Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Don't worry, this isn't my own state of mind. I just watched "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" and now I am enthralled with Dorothy Parker. She had the same dry humor as Oscar Wilde and Mae West, that sort of blunt commentary that surprises and startles. Is sardonic the word I am looking for?

I often have trouble with poetry; I think I have been a speedy reader for so long that my eyes skip lines and do not read carefully enough to understand most poetry. I lose patience and move on. This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but the poems I really enjoy are Edward Lear's limericks and Lewis Carroll's nonsense poems. Oh, and all of A.A. Milne. So perhaps it is Parker's rhythm and rhyming that draw me in. Although, once there, I think it is the surprising off-beat-ness of the rhythm and her playful manipulation of the words that hold my attention. She is so deliciously dark, and her poetry makes me believe she relished in that darkness.

My New Toy

This is the new toy that is responsible for the type in my latest batches of cards. Found on Ebay, this is a Cub Rotary Press, an incredibly intricate and complex children's toy from the 1940s, which came with (apparently) all its pieces intact (signifying to me that most likely a child never got his or her hands on it!).



I have lately become enamored of letterpresses (check this out, I'm a big fan!) and was searching ebay on the off chance that someone out there had an awesome old press that they just happened to want to give away, possibly even deliver to Vermont. Naturally, that scenario didn't play out, but this little rotary press seemed a good place to start.




As it turns out, children of the '40s must have had incredible patience, or toy manufacturers of the time must have been very optomistic or out-of-touch, because this is just hard! The first job was sorting out the little bitty type and arranging it in its little bitty box.



Painstaking and neck-aching are two terms that come readily to mind. But see how neat when it was done? And the two little picture blocks came along too!



The mini bottle of ink that was part of the original set is firmly closed and no doubt dried up, so I tried caligraphy ink and it seemed possibly a bit too wet. I don't really know about ink consistencies, but I had difficulty coating the type. Using only a single line worked best, so I just made little word tags, but would love to try to write out something longer. Just got to figure out the ink situation. This evening I tried Chinese brush painting ink, but it seemed pretty much the same.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

The Final Days

Does that sound like impending doom?

Today I finally finished the paper that accompanies my Degree Project. I want to share here, because Im not so sure anyone will listen to me if I try to explain in real life, my difficulties with writing papers such as this.

Its not that I find writing hard, or even unenjoyable. Actually I quite love language, I love finding exactly the right word that expresses what I want to say, and I love having the opportunity to sculpt my sentances, reworking and revising until they say only what I mean to impart, no more and no less. I try, with my writing, to be honest in intention and in style. And this last is really what causes all the problems.

This is my confession: I find it really, really difficult to write bullshit papers. The words just don't come. I need to be honest in my writing, or nothing makes sense. So things end up taking ever so much longer than they should.

That's all. Thanks for listening.

And I think the threat of impending doom has actually been averted.

As long as I can get the rest of my sewing done tonight!