Bookmarking

Okay, going into this weekend I'm more than halfway though another reading of The Flower of Knighthood and making very few changes, which is an excellent sign. I'm going to work on that, and prioritize the Etsy photos, and get some sleep. I'm going to a concert tonight in Hollywood, the Ladytron show at the Music Box (look for a review of it on my fleurdamourmusic blog in the next few days), and after that, it's time to rest and focus.

Victories for the Constitutional Ideal of Freedom of the Press and the Free Flow of Information on the Internet

Here is another great article I found via Mediabistro's media news aggregator service. This one is regarding big media regulation, and a recent victory for democracy whereby proposed legislation that would have allowed large media companies to own newspapers as well as TV and radio stations in the same markets was shot down.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080616/mcchesney

At least there is some sense left in this country. I've worked for several big media companies and they have a whole lot of positive aspects, like greater resources and, at least in the past, more employment stability, but no one company should be allowed a monopoly on the press in any given area. Big media already owns too much, in news and entertainment. Thank god for the internet. At least that's still open to anyone, and a lot of people are putting up a fight to keep it that way.

Last Man Standing

All but one of the saucer guys has left, headed up the road to San Francisco, and the movie crew seems to have wrapped up, too. I heard conflicting reports about what their project was; someone told me it was a big studio movie, but one of my housemates said he thought it was a TV show. Whatever it was, it was well-financed, because they sure had a lot of trucks. The last remaining saucer dude is named Scottie, an artist who lives in Utah. He got invited to Lightning in a Bottle by the festival organizers because they had seen the saucer at other events, and they covered the cost of his gas to get it there. Sweet. A UFO takes a lot of gas to travel interstate - that thing is really big. This is why the artist's community is so much fun. I like living in a place where a flying saucer shows up.

I got a little editing done last night, but at some point I realized I was re-reading the same passage over and over again because I was so fried. It's been a busy week and I am very tired. I gave up on it, took a shower, and watched Sex and the City DVD's with my housemates. I call that show the junk food of the mind, and I was ready for some. I've read my book I think ten times since I started revising it in February and I feel battle-fatigued, but it's almost there. I am very happy with it and it will be done soon.

When Worlds Collide

There is a giant flying saucer parked in front of my house right now. Some of my roommates went to the Lighting in a Bottle music festival just north of Santa Barbara over the Memorial Day weekend and several of their friends came back with them for a few days. The guests made a huge solar-powered UFO for the festival circuit, and it's now outside our house. There is also a major motion picture being filmed on our block starting today, so it's like a three-ring circus out there. It should calm down by this evening when I get home and start my book editing for the evening. There were so many people in the house Monday night when they all got back from the festival that I gave up trying to do any work and put in a DVD of Donnie Darko and sorted my socks while I watched it. It was like the circus was in the house then, no sense trying to work, so I thought putting in the weirdest movie I could find would fit the atmosphere, and it did. Some of the saucer people sat down and watched it with me. All we needed was a wormhole for them and they could have gotten home to Utah pronto.

Here is the saucer: http://www.thesolarsaucer.com/Photos.html

One Hundred and Eighty Photos Later

I picked up my new camera on Friday, along with batteries, a camera bag and a memory card, and took it home and started reading the manual. It's super-easy to use, one reason I chose it, and I mastered taking pictures very quickly (I've never owned a digital camera before, so this is all new to me). I set up my garment rack full of vintage clothing outside behind the house on Sunday when the sun came out and photographed all of the stuff in under two hours. Then Monday I took all of the smaller loose items I have to sell, like jewelry and knick-knacks, and styled a backdrop on an outside windowsill that looked really cool, and took pictures of all of those items. I still need to install the software to upload the photos and to take measurements and write descriptions of all of the items for the Etsy listings, but the pictures are all ready to go. I hope to have some stuff up by the end of the week.

The camera also has video capabilities, which is remarkable, because it is tiny and was so inexpensive. I'll play around with that this week some and see what I can do. Not sure if it has sound capacity, but I'll find out. I love it, am very glad I bought it. And I can write it off on my taxes, too, score!

I got a lot of other stuff done this weekend, too. I've been so immersed in writing and editing my books for the last year that I was behind in a lot of other stuff that I just did not prioritize near the top of the to-do list. I've been taking care of some of that lately, including unpacking some boxes from storage, filing papers, going through old bank records and shredding two years' worth of receipts and documents, mending clothes, organizing drawers, my desk and my arts and crafts area, etc. I feel like I am shedding my old skin and getting ready for the future. I have big plans for the second half of this year and for 2009 and I want to get all of this administrative stuff out of the way so my slate is clear. I plan another visit to NYC in September because I still have some things in storage there from my Katrina debacle, and I want to dump most of that and move only what I really feel is irreplaceable. I want to free up the funds I am paying to store that stuff so I can apply them what I need now, and I plan to make another cross-country drive next year to move the items I want to keep out here. This is not the best way to be bi-coastal, and I feel too scattered. It would be better to keep less but keep it all together, and gas has gone up so much in the time since I left NYC that it makes no sense to transport some of that stuff. It would be cheaper to replace it out here. Rent in Los Angeles is no joke, and I don't expect to have a large apartment to myself anytime soon. The artist's community where I live is a great value, but my personal space is limited, and I just can't fit everything I used to have when I lived by myself. I mailed some boxes back last year when I visited and cleared some of the storage out, and I may do that again. I was so happy to receive those in the mail a few days after I got back, some clothes I really like and a beautiful comforter and vintage pillows I bought for myself when I had a big apartment on Staten Island. I am also going to look into shipping a few things by freight. No sense moving the lighter stuff it if would be cheaper to mail it or put it on a truck.

I worked a little this past weekend on editing The Flower of Knighthood, but decided to ride the wave of setting up shop and cleaning house, so I saved buckling down on the book for this week when I only have evenings free and don't want to get into some big cleaning project.

I Am a Camera

Yaay, people! I bought my digital camera online earlier today through Best Buy and arranged to pick it up at their local store. It was on sale for Memorial Day, and I saved enough on the holiday discount to cover the cost of a case and memory card for it. The total for the camera and accessories also came to $70 less than I had budgeted for the whole thing, so I am ahead. I am going to use some of the balance to buy tickets to go see The Faint, bonus for me.

Here is the camera - it's pink!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8671804&type=product&id=1197074522114

It got really good customer reviews that said it was easy to use, and a four-and-a-half star rating, so I figured it would be perfect for me. I'm not really tech-y and I just need something simple that works well. I've also had good luck with every Kodak thing I've ever bought. I'm going to devote time tonight to reading the manual and figuring it out, and will start on the Etsy merch photos as soon as the weather clears up here in L.A. It's really overcast and cold and windy, and I need to take the pictures outside. I want to be really proficient on this thing before I go to France in July. I want to take LOTS of pictures of Paris, Rennes, and Mont St. Michel. I also plan to do a lot of reading and editing this weekend.

It Really Has to Be Done Soon, Doesn't It?

OK, y'all, I finished another edit round of The Flower of Knighthood. My posts here lately are starting to sound like Groundhog Day - it's like I am re-living the same thing over and over in order to get it just right. I am pleased with the work I have done, but I admit I am getting very tired. I'll read the manuscript again over the weekend to check these latest changes.

One Step Back, One Step Forward

I had a setback this past weekend in my timeline for going live with my online store. My relative loaned me a digital camera to take photos of my items, but she forgot to give me the cable and the software disk for it so I could post the pictures online. She lives an hour and a half away, so there was no way I could get the missing components by the time I discovered I needed them. So my Etsy shop is still empty for a few more days, but this is probably a good thing in the long run, because I decided to go next weekend and buy myself a good digital camera. I found one at Best Buy online that's a reasonable price. I need one anyway; it's been becoming clearer to me lately that it would help me get more writing assignments if I could provide pictures for some of my articles without having to arrange for a photographer to accompany me. I've been asked by several magazines if I could do that, so I think I need to empower myself and get the camera. It's not like it's hard to use one, I just haven't bought one because I had other priorities, but this is the kind of cross-functionality that media demands now, and while I am not a great photographer by any stretch of the imagination, I can manage something that's ok. I also need my own camera to manage this online shop, so it's worth the investment.

On a positive note, I took the time I would have used on setting up the shop and applied it to working on my book editing. I'm now more than halfway finished with this next edit and hope to have it done by the end of this week so I can spend next weekend taking the photos with my new camera.

Another Day, Another Draft

I just finished another draft of The Flower of Knighthood. I completed the readthrough this morning and typed in the last changes today while I was eating lunch. I'm printing it now for another copy edit. It feels done to me. I may catch a few more little things, but like I said, I have been going back and forth on some changes I made and historically when I start doing that, it's done. I also feel like I did when I was readying the copyright submission draft at the end of 2006, the final stages where almost everything is locked down and ready to go. I am working with my best friend, an artist and animator who also does web design, and we're getting ready to post the download option on my website soon, at www.fleurdamour.us. Stay tuned. He's also going to help me with the cover art for the physical book when I get that cued up. I got a concept to him a while back and he's been ruminating on it for a painting. I want kind of a '70's fantasy paperback-inspired look, with a Medieval feel to it. Something like this:

http://www.vintagepbks.com/images/sf/baf/baf_23485.jpg

I collaged the basic elements that need to go into the piece, and told him the style I want. We'll see what he comes up with. He's remarkably visually talented. I sat and watched him quickly sketch a perfect likeness of someone once from a photo I gave him, so I know I am in good hands. My goals for the weekend now are to work on this next copy edit and on getting photos taken of my Etsy merch that's hopefully going to finance the first press run of the book.

Interesting Article - Famous Cases of Writer's Block

I like to read about other writers sometimes, and I found this today - it's an interesting analysis of two famous cases of writer's block.

http://www.slate.com/id/2191312/

I always thought it seemed like Ralph Ellison was just happy to sit on the social laurels he accrued from writing his one successful book, Invisible Man. And Truman Capote was a raging alcoholic. They both exhibited addict behavior, no wonder they had such problems pulling themselves together to write on an ongoing basis. I read a really great book once, called Witness to the Fire, by Linda Schierse Leonard, about the archetypes running wild in the psyche of an addict. She used cases of famous artists to illustrate her points, pulling from their work and lives to demonstrate her points. I also thought The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron was very interesting and helpful for unblocking oneself. Reading that has helped me get to the point where writing and editing are integrated into my daily life, which is incredibly rewarding. I had trouble getting started as a writer when I was young because nothing in my environment was encouraging me to do so, but I hit some kind of critical mass around 1995 where I no longer cared what anyone else thought. I realized I had something to say and I decided that I would figure out how to say it, and do what I needed to do to get it out there. And here we are.

Progress on Several Fronts

I had an amazingly productive weekend. I am more than halfway through another readthrough of my first book, and in addition to completing a bunch of personal errands, I got all of my vintage merchandise ready to post on my new Etsy webstore so I can start generating some cash. I had to do some minor repairs to a few things, like where a hem was out on one dress, and a few things needed some ironing. I plan to work on mastering the digital camera this week and getting photos taken of the clothes next weekend so that I can list everything. This is actually a lot of fun. I love clothes and I like styling things. There is a funky old mannequin kicking around the artist's community where I live, and I plan to dress her up for some pictures. I have a big collection of 1980's floral summer dresses that are way cool, and some late 1970's polyester dresses that also rock. I plan to work on the book more today and hopefully finish it by the end of this week.

The Man of Light and The Axis Mundi

The book I just read, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, pulled some things together for me. I've written here about the axis mundi and how it's been showing up for me archetypally lately. The book talks about that, expanding on the mystical significance of the North Pole in Sufism and other esoteric disciplines (I've run across it in shamanism, King Arthur mythology, the Egyptian Osiris story and Hermetic mythos, too). The pole is the metaphor for the axis mundi, the center of the world. The north is a metaphor for the highest spiritual places, being at the top of the world and of the heavens, and the stars at the North Pole are named as the site of the throne of God. I wanted to read about this because I used that mythology in Parsifal. I did enormous amounts of research for the book, not just in the Matter of Britain and the European Parsifal stories, but also in the possible Persian antecedents of the story (an old story called The Cup of Jamshid about a vessel which may have been an earlier Grail), possible Greek origins (the cup of kykeon, the sacred beverage of the Eleusinian mysteries, the drinking vessl again perhaps a proto-Grail or chalice), Siberian shamanism, Sufism, ancient European mother goddess and divine son mythology, the Sumerian myth of the iniation of Inanna into the underworld as a metaphor of the descent of the soul through the seven planetary circles and into the material world, and so forth. I used the Persian Zoroastrian emphasis on astrology as a celestial mirror of spiritual occurrences as a way to tie my book back to the possible Middle Eastern genesis of the myth, and I got really interested in a theory that the Arthurian body of myth may in fact have been completely inspired by the movement of the polar stars, including the bear constellations, bear in Latin being Artos. This all bubbled away for a while inside of me, then gushed out and into the book. Finding a Sufi book that talked about the same things, the pole (qutub) and the seven lights that indicate the seeker's approach to it, really excited me. The book talks about how the rainbow lights are the seven subtle organs of the inner man, the man of light who is hidden in the flesh until the spiritual seeker unearths him. Those would be the chakras, and I think the pole also refers to the awakening of the kundalini energy in the spine, and the flowering of the crown chakra. An honored shaykh in a Sufi tariqat is sometimes referred to as the pole, and so is the sheepskin upon which a person kneels when they are to be initiated into a Sufi order. In Sufi and Shia Islam, there is also said to be a hidden imam of great spiritual power (sometimes named as Archangel Gabriel) who is secreted amongst the stars in the northern sky. One ascends down into a well (the spinal column?) into the depths of one's being, and then begins to ascend, passing through a show of colorful lights (sometimes symbolized by the aurora borealis) and meeting mystic prophets associated with each chakra center (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and Mohammed). The final color one sees is a brilliant and radiant green, the color of the gardens of Allah, as one meets the imam, who wears one's own perfect face. Henry Corbin, the book's author, tied this Islamic mystic experience in to a similar Hermetic story, too, about meeting one's Perfect Nature, the spiritual guide which is one's highest self. Dervishes of the Turkish Mevlevi order (founded by Rumi in Konya) enact their whirling to express the motion of cosmic bodies around their central poles. I have achieved a whole new level of understanding of esoteric mysticism in general and Sufism in particular by reading this book - it tied up many loose ends for me and answered a lot of questions. The next books I want to read are Green Hermeticism, the new book about applying alchemical philosophy to the environmental movement, and the Kerenyi Dionysos book that I started a few weeks ago, blogged about briefly, then set aside in order to work on my book drafting. I think it's time to go back to it, as time permits. There were some archetypal similarities to the Dionysos myth that I found in the Hermetic stories in The Man of Light. One reason I got into Sufism in the first place was because I was interested in alchemical and Hermetic studies from my work in medievalism, and I realized through research that the origin of much of the material was in the Middle East, in al-kimiya, the earliest forerunner of modern chemistry. It got transferred to Europe via the Crusades and trade, and during the Moorish conquest and occupation. Everything is connected, and I intend to find as many of the connections as I can, because this is fascinating to me, and the basis of my life's spiritual and creative work.

Time is Speeding Up

I thought I would need to wait a few days after my last edit readthrough of The Flower of Knighthood before I started another one, but I not only went ahead and dived right back into it, I am more than one third of the way through, in about a day and a half. I really want to finish it. It's just over two months until I go to the conference in France, and I really, really want to be done and be able to take something with me. I am still making edits on this readthrough, but can tell that I am very nearly done, because I'm starting to argue with myself that some of my suggested changes don't really make a difference one way or the other, and also because I've looked at some of the prior changes I made and decided I don't agree with them after all, and changed them back. Both of those are signs that I am almost done, because the same things start happening when I am almost through with a magazine article or song.

My tentative plan is this: I want to have the book ready to sell in a small self-published press run and also in a downloadable format before the conference. I will offer a free download of the first ten pages, which is my sample of the book that I show people to give them an idea of its contents, and will charge a small amount for an instant download of the whole book for anyone who likes the sample and wants to read the whole thing without waiting for a hard copy to ship; I will also print up some paperback versions and offer them at a reasonable price for those who want a real book. I still want to approach one commercial publisher that I recently learned about who may be interested just to see what they say, and to see which publishers show up at the conference since they might be very interested in it, but I don't want to wait any longer to get this book out there. The technology now supports instant release of content, and I want to avail myself of that. If I can't get the print run locked down before the conference, I will aim to get the download up so I can give the info to other International Arthurian Society members, since they are a ready-made audience. I want to speed things up, because I also want to get back to Parsifal and get an edit read-through done on it, too. It mentions both Rennes and Mont St. Michel, sites in the area of northern France where the conference is taking place, and I want to be able to talk about that, too.

Blogging My Little Heart Out

I wanted to add something to my notes about my creative process with these books. As I said in an early post, I did not start a blog in the past because I was spending so much time writing the books that I did not want to siphon off any energy from them, which was the right decision for that situation. I needed to devote every minute that I could to them, because I had lost a lot of productive time due to various problems and demanding work, the kind of work that pays bills, not self-affirming work. When I got my inspiration, I did not want to mess it up by diverting any energy to other projects, but now it's actually really helping me to have this outlet. Reporting here on my progress is helping me stay on track and I want to have a record of what I accomplished, and how I did it. It's useful for psychological processing, too, and for addressing other topics that interest me but that I don't feel a need to cover in depth. I like to write in general, and I find it fun. These little capsule entries are a breeze after the huge, demanding projects I have undertaken the last few years. It's a completely different kind of writing than I am used to, and I really like it.

Flowering

I just made the last edit changes to the manuscript and am about to print it for another proofread. Awesome. I am getting tired, but I have to say that this last runthrough was very freeing. I remember when I wrote earlier drafts, and especially the one I sent to the Copyright Office to register it, I was very attached to particular turns of phrase and thought I would never change them. Well, after writing another book and realizing that I could in fact improve on some of my previous writing, I am much more willing to go in fearlessly and be beholden to nothing if I can find a better way to say it. I did not change any of the poetic phrases that I am very proud of, but I learned that it was highly possible to find clearer expressions for some things that I thought were set in stone. I have become much less of a precious writer through this whole process, meaning that I give more to the reader now, I don't make him work as hard to understand me. I think I was a bit of an artiste in the past, which is understandable for an author on their first book, but I see now that I was a bit too impressed with myself a few years ago when I finished the first draft. Again, I consider that that's forgivable, and it's also a very young thing, which I was as an artist. The more I write, the more I will learn. I got really, really frustrated at the poetry conference I went to in March when one of the workshop leaders talked about not being too eager to find your voice as a writer. I don't really agree with that, because you DO need to figure out your creative identity, your voice, on the page, and you can only do that by writing, but maybe he meant a little bit of what I am saying here. He used the example of an established female poet who wrote really spiritual and ethereal poems for a long time, and then suddenly started writing in the voice of an earthy man. He thought she found her voice too early, and had to change it. I don't see that as a change in style so much as a psychological development, personally; it sounds like she hit a certain phase of growth and her animus, her inner masculine, kicked in to correct and balance her conscious attitude. My Arthurian knights are expressions of my own animus. My books are very feminine, but there are these strong, spiritual male figures at the center of them. That's like an axis mundi for me, a pole that provides support for my own female energy. I don't think anyone at the poetry conference, and most people talking about any kind of art, really, fully understand that the important thing about art is not just the aesthetic product, but that it is also about the internal psychological and emotional process that you go through while making the product. You HAVE to find your voice, your identity, in order to develop it, even if that means changing it at some point; you can't just flail around for years not knowing who you are or how you write. But I can understand having to make a course shift in order to break down a kind of expression that might be walling you in or limiting you as an artist. Making these additional passes through The Flower of Knighthood has enabled me to grow more and more, and I am very grateful for that.

Solar Consciousness

My friend writes me fairytales sometimes that always turn out to be far more than just some little entertainment. Like all myths, they come right out of the collective unconscious and always mean more than they might seem to at first. He wrote one for me back in September of last year that ended up tying in not only to real things in my life that had immediately preceded it, it also became significant again this past week as I was reading The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. In the fairytale, he described a city and a well and emeralds and other things, and it turns out, as I learned from the book, that he perfectly nailed a highly mystic Sufi experience in his description and plot, without ever having heard of that particular experience at all. When I told him, he was like, “Well, awesome.” This is why I believe in God, people, and in spiritual things. I have had so many experiences where I unknowingly did something because it felt right, and come to find out I had just enacted some kind of high and hallowed thing. La ilaha illallah – there is no god but God – there is nothing but God.

In the fairytale, he cast me as the heroine, and I sang a little song at the well called The Flower of the Sun. I actually wrote it last night, at least the words, and it’s Sufi, too, and was inspired by the concepts in The Man of Light and in the fairytale. Here you go:

The Flower of the Sun

There is a rose the shade of copper
That grows in a garden on the upper
Gallery of an emerald house.
The columns there are set in rows
And open to the northern sky.
The house itself sits very high,
For its foundations stand astride
The sheer face of a mountainside.
There is a well in the garden’s center
That one can drink from if one enters
And ascends the house’s height.
The rose sits in an earthen pot
Set upon a balustrade.
The flower itself casts no shade,
For it is the distilled essence
Of the solar luminescence.
It is the Flower of the Sun,
And just as the world had begun,
It sprang forth from a tiny sprout,
And bloomed, and put the darkness out.

-Susan Brooks

Vessel

Okay, I am done with this latest readthrough of The Flower of Knighthood. I only need to type the last batch of changes into the manuscript and then I am ready to… read it again! It’s fascinating to me what the process of working on it so hard has done for me. It’s developed my nervous system to a higher degree, as art always does in an alchemical process – as one does the work in the outside world, the work is also done in the inner space, since we can perceive everything only inside of ourselves. The work of each pass through it has not only untangled strands in the language of the manuscript, it has also done the same for my own mind. Our nerves are bundles of fibers, and all of the readthroughs have felt like a comb-out of my synapses and a massage of my grey matter, like a spa treatment from the inside out. I realized something else profound about the text last night as I was finishing it. Even after I “fix” this book in its final form, as the Copyright Office terms it, and call it done, it will continue to be a living, breathing thing. All of the life and energy that I put into it will remain forever, and it will continue to be informed by my essence. It will also become a container for all of the experiences that others have while reading it, and I could not be happier about that. It’s why I want to share my work, to both express myself and to interact with others. That’s the reason I labored over it to weave it so closely, like a well-made basket – watertight, but not airtight, because it will always want to breathe. It will need to be able to hold a lot, and to hold up well over time. It’s like a Moses basket that I am putting something precious into, and sending out onto the river to let the current carry where it needs to go.

She's Crafty

I just opened up a little crafts and vintage shop on Etsy.com. I need to make more money in order to accomplish some things that I want to do (like buy my good laptop and take more classes), and I used to do vintage resale and arts and crafts shows in New York City when I lived there. I enjoy it as a sideline, and I wanted to get back to it. I like to make little things, too, just as recreation for myself, and having an outlet for selling them is cool. I also have needed to blow off some steam lately, and a project like this is a good, productive way to do it. I do like to shop sometimes, and instead of buying more stuff for myself that I don't really need, I can buy supplies and make things, and find cool vintage stuff and put it up in the shop. Etsy is awesome, kind of like a candy store if you like vintage and handmade, arty kinds of things.

Here is the link if anyone is interested. I have not listed any items yet, because I have been busy writing my shop profile and figuring out how to set up the sections, but I'll put some stuff up soon. I'll also add this link to the sidebar here with my other websites.

http://fleurdamour.etsy.com

Almost There

I'm just a few pages away from completing another edit cycle on The Flower of Knighthood. I am really, really glad that I am doing all of this work on it. I truly have improved the book with every pass, and I am very grateful that I did not rush it to print. By putting in the extra effort, I am making something I can be proud of for the rest of my life. I hope to finish the edits this week, take a few days off to clear my head, and start another read-through by early next week.