The Next 3 Years

Posted on December 12, 2011 by randomyriad

I am getting a jump on the whole New Year’s resolution thing as I am finished with my classes, and I have some time to think about it. I looked at my 101 in 1001 list and decided that most of the items on the list did not or will not make a big difference in my life– I will either do them or I won’t. It would be great if I learned to be more fluent in Spanish or play the piano, but having it on a list doesn’t seem to inspire me in these areas. So my next list will be shorter and more about what I actually am inspired to work on, but lose track of sometimes. I am hoping the list will help to focus my efforts on the things I most want to accomplish in the next 3 years. I will do other things and continue to work on my 101 in 1001 list in order to complete my self-experiment, but I can’t wait to get started on this list. As you can see it is not finished—I never know what else I might want to reach for.  But, at this point, these are the things I am most wanting to focus on. I probably do not even need a list, but I like lists and numbers and keeping track of things. The list is like an itinerary of my travels through life for the next 3 years; I’m sure there will be many diversions before I get there. I hope so the list is not supposed to be my life; it’s just there to remind me of where I thought I was going.

  1. Read or listen to 3000 poems.
  2. Read or listen to 1000 different poets.
  3. Read 50 volumes of poetry.
  4. Read 50 books of fiction.
  5. Read 50 books of non-fiction/non-poetry
  6. Write 150 poems.
  7. Publish 300 blog posts.
  8. Write 500,000 words that make sense together (fiction or non-fiction).
  9. Publish 10 written pieces in a place other than my blog.
  10. Finish 200 drawings.
  11. Mount and display 10 pieces of art.
  12. Finish a BA, AA or vocational training program that will help me with #13.
  13. Get a job I like that pays well.
  14. Move myself 2000 miles by my own muscles (walking, running, bicycling).
  15. This space open for new goals as they come up.
Posted in All part of the process, Drawing, Fiction, lists, my life, paying attention, poetry, Self-Experiments, thinking in words, time travel, Walking | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Simple Theory About the Origin of Random Elements in Dreams.

Posted on December 9, 2011 by randomyriad

Last night my dream mind invented a mycologist. He was a friend of mine, but I am not sure if I was a mycologist also or just someone interested in fungi. He was a generalist in mycology and was complaining that he couldn’t get into the lectures for more specialized studies of fungi. He kept throwing out terms that my dream persona did not understand.

My question is: why would I invent a mycologist? I have had very little interest in mycology in my waking life; it is as interesting to me as most other science. Though almost all scientific fields of study catch my attention at one time or another, I cannot remember a single specific instance in which the study of mushrooms was my central focus. I took microbiology a long time ago, but that had way more to do with bacteria than fungi. I just finished a class in medical terminology that had one or two terms out of more than a thousand that had to do with myco anything. So once again I am stumped as to what goes on in the upstairs part of my anatomy during my conscious downtime. 

Maybe the gnomes who live up there kicked over a box labeled unused information, and were a little careless in their cleanup, leaving mycologist like a stray scrap of paper on the floor.  Maybe dreams are just where the sweepings go when the gnomes make everything tidy before my consciousness opens the shop for another days work. Or maybe dreams are what my conscious mind finds on the floor  when it comes in, heaped in a corner with some memories about a banged up Toyota minivan and some parental regret, a discarded reference to mycology. And, consciousness, being so anal about things making sense, has to sit down and build a story out of the random pile.

 My conscious mind is a little lazy and just kind of slaps things together in a rather sloppy fashion and says, “Good enough.” Because it knows the weirder the story the more I will be occupied with it, and leave him to catch up on his sleep. He is basically an underachiever and often lets the gnomes run the show.  I get a lot more creative when the gnomes are about, but I would hate to see the mess if they were in charge all of the time.

Posted in Dreamtime, file folders and nut shells, funny stuff, mindworks, Questions and riddles, thinking in words, Wacky World | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thoughts, Quotes and Visual Mysteries

Posted on December 4, 2011 by randomyriad

I spent a lot of time last month making up reality, in the form of a world I am creating in my head, pieces of an unfinished novel for NaNoWriMo. I wrote 40,000 words which in their present form of disorganization would make little sense to someone who is not me. After this month of intense putting down of words, I am left with a feeling that the ideas behind all of these words are more real to me than most of the things going on in the world.

It is much the same feeling I get when I go to work at the little school at which I do a few group activities for each week. I go to this almost perfect little world created for these very young and developing people, sing songs and tell stories, laugh and empathize with their worries and joys, and then I leave. In the small world of my novel, which is way too large in scope for my mind to wrap completely around yet, and the preschool things make sense because they are contained in a context that I inhabit. The novel has the context of my ideas; I can pick and choose the ones that fit and the ones that do not. In the preschool, the context is the children and their development into sane, educated human beings. Most of the activities in this environment when I am there make sense to me because I am familiar with the way young children think and learn. Many people not so familiar with that would come in and see chaos. If anybody tried to read the crazy patchwork of my novel in its present form, they would have the same reaction.  I am comfortable with because I understand the underlying context. I can’t, as hard as I try, get a contextual handle on most of what I experience of the world in general. Every time I think I see a trend that makes sense, people do things like use pepper spray and tear gas on peaceful demonstrators or fellow shoppers, or large numbers of people are manipulated into hating people they with whom they should be working on shared problems. I am sure that my actions appear just as puzzling to a lot of people who do not share my point of view. The thoughts that go on in my mind are way out of context for a lot of people. That’s alright with me, but I wish some people could just wake up a little and see that, as human beings, we are more alike than we are different. I am ready to listen to anyone who is not using pepper spray or trying to own the world.

“There is as much difference between us and ourselves, as between us and others.”

Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1588

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity?”

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor, 1924

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Krishnamurti, 1895–1986

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that are forever blowing through one’s mind.”

Mark Twain, 1835–1910

Posted in can't really complain but, capturing light, Drawing, Fiction, mindworks, My Art, my life, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, Other peoples words, philosophy, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ink and Vellum

Posted on November 26, 2011 by randomyriad

I have been working on two pieces in various inks on transparent vellum. I scanned them in both color and gray scale, and combined them by scanning them stacked. I will let you sort out which is which.

 

The one above was scanned through the blank side of the paper.

I have been experimenting with adding more color to this series.

Posted in All part of the process, capturing light, Drawing, My Art | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Few More Images From The Wine Crate and Some Thoughts On The Creative Process

Posted on November 12, 2011 by randomyriad

“If we are to solve the problem of what to do with our consciousness, we need more astutely constructed models as that consciousness changes, develops. They must be relevant and flexible; and the execution must be fine enough to endure.”

Samuel R. Delaney, “Faust and Archemides” 1968

From my disinherited mother I learned to stay alive by dreaming myself into existence. From her I learned that everything is real. It was a lesson of enormous value to me.

— Jamake Highwater

I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I am doing– John Cage

These quotes explain what I am trying to do with my blog as well as anything. Its about making models in words and pictures that fit the processes occurring in my mind. It is also about creating images and poems that reflect the fact that I am exploring parts of my mind that would be inaccessible to me without the creative process. Some of it is just pure reaction and response to the initial image. I am trying not to let my conscious process have to much influence on the finished piece. Dreaming my art and writing into into existence leads me through process to more of me. The pieces I put here are the ones that reflect the process of exploration, which after all is the edge of existence for all of us.

When we come to the place where our conscious experience meets the vastly larger expanse of the unknown and unthinkable, we need new models to communicate because it is inconceivable from the point of view of our experience. Just because something seems impossible does not mean it will never make the leap into our waking conscious. Everything in our dreams and nightmares is possible however unlikely, and should be accounted for. To do this, artists must make impossible models, scientists must dream magical visions of the improbable, and storytellers must make it all seem like it has already happened. My attempts are not meant to endure but perhaps inspire others to make better more lasting models. The more attempts we make, the more possible paths we have to follow. We just need to keep thinking and unthinking and imagining ourselves into the next present which will only resemble this present. But, whatever is in the next present is here now, though some of it is not coalesced into a form that we can perceived. I may not know what I am doing, but someone else might see something in what I do and make it more accessible to others who might use his or her ideas to change the way the world thinks. That is my motivation for creation, as well as wanting to see the strange and wild creatures that escape from my jungle mind.

Posted in All part of the process, capturing light, change, make your own world, mindworks, My Art, Other peoples words, philosophy, poetry, Telling Stories, thinking in words, wonder world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment