on buses, tramways, at cafe tables, in cemeteries, in the garden and in fact at Dickinson's house in Amherst (MA). I don't often write poetry at a desk or on my bed. I don't chose to write poetry. Rather poetry calls to me unbidden, infrequently, and often in sudden bursts.
I can write long passages of non-fiction, and even write thousands of words in a morning of fiction, but poetry grips me like a vise or fondles me like a lover, but either good or bad, I have no apparent control over the impulse.
 |
| A young Emily Dickinson |
A Dickinson poem:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
It's that impulse that made me think of Dickinson. Did she think about all those poems that streamed and streamed and floated on her pages? Did she have control over the words, the subject matter? Did she, too, walk into her garden, sit on a stone and write with her fountain pen?
Knopf sent this poem out today for Valentine's Day, by Leonard Cohen:
When I Uncovered Your Body
When I uncovered your body
I thought shadows fell deceptively,
urging memories of perfect rhyme.
I thought I could bestow beauty
like a benediction and that your half-dark flesh
would answer to the prayer.
I thought I understood your face
because I had seen it painted twice
or a hundred times, or kissed it
when it was carved in stone.
With only a breath, a vague turning,
you uncovered shadows
more deftly than I had flesh,
and the real and violent proportions of your body
made obsolete old treaties of excellence,
measures and poems,
and clamoured with a single challenge of personal beauty,
which cannot be interpreted or praised:
it must be met.
12.2.12
Shirley made me do it!
Shirley of Paper and Threads recently posted a tutorial on retrofitting a book into a sketchbook. Well, I have instructions for this in 5 other places and nearly took Diana Trout's online class to do it, but something about Shirley's tutorial set me on the course and on that course I am.
I had a rather badly treated Moleskine diary calendar in red that I bought in Catania (Sicily) in 2003, a year long gone and decided this would be the trial by fire test of whether I have the patience to meet this task head on.
It's not as if I haven't made a book, from scratch. I've even made books that some bookbinders consider "too difficult," like the Belgium Secret Binding journal with Emily Martin. And the summer of 2003, I traveled up to Easthampton, MA and spent an entire week with Daniel Kelm at the Wide Awake Garage making the most complicated book you'd ever encounter except of course in the Smithsonian. I was the laughing stock of the class, with good humour, with lots of chuckles from my workshop mates who took all this far more seriously than I apparently did. Least you think I am lame, and occasionally I am, I was a member, in good standing, of the Center for Book Arts in New York for many years and took several workshops there, leaving with book in hand.
But, but, but, my books never looked like the Gutenberg bible or one from the hands of Wendy Hale Davis, or Roz Stendahl.
As this is a 3-1/2 x 5-1/2 book, it took nearly a milli-second (read 15 minutes or less) to eviscerate the old calendar pages from the body without harming myself or the covers.
Presently distracted by making a living or rather writing an article, this project will take me some time. The next step I believe will require much patience: making the folios. It is the cutting them that may get me in the end.
I had a rather badly treated Moleskine diary calendar in red that I bought in Catania (Sicily) in 2003, a year long gone and decided this would be the trial by fire test of whether I have the patience to meet this task head on.
It's not as if I haven't made a book, from scratch. I've even made books that some bookbinders consider "too difficult," like the Belgium Secret Binding journal with Emily Martin. And the summer of 2003, I traveled up to Easthampton, MA and spent an entire week with Daniel Kelm at the Wide Awake Garage making the most complicated book you'd ever encounter except of course in the Smithsonian. I was the laughing stock of the class, with good humour, with lots of chuckles from my workshop mates who took all this far more seriously than I apparently did. Least you think I am lame, and occasionally I am, I was a member, in good standing, of the Center for Book Arts in New York for many years and took several workshops there, leaving with book in hand.
 |
| Gutenberg Bible, Lenox edition, via Wikipedia |
But, but, but, my books never looked like the Gutenberg bible or one from the hands of Wendy Hale Davis, or Roz Stendahl.
 | |||||
Moleskine Diary with exacto knife
|
 |
| Empty Binding (not in great shape, especially the pocket) |
As this is a 3-1/2 x 5-1/2 book, it took nearly a milli-second (read 15 minutes or less) to eviscerate the old calendar pages from the body without harming myself or the covers.
Presently distracted by making a living or rather writing an article, this project will take me some time. The next step I believe will require much patience: making the folios. It is the cutting them that may get me in the end.
8.2.12
He said, "life is a circle."
It was 1986.
We were in Denver at a conference.
I never forgot his insistence that people, and life itself always comes full circle.
And today as I finished, or nearly finished organising all my books, with an emphasis on art books, I found I had Martha McEvoy's first two issues of Trumpetvine. These were made in 2002. We were all active in the artists journals group then, and Martha was among the first to do a zine within the group. Later, but not much later I created, "Art on the Loose," with a totally different focus.
So imagine my surprise in reading through Issue 2 even more than her first issue the amount of information she shared about "fountain pens."
It includes some of the very pens folks are talking, now, and several of the issues that come up, time and again, about waterproof, archival, fading and bleeding. She had a wee diagram (page 14 of zine 2) of several pen line variations. The pens she used were the Rotring, a Pelikan 600, a Reform, Parker Sonnet and what I assume may be the Ackerman Pump pen.
It's a pity the zine is out of print, Martha no longer doing it, and that the circle is so elastic.
We were in Denver at a conference.
I never forgot his insistence that people, and life itself always comes full circle.
And today as I finished, or nearly finished organising all my books, with an emphasis on art books, I found I had Martha McEvoy's first two issues of Trumpetvine. These were made in 2002. We were all active in the artists journals group then, and Martha was among the first to do a zine within the group. Later, but not much later I created, "Art on the Loose," with a totally different focus.
So imagine my surprise in reading through Issue 2 even more than her first issue the amount of information she shared about "fountain pens."
It includes some of the very pens folks are talking, now, and several of the issues that come up, time and again, about waterproof, archival, fading and bleeding. She had a wee diagram (page 14 of zine 2) of several pen line variations. The pens she used were the Rotring, a Pelikan 600, a Reform, Parker Sonnet and what I assume may be the Ackerman Pump pen.
It's a pity the zine is out of print, Martha no longer doing it, and that the circle is so elastic.
Caribbean
 | |
| Map of the Caribbean |
Those that know me, and that number is small, know I hate the heat, so when I told my closest friend I wanted to go to the Dominican Republic, she laughed. But as it turns out the temperature is rather mild and the hurricane season appears to hit the other side of the Island, poor Haiti.
So, I am thinking more and more about the Urban Sketchers symposium.
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