Today I am going to write a loose journal of my creative

work over the weekend. I am still swamped by work, but what

else is new? But I am much happier when I take a some time

away from the grind give it away to creative work of my own

choosing. Last year, I made the experience unifying and

calming. I would write a florid essay at a coffee house

and send it out to a small email group.

This year, my creativity is a lot more scattered, flinging

around to some extent with passion and whim. It is much

less of a Sabbath, and thus I fear much less restorative.

This is certainly something to monitor, but my god I feel

so alive -- and that is worth a lot to someone who knows

what it is to feel emotionally dead as well as I do.

Well, the journal in all its looseness:

==

On Friday after meeting co-workers for drinks and

conversation, I went to work in the garage. I have two

projects active in there.

One is making a stool. We are wanting it so I can have a

place to sit when my wife cuts my hair (super frugal or

cheap bastard. . . you decide) and as a place to sit on

when we play the keyboard we got from my mother-in-law [1].

I starting cutting up a section of a pallet I recently

acquired behind a store that went out of business, so I am

quite sure no one misses it. I am working with a hand saw

and got the bit I wanted cut out, removed a nail that had

the potential to be dangerous and then did a glue up and

clamped it down to make the whole piece stronger.

The other project is working to systematically make rolls

of paper that are about the same size and can work like

wires for making sculptures [2]. I am just trying out the

medium, so I am doing a lot of experiments -- more than I

want to recount here; basically what I am doing has to do

with learning how to crafts shapes, when to use tape, when

to use glue, and just seeing what the limitations of my

current ability to execute are.

In my line of work, I can source about as much paper as I

want, so this would be an excellent medium to master,

granted I can make either useful or beautiful things.

That's enough for a Friday that stretched into midnight.

On Saturday, I woke up late, started on the legs for the

stool and went a coffee house. I caught up on my narrative

through Friday (ie, wrote the bulk of this). . . There are

some slick ad-funded free magazines at the coffee place. I

placed three copies of my paper Zine down, releasing them

to the wider world.

Speaking of sending out my Zine, I got to the post office

and sent off a some copies to a friend that lives in

Brooklyn.

After that, I got completely sucked up into errands and

then a social engagement with people from my wife's work.

(Well, I did finish sawing the legs for the stool, but must

leave assembly hell for some other time -- still so far to

go. . . )

Lest anyone think I have forgotten about pump drills, I

must say that I need to buy some materials, such as epoxy

and some better cording, and that I am have specific rules

for when I get to spend money on the shop, and they will be

the subject of some other piece in the near future.

===

[1] One product of my culturally (more of socially)

impoverished childhood is that I have no musical background

at all. I really like music and have expanded that into a

near-mania to finally vanquish my addiction to passive

visual media (the YouTube feed is still TV; I can watch a

video if it is the best answer to a question I have), but I

know virtually nothing about playing, music theory, etc.

The only thing that started me on music was making very

simple string instruments. Seeing that passion led my wife

to want to play again, and that's how we got a keyboard

from her mother. Now, we just need a stool. . .

[2] If you're willing to go to web to look (and let's be

real, as of this writing, pretty much everyone is) the

artist I am following the path of is named Darcy Turner.

==

I'd love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus

"net" (so, a work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at

sdf.org.

While we're adding boiler plate: this work is in the public

domain. Do what you want with it.