Oh my god....

I was looking up a magazine and the person who did it and saw that I had been published in it... nearly ten years ago! Wild. I knew I had been accepted to it but never knew it had actually come out, and tonight I saw it.

Personal Reality Essays: Sidereal Birds: Trans-Species Communication and What Lies Beneath by Joey Gaen;

Joey Gaen! That's me! At that time I was changing my name to 'Gaen' - my middle name is 'Gayne'.

Anyway, wow. CPAOD was a huge influence and inspiration to me as a young teen and forward. I'm sure it's there at the cracks of my personality now. And I've always loved Jasmine Sailing. I was happy to see she's starting CPAOD again but just floored that my essay had gotten through way back then and I'd never known.

For years I'd hoped it had. Like, I would want to tell people that it had. Jasmine had accepted it but I'd never seen the magazine with it in it. As she has said her schedule is erratic. And at that time it was moreso, er, that it had been.

So, yeah.

see here

Self Portrait Day (Halloween 2009)

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A costume which makes the wearer appear to each viewer as someone that they loved but could not satisfactorily express that to; moreover, someone they were terrified to express that to, would be the one I would wear, especially to a party.

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Don't Do It

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--A coffee lecture, virtual travel doesn't need poor education only pictures. Besides, that's what makes it a fantasy. There is no difference in knowing things. A walk in the rain will get you wet either way. The glass pan still holds too much heat for fingers. It's not the same as a bruise which lasts months, but I guess it's still a symptom of distraction.
--The photo made her look overtly together. I was intimidated in a different way than I was after we'd first talked two years ago, when she had definitely not looked too much together. I had been so flattened after meeting her that I walked into a steel door frame and bruised my hip. Which, as you might imagine, is not something that happened after seeing her photo just now. Similarly though, there was rain.
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Tonight (etc)

(picture by Theodore Kittelsen)

Today I wrote a cover letter and submitted my new picture book to a children's book publisher. In a few months I will know what they thought. This is my third picture book, that I've submitted, the first two had enough rejections that I decided to rework them.

On another note I had two poems rejected, er, sent back, tonight. Which was a bummer. But, they were my first poetry submissions in ages and so I don't feel too bad, well I do but I know I shouldn't. I have a few other poetry submissions I'm prepping, so hopefully, something something.

The essay I said I had finished I had until I came across some old diaries from the time period the essay focuses on and realized I wanted to do more with it. So it looms...

The second and third Aiko Planetarium LPs are in progress, with the second being basically done, it just needs a few little touches... The third is mostly demos at this point. The second in something I'd started years ago, the third is something I started at the end of this past spring.

Aside from that someone offered to make me a Szechuan dish, which is great and sweet of them. Lest I let the fruit rot on the vine, as my friend put it.

My body image issues are so out of whack and I feel very horrible in that arena... Luckily a good friend of mine who is beautiful and as it turns out has experience in this mire has lent an ear and friendly advice.

Also, I'm sure that this path I have found as a writer is more difficult and strange than I had ever imagined.......

That said I went on and did three personalized promos for Japanese Alice releases (my itty-bity virtual label which has released the great Pacific Blush debut and will soon release the even more amazing follow-up!)... hopefully they'll see what I see if not more........

"tiger mountain" calling...

Jesus...

(painting by Gerhard Richter)

Just finished revising, rewriting, rewriting my essay on Shin and it nearly killed me, or I nearly did. At least I got through the essay. I never, ever, want to have to write that or work like that again. Hopefully it will find a publisher. Solace calling...

off the hook 2

Q: Anything interesting out there?
A: The Spiral Jetty.




As is probably obvious by now, I quite like the band Destroyer, especially their song 'what road' off the Your Blues album, a quote from which I used to open my expository essay: 'How To Lose Shin'. Anyway, there's a line in the song, in the verse after the one I quoted in that essay, that I found myself singing, but not really knowing what I was saying. Destroyer's songs often reference many things with an emphasis on women (or simply female characters), other songs (including other Destroyer songs), cities and so on. Dan Bejar, who simply burned a golden bridge, has his own metaphorical vocabulary as well that he's developed over the course of seven or so album. His lyrics have been referred to as hyper-literate. The lines I found myself singing were,

Able, willing, ready!
Fuck the Spiral Jetty!
Tonight we work large! We aim high! Pillars stare at a sky
Designed to come down upon
Everyone at once...

The piece which seemed to evoke a space that I couldn't specifically visualize was in the second line, spiral jetty. I know what a jetty is but wasn't quite sure if this was a metaphor, or what. So one night while browsing the Destroyer wiki I found that exact phrase hyperlinked in the lyrics (as anything referential is apt to be) and clicked it. It turned out that the Spiral Jetty is a land art sculpture by the artist Robert Smithson which is an actual spiral jetty off the shore and into the Great Salt Lake. It was completed in 1970.

Whether Dan Bejar is really saying fuck that piece of art, as in let's not be weighed down by this or let it rot, or not, is delightfully up for debate. However, I was thinking he meant it like to hell with it, while at the same time conversely drawing attention to it.

I clicked on and read the article on the Spiral Jetty at Wikipedia, where I saw two photos of the work and was frankly wowed by this thing. It's exactly what it sounds like, a plane curve tracing a point to its center. It's gorgeous, amazing, inspiring, and other hyperbolic terms – however in this case those words are pretty much right on the money. Or were at the time. Smithson died three years after the work was finished, and shortly thereafter the water levels rose and the piece was covered until 1999. It's expected that the work will go back under and eventually be ruined unless it's preserved. Currently it's owned by some art gallery in New York. I'm not sure if it's open to the public, though apparently you can walk to a location where the jetty is visible from. I hope I can go see it before it becomes more of an underwater adventure, and hopefully run out and walk to it's center.

I'm sure it'll be something, because, god, it's sublime. Will I say, fuck you? Probably. It will be at least half meant endearingly. To respond to the lyrics, well I think they're great. Inspiring, even vaguely revolutionary in a fatalistic socialist way or whatever. Fuck that, the lyrics are poetic, political only in envisioning some cloud like dream where we rise up. Maybe it's a scene from a play. Or god, what do I know?

For more: What Road and Smithson's Spiral Jetty