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  • Artist Books

    Over Winter Break, our little family went to the Museum of Modern Art here in Manhattan. Part of the reason to go was to kill an afternoon, but also the kid really is loving her art class at school. They were studying Picasso before the break, and she remembered that MoMA has several of his very famous paintings, and was excited about seeing them. For the wife, she hadn’t been out in the City in a while, you know, to actually enjoy this place – so she was hip on going. Me; I love going to museums – any museum: historical, art, kid, whimsical, yarn, whatever…

    So, up on the top floor, MoMA is holding a retrospective on Edward Ruscha. I was vaguely aware of his work, especially the gas station stuff, but I didn’t know a whole lot about the guy. Let me say this, if you are available, you should go check it out. His work covers several different mediums, and is a very interesting digestion of Post War America, and the growing of Pax Americana.

    Out of all his works, the one I was most drawn to were his artist’s books, the first being “Twentysix Gasoline Stations.” There was something to the simplicity of the work in the book, and the efficacy of the design on the whole. Ruscha went on do many other artists books, all keeping with the same design theme. What these books reminded me of was two things; gallery books my uncle would make, and other artist’s sketchbooks.

    I am aware that Ruscha’s artist books were not sketchbooks, but a complete work unto itself, but I have been to other artist’s shows were they make a single sketchbook into a work. Some of the most interesting I have seen, sadly I have forgotten names, were books that had cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers, or were a combination of text ant drawings/paintings.

    And then there are the gallery books that my uncle used to make. He was a painter/artist who spent time in New York in the late 50’s and 60’s and then relocated to Houston. When he had a show in a gallery, books would be printed for the event, but my uncle took extra time making these limited-edition books individual and unique. Some of the books he would personally swipe paint across the cover, and I think one he would rip the corner off of the first page, to make each book feel “used.”

    And for the past week, in the back of my head, I have this “artist book” idea-thing kicking around in my head. Not sure what to do with it. About six months ago I started farting around with the idea of making a limited run “zine” that would feature crayon drawings and poems with my kid, but that never materialized. (I think my daughter was never on board with the idea.) But I like the idea that writers should adopt artists books as part of their medium to work with. This would be more than a chapbook, as it would incorporate more visuals and play with format and style. For a writer not only works with words, but also the form that books can take, right?

    I’m going to play around with this some more. Even though I might just be describing chapbooks…

  • Short Story Review: “The Beach House” by Joy Williams

    (The short story “The Beach House” by Joy Williams appeared in the January 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Mia Bergeron

    Of all the storytelling tricks that are out there, the “MacGuffin” is my favorite. If you don’t know, a MacGuffin in a story is any object, device, or person that is essential to the plot and motivation of the characters. Think of the Ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark; it’s the object everyone wants and is also what drives the plot. And the beach house in Joy Williams “The Beach House” is a MacGuffin, but the rest of the story doesn’t play along.

    So, in the story, Amber’s elderly father is near death, and he owns a beach house which he is planning on willing to a charity that save dogs. Amber finds this charity suspicious, but more importantly, if the house is not willed to her after her father’s death, she will be homeless. This is about as textbook as you can get with a plot, and motivation and the whole thing. He wants one thing, she wants another, and the stakes are high as she has a desperate need to get her hands on this beach house.

    But this story never seems to get its dramatic act together. It plods along with little urgency. Amber seems resigned to talk about her plight, but never take action. And the father, though its hinted at that he might be suffering from early dementia, doesn’t seem very interested in his daughters situation of near homelessness. I feel that there are other issues simmering under the surface between these two, but I also think I am giving the story the benefit of the doubt here. When the climax of the piece occurs, the father falls and the daughter wants to take him to the hospital, it in no way affects the plot, the motivations, or the MacGuffin. Nothing is resolved or concluded with this action – the issue of the beach house is still there.

    It’s not a badly written piece, but the aftertaste I am left with is that “The Beach House” might be the first chapter of a novel. Again, all the pieces are here for a good story, and like I also pointed out, there seems to be a subtext between the characters that could be richly explored. But, with the story in this state, Williams introduced a gun and then didn’t fire it.

  • A Project Manager for My Family

    I know we are on the second week of the new year, but is it too early to feel overwhelmed with everything that me and my family want to accomplish in 2024?

    Yes, it is too early to feel overwhelmed in this new year. I would say the start of February is an acceptable time to feel overwhelmed with 2024.

    “Overwhelmed” might be me overreacting a tad.

    There is a lot we need to do, and starting around November, I said that we’d tackle it at the start of the year…

    Yeah…

    I mean, I gotta finish sound damping our bedroom wall, patch some holes, paint the living room, find a new dentist for the kid, make summer travel plans, get new glasses… honestly, I could go on forever. Oh! I gotta find a new storage space for us that’s closer to the apartment and less expensive.

    And then I started thinking that I should use a project management software, or platform, to help me organize everything. Help me find a faster way to work, use my time better, follow up on tasks. That would help, right?

    I did some searching, and I found out two things. One, if you are looking to project manage your family, you could use any PM platform and even use Google Calendar and Tasks. And two, there aren’t many people who do this with their family.

    I actually found that rather odd.

    I would have thought more apps would be out there to help you organize all the tasks and goals a family has. Our little family has so many balls up in the air with playdates and birthday parties, school events, and teacher conferences… Then then there is the stuff I also mentioned above. Seems like there is a goldmine waiting to be explored and exploited by making people feel like their families are disorganized, and that the PM app is what will solve all their problems.

    The trick is that you have to follow through on completing the tasks. You know, if you don’t at work, you get fired. In a family, you just get made fun of because you disappointed everyone, but you get to hold on to your job.

    Huh?

    Still – I need help organizing all of this stuff.

  • Moving Stuff Around

    After Thanksgiving, like the day after, is when we put up our Christmas decorations. And to be honest, we never had a good place to put our tree. The curse of a small NYC apartment: There is a never a good place for anything.

    But this year, the wife came up with a good idea, which was to move our lounge-sofa away from our windows, and place the tree there. The tree looked nice in that location, and with all the other decoration we put up, it looked very festive, but cluttered – a Christmas explosion.

    Anyway, I mentioned before that we take everything down after New Year’s, but with the holiday on a Monday, and everyone back to life on Tuesday, we didn’t get around to cleaning up until this weekend. It took all day Saturday, but we got it done. Life had returned to normal, but we decided not to move the sofa back. We were tired, and ready to relax.

    And something amazing happened.

    The new placement of the sofa has changed the whole mood and flow of our apartment. You could logically assume that we were just reacting to something being “new” and in time it will wear off. But I have to admit, for the past two days our home has felt different, more home like, peaceful, calmer even.

    Is it possible that the placement of the sofa was holding us back? Does anyone remember Feng Shui? That was a pop-culture thing, right? Was that real or something made up to sell sofas?

    The funny thing is that I remember being a kid and my parents would do something like this very randomly, like every few years; that they would get a bug in their ear and just start rearranging the furniture in the home, and then talk about how much better everything felt.

    So, I have discovered another way that I am slowly becoming my parents. Not that I mind.

    No… Maybe the better way to think about this is that I am coming to a better understanding of who my parents were.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Christmas Has to Go, Can You Believe It, Must Win, and Serious

    (It’s a trip… it’s got a FUNKY beat. And I can bug out to it!)

    This is the weekend that we are taking the Christmas decorations down. Normally, we do this on January 1st, as a sort of cleaning the house for the New Year. And I think you can read between the lines there and see that the wife and I have passed the days of staying up late and waking with a hangover. But this year, we didn’t get around to it. We put it off. Not that we had a good reason to do that, other than we wanted to lay around and not doing anything on New Year’s Day. The end result was that we got an extra week of Christmas, which has left me feeling like the holiday has over stayed its welcome. I like Christmas, but I really like it when it lives tightly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

     Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we live in a world where the movies Cocktail and Road House exist.

    And I need the Cowboys and Tottenham to win this weekend. Simple as that. If it doesn’t happen I will be heartbroken and disconnected from the universe.

    Some evenings, late at night, when I am alone on the couch while my family sleeps, I start to believe that the core of me is a very serious person. Alone and in the dark, I am confident in this pronouncement. And I say these things to myself when I am normally watching a terrible ninja movie, or something awful by Bert I. Gordon. That is when I know that I am a contradiction at all times. A silly one at that. I like walking funny and talking in goofy voices. I make up songs about doing mundane tasks. And I’d rather laugh than cry. I’d rather make you laugh; Try to make you happy through humor. I still attempt to rob an honest melancholy tear from people… but… I have never felt sure that’s what I’m best at. Yet, honestly, I have never felt sure about anything. And if I think too hard about that, I might start to wonder, worry, and then cry. Which is why I’d rather laugh. Hold it off, at bay, for a little while longer.