I have had a very busy few days. Most of it working on the front entry. rearranging things, covering pillows and an old yoga bolster. I wanted a bit of color so used a nice piece of rust and black mud cloth over a firm 2″ foam. I painted an old stool that was under a large flat rock on my previous porch (that stone is actually what slopes the water into the pond here).
Yesterday I went off to buy porch rugs. They are taking their time settling out flat. But I keep thinking that the wall opposite the wide bench could use something. I think I will move the five foot by 12″ D x 15″ H black bench from the porch to out here. Neighbors could sit and have a wine and a bit of conversation. The bolster I covered with a very large shawl that I bought in Bali…doubled it over and stitched along one end and the length, leaving the fringe hang off one end. The smaller pillows were unused ones from my bedroom.
I covered them and a soft pad for the stool with another scarf I found in my fabrics chest. I had dyed it (rather un-successively with plant materials in Australia and thought I could disguise the boringness of it by kantha stitching long lovely cream threads one end to the other about 1/2″ apart. What a dumb idea that was! So now that one scarf covers three pieces that match the stones I can’t seem to put in the gardens.
I also can’t seem to part with the wire and wood bird cage. It hung in my old living room from the shelves and has been looking for a good place to settle here. I think it goes with the wire, sandpaper scraps, and stone tai chi figures. It is those things that have the mark of hands putting pieces together that I love.
The more I think about that empty wall out front, the more I know that as soon as I finish this blog, I will move the black bench there.. I could even put a stone or two on it. Speaking of which, I have requested more of those perfect ball-shaped ones that Amy can find up north.
The Scrabble book is finished and now available on Amazon. Out of the $10 selling cost, $4.25 goes to printing it with color images, Amazon takes 40% of the balance and I get $1.75.
This is not a way to make money! But if one wanted to market their work and themselves, money can be made using this form of self-publishing. Since I have no intention of hawking wares at local writers’ functions, I am wondering of what value I can be on a panel discussion of those who self-publish. Maybe my value is the opposite approach from being known and accepted in the world of writers, that can be useful to others who have similar views. Anyway, I need to get myself ready for that panel discussion by this coming Friday. No worries.
Thursday, Eddie, the yard guy, reappears to finish adding mulch and a red bud tree. I will be at the gym, doing laps around the gymnasium,
having coffee with the corner people, tai chi, and poetry that day. I have new pieces written for both poetry meetings.
Speaking of poetry reading, I began to follow Billy Collins weekly readings on Facebook that started a few years ago. At first, I thought it was some know-it-all graduate student who kept interrupting him to say where to face and when to speak. After quite a while of being irritated, I discover that it is his wife, who thought this was a good way for him to connect during the isolation of Covid times. And after a bit he seemed to quiet her down and would read his and others’ poems. Then for some ungodly reason, he thought adding his favorite jazz music would be a good idea. And we would have to hear all about his house renovations, etc. Well, naturally most of his regular listeners thought all this was simply wonderful. Billy was making them part of his life. Well today I called our relationship over. Here he was, without the continual supervision of his wife (who must have been away), telling an audience (that most likely hoped he would read from his earlier works), about what a clever musician he was to have learned so many instruments recently so he could play his own jazz compositions. He read some poetry from magazines featuring un-understandable lines and continued to promote his books…could be close to a couple dozen by now, and all in all continued to irritate me. So. I talked over him by reading a very short poem of my own out loud before scrolling down to the next cat video.
Doing a bit more in the book about philosophical considerations. I like connecting the pages and thoughts together.
Anyway, the bench is waiting to go out front…
Til later…