I'm Back

Word of the day: inveterate - stubbornly established by habit; habitual; unlikely to change.

Hello, all!

Long time, no talk. We're ensconced in Georgia now, obviously, and we love it! Though Statesboro kinda stinks!

I'll stop there. Sometimes the best way to catch up after a long absence is to just not even bother with it, just resume business as usual, which is what I opt to do here. I've been thinking about the blog and what I want to do with it, what I want to say on it. I've decided that I will continue to post fun bits about art, but I want to include more information about nature (animals, birds, endangered species) and anything else I can think of - this "anything else I can think of" including but not limited to authors, places I want to go, movies, news and stories that strike me as refreshing, strange, or comment-able.

In April 2009, I decided to try and get creative. I had written screenplays before (none of them worthy of representation, natch) and maintained a blog for about a year to 16 months. I wanted to try something new. Ever since my senior year in high school (where I wrote a few short stories my white-haired, corvine-visaged, all-knowing teacher commended me on), I've had a bit of a jones for writing. So two-and-a-half years ago, I tried to write a young adult novel. I completed the book - and then went on to write two more YA novels and two YA horror story collections. Try as I might, I just couldn't find any representation for them. A few agents I queried asked to read a few pages of this or that, but no one was interested. Needless to say, I was a bit disillusioned, though I don't know why I should have been. I just can't get over how tough and discombobulating it is to spend a substantial amount of time on works that might sell.

So I next decided to try out an adult novel and for the last year-and-a-half, I've here and there worked on a novel that I'll probably never finish or have any clue as to how to finish. This is slightly depressing. More wasted time. I've tried writing another adult novel too and by my accounts I'm maybe 2/5 of the way through that one. If I finish, I finish. I know no one in the industry, I have no "ins", I have no in-the-know guide or resource to even give me feedback. It just seems like vanished time. The numbers are staggering: 100,000 books out there all seeking agents... It didn't help that I worked in a used book store and saw with my own eyes the life cycle of most books: Bought at discount somewhere or given as a gift, maybe read, abandoned and discarded and forgotten about.

There are a million other things I can do with my free time. Eventually I'm sure I'll finish these novels, but I never really saw myself, at any point in my life, as an artist, and so I'm relieved that I won't feel disappointed, like a letdown, if I can't wrap these novel attempts up. It's been fun working and tinkering on them, and that'll have to do.

This is a hard resignation, but liberating too. No pressure, no urgency to express myself. I need to continue to write, create, but I have no illusions, no aspirations. Writing outside of this blog will just be a hobby, just a way to get a few original ideas down.

That said, I'm excited to get back into the blog. My maintenance of this site will be vigilant and thorough.

Let's see... Wow, there's so much to write about I don't even know where to begin. Here's some thoughts I'll just spit out:
- I was glad I took note of what Barack Obama was reading this past summer. I've read two of his selections - Daniel Woodrell's Bayou Trilogy and Ward Just's Rodin's Debutante - and they were both eye-opening and masterfully written.
- I'm kinda diggin' Fantasy Football. This is my first year of really participating in it and it's quite addictive. Through eleven weeks, my six teams have amassed a cumulative record of 43-23 (though I'm afraid that when the final totals come in from yesterday's action, I'll have put up a dismal 0-6 goose egg for the weekend).
- The Descendants, with George Clooney, just might be a perfect movie.
- If I never get to see the Great Bear Rainforest in western British Columbia (and what are the odds that I will, honestly?), I'll be the worse off for it.
- I think that when Julia gets me a subscription to National Geographic, it will be one of the best gifts I'll ever receive.
- Homeland rocks. Claire Danes rocks. Dexter is still entertaining as hell, but news that there will be two additional seasons after this diminishing-goods Season 6 makes me feel a tad sour. You know, that, they should have ended it after... feeling.

One thing most of us will never see is a tropical pocket gopher, not unless something magical and unexpected happens. A rodent of the family geomyidae, the gopher is endemic to Tamaulipas in coastal Mexico. They spend most of their lives beneath the ground in wooded areas and shrublands, mostly eating underground vegetation. They live solitary lives and are active year round. Because their range of habitat is so narrow, the gophers are inevitably doomed when confronted, as they are, by agricultural encroachment and industrialization, along with residential development. They are on the IUCN's (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List, a designation that immediate action is required to protect this critically-endangered species.

One of the most famous Art Deco painters, Erte, is man I know nothing about. While working thousands of crossword puzzles as a kid, I found old Erte to be a regular companion. "17-Across: Art Deco painter." Who is Erte? Dozens and dozens of times. Art Deco always equaled Erte. Was it just the handy way his name supplied the valuable, intangible building blocks of 'r' and 't' and two 'e's? Or was he generally worth knowing about?

Well, he was Russian-born, a painter and designer, and he didn't die until 1990 at the ripe old age of 98. So what about Erte, born Romain de Tirtoff? His accomplishments:
- worked for Harper's Bazaar for over two decades
- designed costumes and stage sets for the renowned Folies-Bergeres music hall in Paris
- created sculpture, gouache paintings
- costumer and set designer for MGM in mid-1920s
- dress designer for famous French couturier Paul Poiret
- designed outfits for famous showgirl, Mata Hari
- designed costumes for Radio City Rockettes

He did a little bit of everything, having his hand in signature costumes, stage and set design, sculpture, painting, lithographs, and drawing, among others. He was an emblem of both the Jazz Age and Broadway, the birth of fashion magazines and turn-of-the-century Paris. He was well-known and much sought after in his lifetime. A particularly iconic work of his is Symphony in Black, above. There is much, much more to write about him - his relationship with William Randolph Hearst, his pioneering use of sheet metal sculpture with pigments, etc. - but at least I have an idea about his work.