botanical scrap shelving
K mentioned that she wanted a shelf for her Lego Botanicals (aka: winter gardening replacement) collection but after toying around with the notion of well-made floating shelves, I got bored with directions and measurements and went with this little thing, Frankensteined out of pieces of scrap and failed drill press / jigsaw experiments during interior Shed construction and/or wordplay boredom.
A case study in why I prefer metalwork and welding to woodworking: I'm very much a "build first, measure later" type and the creative assembly (read: winging it) of something useful (or at least interesting) from otherwise useless and damaged castoffs was my little way of bringing my metalwork love to the extent of my woodwork tolerance. Fun little experiment – that K dug the end result (You can make more, right? she asked) made it all the more so.
tuning
In keeping with yesterday's clean break with the past and much of the present, I started something new today – and loved the process. Indeed, much of the impetus behind the great split / divide / whatever was a desire to bring my now-quarter-century-long writing practice in tune with the beginner's mind lent by my new practices of cartooning, drawing, and metalwork by banishing most if not all of my previous attachments and intentions: gone are the designs and hopes and dreams on and of a career, the designs on anything; I want to view whatever I write moving forward not as a stepping stone but as a thing that was written – like each day's Informality, like Miggy or Weldo – nothing more than another means of expression and communicating whether I'm heard or not: if I'm to be a tree alone in the forest, I'm going to fall where-, how-, and why-ever I damn well please.
clean slate
Following yesterday's successful execution of a really shit draft of something really cool and the requisite making of distance between shit and un-shittifying, I returned to another thing I'd been playing with for a few years and, after staring at the same words and the same stuck spot, felt the magic wave a middle finger at me as it skipped town. So I've decided to do something I've never done before and – with the exceptions of current commitments to other people (hi Uzi, hi Jess), my daily Informalities and the ongoing adventures of A.A. Void, and this space and the newsletter – make a clean break with my current project slate AND with all of the past, failed fragments and notions to which I'd normally turn in these times of void. Time to start a new day creatively and prepare and till a new field for whatever seeds may spring; I suppose starting my notebooks over with a new 0001 after 37 volumes and 15+ years this week wasn't just a fresh start at numbering but a herald of the creative Galactus that landed today.