kinds of crepe

...well there's really no denying it. it is the Official Onset of the Chillblains. a few clues are:

-the ravaged, limp, and frost-glistening tangle that the coleus has collapsed into

-the test of will to brave chill of the house with all of one's skin after darting out of warm bed

-the new found delight in curling body and palms as close as possible around the hoarse rasp of the gas burner while the kettle heats

-wearing wristers inside
-possibly borrowing someone else's, bigger, slouchier sweatshirt in lieu of the svelte and (seemingly right now, very silly) leanly cut red one that has one has made do with over the summer
-the itch to haul out all of one's knitting materials so the morning runs can be braved in a more practical sense, rather than leaping out in tiny shorts and goose flesh pricked arms, brazenly bare-headed.

i have required of myself one hour, minimum, to get Important Jazz for School done daily. it's a good goal because it is easy to meet and often exceed. but today i spent more time than usual fooling about with the little enamel teapot, and whizzing milk for coffee and hauling out two blankets and a sleeping bag to swathe myself in while i sit outside and decidedly Make Some Progress.

the dangerous thing about procrastinating is that often it feels very productive. totally worth it to have a warm milk belly and wooly mitts for sitting outside. but definitely too late in the day to be eating breakfast.....

by the way,

still thinking about Lacan's question- the subjective experiences of life shaped by language. often Lacan used 'algebraic variables' to describe his somewhat intangible concepts. for example, his model of the Other describes the relationship a person has with herself as she separates herself from the oher Other's around. (seriously intangible grammar.) Lacan, in an attempt to assuage some anxiety labeled the 'big' Other "A" and the 'little' other a. thus, for a child (A) all the other Other's around (mother, father, chair, popsicle, fear) were a series of a's. in this way, Lacan translated a creative experience (that is, ascribing to subjective perception the tool of language) with a more cognitive, concrete one (translating this perception into mathematical variables.) thus, a conclusion could be made that a person goes through the life distinguishing herself from other numbers, all named similarly despite their inherent, formal differences. which neatly brings us to this:

the artist, Hans-Peter Feldmann conceived of the current exhibition at the Guggenheim wherein 100,00 $1 bills are affixed onto the gallery walls. while his statement (a commentary of the coexistence of art and money in a very literal way) does not necessarily align with mine, it is an interesting thing to conceive of being bombarded at once by such a fantastic sum of wealth (of which, ordinarily, it would be difficult for us to conceive) while at the same time having a visual register of the absolute lack of inherent value in a space papered with what might as well be crepe streamers or pinata roughage. certainly a thing to let burn against the back of your eyes if you're near by. out here in the decidedly less affluent living room of a small desert town i have to satisfy myself with ogling electronically.

the latin for filling-her-pockets

so. research and cataloging. happy pursuits really. one thing, among many, that lights up my insides is the phenomenon of amassing, sorting, dividing and displaying. this, potentially, was cultivated (and then propagated) by two simultaneous experiences in college. the first was my maiden voyage into the swoony field of the cataloguess/librarian while assisting in RISD's nature lab:

and also by a trip to RISD's special collections where i was thoughtfully introduced to this magnificent woman by the collection's curator who thought 'it might appeal to me.' likely she had no idea what kind of impression the collection and this book in particular made on me, but i am nevertheless gratefully indebted. 

this is the work of Candy Jernigan. she called herself a 'collection artist' and practiced in New York City until the mid-80s. this catalog of catalogs is mind blowing. someone, at long last, publicly displayed, with love, the mundane trash of our lives and showcased it into something meaningful and potent. one project involved the collection, display and precise mapping of dope vials Jernigan found within a specified area. others are less a commentary but no less powerful. a collection of single sheets of toilet paper from various famous museums in paris, lined up and labeled. or a similar treatment of various bits of dust from the houses of the famous and deceased, presented in the sterile glassine windowpanes more commonly used by lepidopterists. nevertheless, Jernigan's thesis (that the overlooked is consequential) stuck with me through college and up to the present day. friends of mine have joked and rolled eyes when i pass my sketchbook around at breakfast and demand everyone spill their coffee on the page and write their name nearby. certainly cumbersome and my notebooks have (at least a few) taken on a certain vegetal quality from all the food documentation. but then, my memories of every tuesday in the month of october, 2008 are all right there, literally stamped in acid and saccharin which is a most crystalline way to move backwards in time.

the reason i bring this up is because, autumn being upon us, i am always beset at this time of year to collect and catalog the living things (or their remains) before they are wiped, whitely, out of view for a few months. seed pods have been objects of fascination for years and i dutifully bring them inside and brush by them all winter leaving a trampled carpet of straw and obliterated leaves in the carpet, doggedly refusing to 'clean them up' even when their mess persists. but a seed pod is kind of dependable, solid vessel. we know that sorts of patterning it is cradling, just waiting for famine or fire or flood to release it and start the uncurling green newness we are so desperate for later in the year. this year, having wide lapses of time to myself, the catalog of the mundane has grown. thematically it is a collection of the outdoor leftovers and so, as a small joke, has become 'the science pile' and it spreads daily over one of the few pieces of furniture in the house as a record of all kinds of exploits

 

that said, one question that is coming up while researching the dreaded critical analysis paper is Lacan's question. it is a very good one. actually, Lacan feels he has answered the question for everyone, but many people will make a fuss on this question's behalf. thus, i am of the opinion of presenting his thesis as a question, allowing everyone to come to her own decision about it's implications. the question is this:

is language a result of subjective experience?

or rather

is language an innate host for meaning?

do we use language to describe our surroundings and orient us or is our experience of the world informed and shaped purely by language?

if i deem the items in the science pile 'mundane' i have assigned them a kind of (loaded) weight, but while we can, as speakers of the english language, agree on the definition of 'mundane' its consequences are infinitely individual. which either makes language meek and limited or so abundant in variation that it makes the throat creek like a dry riverbed at the thought of saying. anything.

so currently, this question is being held captive in one of the spare vials above until better things can be attached to it (or pasted down, or pinned, or stapled, or affixed with a manila label and inscribed with a quill pen.)


ps...
...if you're wondering what's up there:
- two shreds of wasp paper, from a mysteriously absent wasp house
- a knuckle of rotted wood, shorn down so as to appear exactly as a hermit crab on land
- the petal bodies of two tuberose
-a stack of shards from a beautiful, lost, Port Marion china saucer
-vial i: a salvaged nasturtium seed from last year's first successful nasturtium propagating
-vial ii: glacial chips from a tundra in Alaska
-vial iii: a caribou tooth (likely a bottom front one)
-vial iv: very special, luminous, important glacial chips, with a promised metamorphosis
-another caribou tooth, obviously a molar (and eNORmous)
-a glacial stone
-a salvaged cutting tool from the southern deserts (similar to an arrowhead, but more rounded, maybe for scooping)
-a perfectly forked stick whose individual forks are also forked, and then forked again
-larkspur blossoms from a certain lovely homecoming
-a butterfly wing
-a shiny piece of stone obviously with some graphite or obsidian- wet-looking. all the time.
-a rock with a hole in its center, almost all the way through (a kind friend once told me these are the luckiest)
-a moonface whose brother belongs to a much loved friend
-a butterfly wing
-a tiny tin vial with an even smaller, more fragile butterfly wing
-a thimbleberry leaf underneath:
-three more bright blue glacial chips
-a strange cheese doodle of an early seedpod
-an icy chunk of quartzite from down south
-a smooth stone (probably feels good in the mouth) from a similar place
-a knot of webbing from a retired (and inexplicably exhausted) hiking sandal
-a moqui ball/devil's marble
-the first yellow leaf of autumn with (you guessed?) more glacial stones
-various shrines to the virgin mary

could you have guessed them all?



 

swiftly

before i go stand behind the bar and dole out pints and mixed drinks that will most assuredly be returned due to their wateriness, and before i explain to them the sillyness of our government's insistence on meddling in the blood alcohol levels of its citizens, and before i sneak pommes frites and butterscotch pot de creme on the very down low, please note a good deal of production this morning!

read: a good eight pages of notes for the critical essay, a chunky pile of dutifully inscribed index cards, fanned out logically in a deeply satisfying graph on the kitchen table, a three mile run and lastly (but mostly) voila! our good Kim Boyce has helped me through another morning. read: ginger peach muffins; amaranth, oat flour, hemp seeds, fresh ginger, sinfully luscious peaches, a very moderate knob of butter and the best part: the crackly sound of the parchment paper as you ease it back to reveal a steamy noseful of snacktime. 

thaaaank goodness.

[ yikes ]

time will unravel without you most definitely. at least most likely.

suddenly summer is over, little sockets like empty gums where color used to heap. now, an economy of monotones; a minimalist gesture in distilling color and teasing out mileage from one crispy, sunbent, heat wrecked, time blown and inconsolable kind of brown. the autumn kind.

in the mountains it is more drastic. in a sneak attack, following a perfectly suitable and mild summer sunset, frost and recoiling mercury will lick delicately against the doorjambs like fire until you wake up one morning only to yelp and dive back under collecting every warm body and down-stuffed article available.

maybe it was last week's snow (yes! real! still there in high bowls!) or the tang of leaf rot and pumpkin vine that come in the snapping cold mornings, but it surprises me that, really, only a few weeks ago we had

and, more precisely,

 

now, upon waking, wool is being pulled over gooseflesh, knitting projects crown braids and (worstly...) socks and shoes, to brave the once lush and sagey backlands that are now

there is some romance certainly. a kind of (perpetual) theatrical backlighting, lonely blowing winds, banks of low clouds, the clutter and grate of winds heaving along sidewalks. as a mountainy kind of person none of this is new, but it is surprising how bone sadness sweeps in on cue and with crushing force.

....especially this year as i prepare (at very long last) to get great hulking gears back into motion for graduate school. for which i have tried my hand in a few times now with somewhat dismal results. but. with a great twist of fate, despite:......applying to a program at BFA student has never applied to (read: nor ever been accepted into), the challenge of presenting work which proves my abilities are strong enough to be accepted into said program which is comprised of 80% doctoral candidates, coming up (some some how) with a critical writing sample of 6 pages which i should have "lying about, leftover from college", passing the graduate record exams (can we talk about the last time i did math? hint: i was in the back of the car during driver's ed...), by, i might add, october 28th! and doing this all in the newly chopped up time frame of between-now-and-december-15th (vs. the original time frame of between-now-and-april-15.)....... i may be accepted into the Modular MFA Program in Creative Writing(!) (?) this is a program that works in conjunction with the Book Arts Program and the nationally acclaimed letterpress studio in the Marriott Library along with possible Fellowship study opportunities in the special collections of rare books. phew! work cut out for me and all the rest.

as a precautionary measure and for good morale, i have amassed various sizes of index cards, a fresh bouquet of fine tipped pens, a few ugly old notebooks to jam into backpack pockets during walks, a few hefty and poorly illustrated GRE guides, a good study software program and a thoroughly potent dose of anxiety. all i need is a highly fancy and well crafted silkscreened somethingorother to lug it all around with, then i'll be all kinds of hip.

i will seek to to be vigilant in my putting up of scraps of thought, image, occasional snap of a good braid, etc. you can count on me. that is, unless it's apparent i've fallen into some sort of hole due to fill-in-the-blank-overload.