Hello 2009

The holidays were awesome this year, but I'm glad to get back down to business. I actually spent a lot of my time off productively - I ran a lot of errands, did some book edits, and read a lot. I've been researching several topics for writing material and just general personal interest, among them Nordic/Germanic mythology, and especially stories concerning Yggdrasil, the World Tree (cosmic axis mundi and world pillar). I read a useful book from the Los Angeles Jung Institute Library called Gods of the North by a British writer, Brian Branston. He gave a good overview of the Northern cosmogony up to and including Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. Anyone who has been following my Twitter posts lately knows I am kind of obsessed with the axis mundi. It's turning up over and over again synchronistically in my work and has been for some time, explicitly so at least a year now and more subtly for much longer. A related and dormant project I've been working on for a very long time suddenly flowered again a few weeks ago and I wrote 120 handwritten pages over the course of 24 hours. I woke up writing and wrote all day and into the night, and woke up again writing the next day. The story takes place on the world tree and is highly alchemical in nature. It started as dialogue in poetry with music, and I thought it would be something geared more to performance, like an opera or musical play, but it suddenly turned into a book with related songs, which I think is really interesting. I have not touched it since that day when I poured out so much in an unbroken stream, but I read the Northern gods book to prime the pump again. Creativity is weird - you can't predict when it will flower, but you can court it. You have to woo it with pretty images and words, and give it interesting material to think about that stimulates the unconscious mind. I'm very happy with what I did in fact produce lately, ecstatic in fact - it was of very high quality, and was also inspired by a book called Prospero's Island by Noel Cobb, about alchemy in Shakespeare's The Tempest. That work influenced mine, as well. My project is kind of a stew of different cultural elements, all of which are traceable to common Indo-European mythological roots.

I am also researching buying a new computer. I want an Apple Mac Book Pro and am looking all over the web for a deal. I need one to develop my music and multi-media project ideas, and I put off getting one last year so I could attend the three conferences I went to in California and France, but it's time to invest in the equipment I need. The only thing I've bought lately is some Amazon penny books for my research (the Rig Veda, the Poetic and Prose Eddas, The Niebelungenlied) but I've been pretty good with my funds otherwise because I want the computer really badly.

I'm one step closer to publishing the first book, too - my friend is almost done with the original cover painting. He worked hard on it over the holidays and said he just needs to clean up a smudge and will scan it for my approval this week. I met a writer at my housemate's holiday salon, and got some leads on publishers from him, too. I plan to research them and follow up with him this week. I also want to follow up with Charles Upton, a writer who contacted me about his book, a Sufi work entitled Shadow of the Rose. I've been reading it, I love it, and it has a lot in common with some of the conclusions I have drawn in my own work about Sufi influences on medieval European aesthetics and ideas. His publisher sounds very promising and I want to ask him for information. Another lady who also visited a housemate and who works on multimedia projects of her own expressed enthusiastic interest in reading my book, so I plan to follow up with her.

I also just made a sale on Etsy, too, my first of the year. A lady in Paris bought a little black dress; it will go out tomorrow via international post. I've been surprised how many sales I have made to overseas clients - Italy, France and Australia so far. One thing I worked on some over the holidays and need to devote more effort to in the coming weeks is my shop. I bought some closet organizing materials with a gift card I got as a present, and re-ordered a lot of my vintage merchandise. I need to photograph some things and make some more craft items, too. The shop only trickles in money, and less so the last few months due to the dire economy, but it's still fun. I've always loved vintage and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur in that regard, so it gives me an artistic outlet besides the writing.

Year End

My poor neglected blog - I've been so busy lately that I haven't posted here regularly, not to mention my even more deprived music blog, Fleur D'Amour. It's one of my main New Year's resolutions to get back to both of them. I love posting here, just haven't been able to organize my thoughts for anything longer than a Twitter post lately.

I finally finished moving and painting, and my room looks great. There is some minor cleanup to do putting some office supplies and clothes away, but I'll take care of that this weekend. I'll take pictures and post when I am done, because the room really does look cool. It took a lot of effort to update it but it was worth it. It's a really good synthesis of where I am now combined with elements from my past, both from my family and the life I've lived since I left home. I also managed to include markers from the many distinct phases I have gone through in my own aesthetic development - all in one room!

I plan to do a lot of general wrap-up and organizing over the next few weeks. I've also been neglecting my Etsy shop and I need to reevaluate it. With this poor economy entrenched for the long haul, I'm going to lower my prices significantly and keep them there. I also need to make a lot more stuff to list in the shop - I have been trying to get to that, but was just too busy with the book, conference, etc. Etsy people seem to love the handmade thing even more than the vintage thing, and I am happy to oblige. I don't have all the time in the world for it, but I do have a few hours a week to devote to making things. I wish I could have gotten it done before Christmas, and maybe I can get some of it accomplished by then, but better late than never.

I've also got catch-up to do on my writing. I haven't been writing for magazines at all lately because I've been busy with the books, and I want to line some up for next year that I can contribute to regularly. I plan to work on Parsifal edits all through Christmas, and research more about getting The Flower of Knighthood into Amazon's Kindle offerings and do a cost breakdown for the small print run I want to get underway. In this economy, I don't think I have a prayer of finding a publisher for epic poetry, so better to just get the thing out there. I've been researching the Hogarth Press model, the small house founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf to publish her books and which they started from one tabletop printing press. That's a business model I can get behind - the modern equivalent is a laptop, which I am budgeting to try to get in January at the post-holiday sales. I want to use that to make a big push toward more social networking in 2009, too. I still don't have much readership here and I need to utilize Facebook, etc. in a more integrated manner and set up pages for my books and other projects. Then there is the poetry contest I want to enter in March - that might lead to being published, but only if I can win it, and there is no telling what their objective taste will be. I am going to do my best to impress.

I want to wish everyone happy holidays. It's been a crazy year what with the second Great Depression and all, but let's work to make 2009 successful and fulfilling.

Clothes Make the Woman

I promise I'll stop blogging about clothes soon - it's my most shallow interest and I spend way too much of my time and energy on it, but with all of this cleaning, moving and storage upheaval, it's in the forefront right now. I am about ready to move on, though - I streamlined in order to simplify so I would have more time for greater things like my books as opposed to clothing maintenance. I cleared some mental space by removing physical underbrush from my environment. I wish I could be like Catherine Deneuve - she looks amazing no matter what and she looks like she makes some effort, but not all that much, because honestly, she doesn't need to. I am not that lucky in the glamour department, but I do have my own thing and I am content with it. I mostly sit at the lunch table with the goth kids, but I'm not extremely so. I just like black and vintage or plain stuff like Donna Karan, Japanese clothes and military styling, and I don't veer much from that aesthetic blueprint. When I was in NYC lately, I was also reminded that I still dress a lot more East Coast than West - I bought most of my clothes while I lived there, and it shows. You'll look at the subway or a Manhattan street in winter time and it's just a sea of black wool, which describes a lot of my closet. I've got a little bit of UK in my wardrobe, too, including a Pringle of Scotland bag that I love and a wool capelet that I bought in London in 2003. I think I am sometimes at least slightly frumpy, but if that is the price of comfort, so be it. I never wear heels, I am too tall for them, and I am partial to boots and long skirts and black t-shirts of all kinds. I might as well be wearing jammies today - I've got on Uggs and an American Apparel t-shirt with a kangaroo pocket and a hoodie, and I am as happy as a clam. I am a little bit frumpy and a little bit rock and roll - I also have some awesome music t-shirts including Pink Floyd and the London mod scene. Hopefully that balances any dowdiness I may carry from some of the more old lady clothes I sometimes wear (although I will blog about little old ladies as style inspirations in a separate post - seriously, there is some generational matriarchal wisdom to be gleaned from older women's clothing choices). It really all just reflects my personal interests and experiences, especially with the places I have lived and travelled. For a good example of that, I recently had to replace my backpack (I take public transit a lot and I carry my huge book manuscript around with me so I can edit it) and I bought a black corduroy one at Target and sewed a small embroidered patch from the gift shop at Mont St. Michel onto the flap. In another recent instance of a souvenir purchase, I also bought a gorgeous probably-1980's black floral print skirt in Paris for about five euro, and it fits like it was made for me. Because of little things like those sentimental items, my mother's old costume jewelry, my auntie's perfect black leather clutch bag, my cowboy boots that remind me of a pair my daddy wore when I was little, and my own long-standing thrift habit, I can guarantee you that no one is dressed exactly like me, and that is just the way I like it. I think that is what clothes are meant to be - style rather than fashion, and an entirely personal expression that becomes elevated to art by living it.

Wardrobe Mayhem

For today's style report, I am wearing one of my favorite vintage shirts that I pulled out of storage in NYC. That means I have not worn it for three years and I am happy to have it back. It's a little 3/4 sleeve black polyester top with an interesting button close at the neck that was made in the late '60's or early '70's. The buttons are small and fake tortoiseshell and the neckline has sort of a gathered effect that I like. The sleeves bell slightly, too, which I think is really flattering.

I found several great items right away in storage and mailed a big box back to myself. There are some pretty lace things, a lot of cashmere gloves I bought discount in NYC at after-Christmas sales over the years, a tartan wrap with my family plaid (Leslie, from Aberdeen), an English schoolboy scarf, a big metal medallion necklace with the god Mercury on it and a nice black velvet clutch evening bag with a gold heart clasp that I hope to use over the holidays.

I also rediscovered a pair of grey short cowboy boots with sky blue stitching that I bought at a thrift store in Dallas. I stumbled upon them when I moved my garment rack of long dresses so that I could paint the ceiling on that side of the room. Score. I'll wear them this later this week.

I love clothes, especially vintage ones. This is why I have so many (too many) of them, and why I've been so talking so much lately about having gotten rid of a lot of things. It's a big step for me to do so, and a positive one. I have lots of nice pieces just sitting in storage and other things right in my apartment that aren't being worn much, so my Christmas gift to myself this year is to get them into circulation.

Ciel Ceiling

I am still in the process of moving stuff back into my room at the artist's community and I took the opportunity to paint. I started a while back and never finished it. I had mixed several cans of a pretty pinkish lavendar but found that they are missing; I think they got thrown away. I found a small amount of the base lavendar I used for that batch and mixed it with a warmer neutral color to make a very nice dusty rose-ish shade. I used that on three walls and I painted a door and the ceiling robin's egg blue. A niche by the window that holds my dresser is the original lavendar I mixed months ago with scattered silver stars painted on the ceiling and I am going to paint a few more stars on the blue once it dries to tie everything together. The whole effect of the room is sky colors, which is very pretty and striking. I think the lavendar I had mixed would have been pretty, but maybe a bit too much for the entire big room, so perhaps it is for the best that it vanished. I wanted to use the paint we already had instead of letting it go to waste, and I did not want to spend much money. I did this scheme for only the cost of painting tape to keep the seams even. Not bad. I have kind of a Paris flew market design aesthetic and it looks nice with the pale colors. The floor is hardwood but it's kind of dull because whatever stain or polish was once there has worn off. I may do a rag-rub of a golden oak stain to brighten it a little. I think that would work nicely with the blue and pink. I have a gorgeous comforter from Anthropologie in NYC that looks like a patchwork of many vintage floral fabrics and it has a lot of muted hues that will pull everything together.

NYC

I want to say, by the time I moved from NYC three years ago, I was so tired of it that I would have been happy never to see it again. Now that I don't have to live there anymore and deal with the expense, overcrowding and stress, I learned that I can enjoy it again, maybe more than ever. On this last visit, I stayed on Staten Island for two nights in my old neighborhood and saw people whose company I found really stimulating. I love that area, too, with the harbor and the Verrazzano Bridge. It's really homey and comfortable. I stood on the street behind my old building for a long time, looking up at what had been my bedroom window, and remembered sitting on the fire escape watching boats go back and forth. I also recalled an amazing storm over Presidents' Day weekend one year when the wind blew so hard that it forced snow in through the cracks around the old, unsealed windows. It literally snowed in my apartment. I spent the last night of my trip at my friend's apartment in the Bronx, and we walked around the neighborhood looking at the beautiful old homes and ate dinner at Montezuma, a great restaurant there. The next morning, I commuted in with him on Metronorth. His train stop is at Marble Hill, which really is a huge marble hill. The station is right on the Harlem River and the ride into Manhattan was gorgeous. I got off at 125th Street to catch the bus to LaGuardia, and that went really well. The ride is pretty short, and I got there with plenty of time to spare. Yaay for planning well. I also spent a little time in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and overall, it was one of the better trips I've ever made.

Catching Up

A lot has been happening lately. I was going to move, but decided against it at literally the last minute, and I am glad that I decided to stay put. I've had to move a lot in the last few years due to hurricanes and other disasters and I realized I have put down some roots where I am and that I need to stay in the network I have built. That feels like the right decision for me for now, and even though I lost a little money on a deposit at the other apartment (I had even moved some of my stuff out and into the new place), I still feel good about it.

One benefit of almost moving is that I ruthlessly pared down some of my possessions in order to fit into what would have been a smaller living space at the new community. I cleaned out my closet and had a yard sale and took stuff to resale shops, all of which netted me about a hundred bucks, and I also donated about fifteen bags of random stuff to charity. Something about this near-move seems to have thrown a kind of switch in me that made me want to streamline my life. I think the horrible economy is working on me, too. I have always enjoyed buying new clothes, but I am not only content to just work with what I have for now, I suddenly want even less. I got an immediate reward from editing my clothes: I kept what I actually really, really like rather than having a lot of things just for fun, and I feel more personally connected to my wardrobe now. I still have a lot of clothes, I'll never be a Zen master with two robes and a pair of sandals, but now every single item in my closet has been seriously thought about. I have a small pile for repairs and alterations, too, that I have been meaning to do, and will budget for those expenses rather than buying anything new.

This attitude carried over into my just-completed NYC trip as well. I still have storage there, and I plowed through it over two days and donated more than two vanloads full of stuff to the Salvation Army and dumped some old furniture. I stored most of my Staten Island apartment contents when I moved to New Orleans in 2005, and it's all stayed there ever since because I had to move on to Los Angeles after Katrina. The plan was to haul it to NOLA from NYC over several trips with a cargo van I had bought for the purpose, but after evacuation, temporary residence in Dallas and ending up all the way across the country instead of just halfway, I had to just leave it in storage for a long time. I finally decided that I don't need all of it, and made a trip about a year ago that pared down some, and did the same this time. I've reduced the monthly rental expense by more than one-third and the volume by at least that, and I plan to go back for several days in April when it warms up and finish the winnowing process. Then I'll be equipped over the summer to bring back what I want to Los Angeles, and, sadly, probably store it here for a while, too, but at least it will be in the same region/state/town as me. I am tired of being so scattered, and I want to move on with my life after so much disruption. Gas prices have gone back down, but when they topped $4.00 here a while back, I realized it made no financial sense to move furniture all the way out here. It would be cheaper to replace it than to ship it so far. Just like with the clothes I mentioned above, I went through boxes of stuff with the sole criteria, what does this mean to me? I only kept things that I have a genuine attachment to. If it was just pretty or something I don't really use but thought I should keep just in case of a future need, it got donated. I come from a long line of hoarders, and I want to grow past that. I thought I might be in that Staten Island apartment for far longer than I was and I accumulated a mountain of possessions. Realistically, I won't be moving into another space that large any time soon. I had a rent-stabilized one bedroom there in an old building with lots of room, and I can't afford that in Los Angeles at the moment. I also have other priorities now: I want a much better laptop, I want to travel more, I want to beef up my savings and retirement and I want to finance my art projects. Knocking out that storage expense and the cost of maintaining so much stuff will get me to those goals more quickly, so it's worth the sacrifice to me. I needed a stable and attractive home when I created that situation, and I enjoyed it for more than three years. I still have a nice living space and plenty of pretty clothes, I just don't feel I need as much as I did then. It served its purpose and I can move on now and share my discards with someone else who can give them new life.

Regarding my artistic goals, I received my receipt in the mail today from the grant application I submitted in October. They have processed my package, and I am in the running. The winner will be announced in March. I also worked some on book edits while I was travelling to/from New York. I really enjoy reading my Parsifal book, even when I am laboriously combing though it to polish it. If I win the grant, I plan to use the money to self-publish at least two books, and to found a small press to keep them in print.