This Thing and Other Things, Too

This crazy thing.



I've been trying to get a good picture of it for awhile now, but it defies my amateur little effort.



 It's about eight inches in diameter and perhaps five inches at its highest point. It's made of paper clay and rubbed with iron oxide, glazed with black, Archie's base, and a white crackle glaze.
 It's a functional object as far as I'm concerned; Most people at the studio assume it's some kind of barnacle-ish sculpture, but it's really a little insect home that I made for the garden. I hope little ground hunting spiders or beetles will move in when spring comes, like a little insect apartment building.

And these are just some random satsumas that I took a picture of at Whole Foods last night.



And in case you didn't know, it's a new year.

Happy New Year!

One of my resolutions for the new year is to read more. Never before have I had to resolve to do such a thing. (In the past I've mainly stuck to (failing at) the lose weight/exercise resolutions.) I've always been such a big reader. Unfortunately, in the past several years I've developed a massive internet addiction. Oh, I'll look down my nose at you for watching trashy reality TV, but I'll spend hours reading celebrity gossip sites on the internet. I'll scoff at you for eating fast food regularly, but I'll spend hours on foodie websites and reading restaurant reviews for places I'll never ever set foot in. That's my monkey, the internet.

 So, yes, I've had to resolve, this year, to shut down my computer two hours before bed and read three books a week at least. (That's 156 books this year. Once a laughably easy goal for me, that's probably 150 more books than I read last year.) The shutting down my computer thing is not easy in part because I don't have a regular bedtime. A long time insomniac, I've gotten used to keeping strange hours and to going and going and going until I just fall into bed exhausted enough to sleep. I rarely take anything to sleep unless I get desperate and down melatonin or the odd off-brand Benadryl tablet, but my point is: No regular bedtime. Because of that, I've decided to shut down my computer between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. and read.

 What have I read? So far, I've read Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton. (Mini-review: She's kind of an asshole so only read it if you like that kind of person and maybe even then skip the last half of the book which is all about how dissatisfied she is with her marriage and how it's such a hardship for her to spend a month vacationing in Italy every year.) Also, I re-read (NOT CHEATING) Shirley Jackson's two hilarious books about her family life, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. And just yesterday I started reading a book I eagerly anticipated (but which I am sad to find is grievously overwritten), The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making by a wood carver named David Esterly. (Though now that I'm about a hundred pages plus into the book, I see that he was just having trouble getting started. Eventually he settles down and the real book begins. Still, that's a lot of eye-rolling to get through, one hundred pages worth of a 280 page book, so--read at your own risk.)

 What's coming up? Let's see. I've got a stack of new, unread books next to the bed that have quite a layer of dust on them (most of them collected in the latter part of last year): Eliza Haywood's 1751 novel The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic to Political Terror. I've also got those books I started to read last year and have yet to finish: Joy Harjo's autobiography Crazy Brave, Eric Weiner's autobiographical Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, Charles C. Mann's 1493, Michel Pastoureau's book The Bear: History of a Fallen King, and a heartbreaking biography of outsider artist Bill Traylor called Painting a Hidden Life: The Art of Bill Traylor by Mechal Sobel.

 After I plow through that stack, I'd like to re-read two of the (very few) science fiction books that I think are worthwhile, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and John Varley's Millenium. From there I'll perhaps move on to a few of the books that the New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani recommended in her year end round up of the ten best books. (I don't much trust her as a reviewer, but she's got an interesting eye for non-ficion.)

 Ay yi yi.

 I was talking to David last night about my little resolution and how I used to be able to move forward through a difficult book with some determination. Over time, the internet has eroded that ability somewhat. I mean, it's so easy to click away from an uninteresting webpage, but when you do it with a book it's hard to bring yourself back to it. It becomes easier to abandon a book altogether than try to struggle through a difficult passage. Sticking with a difficult or even momentarily disappointing book takes some discipline, a kind of discipline that is not fostered by the internet's constant offering of something potentially more interesting.

Anyway, I'm doing well so far, I think.