I’ve lost half an inch — which means the next time I lose half an inch, I’ll be 4’11” and a half. I know it’s indicative of spine deterioration, aging, blah, blah, but I also find it funny. FOUR-ELEVEN and a HALF — REALLY? (I’m looking at you, Dottie!)
At my annual yesterday, my PCP managed to be efficient and personable at the same time. I got to air my concerns. She referenced reports from specialists and reviewed them for both of us. She even asked after the boys.
Are you lucky enough to have a doctor that gives you enough time?
In other news, this week’s Paris Collage Collective double image is dedicated to Tommy Tuberville who recently announced that white nationalists are Americans and not racists. He has since walked this back.
I agree with the commentator who said it was hard to tell if the man is more racist than stupid or more stupid than racist. And then there’s this:
Paris Collage Club — this week’s image
The printer is working again, so there will be paper variations this week.
I am still in California and it is still grey. At least it’s not the fire-roasted smoky grey of Boston or New York.
Sometimes in my double collage play with the Paris Collage visual prompt, the prompt gets lost. When it disappears, I don’t post to instagram, even though sometimes I like them better. Today I’ll share a bunch here.
It just occurred to me that making these double/triple/quadruple images might be my version of Hazel’s watercolors. I find her daily practice inspiring and the paintings expressive, sometimes beyond what her words say. I guess that’s one of the points of the practice.
As a writer friend announces after every read: THE END.
The debt bill just passed the house. Ugh. The process. Certainly, some mastery at work by Biden.
In this house tonight, Jeopardy is competing with a soccer game. I think Jeopardy will win. I don’t want Ted Lasso to end — I really don’t— but we’ll watch that later.
Ready for a month’s worth of haiku tomorrow? Is a month all at once too much? Would weekly round ups be more digestible?
Much of creative discovery is propelled by laziness — or at least in my case, it is. It’s not that I mind performing lots of discrete steps or putting in the time (sometimes an obscene amount of time, I might add), it’s that I don’t always love some of the individual steps — for instance, gluing shit down.
Enter the scene: 8 1/2 x 11” sticky paper designed to be fed into an inkjet printer. Oh, am I psyched about this!
Step one: rip and cut collage elements. Place on blank page. No glue. Photograph.
This is as ephemeral as you can get, by the way, because by the end of this process, this arrangement will no longer exist. Digital record only. Do I mind the curling edges and the shadows produced by them? Sometimes. Sometimes not.
Step two: run photo of unglued collage through a bunch of filters using dianaphoto app.
My favorites below combined the collage and a photo I took of very weathered wood — perhaps a window opening to a slave cabin? I don’t remember. Using the “roll the dice” function for shuffling images in dianaphoto means I don’t always recognize what comes up and, having 13,000+ pictures on my phone, I don’t necessarily want to track down the source (see laziness, above).
Step three: select one photo of a layered collage and print onto sticky paper. Trim and stick to sketchbook page.
Step four: pillage elements from original collage (remember, nothing was glued down) and adhere them to the print/layered version.
I have trouble getting the interface between my phone and printer to do what I want it to, so I often just go with what comes out. In this case the slight change in scale served the design.
PS Sometimes I use the app “whitagram” to add a white border around an image so that when I print it, the image is smaller. In this case, I didn’t.
PPS The photo of the weathered wood was taken with the app “Hipstamatic” which applied the off-white faux paper photo border and also muted some of the color.
Maybe I’ll try to find the original after all. But first, it’s shrimp scampi for lunch (inspired by Melissa Clark’s cooking video on NYTimes cooking app) and then I’ve got to bake Za’atar Parmesan Pinwheels (same app) for a 75th bday party tonight!
The two female faces showed up in an earlier collage, some filtered versions below.
Someone looking guiltySomeone looking on with avid interestSomeone ready to go outside after licking the cutting boardPCC collage made when I couldn’t sleep last nightThe prompt this week is the woman’s face
Hope my American friends had a tasty and relaxing day! We were four and it was really nice. I learned you can always make something else (oh? Bourbon-laced sweet potatoes? Why not! Cream biscuits? Sure!), thereby turning a meal for four into something more like dinner for nine.
I had a chance to test the Hockey Puck Biscuit Theory.
Previously, I have been embarrassed and annoyed that any time I tried to make cream biscuits for a holiday meal, they were epic fails. Hockey puck biscuits. While my more private baking adventures are not uniformly good, I often manage to produce tasty and flaky biscuits.
Until yesterday, I figured the tension and pressure of putting out a dinner for a crowd foiled my efforts. But yesterday, we were four. There goes my theory.
So what, then? A post-turkey oven is not hospitable? Sitting on a cookie tray for three hours jinxes the dough? Anyone? Maybe the cut dough needs to be refrigerated until oven-time.
I mean look at that thing! It’s practically two-dimensional.
Everything else was good, I’m happy to report including the cookies (talk about going overboard. I’d already made a pumpkin cheesecake).
It’s cold. It may or may not be raining. If not, it will be raining soon.
Lastly, I came upon two share-worthy creators this morning. The poem by Bernadette Mayer (below) offers a master class in the use of repetition and captures my mood of late. The collage artist, a 75-year-old woman living on one of the barrier islands along the South Carolina coast, takes my breath away. Some of her pieces are huge. Aldwyth.
