Weekly-ish Flotsam 017

Seven things what tickled my interest

1. One of my morning runs, I spotted a group of bird watchers with their binoculars out. I turned off my headphones and whispered to one, “What are we looking for?” She said, “A California thrasher. We just heard it. Hold on, maybe it’ll go again.”

   

   Photo: Feederwatch

She said to listen for a pretty sound. And when it called again, I was utterly taken by its truly melodic song. Here is a wonderful collection of thrasher songs.

2. Last time around I wrote about my struggle with writing my most recent attempt at a novel, and how a friend encouraged me to stop trying, and to start being. About a week later, sitting at my writing date with another friend, it occurred to me that I’ve drafted every other novel longhand. And that, for the past year, I’d been trying to draft at my computer.

   It was like, part of me had forgotten how I was a writer. Like I was playacting at it. Like, my brain was like, “how do we do this again?” and then it went and found some image a writer that it had found on the Internet, and decided to try that.

   Anyway, the short story is, I’m back to longhand drafting, and it is so much better. Gonna do that from now on. I’m back.

3. Last year, I started doing Wendy MacNaughton’s 30 days of drawing to kick start the year, and I didn’t manage to make it very far. But I’m trying it again this year, and I am loving carving out just ten minutes each day to do a little drawing. Yesterday’s exercise was to do something different within each of ten circles. I took this way too seriously, when what she meant was to literally just do something different, not to make something different of each circle. But that was a valid lesson, too.

   Also, crayons are hard to work with.
   Today’s 10-minute assignment is a silly self-portrait; I’m pretty excited about this one. I wonder what will out!
   Another thing I like about these thirty days is reading MacNaughton’s daily posts. They don’t just outline the assignment. They tell a story and they impart lessons along the way. Today’s post talk about stealing from other artist, and how great it is to share the credit. <3

4. Yesterday, after literally three weeks of telling myself I’d do a thing, I went and did it. I took myself to the Norton Simon museum, one of my very favorite small museums. Looking at art soothes me. Doing art, has the same effect. This time, I wanted to go back for an exercise I’d done once before, drawing a portion of a picture frame. Instead, I revisited a statue I’ve tried to render previously, an exercise in light and shadow.

   

   I’ve tried previously to render her face, but in the end, I wasn’t drawing someone I recognized. That is, the woman on the page ended up being vastly different from the woman I was looking at.
   So I went back to try again.

   

   The point is hardly the product. It was the being there, sitting cross-legged on a bench while patrons passed in front of me* or stood to the side of me, looking at the same piece of art I was. It was the time passing, so quickly. It was the sentiment that I was getting to practice a thing I really enjoyed.
   It was time well spent; 5/5 stars; would do again.
   *Or, sometimes, stood right in front of me for some time. That was OK, too. It was an exercise in patience.

5. More on art! I’ve been using ArtsyTabs, a Chrome extension that shows you a piece of visual art from the National Gallery of Art with every single new tab you open. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was tempted to open a new tab just for the joy of seeing a new-to-me work of art fill my screen every time it happened.
   It makes a huge difference, actually. If I was hard pressed, I’d say it forces me to slow down. To not be so quick to Get On With It. To look.

6. I’ve just finished reading Taiwan Travelogue. (All book links go to my Bookshop.org affiliate shop.)
   It was interesting to explore the era of Taiwan just before the war, when it was still squarely a Japanese colony, and to understand more about “Islanders” relationships to “Mainlanders.” Plus, it’s a lot about Taiwanese food by way of framing, so you can’t really deny that attraction. And, there’s a map of the railway system back them, and I love both maps and trains.
   

   

7. On one of our daily walks we passed a baby pine tree at the corner of one of the streets. Our neighborhood is changing a lot; there’s a new development going up that will involve 65 new home single-family homes, and although those plans have been in the works for over a decade now, they’re just now getting started on grading the ground in prep to build.
   So I’ve been thinking a lot about what things will look like 5, 10 years from now. I’ve marked down the location of the tree, so I keep an eye on it.
   I’m not sure what this random thought wants to say. I’ll keep an eye out on that, too.

That’s it for this installation. More soon. Thanks for reading, as always.