Thanksgiving Weekend

And here this is, finally. It's always a bit of a let down finishing something. Even if it turns out well (and I suppose I will admit that this one is well enough), there are always things I wish I had done differently. The blue background looks nice (nicer even than in this photo) but still...
And here this is, still so much potential. I'm nearing the outer ring. I won't set myself a date but it surely would be nice to be done with this before Christmas.

More on...The Thing

Here this is, black frame finished (both the wooden frame that will support this on the wall and the lights that go behind it and the black, glass mosaicked frame around the picture). I've also begun on the background, which I'm doing with "architecture glass" which is frosted glass that lets in light but obscures whatever is on the other side (which, in this case, will be wiring and a wall).
Here is a closeup. The glue I am using, Weldbond, takes a really long time (2 weeks) to become completely clear so you can see how much work I do at any given time by how wide the various bands of drying glue are. The 3 inch wide thick white glue band was done two days ago. Underneath The Thing is a big sheet of kraft paper, about 3' x 4', onto which I drew out concentric circles to use as guides for placing the glass. I thought I was being very clever by using a nail in the middle, tying a piece of string to it and, at the other end, a pencil. Then, or so the plan was, I would spin the pencil around the nail, letting out ever increasing lengths of string so that I would get ever larger, perfect circles. Except that the string went around the nail and so got shorter, and so my circles spiral. In could be a good effect if it was noticable, but it will be broken up with the Hulk and Thing bodies. So will it look like perfect circles, slightly wobbly circles or an ever increasing (vertigo inducing) spiral? Or just a big slab of indistinctly broken glass?

Getting Somewhere?

Here is one thing I have been working on. After a sputtering start (doing and then undoing the tentacles) I am finally back to work on this. The shell is done (I keep reminding myself that, although it looks too intensely bright now, the grout always flattens the colors out a bit) and so are the tentacles (barely visible now in a sea of sketch lines and gobs of old glue) and am starting to work on the background--always the hardest part.
The eye looked really big when it was the only thing done, but now it is sort of lost in the activity. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Fiber Show, Flint MI

People with more energy than I can imagine are organizing a local Fiber Show in downtown Flint for sometime next week (or sometime soon--I can't remember the dates of anything except the upcoming semester that starts in 136.5 hours and counting). I was asked if I wanted to enter anything. Here is a huge piece of felt I made last winter during the felting frenzy of Christmas Break 2008. I didn't have a plan for it then and couldn't come up with anything too imaginative, so it is a shawl--at least for purposes of displaying it in the fiber show. (That weird little circle is just light reflected from something in one of our trees. It looks strange but it isn't part of the wool. No really, it isn't.)

Here is a close-up with a bit of glass being used as a pin to keep it together and on the hanger. Mainly what I want to do is write up a narrative about what a mad scientific experiment felting is.

Haven't Forgotten The Thing

Just to show that I haven't completely forgotten about my promise to finish this before some Christmas or other, here is evidence that I actually do work on this piece once in a while. Here is the border SLOWLY getting done. I realized as I worked on this that I had to leave spaces for where the screws would attach to the wooden frame. BUT since I didn't know which screws to use, I didn't know what size space to leave so I was leaving huge spaces but didn't have the pieces for them... the whole thing was quickly dissolving into a mass of doubts and speculations. So I decided to get to work on the frame and then I could just get the damn black glass border done in a night or two.

Here is the black frame. This is just shy of being 4' by 4' (remember the broken corner business of over a year ago--still angry about that). Once I get enough layers of black paint on and it is COMPLETLY DRY (unfortunately I have a history of being a bit slip shod about these sorts of things--hanging pictures on walls before the paint is completely dry, that sort of thing) I will attach the frame to the plexiglass backing.

And here is one of the little holes I have drilled into the plexiglass so I can attach it to the wooden frame. I also have a dozen or so bits of wood that I am going to artfully scatter about within the frame to support the weight of the plexiglass and glass while I work until it is grouted. THEN I will finish the glass border and begin filling in the middle. Making the frame is tedious business and the black paint is really slow to dry (of course it has been raining every day for weeks, that might have something to do with it). But the end seems to actually be in sight...

Clay Nautilus

Just for the sheer perversity of it, I decided to make a nautilus sculpture in my most recent clay class. Since the class was only 6 weeks long and in summer (while it was really muggy and the clay most difficult to work with) I see in hindsight that I was being foolish and deluded to attempt this. While I won't relive the whole experience, the nadir was when I came to class one day and, because the moisture in the clay had moved around [no really, it does that: if clay is almost dry in one part of the sculpture but very moist in another, the water will relocate more evenly throughout the whole of the sculture--unless you wrap up the different sections of the sculpture differently--which I didn't do...but now I would...] and so sections that I needed to be dry and strong became wet and weak. And so I found it at the start of one class after a long holiday weekend collapsed into a big, 30-odd pound blob. I was rather dissapointed. But, unlike most things in life, unfired clay can be forgiving and Addie, my genius teacher, helped me stuff it with newspaper and we got it back on track, more or less. I still see sections in the walls that are bumpier now than they were before the disaster. Here is it, post-disaster, and almost dry. The plastic vegetable bag wrapping on the edge is there to keep the very thinnest part from drying out too quickly and cracking (which is what happened with my 3 story house, see earlier post). So what have I learned about working with clay? The real artistry lies in knowing how to wrap clay in plastic to control wandering water.
Here it is after surviving its first trip through the kiln. Guy, the kiln man at the FIA, said it needed to be in an especially slow fire otherwise it would have exploded (I must confess that I like hearing that my pieces make the lives of others difficult--what is the point of making something insignificant and unremarkable?) so it not only needed to be alone in the kiln but had to be fired for almost 48 hours. Since the semester had long ended, I didn't have time to glaze it yet, so it is actually rather fragile right now. Here it sits, on one of my grandmother's towels that I remember using when staying at her house more than 30 years ago, in our basement on my work table. Once the next semester starts I will get it back to the FIA and glaze it. [I HATE glazing. It's hard work.]

A Few of My Favorite Things...

I am taking a photography class at the FIA. I took photography classes MANY YEARS AGO when I was in highschool and I got very comfortable with my Pentax k1000--the classic photography student's first camera: relatively cheap, reliable, heavy and virtually indestructable. (I dropped that camera into the Yellowstone river and then later on a cement pathway in East Berlin and it still took great pictures!) But the world has moved on and now I have a digital camera (a Nikon--eee!!!!) that is light as a feather and can do ANYTHING (or so the manual tells me) but I can't figure the damn thing out. So I am in a class, with other people that really belong in an Agatha Christie murder mystery: there's the guy who only "shoots raw," the woman who wonders whether or not her memory card will be in b/w or color, another woman who "LOVES taking picture of children--ANY CHILDREN," and the guy who claims that "all photography is prevarication." So far I have learned a little more about how to used my camera (and a lot about what it could do if I only knew how to do it). Here are a few of my first photos:

This is late afternoon, looking up through our grape vines. I spend quite a lot of time in our backyard but never really noticed how many bugs there were until I really got up close and personal to everything.
Most of our yard is surrounded by hedges (which I refuse to trim too rigorously because it is unnatural but the result is that we can barely fit the cars down the driveway as they close in on us more every year) which get covered in tiny flowers (I think I am allergic to the pollen) which attacts THOUSANDS of bees.

This taro used to be 3 feet tall but suffered from poor care while spending the winter in my office. The plant died back to the ground and I thought it was all over, but after a series of amazing thunderstorms, these signs of life appeared.

More bugs enjoying themselves. I think these are fireflies.

We have an enormous tree stump in our backyard which is an ecosystem all of its own. Sometimes as I head to the compost pile it hides I can hear buzzing and scratching coming from within it. It had bark when we moved here 10 years ago, but most has fallen off. A few days ago several hundred mushrooms appeared during the night.

Delphi Adventures!

Wednesday Thomas and I headed for glass paradise--though you wouldn't know it by the sign.

I'll have to take their word for it. There certainly was a lot of glass to look at. A good location to set a murder mystery... spend a lot of money. I didn't go hog wild but I did finally get the glass I needed to fill in the background of The Thing. Now I will do the black border and away I will go. Maybe I will even finish it before next Christmas! (Interestingly, Thomas didn't think this place was all that great. What's wrong with kids today?)

The Thing and more

I was putting off chipping off the tentacles for months because it just seemed too depressing to undo 30-odd hours of work. But, today seemed like a good day for destruction and I went at it. I expected it to be slow and tedious but, as the saying goes, with the right tool any job is easy. And for this job, the right tool was a big ass screwdriver. I chipped off the glass pieces in about five minutes. This left me sitting amongst several hundred glass shards but the art process cannot be tamed! I finished the ground (brown and black glass) in just a few hours and here it is. I'm actually toying with the idea of not including any impact lines--gasp!!!--but just finished with a frame in black glass and the frosted shattered glass for the background. The idea is frighteningly tempting because it would save dozens of hours of work.

The Thing Update

I haven't given an update on The Thing mosaic in a long time. I had a burst of energy in January and got quite a bit done but then, halfway through the second speech bubble, I stalled. The letters (most seemed to be round and very small) were really frustrating and I just couldn't face it. Simon started to despair of ever getting his Christmas present. Then, inexplicably, about three weeks ago I had a burst of enthusiasm and started working on this once again for several hours a day. The second speech bubble was done in under an hour and it seemed to take no time at all the finish up The Thing's second leg and second arm. Here he is:
Notice I extended the B of the BUH out past the frame. The idea is that the content of the picture is bursting out of the frame--not hard to figure out but I thought I would be explicit. This was Simon's idea many months ago and I don't know why I resisted for so long--perhaps simply a habitual response to all his suggestions that I have acquired in the past twenty odd years of living with him. He now has no memory of suggesting the B extension and thinks it was my bright idea--I certainly came out ahead on that one! Next I will work on the ground with brown and black glass and after that the "impact lines" which frame the image. I'm not sure how I am going to break up the glass for the impact lines--if they are too even, it will look static. Thin lines look like motion but thin, squared-off pieces of glass do not. Glass shattered (like a broken windscreen) would convey motion but it would be hard to pack that into the spaces. I could double the width of each line (and so have half as many) and therefore would have more room to arrange the pieces...Hmm. Not sure. Have to think about this more. Anyway, here you can see the ground The Hulk is standing on and the impact lines on the bottom half of the picture.
The other issue that haunts me is the moment of shifting this mighty construction onto the wooden frame that will house the lighting. Should I grout first (adding 20 odd pounds of weight to something that will already weigh at least 20 pounds) and then shift it hoping the grout will keep the billions of glass pieces in place OR should I shift it before I grout and risk the plexiglass bowing and billions of glass bits popping loose? Working through this problem is keeping me up nights.

Flint Institute of Art Art Show--June 2 to June 30

Here is the finished version, (tentatively) titled: Broken Glass Inside. I just finished it and schlepped it up into our bedroom to be used as a clothes horse (what ARE you supposed to do with clothes that have been worn once and so should not be rehung in the closet but that do not actually qualify as dirty and therefore needing to be put in the hamper?) when I got the word that it was wanted for an art show at the FIA. The show is featuring "The Figure" and, although this was never intended to have a human form, most people think it is a female human abdomen (indeed while I was working on it several women leaned into it and caressed it--longing for those long ago but not forgotten "baby bumps", perhaps?). Works for me! So off it went, back down the stairs, back into the car (strapped in, of course) and back to the FIA. The reception is on June 9th. (When I asked Simon if he wanted to attend with me, his only question was, "Will there be snacks?" Yes. "Then I'll be there.")

Hey--I'm in Knitaly

Check me out! I was looking through Google to find out who has been paying permissions to use excerpts from my text and this is what I found! (You have to read past the Italian to get to the mention of me--keep going, it's there.) I wish people would let me know if they find what I write interesting. It's so thrilling to get something published and then you spend year after year wondering if ANYONE ANYWHERE gives a rip about what you did.

Here is the original article: Hegel Knits.

(And I never did find out where the excerpts from my text are going--will someone please tell me who is quoting me and paying royalties to Prentice Hall? It's not as if I will make a dime but I am rather curious.)

Clay in Car

Here is the clay pot, after being glazed, on its way home. It's in the basement now, awaiting mosaicking and grouting. What its future holds after that, I'm not sure.

Clay Update

Here is the mystery pot just after getting five coats of glaze. I used the sprayer in a hooded, vented area (wouldn't want to get black lung or anything else nasty) at the FIA. It was quite satisfying watching it get darker and darker and (or so I hope) softer looking with the velvet underglaze. I don't know when it will get fired, but I am rather anxious to find out if it will make the journey to 1900-odd degrees and back without cracking. (Hmm. Sounds like a Jules Verne novel.) The long term plan is to mosaic the inside of the...mouth (?) with glass, light green and turquoise.
And here is my house. I did say in an earlier blog entry that I wanted to learn how to work with slabs and here is what I came up with. Each of the three levels is a separate box that, I hope, will survive both the bisque firing and the glaze firing without cracking or distorting to the point of no longer fitting together snugly. This structure has no purpose but I am rather satisfied with it nonetheless.

The Nautilus

Mosaics class ended and not too surprisingly I didn't finish The Nautilus. But I did get some decent work done and it is possible to see where this is all going. I hope to finish the red/orange/cream part of the shell and then will work on the backdrop once the next class session starts.
I have decided to chip off the tentacles and start again. Not only are they moving in the wrong direction (they will start in the shell and wiggle off to the lower right corner) but I decided that I want to make the tentacles creamy yellow/pinkish/whitish instead of the blue/green/purple that I have now. I want to have the blue/purple for the background. I chipped off one piece, and that only took about five seconds so, if you multiply that by about 300 pieces, I should get the old tentacles cleared away before I die of old age.

Clay...what is it?

Here is the clay thing so far. It's sitting, drying out, waiting for the first firing, on a shelf next to a window which is why it looks so stark and alone. I am not sure how I am going to glaze it, but I do know that I want the glaze to be very matte and variegated. I ended up using 40 pounds of clay so it is a big baby. A few (a very few) other FIA students have praised me for making this, one guy (who really reminds me of a type I used to see quite often when I lived in LA but haven't seen much of since moving to the heartland) stopped me in the parking lot to ask me about it and stated very enthusiastically how "cool" he thought it was. Others just seem bemused if not slightly offended. One person went out of her way to explain to me why making such large things is unduly burdensome on the school because of the kiln space it will take up. Those hallway monitors who hassled me 30 years ago have all grown up and are still at it.

Little People!

It's the 50th Anniversary of the Little People sets. I remember playing with these exact sets for hours and hours when I was little. Looking at them makes me feel so happy inside.

Meanwhile, the clay

I started taking pottery (wheel) classes at the FIA about 4 years ago, and always enjoyed them but realized pretty quickly that I had no artistic skills when it came to making things on the wheel. Or so I told myself at the time--I just kept churning out these endless medium bowls and rather clunky urns. (Though, if you are into clunky urns, mine were pretty good.) But it just wasn't clicking. Then I stumbled into the mosaics class (and I can't remember why I decided to take that class but there you go--one of those fateful moments that are seemingly uncaused yet, in retrospect, seem to fit in perfectly with everything you want or have been trying to do) and suddenly I began thinking about structures in a whole new way--not as ends in themselves but as means to be covered in tiny shards of glass. And mosaics book are, as a rule, filled with fantastic pottery that people have then covered with tessarae--it was a whole new way of thinking about clay and glass. So, when the FIA offered a handbuilding glass that promised to teach the student anything they wanted to know how to do, I signed up and started making my list. Firsts, coil building. I wanted to know how to make coil rolls (see play dough reference below) and build them into fantasticly improbable shapes. I had some sort of seed pod or gourd in mind. We've just finished our third class and this is what I have so far:

It's about 30" tall and (so far) has used about 25 lbs of clay. I will probably use another 5 or so pounds before I am done. People wander in the classroom while I work and comment (always annoying)--so far I have been asked if it is a chiminia, fireplace (?) or flower pot (?!?). I tell them that it isn't anything yet and will never be anything functional but that doesn't seem to satisfy. I'm toying with the idea of mosaicking just inside the mouth of the vessal when it is done--whenever that will be. What next? Slabs. (That's a technical term. No really.)

More on The Nautilus

Saturday I went in to the FIA to donate a box of glass bits to the kids mosaic glass and took these photos of The Nautilus while I was there. It always feels like I am getting so much done but, when you see how much there is left to do, it looks like I have hardly begun.
I am still SO PISSED that I have the tentacles (not legs or arms, I now know--though tentacles with no suckers, so unlike octopi and squid) coming out of the eye area instead of to the left, the large part of the shell. ARGH! In theory I could bust all the glass and do it correctly. Sniff. I can't think about that.

I do like the green stripes (so far) that are on the shell. I bought every damn shade of green glass in existence, cut each up into little pieces (about 1/8" by 1/2" or so) and then set to it. It's surprisingly satisfying working up a color run all within one color shade. And it looks pretty good, too.

Meanwhile, The Nautilus

My glass class at the FIA continues. This picture is AGES old (from the first day, I think, back in the first week of January). The board (just 3/8" wood attached to a 1" x 1" frame with knots and other uneven bits wood puttied and then covered with primer) is 3' by 4' and so weighed about 4 pounds naked. I wanted to do something rather abstract, but not completely detached from reality. I have always like patterns on shells, in particular nautilus shells, and so thought a massive nautilus would be a cool thing. I happened to have this piece of wood and so used it and, since I wanted to have it be very close up I didn't worry too much about the image ending up assymetrical. Now that I am farther along, I am worried and wonder if I should have done it on a 4' by 4' board. Well, too late now. Here you can see a few of the legs (arms? appendages? not sure) at the bottom and the start of the eye. I had it in my head that nautilus eyes (cephalopods and relatives of squids and octopi, apparently) were simply big, black circles, but they are actually quite complicated and beautiful.

Here is the pupil up close and personal. I intend to add a few more legs/arms/things in a while, but just got sick of doing them and not feeling like I was getting anywhere with this guy. By now I have the eye done, a horn/beak sort of thing done (not sure what that is, but will find out) and have started on the shell. If I remember to bring my camera to class next week, I'll get an updated picture then.
I am very peeved that, because I was so rushed the first week of class (my semester has started that week, too, and I was already desperately behind and disorganized) that I didn't have time to print up a picture of a nautilus to take to class to use as a basis for a quick sketch. Going by memory, I plotted out what I wanted to create. Then, a week later, I did get to looking at photos of the real things* and I was really cheesed to find that I had inverted the things in a really stupid way. I had the legs coming out of the main opening of the shell, and then had the main curve going up the right, over the top at the left, and then down and around. WRONG! Of course, they fact that the legs aren't really blue and green doesn't bother me at all. I immediately remembered Gary Larson (The Far Side) writing in some preface or another, that he was really annoyed with himself for drawing bananas growing down on a banana tree, when in fact they should grow upwards. The fact that he draws cows standing up, talking and wearing horn rimmed glasses, is entirely tolerable. There's a rich philosophical analysis waiting to be created here that will explain the rules of these things.

*My now favorite nautilus is the nautilus macrophalus, otherwise known as the "bellybutton nautilus". They are cute as buttons!

Glassy Eyed

The lack of updates is not because I have not been working on this. Here is a photo of The Thing from about two weeks ago. Filling in the orange spaces is surprisingly quick work. It's also enormously satisfying to give the body some size and heft. I switched back and forth between the speech bubble and The Thing. Since the glass pieces for the letters, bubble filling and outlining are so very, very small, I couldn't work on too much at a time without bumping and shifting all the pieces. So I would do a few letters then, while they were drying, work on a few more orange patches, and back and forth.
Here is where I am as of right now. Since I am officially on winter break (spring break for the rest of the world, 10 degrees F here in Flint makes it winter break here) I hope to really get to this and completely finish The Thing by the end of February.

Here is the speech bubble. This was far more tedious than I expected, and I was expecting it to be pretty grim. One the one hand, working with black and while tiles was very pleasant because it looked so clean and stark. It reminded me of the bathrooms I once saw in the Hot Springs, AR health spas from the 19th century--medicinal yet luxurious. Makes me want to toss around a giant leather medicine ball. One the other, it was very annoying because it's so important to make sure the letters really look like letters, can be easily read, and also accurately protray the three kinds of font so as to capture the tone of the speech.

Resolutions

So how am I doing? I haven't had a single nap in about 15 years. So a big F for that one. No homemade icecream, either. Not one spoonful. I HAVE added more art to my life in that I have decided to take a handbuilding clay class at the FIA, which started this past Monday. The class runs from 1-4 in the afternoon and it felt really weird to sneak out of work to do something utterly self indulgent. Also nice was the fact that there were only 3 of us in the class (though 2 more are alleged to be there from now on) so we had the whole room to ourselves. My only experience with clay is with wheel throwing classes which, though interesting, never seemed like art but did seem like a lot of work to fill the house with very heavy bowls of all sizes. I have never attempted handbuilding and am determined to make nothing practical or useful in any way whatsoever. The first project is using coils, which are surprisingly hard to make properly. (You know what it is if you have ever played with Play Dough. You take a glob and roll it on the table until you get a long, even sausage. The tricky part is that it must be a sausage that is perfectly even, smooth and tubular, not wobbly, lumpy or with flat sides.) Addie must be an excellent teacher because my clay rolls were things of beauty. I decided to make something REALLY BIG (of course) and so am attempting a thing that has a 14" roundish base and will have coiled sides that gently curve outward for about 12", and then cut in and close off and curve around. I have in mind something seed pod shaped but that has a flat bottom. (I am worried about that--should I have started with a bowl shape so it would be more like a gourd than something that looks like the top half of a gourd?) I built it up to about 5 inches on Monday and so am giving it a rest while the walls get stronger so I can add more. It's all rather exciting, in a very calm and heavy sort of way.
As to the other resolutions, well, I think I need to get to it. Fortunately, I will be on winter break starting in about 124 minutes, which is when my law class ends today. And, as we all know, winter break is when not only will I get caught up but I will be 6 months ahead of schedule!

A Daily Dose of Architecture

One of my favorite blogs that I stumbled across accidentally is A Daily Dose of Architecture. For reasons that I do not entirely understand, I like to read it before going to bed at night. It's always fabulous, but I particularly enjoyed this filmette, Mr. Glasses.

Mister Glasses

Poster Boy

I just found this on YouTube. I wish my brain could think this way.

Marvelously Marveling

I didn't work on this most of my holiday break, but I have been working lately and here is the current state of play:

The Hulk is done, purple pants and green face and all. I also started working on The Thing. I put off beginning this because I thought it would be hell on Earth but it turns out that it isn't. The internal debates were Debate 1: Should I fragment the orange sections (easier, but may look choppy) or try to cut each piece surrounded by black as a single piece (almost inconceivably difficult but more "rock like" in appearance). I struggled with this until I convinced myself that fragmented bits of glass can, too, look rock like or so I told myself so that I would begin working on it. Debate 2: Should I use the marbling side of the glass which has half a dozen or so shades of orange swirled within it (prettier colors but not very true to the original picture) or should I go with the other side which is a solid, dark orange (which is more like the original comic but would look very "flat" and not as interesting. I went with the swirls and, I tell myself, it also looks more "rock like" because it looks variegated and more shaped. I also just started The Thing's speech bubble. I have done the circle around it, and a bit of white in the bubble stem just to see what working with white would be like. I finished the black outlines on the right arm. Working on this went particularly easily, perhaps because I was listening to Atom Heart Mother (I've always wanted to take photographs of cows--what's that about?) which I haven't listened to in many, many years (two decades?!? Eek!). And, if all goes well this evening (which even typing that makes me think I have doomed my chances), I will start filling in the wrist and lower arm.

And here is the whole thing so far. Hmmm. I doesn't look like I have done all that much. How could I possibly think I would get this done by Christmas? Perhaps Summer Solstice is more likely.

Debate 3, as of yet not settled: And what for the background color? In the comic, it is a rather drab faded soft yellowly newspaper color. Not appealing. I want it to looks like they are bursting through a broken windscreen, so I am thinking either tightly fragmented clear glass or (fearing that may reveal a bit too much of the machinery behind the piece) lightly frosted glass. Hmmm.

New Year, New Look

I thought of a long list of New Year's Resolutions and was determined to commit myself to accomplishing them, but I never got around to writing them down. So although it is already January 21, it still is early days in this year. So I will write them down now and commit myself to accomplishing them...some time before the next January 21 comes along.
1. Give the blog a face lift. (done!)
2. Exercise 60 minutes on five days a week. Ok, this one stems from a meeting I had with my physician several years ago who then informed me that (a) given my family history and (b) given my high cholesterol levels dating back to when I was 21, I should do serious aerobic exercise for 60 minutes five days a week. I mulled these words over for about three years and then, this past December, decided that maybe she was on to something. So on January 1, 2009 I dutifully got on my free exercise bike (nabbed from my mom's basement just after her foot surgery when she couldn't stop me), put on my new Ipod and my awesome Bose headset--with REAL ear muffs and not those ridiculous ear buds that cause dizziness and headaches--turned on my newly acquired book on tape, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and set to it. And then about 5 minutes later I realized that 60 minutes just was not going to happen on that first day. I managed 20 minutes at level 5 and was amazed I lived to tell the tale. I am now up to 30 minutes at level 8.5. I have kept my promise of 5 days out of 7 (and am now into my next book on tape, Master and Commander) so so far I am in compliance with this one.
3. Get more art in my life. I have slowly come to the conclusion that the life of the mind, while often very satisfying, is not in an of itself good enough for the good life. As stated in earlier posts, I started taking art classes when I was 10, shelved that interest for years and then during the past four years have been taking art classes as often as I can. But I always viewed the art class as therapy (an escape from a stressful life) and/or education in the mechanics of ceramics/weaving/or whatever. But what I never really embraced was the possibility of ME making ART. Probably because I assumed that because I am not a professional artist, that I would have no right to make anything and call it art. So, very uncomfortably, I am trying to reconceptualize my efforts as ART, not mere activity.
4. Start finding pleasure in my job. I see myself heading for a serious mid-life crisis prompted by profound disappointment in my profession--both as practiced by others and myself. If I am to avoid that fate I have to start finding pleasure in what I do for 5-6 hours every day at the office and for 2-4 hours every day at home. But, as every well-trained philosopher knows, the pleasure paradox prevents us from pursuing pleasure simply for the sake of it. So what to do? Not sure about how to go about realizing this goal yet...Can professional philosophy be pleasurable?
5. Get rid of a lot of crap. I've said if before and I will say it again, but this time I mean it. Is 30% feasible? Let's go for it: 30% by volume, not weight. Starting sometime very soon. But not today.
6. Get out of debt. Same deal as 5--said it before but this time I mean it. (Ok, this one probably won't happen but I have to keep saying it.)
7. See more movies. Let's say one a week during the school year and 3 a week between semesters.
8. Have more naps. I propose at least 2 a week. But they don't have to be REAL naps (I don't actually have to fall into a deep sleep because then I get sweaty and have scary dreams) but I do have to "doze" peacefully for more than 10 minutes.
9. Eat more homemade ice cream. This one needs no explanation.