So it is Halloween and I find myself incredibly nostalgic for childhood trick or treating episodes and the subsequent horror movie marathons with my Dad (even if Halloween fell during the week, we were allowed to stay up as late as we wanted both watching trash and eating candy like it was going out of style.) I remember a few costumes, particularly those vinyl tied wrap around costumes with the uncomfortable masks..things like Cinderella and Strawberry Shortcake. In kindegarten I remember I was a devil in red pants & turtleneck with plastic horns and pitchfork. Later I was getting too cool for kiddie costumes and opted for "punk rocker" several years in a row, which basically meant I dressed like an extra from a Motley Crue video and put spray dye in my hair. I don't remember dressing up at all through most of junior high and high school, but did quite a bit in college (the possibility of drunken costume parties seems to have rekindled my creativity). I still do most years as an adult, though, especially since we've started doing Theatre Bizarre every year.

Tonight though, I'm library bound, though I have managed to finish up the manuscript of moon poems and send it off into the world in time for the chap deadline I was aiming for. I also managed to get all of the new collages framed and delivered for the next Art of the Library show, which opens in the next couple fo weeks. Yesterday, the waves on the lake were huge and grey and Atlantic-like even inland in wake of the hurricane on the coast, which meant the wind coming in from the water howled all night outside my windows, setting the perfect stage for spookiness.

I am continuing to push through the fall weather doldrums (the barren point at which most trees have lost their leaves and everything is brown and grayish and terribly uninteresting) and immersing myself in so many projects I can't keep everything straight. First there is the chapbook manauscript of moon poems I'd like to finish and submit by Weds. Also the unusual creatures collages (see below) that I need to have in their frames this week for another library show ( the box project and text pieces will come later, but the images, or at least some of them, need to be done asap to get them on the walls). I also have a bunch of author copy orders and the assembly of Fascicle, which means getting everything trimmed and in their boxes and on their way. Yesterday, I mostly napped alot, made pasta, and then went to another Halloween party (at which I drank way to much Stella Artois and am today tired and sluggish.) Later I am planning grocery shopping, pizza making, and horror movie watching. This week, more Halloween and Day of the Dead festivities at work. I do have my weekends free for a couple weeks to the middle of the month, which is nice, though I feel like time speeds up during the holidays and the end of the year will be here before we know it.

from unusual creatures

Dear Margaret,

The coyotes walked the porch last night and my hands are anxious. Three nights and at dusk, the yard darkens, the room darkens. Small animals move along the baseboards, howling and mewling in tandem with my heart. Two loggers were lost today, and I mourn according to the condition I find myself in. The lawn is a strange artifact. I dress in black. Make plans to go south in the winter. Still a white powder coats the window sills. I dreamt my hands held a bundle coddled and clotted. I passed the sugar, passed the salt. Am ever fluent in distraction. From the bed, hope looks like a shadow moving along the wall.

C

I've been working a little the past couple of days on the project using the cabinet card and old photo images. As I was making them, I was thinking it might make a cool box project, reproduced / doctored photos and maybe letters, postcards, calling cards, ephemera, etc. I'm hesitant to do another Victorian themed project since I feel I've already exhausted that impulse, but somehow these images seem to be begging for it and I've been waiting to do something in a box for awhile now. Of course there is still the pop-up thing, and a couple of poem-only projects I am in the midst of and never enough time to do everything (even the cards have taken me over a year to get to properly).

Detroit, however, was good, despite some travel diffulties and logistics. Theatre Bizarre was the strange amazingness it always is. So much cool stuff, including a huge diorama of the original grounds, lots of fire performances, a "sinema" featuring scare films, and a disorienting layout of rooms opening onto rooms. I always feel creatively inspired by what I see there, as well, in terms of the way John Dunivant creates this little (well,sorta big) world and invites others into it. It makes me want to create things like that (well on a smaller scale anyway..)

I am working on another box project for Rebecca Dunham's Facsicle, which is a collection of poems and prints from Dickinson's Harbarium. And there is still the long overdue tarot project that will be finished at some point.

Otherwise, the world is a flurry of tiny yellow leaves and a lot of rain. I am waiting for a promised bout of Indian Summer..

And so we move further and further into autumn and I am anxious about all sorts of things, but now am just pushing through to the end of the week and the awesomeness of Theatre Bizarre, which is its own little world away from everything for awhile (be it a world of flame swallowers, burlesque dancers, sideshow performers, and debauchery.)I need to get away for a couple days to restore my sanity and blow off some steam.

Meanwhile, I am making good steady progress on finishing out the last of the 2011/2012 season of books and plotting the next. I still have more than a few submissions still unopened in the inbox, but I plan to finish them off before the end of the month, plus iron out something like a structured schedule for next year's titles, most have which have been accepted already. There are also other things coming before the new year (a box project from Rebecca Dunham, the tarot deck, my radio ocularia artist book thingy.) And of course, preparations for the big holiday open studio in December.

I'll be finishing a couple manuscript projects during this time also and winging them off to certain open reading periods, so here's hoping someone likes them. My productivity in the writing arena waxes and wanes, but I've been pretty steady lately and have some interesting things to show for it.

amazingness

www.jessicatremp.com

Another week, another Friday. I have been making last minute preparations for tonight's open studio, which mostly means cleaning up the book-making tornado that seems to have hit the past few weeks, which entailed paper trimmings about a foot deep beneath the work table, 4 empty coffee cups, multiple strewn envelopes, a half dozen empty boxes, and about about 30 unfilled covers. Since I've been focused on the poem stuff of late, I don't really have anything new or exciting to debut tonight beyond some of the book fair leftovers from this summer (many of which I am still waiting to post in the online shop, including new prints from the shipwreck collages and a whole bunch of bookmarks of various images). Days, weeks, entire months seem to be getting away from me. I realized today that it's about time to get started on an art project that I first concieved about a year ago, and beyond scanning in some images for old cabinet cards, I haven't done much else with them in the meantime. I'd like to say the whole thing was germinating in my mind the past year, but it's more that I just hadn't had much time to think about it and it was overrun by the day to day.

I would love to undertake & finish projects maybe on a monthly basis, this month including the moon poems and the radio ocularia images. Also make some new crafty things with the supplies I've been hoarding, but time gets swallowed up in the day to day, in library tasks, in books, in bus rides and random errands. And sleep, which is a thing I need more and more of as the weather turns colder. In the summer, I'm usually hopping from bed bright eyed and bushy tailed, but now, I have to bribe myself with coffee to even get out of it, let alone into the shower and dressed (and that doesn't always work.) I did hear the radiators kick in at dawn this morning for the first time this season, that endless clunking followed by warmth and definitely didn't want to get up when my alarm went off at 8. I'm also hungrier when I'm colder, which is annoying when I'm stuck at work so late and am starving by the time I get out of here, let alone an hour later when I get home...One of our former student workers, who had been living in San Francisco, was talking about the low there usually being in the 50's at most. If it weren't for potential earthquakes, I could SO deal with that.

The past couple of days I have been trying hard to think of everything as a learning experience, as some trial that teaches me more about myself, more about what I want, what I need, what I can tolerate and what I can't when it comes to relationships. Second chances are all well and good, but they probably only make it harder to walk away a second time. Yes, it was good, but there are boundaries I have to keep for my own sanity, my own autonomy, and once again it was too much, too soon. I like to think I at least tried, was open, and I was, but there were too many expectations.

It's not even about monogamy, which I can take or leave, but more about feeling in control of my own life and time. Yes, it's probably selfish, and self-centered, and overly control freaky, all charges that have been leveled at me in the course of the last month or so at various impasses. (and whenever someone calls me a control freak I'm like "Duh..do you even know me at all?") And it's almost a relief, the letting go without reservation, even though it's a little sad. I don't want to put myself in a position to hurt people, to mean that much (or at least be told that I do) to someone that I feel responsible for their well-being. Which also seems like a manipulative thing in some ways.

But I am finding solace in other things, new poems, galleys to proof, new projects in my notebook, other random fall plans. I was suddenly very anxious for Thanksgiving to get here (equal parts missing my family and being really hungry for something besides Chinese food, salad, pasta and frozen pizza.) I am moving on again, and this kitty pretty much always lands on her feet whatever you throw at her (or throw her off of.)

from Pinterest

It's finally getting colder and I had to pull my black coat from the studio closet where I stuffed it away in March. Today, I am attempting to organize my bedroom closet into something like funtional and finally moving all the summerish dresses toward the back and the winterish ones forward. plus trying to persuade myself to wear some of the ones I rarely do, simply becuase I keep rotating the favorites. I also have my eye on some new lovelies, but I need to wait til they go on sale or until I have more money in my bank account, whichever comes first. And then there are the shoes, of which I need to do a serious purge on the overly heeled one's I never wear at all (if I were driving they would be fine, but they are way too uncomfy for the amount of walking to and fro I do.)

Otherwise, I am mostly sleeping, reading, and watching a little of season 2 of Walking Dead on Netflix, which reminds me that I need to start queuing up my Halloween horror list as we get closer..

And it's here, the e-chap in which I talk about my Cloverfield theory of romance, crush on Ryan Gosling, my affection for dance movies, and all other sorts of randomness...

and best yet, it's absolutely free and downloadable from Sundress Publications..

It's rainy, chilly day, and I waited for the bus interminably, but I think the whole romantic drama issue is sorted out and moving in the right direction, which frees me up to be all angsty about other things like art projects and half completed manuscripts and whatnot (and that's a good creative angstiness and not a sad, crying sort of angstyness.) I also got some news that the release of I*HATE*YOU*JAMES*FRANCO is nigh, as in coming in the next 24 hours, which is exciting, so stay tuned...It's a busy week with this and the art opening on Friday(another sneak peak of that series above), then preparations for the Open Studio next week. I did manage to work on another piece of the moon project last night, so it's looking possible it might be finished by the end of the month as I planned...

Today, there are hazelnut lattes and book trimming and a stack of new texts for library reserve to process and already, halfway into my day, I am tired and worn out. I am sort of unfocused and unrpoductive compared to usual Tuesdays, distracted and all sorts of wonky. If Tuesday feels like this, I fear Thursday. But am forging ahead, slowly, and determined to get the backlog of dgp titles out during October, so much good stuff, and especially since there is so much other amazing stuff coming for the 2012/2013 series. I have also been neglectful with wicked alice, which is sort of ridiculous, since I do have content queud up and waiting, but so little time to mess with formatting. I need to just get it all ready to post and then schedule it for busier times. Meanwhile, there are other mundane things I've neglected to get to, like dying my hair before the blond at the roots takes over actually drying the load of laundry I started last night before it gets smelly (for some reason the laundry room was hopping at 1am and no free dryers, so I said fuck it.)

But I'm liking this warm mild fallness right now, not quite Indian summer, but tolerable, and the trees turning yellow over in the park and the afternoon light that filters over the buildings at dusk and makes them explode in color. The sidewalks are dotted with leaves and I am on a sweater dress buying kick again and putting together my TB costume (and figuring out how to make a peacock feather fan).

My mother is always fond of qualifying statements with the phrase "if it's meant to be, it will happen.." which usually drives my Type A control freaky Taurean self absolutely bonkers. This usually has to do with the sort of things that fall mostly beyond your realm of control, not necessarily chance things, like winning the lottery or getting struck by lighting, but more mundane things like getting a job or a promotion or winning a prize or whathaveyou. To which my usual response is "NO! NO! NO!, YOU have to MAKE it happen.." I am never one to wait for serendipity, which is sometimes incredibly frustrating when things involve the will & whims of one or more other people. Nothing bothers me worse than "wait and see" or "play it by ear"..Of course I am also occasionally guilty of putting off decision-making until it either works itself out or is to late to really decide, thereby wallowing in indecision, which is what I have been doing for a couple of weeks. The jury is stil out on the outcome of this particular situation, and perhaps I waited too long deciding what to do. I've been leaving alot to portents and signs and auspicious revelations. I haven't gone so far as to do anything wacky like pull out the tarot cards, but I have engaged in some coin flipping and pencil spinning. I've made decisions like this before, and sometimes my best decisions have been about whim and chance and excellent timing. All I can do is sit tight and wait to see if it works out...