GOING WITH THE GRAIN
Tag: Design
STONE AND BONE
FACING THE TECHNOLOGY
Shifting to the world of epublishing has stimulated a gentle learning curve for me. Maybe because my to-do list has always been much longer than I can manage or maybe because I felt I already had too much detailed work at hand, I’ve tried to avoid becoming a computer geek who spends all his time in the technical minutia. Actually, it’s the same way with my cars – I don’t want to spend my mornings, afternoons, or weekends under the hood or on my back under the chassis; I just want to get in and drive. As for high tech, I’ll wait for all the bugs to get worked out before I buy the updated version, thank you, especially since I’ve always been on a very limited budget. And for the record, I hate Windows 8, which is always interrupting my work by blowing its apps in my face or requiring me to log on again throughout the day.
On the other hand, keyboarding on a computer has been a vast improvement over a typewriter, at least for klutzes like me, and the ability to correct and revise as I go or rewrite and edit later is, well, divine. Sometimes progress really is progress.
And sometimes it isn’t, as we seemed to discover at the office each time we moved on to a new system whether we wanted to or were instead forced to when our current equipment was declared obsolete. (I’ll let others relate those nights of terror when they pulled the plug on what was finally working as promised.)
Participating in the small-press literary scene has been another matter. When I first ventured into email, thanks largely to my now-wife, well, let’s say broadband’s been a huge improvement over those telephone connections and leave it at that. Still, cutting and pasting poems into the email and having them accepted within hours rather than be rejected months later was quite an eye-opener. These days, with most of the liveliest literary action happening in online journals, the process has taken leaps forward; typically, you use a submissions program, upload your file, insert your cover letter, and follow the pieces through the editorial process, if you wish. For a long time, I tried to maintain two sets of files – one for journals that still used, or even required, submissions via the Postal Service, and those that took them online. This year, finding that too complicated, I decided to drop the postal-only journals altogether. (That move, let me add, was hastened by problems with our computer printer as much as the much higher rejection rate on the envelope entries.)
The 2005 publication of my second novel, Ashram, as an ebook was another eye-opener. I was surprised by how easy its preparation was, how quickly it went from acceptance to general availability, and how pleasurable reading a long work on my computer screen could be (even if the work was issued only in PDF format). Unfortunately, we were also a bit ahead of the ebook reading trend and many would-be readers told me of their difficulties in downloading the volume. The other snag was getting the work reviewed at all – even online critics stuck solely to paper editions.
Blogging has revolutionized much of this world, probably more than we realize. For me, avowed neo-Luddite that I am, WordPress has been heavenly. It’s allowed me to take a model “out of the box” and run with it without modification, even if I do admire the customized tweaks many of the rest of you add apparently without hassle. The Blogs That I Follow, searching by topical tags, and Freshly Pressed streams have introduced me to many wonderful voices around the globe for my daily perusal. In fact, I’m still struck that in its first year, the Red Barn had readers in 72 countries. Amazing.
These days I’m learning again. The opportunity to publish my novels to be distributed across a variety of platforms (as they say) has meant following a new set of directions to strip out all the hidden codes (we hope; some of mine go back to the first versions on WordPerfect4.0) and set up the work to flow smoothly in a reading device. (I started to say “reader,” but for me, that will always be a person, not a machine.) I’ll admit that adjusting to the concept of considering a long work as a continuous text, rather than pages, has been major, as has the matter of inserting hyperlinks. Remember, I’m someone who loves the art of printing from its very origins. (How many Gutenberg Bibles have you seen?)
Even so, I’m excited by the new opportunities and the new visual dimensions.
Here we go, again.
SHOOTING THE SAME SPOT AGAIN
We could be considering writing or painting and drawing as much as the photography that prompts today’s line of thinking. Specifically, I’m reflecting on the tension between trying to capture everything I see everywhere versus the reality that one needs limits.
For starters, I reach a point in shooting where I begin to weary. Push hard enough and everyone hits a wall. When it comes to photography, I just stop seeing images of interest. When I’m writing, my words go flat. Folks in other endeavors can relate their own versions.
A second fact of life comes in trying to arrange and manage what I already have. Accumulate too much and I’ll never find anything when I want or need it.
I find a similar tension in a writing project, where I can hope for a tightly focused, crystalline work even as it begins to expand into a complex baroque construction. Or the other way around.
As I’ve been shooting over the course of the Red Barn, I’ve found myself increasingly resisting an urge to range more widely from my base in Dover. I’m sticking more and more to what’s at hand here and in a few other familiar places like Sandwich, to the north, and Fort Foster in Kittery Point, Maine. We’ll see how that evolves in the future.
For now, what fascinates is seeing how much new keeps appearing to me in our yard or while I’m walking to meeting for worship on Sunday. Perhaps that’s why working on pieces in a series hold so much appeal as more and more keeps surfacing from the depths.
The other aspect of the series is the desire that somewhere in there is the one iconic piece that rises above the rest, can stand on its own, deserves its own place.
Oh, what would Monet say to all this? Or Matisse? Or any of a host of others!
FOAMING FUNGUS
SOLAR ECLIPSE
BULLETIN TIME
So here I am, looking at a catalogue of “every Sunday bulletin subscription service and other ministry resources.” You’d be surprised by some of the products addressed to a Quaker meetinghouse, and I’m still wondering why church furniture has to be so uniformly ugly. This one, however, catches my imagination.
If you’ve ever been part of a congregation that has ushers, you likely remember how they hand out a leaflet while leading you to a pew. The folded paper would have a colorful image on the front and a meditative reflection on the back. Inside, mimeographed back in the days I remember, was the order of service and an array of announcements. I have to say that the graphics have improved in recent years, and I rather like the format that opens into three leaves, rather than two. For a moment, I consider this as an alternative to our announcements period, at least until I realize that someone would have to type and print them. Still, the thought of ushers revives my meeting’s concern for having greeters at the door.
As I look over the samples, however, I must admit how foreign most of them are to our experience. The one with a large American flag and a kneeling soldier over the words, Lord Jesus, is especially troubling. Others seem superficial with their platitudes or cliché. Maybe there would be shock value in some, with their communion cup and bread or photos of country church spires. One set proclaiming nature’s splendor comes close, if it weren’t for the cutesy texts, while the set I find most acceptable is aimed at black congregations – which isn’t quite us, either. Not with all our blue eyes and master’s and doctorate degrees.
I guess if we ever have a need of weekly bulletins, our best option would be to feature work by our resident artists – Brown, Carolyn, Connie, Edi, Gail, Jane … and, of course, the children. Now that would be inspiring.
SPACE FOR DECOMPRESSION
It’s hard to believe five years have passed since we made the loft of the barn much more usable.
When we moved here, the loft was accessible only via a second-floor catwalk from the master bedroom, and getting there and back could be tricky, especially when snow was piled on the deck.
I’ll save the home renovation project description and photos for another time, and just mention that it involved removing the catwalk, deck, bedroom doorway, and barn loft doorway, installing stairs inside the barn and lighting in the loft.
What it essentially did was give us another 450 square feet of usable work and storage space – especially once we replaced the leaky roof two years ago. (Gee, I think that’s the size of some of those Ikea model apartments.)
Admittedly, it’s not someplace you linger for much of the year. It’s not insulated and there’s no heat, so you do little more than dash in and out in January-February or July-August, but for me it’s been a huge blessing.
As I wrote in August 2009, an “especially humid Tuesday: No Rick yesterday or today.” Our carpenter/master electrician was “off on another project.” We were in no rush, anyway. Still, enough of the project had progressed for me to note, “Having the top of the barn – the Squirrel Piss Studio or Jnana’s Red Barn or the Summer House – finally available as usable space is mind-boggling. At last! Ten years. A time for decompression, unpacking. The difference in scale as a result of the larger space (framed posters, for instance, now appear so much smaller).” I detailed more effusively in my journal. What I noted was “t
he array of items: places I’ve gone off to, to live. Sometimes unwillingly. The skulls – steer, horse, dog. Elk bones. Shells.
“So much to discard, too. My burgundy valet bag, an artifact of the past (after 9/11, nobody travels with one). Burgundy, LAL’s color. Same as the Chevy. The specially designed coat hangers, with their folding hooks – open for the hotel, closed to slide into the bag. Those two years, a ‘backpack for business travelers.’
“A Quaker altar: a candle on a piece of squared birch firewood, the side with bark facing the sitter; incense; in time, flowers or dried arrangement; Bible, Gita, notebook?
“I sit in the space and recall how Roger Pfingston could sit for hours in front of a blank piece of paper without writing a word. Maybe smoke a cigar. Now see it as his way of meditation and self-collection.”
The space also gave me a place to resume hatha yoga exercises after way too long a hiatus.
I love having large surfaces where I can spread out the pages for a poetry collection and rearrange the sequence. I’m not one who works easily with a crowded desk, unlike many of my colleagues. No, it’s Zen order or Quaker/Shaker simplicity I desire.
The loft is far from the year-round office studio I’d envisioned when we moved here. To get there, though, apart from the money, we’d have to cover the wooden underside of the roof I’ve come to enjoy viewing. The feel would become much different than the funky, well, summer cottage I so much enjoy now – even when it’s fall and spring rather than summer when I most use it.
Besides, to be candid, as I’m able to clean out and dispose of more and more, and as I move increasingly to online, paperless writing and submissions, I don’t really need the big office of those earlier dreams. At least that’s what I’m thinking now.
Who knows what’s really ahead.
NOT WHAT YOU THINK
I’ve always been a visual person. Had even considered a career in art before the writing took over. As further evidence, remembering a story or argument I’ve heard has always been more difficult to recall than one I’ve read. As for names, I’m hopeless unless there’s been a name tag.
Somehow, though, I can remember a musical line much more than I can any lyrics, including those we’ve been working on in chorus. So I’m not memory deaf, exactly.
As a visual person, I’ve found the point-and-shoot digital camera entries you’ve seen posted in my blogs to be a wonderful way of sharing the way I look at the world and many of the details that catch my attention.
But there’s another range of experiences I can’t begin to describe. Often, especially while watching people, my vision shifts from photo-realism to real-life cartoons. I hope I’m not staring, but the transformation is incredible. R. Crumb had nothing on me, other than technique. Sometimes they’re squiggling black-and-white line drawings. Sometimes, baroque etchings. Other times, wild blobs of color.
Even before they start moving.
CRAB ROCK
Jnana's Red Barn 