Friday, August 27, 2010

Well blog, I'm baaaack.  I had to take a little locked blog vacation, I was just getting a little too paranoid.  Now I've calmed down and realized that I think it's going to be alright.  Managing bipolar disorder with it's accompanying paranoia, and that compounded by the innate paranoia of the internet, well, it's just a little too much sometimes, I think.

But I enjoy this blog, and I enjoy the tumblr, too, but they are different creatures, and work in different ways.   I'm not altogether ready to shut this blog down, because then all of the personal blah blah that I put here  just gets leaked in other places.  It's an outlet, it helps me, let that be that.  And done with.

In other news, I've been in Reno for the past week attending my youngest cousin Eric's wedding to miss Jaimie - it was a lovely backyard affair, and I am really happy and recharged for my own wedding planning, Katie and I.  This trip seemed to solidify my family's acceptance of her as my future wife.  We had lots of fun, did not take enough pictures, unfortunately, but took quite a few of the ghost town we traveled through.

So many subtle textures in the shredded wallpaper, the lumber and springs. 

I wonder why things don't resonate so much as real until I put them on the internet.  Is that a generational thing?  I did not experience the internet until I was in college, until I was about 19. Why am I so addicted to it now?  Is it a sort of safe form of exhibitionism?

I have decided I am going to be "The Internet" for Halloween.  Hopefully I can grab one of those American Apparel unitards before they go out of business.  I am so excited for this costume, it is going to be quite labor intensive, but hey, have glue gun, will travel.  I'm glad I've saved so many of these wires that Giblets has bitten through, because they will find new homes as part of my headdress. 

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

It's hot today, it's one of those deathly hot days where the melting sets in and the fact that we returned the air conditioner so that I could afford to go to the doctor begins to seem like one of those Faustian bargains.  It's okay, though.  Apart from the fact that the veils have been taken off my eyes as to the transparency of the internet, the contact points reached and transgressed....I see you.  You see me.  Hi googlebot.  Let's shake hands and be friends.

Sweep the crazy-talk to the side of the table, Andrea, you're trying to blog. Yes.  I am quite happy today, despite the fact that a new creditor has added her name to the roster.  Hi Denise. We will never be friends. I am happy today because I got into the writer's workshop that I applied to.  Wordlab.  This will be my first foray into the organized workshop setting, into any sort of organized thing that is not hanging out with my friends or an event of some sort, since CalArts.  Since my breakdown.  I am excited, a little nervous, going over poems and stories and novel scraps and trying to bring some text to the table to work with.

Today it is so hot, though.  I have opened the windows, I have both fans on, I am wearing a sundress.  The bunny is lost somewhere in the apartment, I assume he is asleep under the bed.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

 Last night I went to see Billy's band, Dona Nicha, and while bobbing my head idly to the surf-rock, I started thinking about my book.  What a mess it was.  What extensive scalpel-snips were needed.  After much thought, I decided that the sprawling five-part structure was ridiculous and self-indulgent and purposeless.  Why?  Why?  Why pad the front end of the novel with previously written text of other cities and other times.  There was no trajectory, there was no...dare I say it, PLOT.

An old friend from Portland always said plot was my weak point, and years later after reading Jet Set Desolate he hadn't changed his mind.  This time, though, I had so lost track not only of plot but of the point...what the hell was the point of all of this?  Who the fuck cares what I spent the last 13 years of my life doing?

So, snip snip snip and a cut cut cut and a new plan has been hatched.  That is, to take the Portland material, my Reed thesis of 1998, which is in itself a completed novella, and try shopping it around to see if any publishers are interested in a punk rock novella of the 90s....who knows, it's worth a try??

And then, flash forwards to what was the most compelling material  of the bloated death corpse of a manuscript, the LA/Echo Park material that I was writing about the present, and make that chapter one.  Start at the end.  Go forwards into the future.  Keep it current and exciting. Don't keep recycling old material, but generate anew.

I will keep the San Francisco and San Diego chapters around on the hard drive, of course, in case a flashback is necessary or suggested.  Razorcut flashbacks are a bit of a fun time.  But I feel so much more excited about the text now that I'm trimming it down, it was sort of an embarrassing dead weight of awkward before.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

On Sunday, Katie, Stephen, Billy and I attended a Public Fruit Jam at EATLACMA. Put on by Fallen Fruit, this sticky exploration of the fruit to jam process brought  museum visitors together to make food. Pictures to follow.

Finely chopping the fruit


Katie gets that pesky lemon
Bowls of herb-fruit-goo
Finished jars and a hand-washing station
Communal boiling down of fruit bowls into sweet jars of jam

Completed jars of jam in the afternoon sun
I focused on herbs and lemon, making a sort of mint-rosemary-lemon-crab-apple jam, which turned a sort of grapefruit pink.  Katie went heavier on the strawberries, jalapenos and oranges, but with all sorts of other things mixed in. Between us both we ended up with nine jars, most of which are now in the freezer, awaiting later sunny days.