Tindaisies

I got new specs last week.

I’ve been far sighted for years but in the past year, my distance sight has been getting fuzzy. Thankfully, I don’t need bifocals (yet).

Here’s the thing that peeves me:

It came time to choose the frames. The vast majority of frames right now are rectangular, which look great on some people, but I have a fine featured, small heart shaped face. The staff at the office kept plunking overpowering, huge plastic rectangles on my face and when I explained that I didn’t like the rectangles, they told me that glasses are a “fashion statement” and you don’t just choose them to suit your face. Eventually I settled on a not too rectangular, metal/plastic combination.

I spent over $300 my fashion statement.

I got sunglasses that clip on, too. Actually, I am pretty happy with them. I just wish there was more of a range of styles to choose from.

We went into town to pick up a few things last Saturday, and I wore my brand new glasses. I know it was because I had glasses on my mind, but it seemed that all around me people were wearing glasses. Most of the glasses I saw were rectangle. All kinds of people, grandmothers, kids, middle aged men, all of them making fashion statements…

All these rectangles on multitudes of different faces; it reminded me of the bold geometric wallpapers that are everywhere right now. Who was it that decided we all have to wear rectangles on our faces? Is there a small conglomerate of powerful design gods who decide these things? Is there a connection between glasses and wall covering patterns?

So I’ve been down in the dumps lately. Well surprise surprise. Who isn’t??? When will winter go away?

Okay, I’ll admit that I also miss my job just a wee bit. I can’t help it. No matter what else is happening in my life right now, I loved my job! I worked for a biweekly newspaper that closed. I got to wear many hats there. What other newspaper is there where you’d get to make a word search, crossword and anagram puzzles for each issue?

There’s a cool little app on Facebook called MyBiorhythm. As long as you have your birth date listed, you can check to see your biorhythm charts and if your friends have their birth dates listed, you can check theirs also. Most people’s look something like this:

As you can see, they’re periodic sine waves. Much of the time they are staggered so if your intellectual cycle is bottoming out, maybe your emotional cycle might be climbing so you can count on being dim-witted but happy (which sometimes seems preferable anyway).

I swear that these days, my biorhythm charts should be looking like this:

Another graphite and charcoal drawing, this one is also 3 x 4 inches, drawn on BFK Rives paper. This is just a play on the term “pieface.” I am finding that photographing these drawings works better than scanning.

Before digital photography, I remember documenting my work by taking photos with slide film. You had to tell the film processors that you wanted the film uncut and unmounted. The film came in a little cardboard roll and you had to cut the film yourself. Then you mounted them by hand, blocking the surrounding backgrounds with silver tape, then snapping them into plastic mounts. A light table made the job a lot easier. After they were taped and mounted, you had to get out the typewriter to type the details of the image which you did on mini labels which were then affixed to the bottom of the white side (not the grey side!) of the slide mount.

I know it sounds quaint and old, but then I come from the era of 8 track tapes too. (I particularly recall my best friend’s mom blasting Boots Randolph in her ‘74 Dart Swinger)

I remember when I was growing up, my mum always seemed to be telling me not to do stuff. I often felt it hampered my style, or hindered my burning curiosity from finding out what I suspected were really important things about the world surrounding me.

The fact is, all mothers have to be “wet blankets.” It ensures survival of the species. It also means that the human race at least attempts to bring those surviving individuals into its fold that are more or less morally and socially sound.

As you grow up, you realize your mother yelled at you for some pretty good reasons… you discover this especially when you become a mother, yourself.

Sometimes people think they do a good job of veiling what they really think but you can read a their face like an open book, or can you? Some people are just plain difficult to read no matter what they say and what their body language says. I think Mrs Whats-Er-Face in the above drawing is one of the latter.

This is a return to making tangible images in traditional media. I drew this with B, HB, F and H pencils and charcoal on BFK Rives paper. The image is 3″x4″.

It’s hard shifting to different media but I miss making drawings and paintings I can hold in my hands and look at. Giclee prints can be lovely, but I sometimes feel something is missing because the directness of working on the actual surface is not there.

Last Saturday I really didn’t feel like doing the end of week household chores so we decided to take a trip into the town 15 minutes west of here to pick up a few items and have a poke about.

A usual part of the trip is a visit to the bakery, which has been in business since the 1940’s. After we finished there, we went to the thrift shop, another regular stop. We search for treasure there and since it’s a small shop in a town 45 minutes away from the nearest city, you can often find some really good stuff that you might expect to be up for silent auction elsewhere.

I was marveling at the crazy mish mash of lamps in the household section: Macrame swags… shades that look like brides maid dresses… bases made of big blobby ceramic eruptions…

Then I saw a plastic aqua green case on the bottom shelf. At first, I thought it was an old typewriter. When I opened it, I saw it was a “General Electric Partymate Solid State” portable record player, circa mid 1960’s. I wondered how many miles of Beatles albums that needle had scratched its way through.

We took it to the counter and I asked if we could plug it in to make sure it worked. I asked my kids to find a record that we could try and they came back with an old Guy Mitchell 78. An elderly woman, who is also a regular at the shop, came over and between us we got the record player working. My kids found two more 78’s: one Sinatra and one by The Four Lads.

We stood around and played the other two records. The woman began to reminisce as the songs hissed and popped out of the plastic speaker grill of the record player. The woman told me that when she feels sad, she pulls out her own collection and plays them, she drifts back in time and it cheers her.

We bought the record player, it cost 3 dollars. The woman who works there threw in the three 78’s for free because the whole moment was just a bit magical. The kids are thrilled because they think it’s funny that we dragged portable record players around back then because we didn’t have mp3 players.

We have been spinning 78’s all week. I have a lot of old music on CD but the sound of the needle dragging along the grooves, the hissing and popping from the original shellac adds enchants me.

And to think that one time, my aunt sat on a stack of them by mistake and cracked every single one.

In the mid 90’s, I worked at a busy art supply store in the core of London, Ontario. It was an intense job and my co-workers were all bright, creative people with extremely overactive brains, so every workday was an adrenaline rush. Scott, one of my co-workers told me the beginning of a story he had wanted to write about a man who always buys the same kind of boots every time he needs a new pair, and then throws his old pair up on the roof of the same building.

I’ve wanted to draw that image since then. Throughout the years, Scott and I have sporadically remained in touch. Well, last week, I finally remembered to ask him if he could tell me the rest of the story, and if I could draw the image, but he told me he doesn’t remember it.

Damn. I feel cheated.
I really wanted to know what happened.

So Potty, thank you for giving me your blessing to draw the image, but you’d better try to remember the rest of it….

How far do you have to turn on the tap to eventually get to where you want to be in your life? When does the tap’s output equal more than the leaks (or gushes) in the vessel? The scary part is, what if you open the tap full out and it’s still not coming fast enough for you to reach your goal 100%? What if your potential cannot reach your goal?

In mid December I was laid off from my job as graphic designer at a newspaper, because the newspaper closed. When stuff like this happens, you stress, then you reflect, and stress and think about your possibilities and stress, and wonder if you can turn around a bad thing and make something good of it and stress. I am thinking about freelancing and wondering how far my tap will turn.

Normally I don’t bother with New Year’s Resolutions, but the one I did make for 2008 was a change I felt was high time to make anyway.

So, allow me to introduce you to my creative muse.

She is both a blessing and a curse. I love her to bits although she can be very overbearing and over-the-top. In the past, I’ve been guilty of shelving her when I’ve been too busy or distracted with life’s events. I find that when I ignore her and brush her off she screams at me from the closet I’ve hidden her away in, and when I let her out she comes back with a vengeance. Sooner or later I lose my centre and I must create. It’s a drive that most creative people will relate too.

The only thing is, my muse is difficult to live with. She’s a shrew. When I finally do create, she tells me it’s not good enough… she’s a perfectionist.

So, my resolution this year is to not ignore, avoid, brush off or shelf the old bag. Hopefully she will learn to live with the flaws in my work just as easily as I hope to let her become a greater part of my life.

Sometime in my 30’s (I don’t remember exactly when) my memory began to get fuzzy. I don’t know if this happens because your brain can retain only so much trivia, but it seems to me I have developed a leak somewhere.

My children have made me see that it’s a matter of perception, a bit like getting a new pair of glasses and realizing you’ve been missing all the sharp details in front of you: their memory is razor sharp, whereas mine is serving me well if I can remember what I had for dinner last night or when I last had an oil change (What? It was in September??? Where did the time go???)

There are good and bad sides to having your children remember things for you.

Good: You can count on them to remind you of things you still need to keep in mind.

Bad: They keep tabs on everything, so you almost need a scoreboard to keep things fair.

The worst part is not even remembering if you ever knew something, or if you just thought you did.

…must remember to look at my calendar to see if I made an appointment to get my eyes checked.