I want to thank everybody for the shop orders. It's been ticking along all week and I'm starting to get excited about reclaiming some space in my apartment, not to mention that lovely sense of something put to rest. The sale continues and you can shop here.
My week was full of that feeling as I also cancelled by cable and home phone. It's almost as if I'm enacting a move on the cards with that lovely feeling of lightening a load, looking around and thinking, what else can I get rid of!?
On the back of my Cloud Atlas post, I've been browsing The Composites. I love what creator Brian Joseph Davis wrote (here) in this blog post about the important aspect of disappointment in the project:
"The New Yorker’s book blog reports on The Composites with an honest and funny take. I’m quite glad they gleaned that disappointment is an integral part of the project. Let me add that disappointment may be an important part of literary pleasure in general, what with that gulf between thought and representation."
And also a link from Jessica's Read. Look. Think. about what we see when we read:
"Most authors (wittingly, unwittingly), provide us, readers, with more behavior for their characters than character description. Even if an author excels at physical description, we are left with shambling concoctions of stray body parts and random detail (author’s can’t tell us everything). We fill in lacunae. We shade them. We gloss over them. We elide. . . . Anna: her hair, her weight: These are facets only, and do not make up a true image of a person. They make up a body type, a hair color … But what does she look like? We don’t know. (Our mental sketches of characters are worse than police composites.)"
I've been buying lots of books lately. Some from Melville House Books and from Miel too. I'm trying to eke out new things, new ideas. I've also been writing a lot and feel some kind of fire in my belly about all of it.
Speaking of books: Dream home. And the paintings too.
Happy long weekend!
P.S. It's a blue moon tonight, do something worthy... there isn't another until 2015!
I'm sorry you're closing your beautiful shop, but it must feel wonderful to, as you say, "put some things to rest." I keep meaning to read Cloud Atlas – never have. Your praise of it may just get me there faster. Maybe not this weekend as I've been buying way too many books as well. But soon.
ReplyDeleteAh thank you! I enjoyed having a shop, but it's not something that should be done at less than 100% and it was stressing me out that I wasn't giving it the attention it deserved.
DeleteIt's a lovely thing, to have a big stack of books to read. Enjoy your weekend!
I have really been thinking about scaling back as well - by necessity and by choice. Cancelling cable is a biggie as far as the scaling back. Home phone is nice to have, but I question if it is still a necessity (according to my mother, it is simply barbaric to rid my life of both of these distractors:/). However, the little free time I have I wish to spend without the feeling of missing out on something because I missed something on the t.v. Lately, I feel that my life has been revolving around the idiot box when it should be revolving around engagement in more productive and creative endeavors. I encourage you and support your decisions. Keep your fingers crossed that I will be strong enough to do the same!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Tina. And good luck with your own scaling back!
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