poem

I've been thinking of this one lately, but can't seem to find the text of it online. So here's an excerpt from memory, which I'll correct someday.

James Riedel- Pill Bugs

In the leaves that border the cinderblocks of the house
My son counts pillbugs in his palm.
Beads the color of lead.
One by one they open and crawl
Until a touch returns them to playing dead.

My son's hand is quiet
As the museum of a spider's corner.
That room full of people I will get
If I keep my house.
If my stone-carved year falls from it's orbit
Before my son's.

They will wait for him to close his father's eyes.
To close them more than once, for the grey yolks of the irises refuse to dry.
From years of watching, long into the night
The lean, striped shadow waiting by the stairwell.

When it starts to climb for a child,
I speak to make it look at me.
To show it that I fall quicker to its paw.
And feed its family more.

edit: remembered the missing bit!

Upcoming and outgoing

Women in Animation had their first public meeting last week. I think it went really well- good attendance and great people. They sought input on what people want from the chapter, which was welcome- it's good to be able to give input. I expect great things from them, and am so happy I played my small role in getting it going.

ASIFA meeting last night discussed upcoming events: Animation Show of Shows on Saturday, a drawing trip on November, a Show and Tell in December, Drinking and Drawing in January, and we're thinking about putting on a freelancer resource fair/panel discussion/something in February. Let me know if you have any insights on content for the freelancer event- I'm sort of spearheading that one, so I'm looking for input and suggestions as I try to see who would be interested in participating.

Work is busy and just doesn't seem to slow down. Which is good, I know- good for the company, good for the economy, good all around, but personally, selfishly, I wish I had a little more down time in a given day. I'm out of touch with all the blogs I used to read at work. We've had a really great group of clients lately, though, which helps immensely.

Last week (was it only last week? It seems forever ago), my mom and I took a trip down the coast to visit the aquarium and see Newport. I don't think I had ever been to Newport, and it's silly to miss things that are so close. I need to get to Crater Lake someday. I took a couple pictures that I'll put on Facebook eventually.

I've been reading a bit, but mostly fiction, re-read Neuromancer and some Gaiman. Here are some gems from Dune:

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of mankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.

I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness--until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say, "What are hands?"

Finally, it looks like I've been keeping this blog (more or less) for a year now. It went so fast.

Finding a creative job in Portland

I end up being asked for my insights from time to time, so here they are, in my official jobhunting in PDX post. I'll edit this post periodically as I think of new things.

Firstly, tweet tweet tweet. Portland is one of the epicenters of Twitter use, and every interactive agency, ad agency, creative company in town is on Twitter. So get yourself a twitter account and follow anyone at any company that looks remotely connected to what you want to be doing. Participate in the community: ask questions, share insights and information, and help people out. There are a bunch of good blog posts on Twitter use and etiquette, I'll edit them in here as I find them. Short answer: Get on Twitter. Lazy answer: search twitter for "jobs Portland" Better answer: Get on Twitter and participate.

Which leads me to: blog. Twitter is a great place to share your blog, so you can keep a blog about your personal and professional work/insights/challenges, and then tweet your posts. Keeping a blog creates a larger context around your resume (which you will also have on your blog) and your reel (which you will also have on your blog), and gives people some sense of you as a person. Portland is a small town, so personality matters (see participate in the community above).

I guess before you do any of these things, get interested in the kind of work that's being done here. There are a ton of interactive and advertising agencies in town, so get familiar with who's here and what they do, which means doing some research. Also, because it's a small town, sending out your reel and waiting is a poor strategy. Be proactive, be visible, be accessible.

Also: PDX mindshare is a great job posting and networking resource. LinkedIn is a great place to form and maintain professional connections.

That's all I have for now. :-)

ASIFA whatnot

So, as I think I mentioned, we're working on the Mary and Max event on the 3rd. It's very cool, because we have a Q&A with the director afterward.
We're also taking first steps toward hosting a Drinking and Drawing in January, and you know that's my baby.
I'm also thinking of my Laikans, and talking with the chapter about maybe having an event focused on freelance animators in Portland. What's the climate like, how does it work for people who are doing it, what are the resources, etc. Maybe a panel discussion and a resource fair? There are a bunch of resources out there, but I'm not sure how well known they are. I'd be willing to help pull something together if people were interested and wanted to connect in that way. So I guess what I'm saying is that, if you're interested, let me know and I'll see how the chapter feels about it.
I have to say, I love how informal the ASIFA people are compared with the SIGGRAPH board. The SIGGRAPH board had a lot of formal behaviors, like making motions and seconding them, and formalizing meeting minutes... it's nice to be able to kind of skip all that and just talk things through together.

And, as I said just nine months ago, I am so sorry for the loss of the wonderful, talented, good-hearted peeps at Laika. When they move on, the Portland animation community will have suffered a tremendous loss.

Jack Kerouac

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The Way We Live

by Kathleen Jamie

Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scary side:
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,
comittment, driving fast and unswerving
friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,
barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold
bangles. Of airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,
of strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon -
the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you're
creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland
walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,
his bodyguard of snow.

Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,
to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,
Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip
of government. To misery and elation; mixed,
the sod and caprice of landlords.
To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems
to be: let me bash out praises - pass the tambourine.

Bric a brac

Well, it looks like I'm a board member of ASIFA Portland. I have to admit, it seems like it will be fun- I don't have, you know, a Real Job like an elected member, and they are a pretty laid-back bunch. So we'll definitely be putting together another Drinking and Drawing- I may not be hosting this one, but I'll show 'em how it's done. :-)

Personally, I'm going through a few transitions- I can't tell if this is baby steps toward major progress, or just sidesteps as I work out a few things. One thing I've been really focusing on (and it was going well until tonight) is delineating my time- I need my work day to end, period, at some specific time, and the rest of my life to commence. I tend to drag work stuff around with me all the time, and it's poor stress management and doesn't let me focus on other areas of my life that need attention. So even if it's just for an hour or two at night, I need it to officially stop. I've been hitting a gong in my apartment, and it's funny but it helps.

I'm reading Locke's Essay on Understanding. Delightful writing style- he starts out so self-deprecating, with just a few of his humble observations, and then commences to thoroughly, systematically, demolish any competing opinions. Funny how we take the whole tabula rasa argument for granted now, and wrap it into nature vs nurture- when he wrote this stuff, it was really groundbreaking.

What's coming up? Cre8Con, for one. I'm not sure I can afford to go- it's so much more expensive than it was last year, and my job just spent a fortune to send me to Siggraph. Too bad, too- I got a lot out of it last year. Also Art Spark, BackFence PDX, OMPA Industry Night, and Dr. Sketchy. So if you're a creative type, September has a lot to offer.

Madmen

by Billy Collins

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.

Actually, they are the real artists,
you said, spinning the ice in your glass.
The screwdriver is their brush.
The real vandals are the restorers,
you went on, slowly turning me upside-down,
the ones in the white doctor's smocks
who close the wound in the landscape,
and thus ruin the true art of the mad.

I watched my poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.

All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
catch a glimpse of the thing
in the fan of my headlights,
maybe perched on a road sign or a street lamp,
poor unwritten bird, its wings folded,
staring down at me with tiny illuminated eyes.

what's going on?

My job is sending me to Siggraph 2009, which is cool. I'm excited to go and excited to visit New Orleans.
I'm taking an online creative writing class, which is interesting.
Meditative lately- the fourth of July always makes me think of our political history, of war and fear and things I try to not think about the rest of the year. And I'm deeply emotionally involved in current events in Iran, and feel hopeless to take any appropriate action. Which is why I generally suppress these kinds of thoughts, I guess. All my twitter and facebook friends are probably sick of me nagging them about it.

from The Once and Future King

A truly amazing book, by the way.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey rules which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically--she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living--not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth--if women ever do hope this--but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one--knowledge of the world.
The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy--this discovery is not a matter for triumph. The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance! But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. We only carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a state of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.
And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with all the impetus of life. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.
But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not. Obviously the existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going to live her present one, because her manner of living it must hinge on the problem. There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads.
Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.
All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh sense. Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments, without difficulty. The seventh sense, indeed, slowly kills all the other ones, so that at last there is no trouble about the commandments. We cannot see any more, or feel, or hear about them. The bodies which we loved, the truths which we sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to them now, safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave, under the protection of our last sense.

He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

Also, the last several pages have some really fascinating thoughts about war and human nature, but I can't type them all out here and the fragments won't be very insightful.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

by Dylan Thomas. Brought to mind by current events in Iran.

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

Happy birthday, Walt Whitman

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

incredible!

This was going around twitter a couple days ago and I just finally watched it. Incredible. I need to watch it a few more times.

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Hopkins is a masterful poet, one of the greatest in the English language. So I had to pause to read this article on Slate.com just out of curiosity.
What's strange to me is the author's contrasting of those two poems for the purposes of the article, because it's easier to say what's different about those works than to say what's similar. The subject matter is entirely contrasting, the authors' perspectives utterly different, the messages and themes completely at odds with each other. One may as well take an apple and an orange and list all the ways that one is not like the other although they are both fruit. Thomas is commenting on the ironies of class and Hopkins is struggling with God, for chrissakes.
Not saying that the author of the article doesn't make some interesting points about the poems, but I'm wondering why he chose to contrast these two to begin with. That is all.

Envoi- Eavan Boland

Appropriate for me on so many levels right now.

It is Easter in the suburb. Clematis
shrubs the eaves and trellises with pastel.
The evenings lengthen and before the rain
the Dublin mountains become visible.

My muse must be better than those of men
who made theirs in the image of their myth.
The work is half-finished and I have nothing
but the crudest measures to complete it with.

Under the street lamps the dustbins brighten.
The winter-flowering jasmine casts a shadow
outside my window in my neighbor's garden.
These are things my muse must know.

She must come to me. Let her come
to be among the donnee, the given.
I need her to remain with me until
the day is over and the song is proven.

Surely she comes, surely she comes to me--
no lizard skin, no paps, no podded womb
about her but a brightening and
the consequences of an April tomb.

What I have done I have done alone.
What I have seen is unverified.
I have the truth and I need the faith.
It is time I put my hand in her side.

If she will not bless the ordinary,
if she will not sanctify the common,
then here I am and here I stay and then am I
the most miserable of women.

Balance

This is an amazing short that I hadn't seen for years (despite looking for it from time to time) until my friend Kristen posted it on Facebook today. Wonderful!

Abt Vogler- Robert Browning

Just about my favorite poem ever.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night--
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is,--shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made verse--still, effect proceeds from cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,
Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:--

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;
It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
As good, nay, better, perchance: is this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,--yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

Uninspired

So, as you may have noticed, this blog is less and less about the community and more about myself personally.

I think it's just that I'm in a bit of a down place lately- a lot of collaborative projects have sort of fallen apart due to one thing or another, so I'm having a little rebound period where I rethink what I want to be involved in and the extent of my involvement.

On the other hand, being done with those things is incredibly freeing, and I'm starting to feel a spark of creativity and enthusiasm for personal projects. So it's fine, I'm just not in the same place I was six months ago when I started blogging.

One of the things I'm thinking about is that I need to take on personal projects that specifically don't resemble the work I do for money. I really enjoy the weird stuff I make with wire and paper and find it gratifying, and want to explore working more with physical stuff, rather than looking at a monitor.

Also, I need to make more substantial connections with some of the amazing people I know, because I think that having people to bounce things off of would be really helpful for me. I have a hard time prioritizing spending meaningful time with people, but I need to do that.

So if you don't mind, I'll continue to share like I have been, and keep the title the same. And thank you for your patience.

The Neighbor- Rilke

Dangit, I can't find the Snow translation online, so I'm going to have to try this from memory.

Strange violin, do you follow me?
In how many distant cities before this
Did your lonely night speak to mine?
Do thousands play you? Does only one?

Are there in all the great cities those who, without you,
Would have long since lost themselves in the rivers?
And why does it always reach me?

Why am I always the neighbor of those who force you
From fear to sing, and to say out loud
Life is heavier than the weight of all things.

Art III

And this is just breathtaking work.

Art II

And this is the always masterful Amano.

Art I

Oh my gosh! This is Boujemaa Lahkdar, who had some absolutely amazing pieces in a museum in Marrakech, but who's work I've never ever seen on the web before. Thank you, flickr!

It's been a while

Going to iSite's anniversary party on Monday. The people I've met from there have made a great impression on me at cre8 camp and on Twitter, so I'm looking forward to it. They have a handy RSVP form on their website where you not only say that you're coming, but can tell them if there's any expert you'd like to talk to, and then adds the date to your Outlook calendar. Nice!

Also coming up- Science Pub and Interesting PDX.

I'm taking a couple days off in early April and really looking forward to it. It always seems like a person should take vacation when they have somewhere to go, but I never can afford to go anywhere. So I try to remember to take vacation anyway and just relax. I have to admit that I worry a bit about everything when I'm gone, but that's just because I take it seriously and feel a personal commitment to our projects- it's good that I worry, and good that I leave anyway.

Tomorrow we start putting together the baby board for the Portland chapter of Women in Animation- that should be exciting!

Also on Twitter, I'm late to the party, but Christopher Walken is my current favorite tweeter. He's hilarious. Someone really needs to put together an audio set, though, so you can hear him saying this stuff.

Also, shout out to some ex-Laikans who are staying in town and taking a shot at their own studio. I wish them all the best.

James P Carse- The Religious Case Against Belief

If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left hand the everlasting striving after truth, so that I could always and everlastingly be mistaken, and said to me, "Choose," with humility I would pick the left hand and say, "Father, grant me that. Absolute truth is for thee alone." - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

[Galileo] knew, as any critical thinker would, that knowledge is corrigible, and that belief is rarely so. Open to correction himself, he had no inclination and no reason to take an immovable stand. He could not perform a heroic act like Luther's not because of cowardice but because there was nothing to stand on ... Galileo knew as well as anyone that there is no protecting ourselves from what discoveries the future brings.

We might say that we join the communitas when the questions being asked there becomes our questions.

In fact, never can we make a judgment of another with clean motives--even when such a judgment is appropriate. Evil is real. It is unmistakeably there in the world, and just as unmistakeably in ourselves.

miscellany

A crucible is a heat-resistant container in which materials can be heated to very high temperatures.

Cre8 Camp on Saturday. To be perfectly honest, I'm feeling a little apprehensive that the event will be something of a forum for the OCI peeps. That makes it feel less organic and participant-driven than the Legion of Tech events, which is precisely what I value about them. However, I am looking forward to it.

Women in Animation stuff is happening- I've been really busy at work so haven't followed up on it as much as I keep intending to.

Still reading James P Carse and listened to his Long Now lecture last night. Really interesting, and surprisingly consistent with some stuff I was thinking way back when I studied philosophy, although, of course, much more cogent. His thinking is an interesting mix of rationality and mysticism that appeals to me.

Lincoln's second inaugural speech

Another amazing piece of literature.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

James P Carse- Breakfast at the Victory

The ego wants nothing less than to see God. The soul knows, however, that if the Divine were to appear, the ego would not recognize it. The heavens cannot open for the soul; they are already open.

That is all.

The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho

So, this is another one of those books that everyone on the planet has read and raves about, and I wasn't particularly impressed by. Perhaps people are just so desperate for a sense of personal significance and meaning in their lives that this little allegory really speaks to that need... I'm not sure.

There was, however, one little passage I liked:

"This is why alchemy exists," the boy said. "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold."

Animation Festival news

I met with Brian from the ASIFA chapter today, and he really wants to move forward with the festival for this fall. He wants it to be an ASIFA event and focus on the capabilities of Northwest chapter members, and I think we're just going to take the bit in our teeth and do it. I'm really pleased.

vacuum woes

~Totally out of step with the usual content of this blog, but I'm frustrated.~

About 7 years ago I got a new Kenmore upright bagless HEPA filter awesome vacuum from Sears. I loved that thing- it always worked beautifully and never gave me any problems. I'm sure I abused the filters, but it performed perfectly.

About 18 months ago, my mom and I agreed to switch vacuums because her new apartment had wall-to-wall carpet, and my most recent two apartments had hardwood floors. So I took her little stick vac, and she took my badass Kenmore.

Well, I couldn't hang with the crappy little thing, so last year for Christmas I bought myself a Dirt Devil bagless upright for pets. It had the air filter and a special pet hair attachment and everything.

About six months after I bought it, they recalled the pet hair attachment because it was hazardous- apparently it had been breaking and shooting out pieces of plastic at high velocities. Fine- I went to the Dirt Devil website and ordered the replacement attachment. About eight weeks later, I still hadn't gotten the attachment, and hadn't heard anything from them, so I call them. The (very nice) woman on the phone said that the order had been cancelled. I explained that I hadn't cancelled it, and hadn't been using the attachment for a long time now because it was unsafe, and would they please send me a new one. About 8 weeks later, the new one arrives.

Now, two weeks ago, my belt breaks. The website says to replace the belts every 3-4 months, but I had never ever replaced the belt on my Kenmore, which is now at least 7 years old. Also, the only thing I vacuum with this machine is a 6x8 area rug, and suck cat hair off the furniture- it hasn't even been used extensively. But whatever, the belts are cheap and I'll just buy a bunch of them, and I need new filters anyway. Except that the belts are out of stock at dirtdevil.com. And so are the air filters. And I called Starks, keeper of all things vacuum (they have a vacuum MUSEUM, for Pete's sake) and they don't have the belts either.

In short, I'm really unhappy with the purchase of this thing, and with the followup service I've gotten/am getting from Dirt Devil, and loved the abuse I was able to pile on my Kenmore. My mom is still using the hell out of it, and she loves it too. It wasn't that much more expensive than the Dirt Devil, and I should have just stuck with the brand.

Francis Bacon 1605

For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.

Women in Animation exploratory meeting

That was a great meeting. The community in Portland is pretty small, so most people were connected to each other one way or another, and the sheer talent at the table blew me away.

The outcome seems to be that everyone wants to do it- to form a local chapter and become more involved with each other, to build community and support, to share and mentor, and, for me of course, to host some kick-ass events.

For those who don't know, yes, of course men are allowed and invited to participate, but we also want to acknowledge that women have a lot to share with each other, and need different kinds of support and mentorship.

I'm really excited for this opportunity, but equally excited that I don't have to spear-head it and push it forward. :-)

Miscellany

The exploratory "who wants to do this" Women In Animation meeting is on the 29th. Kate's gotten a huge response- she's starting to worry if there's going to be enough room at the table for all of us. Wonderful!

I just got a notice from the library that Altered Carbon is due sooner than I thought it was, and I haven't made much progress on it due to being sidetracked by Don Quixote. I'm going to try to finish it this weekend- I don't have a lot on my plate, so I should be able to jam on it.

Interesting Portland is moving forward, and I'm bummed that I missed all the meetings- they've been in the morning, before/into my work hours, and I just can't hang with those times. However, the event itself should be pretty cool, and the tickets are already on sale at a steep discount for the adventurous who are willing to buy tickets before the agenda is announced. For more info, go here.

The final animation from Drinking and Drawing

Find more videos like this on ASIFA PDX


What I really like about this one is that people really maintained continuity- if you look at the one we made last year, it just morphs and morphs... this one has more of a sense of story.

Derrida- Rogues

At the moment of confiding it to you, I am myself torn or split in two.
On the one hand, this double question would require us to inflect otherwise the very word question. It would impose itself at the very beginning of the game, and that is why I spoke without delay of an injunction and of the greatest force, of a force that will have won out over everything, and first of all over me, in the figure of a violent question, the question in the sense of an inquisitional torture where one is not only put in question but put to the question.
On the other hand, this double question has returned to torment me. It has made a return, turning around me, turning and returning, turning around me and turning me upside down, upsetting me, as if I were locked up in a tower unable to get around, unable to perceive or conceive the workings or turnings of a circular machine that does not work or turn just right.

In the end, if we try to return to the origin, we do not yet know what democracy will have meant nor what democracy is. For democracy does not present itself; it has not yet presented itself, but that will come. In the meantime, let's not stop using a word whose heritage is undeniable even if its meaning is still obscured, obfuscated, reserved. Neither the word nor the thing 'democracy' is yet presentable. We do not yet know what we have inherited; we are the legatees of this Greek word and what it assigns to us, enjoins us, bequeaths or leaves us, indeed delegates or leaves over to us. We are undeniably the heirs or legatees, the delegates, of this word, and we are saying 'we' here as the very legatees or delegates of this word that has been sent to us, addressed to us for centuries, and that we are always sending or putting off until later. There are, to be sure, claims or allegations of democracy everywhere 'we' are; but we ourselves do not know the meaning of this legacy, the mission, emission, or commission of this word or the legitimacy of this claim or allegation.

In its constitutive autoimmunity, in its vocation for hospitality, democracy has always wanted by turns and at the same time two incompatible things: it has wanted, on the one hand, to welcome only men, and on the condition that they be citizens, brothers, and compeers, excluding all the others, in particular bad citizens, rogues, noncitizens, and all sorts of unlike and unrecognizable others, and, on the other hand, at the same time or by turns, it has wanted to open itself up, to offer hospitality, to all those excluded. ... Rogues or degenerates are sometimes brothers, citizens, compeers.

D. H. Lawrence- Snake

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Drinking and Drawing

Turnout wasn't as high as I had hoped, but everyone had a really good time. It's funny, because the group of people who ended up doing the bulk of the drawing really took ownership of the final product. I hadn't seen that happen before, but I think it's because at prior events there were so many people drawing that they only got to go once or twice.
I had a really good time and saw a lot of people I wanted to see, and finally met some people I had only met on Twitter.

My use of Twitter on this event was really interesting to me. I created a Twitter account for DrinknDrawPDX, and specifically sought out people on Twitter that I thought would be interested. Over time, DrinknDraw developed a social network that only slightly overlaps my own, and introduced me to people I wouldn't have met otherwise. And I'm still not sure that all those people know that I'm DrinknDraw and DrinknDraw is me. Funny.
So DrinknDraw developed a small social network on Twitter, and I spammed the hell out of everyone from my own Twitter account, and Facebook, and the Oregon Media Network, each of which had a slightly different result from a different but overlapping group of people.
The DrinknDraw account ended up being followed by some local art and media outlets, and had people volunteer to post press releases, as well as volunteer for the event itself.
That was pretty cool, actually- normally the process of getting volunteers for chapter events involves sending an email to a massive distribution list and then having interested people contact a coordinator who tries to coordinate them- in this instance, I called for volunteers from both Twitter accounts and within minutes I had one confirmed volunteer for each account. I love the speed and ease of tweeting those kinds of requests, and how quickly the community passed on the info. It's really cool.

At the event, someone I had never met before showed up and took the lovely photos posted here. Her name is Heather Zinger, and I think there's a wonderful artistic sensibility in her photography. And lo, she's interested in animation, so will show up to our WIA meeting.

On a different note, I think I need to set aside Don Quixote for now- it's a huge time sink, and I have some library books I'm dying to get to. It's a strange book- I spent a long time expecting a Decameron/Canterbury Tales kind of thing, and then just when I had accepted that it was going to take on the novel form, it switched over and seems to have become that. Which makes it easier to set down, actually.

loss of momentum

So, somehow over the snow days and the holidays, a kind of inertia set in and I'm struggling to get out of it.

Correction, I'm not trying that hard to struggle out of it, because I am enjoying pulling inward a bit right now.

Rest assured, soon I'll arise and attack this animation festival and get my teeth into Bobbsey and forge ahead on Women in Animation and so on. Drinking and Drawing is next week and that will probably get me going.

So, because I'm not really acting on those things right now, and I'm deep in Don Quixote (which is really long and strange), I just don't have that much to blog about.

I'm still mentally wrestling a bit with issues of creativity and connection, but I don't feel like I have anything new to share. I'd still like to chat about it with anyone who wants to. :-)

T. S. Eliot

I know, I owe you an update- I got caught up in the snowpocalypse and the holidays and whatnot, and do have a few things to catch up on. However, I've been thinking about this poem a lot lately, so here it is. Real update to follow, but in the meantime read this amazing work.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-- (They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-- (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all-- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all-- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

* * * *

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here�s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-- If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the

floor-- And this, and so much more?-- It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:

"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all."

* * * *

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.