miscellany

menagerie

Yesterday, for my birthday extravaganza, the boy and I went to the Peabody Essex Museum. We hadn’t been in awhile, so all the special exhibits were new to us, but by far our favorite was the Trash Menagerie, an exhibit teeming with creatures made from recycled materials.

(Sulphur Blue Smeck, 2005, Michelle Stitzlein, mixed junk, 62 x 84 x 11 inches)

This butterfly is even more impressive in person. The stripes on the bottom of the wings are piano keys and the circles at the top are pots. It was impossible to pick a favorite, between the cardboard monkeys and the clam made of cigarette butts and the bunny with cigarette filter fur (bunny was even more adorable in person) and the glowing centipede comprised of bundt cake pans and bicycle brakes.

I love art made from repurposed stuff, and something about repurposing junk into animals is entirely enchanting. I can’t precisely put my finger on why, but the whole exhibit made me very happy. Finding new and exciting things, especially on my birthday, is a happy-making sort of thing.

After museuming we went out to dinner and managed to not get rained on, though it is the second coldest birthday that I can remember having.

We are still munching on funfetti cupcakes and I have a beautiful new necklace, my very first piece from Parrish Relics after years of coveting. Will be posting the first flax-golden tale tomorrow morning, and so far being thirty-one is very nice, indeed.

By erin, ago

randomness for the 29th day of june

I finished the pages for the tarot deck today. They’re over here on LJ and in the tarot minors gallery on phantomwise.com. I have the sketches for the knights finished but I likely won’t start painting them until next week.

I am working on the aforementioned unexpected YA novel idea and it’s going pretty well. I think I want to do a relatively fast first draft over the next couple of months and see where it wants to go.

Query-wise I am playing the waiting game, and I seem to be getting better at it. Or better at distracting myself by baking cookies and drinking lots of wine.

I can’t believe it’s almost July.

That’s about it. Apropos of nothing, here is a photo I took on Saturday as we were driving off into the sunset.

By erin, ago

in lieu of content, bucket.

I should probably polish my nails so I don’t chew them too much while waiting to hear back on queries and such. Am trying to distract myself with working on other things. I have court cards to sketch and books to read and a sprawling novel-in-progress about a subterranean library to work on.

But I really don’t have much to say or post or whatnot at the moment. So here, in lieu of actual interesting blog content, picture of Bucket sitting on the rug in the studio:

Because Tessa gets too much of the kitty picture glory. Since she’s a camera whore kitten and all. Bucket is shy.

By erin, ago

tarot reading

I had my first professional tarot reading in I can’t even tell you how long this morning.

I’ve been playing e-mail tag with Anya Weber about the progress of the Phantomwise Tarot for awhile now, and I mentioned that I’d love to get a reading from her at some point. She was in Salem today so she came by to read for me and get stared at by kittens.

I read for myself fairly frequently but I’m not often read for by others so it was kind of new and exciting and familiar all at the same time. We spent awhile discussing different decks before we started the actual reading, she’d brought three with her and we ended up using the World Spirit Tarot. It’s a really lovely, vibrant deck which I’d heard of but not seen in person before. Totally added it to my wishlist.

Anya has a wonderful system where she creates a custom spread tailored to the querent. Mine was perfect, I’d wanted some clarification on this whole publishing thing and how things sort of tied together and she came up with a very clear, concise spread that still left a lot up for interpretation. And she wrote it out all color-coded for me to keep and take notes on! I’m a sucker for diagrams and I tend to be a visual thinker, so I thought that was brilliant.

This was my spread, slightly adjusted to add a clarifying card. I took a picture for posterity:

I won’t bore you with details of each card position and meaning, but I will mention that the Tower showed up in a position where it wasn’t really that bad, more confirming suspicions I’ve had for awhile. Really, that’s one of the things that was wonderful about this reading: it crystallized a lot of things that had been floating around in my head already and they feel more solid now.

Anya has a great quote on her flyer that says:

Instead of “telling the future,” I use tarot to clarify the present. Tarot cards are fantastic sources of insight into just about any life question. They illuminate what’s going on right now, and also shed light on where you’re heading, so that you can change course as needed.

Which is precisely what this reading did for me. Though happily it seems my course doesn’t need much changing.

And Anya herself is lovely and personable and explains things in a wonderfully straightforward way. Her reading style is creative and intuitive, and she even gave me new ideas about reading reversals, which I usually tend to avoid. It was a very comfortable, enjoyable experience and I look forward to having her read for me again. If you’re in the Boston area and looking for clarity and insight I highly recommend her.

Check out her blog for more information: http://tarotsolutions.blogspot.com/

By erin, ago

happy towel day!

Trapped the wonderful land of editing and synopsizing, but I know where my towel is.

Since I am busy being a hoopy frood and trying to condense a non-linear narrative into a cohesive synopsis, here, watch Maru with the Big Box, because it is possibly the best thing ever:

By erin, ago

miscellany & tori

I know, I fail at updating. I have been a busy bee. Well, really, a combination of being sort of busy and also having nothing in particular to say, which seems to be the formula for lack of blog updating. Remind me not to make rash promises about updating every day anymore.

It decided to be summer all of a sudden, which is interesting and results in terribly flopsy kittens. Tessa is melting into the file box as I type.

Spent the week working on a new painting, hanging out with a friend from Smith I hadn’t seen in five years, and flouncing around in sundresses. And submerging myself in the new Tori Amos album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

I’ve loved Tori since I was 13 years old and first heard Little Earthquakes. I’ve grown up with her in a lot of ways, and each subsequent album seems to accompany me into my future, if that makes any sense. AAtS is interesting. It’s very mellow, that’s the first thing I noticed. It seems more like one long musical progression than a bunch of different songs, while certain tracks are standouts (I’m particularly fond of “Give” and “Lady in Blue” at the moment,) it blends very well. And I’m sure this sounds vaguely insulting, but it makes for very good background music. Maybe it’s just more atmospheric than some of her previous albums. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at first but having listened to it pretty much non-stop for several days I really like it. You can hear the sound progression from American Doll Posse, but it’s, I don’t know, smoother and softer. Very much looking forward to seeing how it sounds live in August.

In other news, I am finishing up the latest round of edits on the novel. The boy and I are planning on sitting down with it this weekend and polishing it up, and by the end of the month it should be query-ready. So when I’m not questioning the clarity of character motivation and adding bits of dialogue to scenes I’m compiling my list of literary agents and worrying over synopsizing something that’s non-linear and 33% second person narration. My query letter is good, though, so that’s one less thing to worry about. I’ll be ready, I feel like I’m working at a good pace.

And I’m having a professional tarot reading on Wednesday, so that should help, too.

By erin, ago