Inverse proportions.

Never fails. Dreams get vivid when the drawing stops. Got to keep those mothers away.

Oh, Mickey.

Sorted, pored-over, pilfered, packed, and finally moved a mini-library these past weeks. Including but not limited to:

--three French primers
--two signed Madeline L'Engles
--a shelf of reference volumes inc. Roget's Thesaurus In Dictionary Form and Crabb's English Synonymes (you tell me the difference), the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, a pocket rhyming dictionary, and a small volume on the Queen's English.
--The Essence of the Talmud and an extensive nonfiction on Islamic women
--forty issues of Ebony
--one pamphlet on the Gay Men's Unitarian Choir
--at least thirty years of National Geographic
--countless books on UFOs
--a Penguin edition of Greek Lit
--...and one lonely copy of The Hobbit

A small peek into the highly engaging, highly literate mind of Alex's great aunt.

A little bitte...

...of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Walk-see.

Windsor by Inwood.

The dawning realization...

...that both fingers and ink move more slowly in fifty-eight degree temps.

Do what you can.

Thanks to The Humanist for providing the link.

http://www.noonprop8.com/home

.

Watson.

Something live has for the last two days been slamming itself bloody against the inside of the fireplace. It's been threatened, pleaded with, abused, and named, all to little avail.

You tell yourself that you'll never be the sort of woman that leaps onto the highest surface at the merest flash of a wing or a tail or a glittering eye. You tell yourself.

Morning routine.

mullberry rouge from Persia--2 gold pieces

Black Sea kohl (Medea's speciality)--one shorn ram

age defying appleseed oil from the Hesperides--5 rattlesnake tails

UV-blocking balm (Heal-ios Inc.)--one amber necklace

membership to Atlas Gym--12 wool blankets

hair brightener--courtesy of Midas

making your wishes count--priceless

Please'er with a tweezer.

Tithonus and the first stray gray.

More trouble than they're worth.

Hobbit's a delicacy that can be prepared any number of ways. They're soft and tender with flesh so aromatic that herbs just become a redundancy. But there's only one way to cook a dwarf and that's to boil it, salt it, crack it like a nut. And watch your teeth around its basalt bones.

Hold it.

Too early for Poe? No matter. I was hoping for a neat convergence by him with what was just a random sketch, but the story's called The Oval Portrait, damn it. Also, turns out that unless you're searching for masses of online galleries, googling "paintings in fairy tales" is really no help at all. Of course, there's the uncomfortable event behind this particular painting (the model didn't die, but nearly froze in a bathtub of slowly chilling water), but once again the shape of the pic figures prominently.

Birthday present.

Saturday, September 20th: finished my second(gasp!) reading of The Hobbit

Sunday, September 21st: 71st anniversary of the publishing of The Hobbit

Monday, September 22nd: Bilbo (and Frodo) Baggins' birthday

Funny how things align.

There are thirteen dwarvish shadows there, in case anyone was counting.

"Chip the glasses and crack the plates!

Blunt the knives and bend the forks!

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates--

Smash the bottles and burn the corks!"

An Unexpected Party, The Hobbit

The appropriate sentiment of clumsiness and mayhem to hang on my virtual door while bandaged hands and mangled fingers heal.

Bits and pieces.

For loss of a pic, a Wednesday was lost. And all for the loss of an eraser nub.

Moon pies.

Strung with the guts of a great-cat-grandfather,
There's a ghostlier note to that fiddle.



A spoon that's more rake took the dish and the cake,
And the sunrise was left with the riddle.

A post-vacation, post-baptism "halloo" to the little Rubaby.

Children of the Night.

I tried, I really did.

The enduring (and, to my mind, mistaken) image of the Beast has been that of a big cat. Ferocious, to be sure, but also powerful, sleek, attractive--watered down and prettied up to romance an audience of fourteen-year-olds. I always liked to think I'd resist the urge to, well, lionize him in the Disney sense. Rackham did, and Dulac--forgoing fashion and form and arriving at something resembling more Murnau's Nosferatu--something nearer the ugly truth. (The three were comtemporaries--did one inform the others? was there something in the postwar waters?). But has a grace been lost and are you plucked from the story because of it?

So maybe I didn't try at all. I clearly don't have the stomach for the unsettling, so here he is--curried and cleaned for easy viewing.

Tookish.

Sitting here amazed at how much work it took for an eh. It aspired toward Golden Age/Art Deco and instead fluttered to the windowsill of 1970's German b&w.

Sing wit me now.

New United Airlines commercials aired during the Olympics. The animation for this one is crazy.

Devil may care.

Faustus.

...sensitive about my shit.

Trying out some 'new' stuff. But I'd be lying if I said it doesn't feel real good to curl up in the spaces between a zillion tiny little lines.