Futility Now

We have a lot of catching up to do.

The weather, just so you know, is exquisite today.  It poured rain and hail overnight and through the morning.  jmags was up all night (as is oft the case) and was able to enjoy it then (except for the time he spent with his headphones on, during which I am just guessing he continued to lament the death of rock and roll by watching youtube videos of ye good olde days), but I crashed early and so woke early. I stayed in bed reading and listening to the storminess of things and feeling very smug at how nice it was to be bundled in feathers and down next to 6’4″ of warmth.

After the storm came the rest of today — alternately slightly drizzly and grey and then very very bright with fluffy clouds, and lots of wind regardless.

When jmags did wake, and we’d finished doing all of the things that one does on a Sunday morning before getting up, we decided to go to Broder for breakfast.  (jmags will tell you more about that soon, I’m sure.) Even better than the meal we shared — and that’s saying quite a lot — was the walk afterward.  It was full of skittish cats, phosphorescent moss, and stunning old cars in various states of disrepair.  These are most certainly a few of my favorite things.

So, then, that takes care of today.  I don’t think it will behoove either of us if I go into the same detail about each of the days since my last post, but I will give some of the highlights:

1) I found another house to covet, a house that strongly conjures Villa Villekulla.  Then it sold.  The important thing is that I’ve discovered Villa Villekulla is the model for what I do, in fact, want in a house, and really has been for awhile, I just somehow hadn’t figured it out.  Rangy, quirky, old, tall, somewhat ramshackle.

2) I finished out another trimester of classes this week.  Tomorrow I begin with just Drawing and Ceramics — no English — so my grading between now and the end of the year is roughly nil.  I will miss my Senior Honors goslings, it’s true.  But not so much that I think I’d change things.  Upon request, as a parting gift, I recited a bit of Beowulf in Old English to them: beowulf1

3) I’ve started a class in wheel-throwing, and it’s going very well, thank you for asking. Photos eventually.

4) I’ve also been doing a fair amount of handbuilding with clay at home. Think hedgehogs and eyeballs:

5) Read & saw Let the Right One In. Loved film, liked book very much.  Also read some bad fantasy w/ jmags, and we’ve started reading Robinson Jeffers’s “Cawdor” aloud.  I love & admire this poem; I found it on accident over the summer, as it was paired with his rendering of “Medea” (also a knockout). I teach “Medea” & was looking for alternate tellings at the time.  In fact, I think “Cawdor” deserves a post of its own.  We’ll see about that.

6) Last weekend, sang karaoke and went roller skating for my sister’s birthday.  Whoa.

7) Did some fairly marvelous cooking — chocolate hazelnut brownies, & bread pudding.

This week looks to be quieter, at least until Thursday.  I hope to read and to do some drawing, since I haven’t done any at all since the fall.  If I do stay in as planned, I also hope to find you here to consider some of the finer points of “Cawdor.”  I recommend you pick up a copy in the meantime.

So I finally gave up on The Captive. I couldn’t take any more and gave the last 30 pages or so only the most cursory skimming. Even that was exhausting and, frankly, kind of degrading. I would say that of the many books that I’ve read that are counted amongst literature’s shining lights, this is the worst. By a wide margin.

Presumably The Fugitive will be an improvement if for no other reason that there needs to be something new for Marcel to complain about without Albertine. Still, I think I’m going to take a little break to avoid accidentally counting my lingering resentments against the new volume.

I’m cutting my own hair these days.  It’s going alright, I spose.  A one-two punch of thrift and whimsy, two of my favorite things.  I’m certainly happier about it than this photo implies.

This weekend I made a dutch pancake that turned out especially nice.  I’ve taken to grating a generous amount of nutmeg into the butter before the pan goes into the oven, and adding sea salt and vanilla to the batter.

In a moment of excess, I sauteed blueberries in a bit of butter and cinnamon, and then threw whipped cream over the works.  Here is jmags’ helping:

It’s not pretty, I know, but it started the day out right.

Small comforts (whipped cream, for instance) seem extra important in the face of frightening cuts in my particular field, education.  It does appear that my position is secure, but the ramifications of being under funded this year and potentially for the forseeable future are disheartening.  Yes, the stimulus may end up temporarily rescuing us.  But that is not an adequate permanent solution.  I’m telling all of my little goslings to go to college — any college they can.  Now is not a good time to be fresh out of high school and entering the job market.

The best way to keep my mind off of these things is to keep my hands busy, and I’ve been doing that, too (beyond my efforts as a barber).  Another little vessel in the series:

The degree of asymmetry isn’t apparent here, otherwise it’s a good likeness.  I like the direction they are headed — I think there is a small but important refining process happening that will hopefully end with a set of coherent visual principles, principles that can then be carried out over a true series of works.

If I’m really lucky, that’s how it will go with the haircuts, too.

While I appreciate jmags’ generous use of “we” in the last post regarding our current housekeeping practices,  in all actual truth it has been me that’s been ignoring the slow creep of chaos.  My only defense is this analogy: it’s like when you are no longer interested in someone, in fact plan to break up with them, and maybe even already have your eye on some alluring alternative — you stop really doing any maintenance or caretaking.  Do you bring flowers?  No.  Give back massages? No.  You neglect the relationship, and turn a blind eye toward the accumulation of dust on your own heart.  Well, we thought we might be able to move forward with this house business pretty quickly, and in my excitement I have done just that — spent my time dreaming about someone else’s crown molding instead of doing the dishes.

This became painfully obvious when our plans were monkeywrenched by the ghost of NYU.  Now that it appears we have at the very least several months left in what is by all rights a very nice apartment, I have a lot of apologetic vaccuuming to do.  It’s important to keep busy, too, because I have fallen pretty hard for a house that we almost certainly won’t be able to buy.  I’ll say this much: 1908, two stories plus an attic garret & basement, pocket doors, porch swing, & leaded glass.  And just the right amount of disrepair.  Sigh.

Lest you think that house-lust is all I’ve been up to, I have photos to prove otherwise.

Hedgehog or pot?  Dunno.

Steamboat or pot?  Dunno.

And, last, Zia’s Christmas present.  The firing had to be postponed because of the Blizzard of Aught-Eight, so she only received it last week.

The impetus for this project, technically the most complex that I’ve done, is Objects: USA, a book I found on a cart in front of an antique store in Sellwood.  As jmags would say, its school is very old.  One of the featured artists within is Michele Oka Doner, who has gone on to do all sorts of impressive things.  I knew as soon as I saw these creature/babies that I had to make one for Zia.

Mine is made of a very different clay body, and I think the face is actually a little less freaky, unfortunately, but the spirit I think is right.  I loved doing this level of detailing.  It was very satisfying.  Almost as satisfying as winning the Miller Teaching Award.

Wait, what was that, you say? Mmhmm, I won a prize. A $5,000 prize — the best kind.  Too bad I can’t use it to buy up that luscious crown molding-ed (and box-beamed!) house, right?  Sometime this spring I’ll be going to a banquet to receive a big check.  The grant I wrote as part of my application was for taking ceramics classes, esp. in wheel throwing, and for developing an online portfolio.

So some dreams really do come true.  Consolation in the face of so much vaccuuming.

So the near-complete circumnavigation of the chair by pinked masking tape was groundwork for assembly-line paper chain construction by little S. and me.  This was the end result:

In fact, the photo jmags loaded of the tree was captured long before we were done dolling it up.  I’ve never chopped down a ten foot tall tree before, you know?  I only have so many origami birds to hang.

Granted, this photo was taken during the daytime, in the blinding reflected light of the snow pack, but it still looks festive, don’t you think?

We have been indoors for several days now.  For the most part, we’re all being well behaved, but today we all got punchy during our late morning/early afternoon pancake breakfast.  It’s too bad I was giggling so much that the shot ended up more than a little blurry.

That’s whipped cream cascading off of the pancake and onto the adolescent.

I’ve been very busy with cooking and holiday projects, and also some new developments with clay that I plan to share soon.