Day: December 25, 2005

Art, Artist Books, Collage, Poetry

Hemp Bound Journal

Shelly

I uploaded a couple more pages from the hemp bound journal. One is kind of meh, but I like the poem that accompanies it. The other is visually more interesting, but the poem isn’t as good. That’s about par for the course. The poems are part of the Creation Myth series I’ve been playing with.

This journal was a great idea, but it ended up being a royal pain in the arse to work in. The pages are nice and heavy, which I like, but the brown color gives me a mental block. I keep pulling out the gesso and waxed paper to try to cope with the unending brown. I wonder why that bothers me, but white paper doesn’t?

Hemp Bound Journal: A Question of Ghosts
A Question of Ghosts
December 22, 2005

If we were soaked in the practice
Mechanisms of truth
Lost in the work
Sanded and rectified
Stuck tight to what seemed fitting
What was lately manipulated
Encouraged
Then killed,If, all around us
The ghosts were deserting,
Would we become gods
Woe takers and lightning makers
The careful sculptors of bones and
Guardians of the lesser portion?

Hemp Bound Journal: Three Things (reworked)
Three Things
December 6, 2005

Three things
Are not four things.
Three things
Are sharper than knives,
Silent famines of thought that
Shine silver like moons in the dark.

Three things are perfectly cold
By intent
By design
By the deadliest scheme.

Three things are ancient wheels
That turn in the night,
Near misses and reflections.
Three things
Are stitching thought to flesh to deed,
Bone drawing blood slickened sinew.
Three things are problematic monsters
Ministering, waiting, and watching.

Crankypantsing

Guilt By Association

Shelly

Concerning last night’s rant, I think I’ve figured out the vague feeling of discomfort. It’s the same feeling I got as a child, when the kid next to me behaved badly. The possibility that I would be assumed to be complicit in the behavior was upsetting. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be associated with what had happened, but on the other, I felt powerless to stop it, because of some stupid unspoken kids’ code. It’s a matter of peer pressure. “Don’t rock the boat, or your life will get even more difficult.” As I learned yesterday, that sort of bullying is not just child’s play; adults do it, too.

And, to be clear, I don’t have a problem with Christmas itself. I was raised nominally Catholic, and my family still celebrates the holiday. However, I don’t take that as a license to smack other people upside the head with my personal holiday fetish. It bothers me when others do it, because it seems manipulative and unsportsmanlike. Or maybe it’s just ignorance. I dunno, but it seems to be born of the same urge as the chipper “Happy Yom Kippur!” blessings that obviously non-Jews wish to Jewish folks. Nice try, but it’s so close, and yet so far. I assume the effort is appreciated, but the end result only underscores the lack of any serious interest in understanding another point of view.

I have a similar problem with films like Memoirs of a Geisha. It’s a thoroughly western movie about a non-western subject. In it’s way, it’s repackaged Orientalism: it’s objectifying, exploitative, and fetishistic. And, I can’t get past the fact that the actors are Chinese. Because, apparently, all Asians do look alike.