Got it.

courtingtheterriblemaster.blogspot.com
Sweep of the hat and a deep curtsy to David Foster Wallace.

the crippling tedium of naming things.

I have been pondering names for a new blog, and have come up with Nothing. Would that I could start one and think of a name later, but, in blog-world, you need a name to have an address to have a blog, so one needs to start at the very very beginning, unlike many projects of a creative and/or whimsical nature. This is funny and interesting to me. It's not a natural way for me to start a project, I've realized, much as I wish it was. Defining/titling something before it has been born makes no sense, and is literally crippling.
So...I guess i'll just procrastinate my way towards a new one here on tea and symphonies. Sigh.

The Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace killed himself. This isn't news, I know. Infinite Jest has been on my to-read list for so long, and how sad that I find it creeping its way back up to the top in light of its creator's demise. It's also odd to me, to feel such a sense of solidarity for a complete stranger whose books I have never read. There's something important in knowing that even those people who seemed to have such a reign on their lives can relent.
Today I happened upon these words of DFW via fb, and the last paragraph sent shivers through me that have yet to dissipate.

"As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."


"They shoot the terrible master."

How lucid and foreboding a warning.

on procrastination, t-shirts, and sundry potent thoughts.

For the record, I'm procrastinating. I'm so close to finishing this bloody book, and the remaining drawings are filling me with dread and tedium, for some reason, probably the same reason that has me thinking daily about moving to Berlin and getting a job as a waitress. Which, I should say, (with no small awareness of the irony of it all) fills me with unparalleled glee. As well as remorse that I may be completely incapable of committing to anything on earth, at the very least geography.
But ANYHOW. Drawing is next, just a few small thoughts to fill a bit of lax time beforehand.
I love t-shirt slogans. I would own a company, or buy the company, or at the very least wear sloganed t-shirts, if they actually sold t-shirts, and not tents, with clever thoughts on them.
A few weeks ago I saw one that has been reverberating in and out of my head in sundry moments:

Well-behaved women rarely make history.

And though it is that typical feminist cheek and righteousness, I have to say, not only is it true, but it's kind of depressing, and really brings home who's writing this planets narrative.

in the interim.

Isn't that always the way. I say I'm going to quit something and then somehow end up revisiting it with renewed fervour.

Though this isn't much of a fervourous (sic) post, to be sure. But it's amusing. Marginally amusing, anyhow. From Harpers' Weekly:

Police in Fresno apprehended a man for breaking into a house, rubbing cooking spices on the body of one sleeping resident, and assaulting another resident with a sausage.

How do they find this stuff?

a new human being.

So there has been radio silence, it is true. I've been drawing and drawing, and visiting Montreal, and drawing some more, and sorting and thinking, and strategizing my life.
I haven't come up with much.
BUT. I did realize that it has been 7 years, officially, to the day (yesterday, that is, Sept 11) that I arrived back home from my Aus-Asiatic tour.
I am a New Human Being. Skin, cells, and all.
That day, seven years ago, i made a decision (in as many words) not to leave the country for any extended period of time until I had found myself a livelihood I felt proud of (read: no more waitressing). And 'til I had somehow started making my own book(s), of some sort.
And so here I am, seven years later, doing clever things with computers to make books and magazines. So for the most part, kudos to me. Although this morning I encountered the mailbot (in my other job that must not be named) beeping forlornly as it butted up against a locked door. I sniggered as I squished by, but as the kettle began to boil in the lunch room I relented. It just sounded so defeated out there in the hallway.
So yes. A bit more balance would be nice, or commitment, perhaps, which we know I'm such an expert at, but all in all, I have made some progress, a blessed seven years later.
And I'm just finishing up my sixth little book, self-published as they may be. With two grants under the belt and storyboards evolving for part 6 of The Details (my seventh book, should we wish to include the little seen One-Night Stands), I'm feeling not too shabby this morning. Or at least in line with my goals.

All this said, it comes with a niggling need for change, which has me pondering some new seven-year plans, and a new blog to boot. I have not yet decided the name of it, but am hoping one will come in the next few weeks, for after I send Teatime 2 to the printers, I shall begin anew.
Check back here for details, but, 'til then, tea and symphonies i think i bid you fond adieu. An enjoyable chapter, but onwards!