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I’ve decided to challenge myself by participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is 50K words in 30 days. I’ve had several books on my mind, but have gone with the one I feel is the most developed of those. While it isn’t the fantastic story I want to work with my friend Daniel on, I think it will be great to finally get it out. I have to keep reminding myself that I can develop some of the story as I write and I can do fine-tuning when I edit. I have a lot of questions about the direction the novel will take and I look forward to seeing where these characters end up. I’m spending this week on my main characters, writing back stories and descriptions that will help me understand them as I go along. I personally find it helpful to name my characters first, but I often change that in the end. Naming them just allows me to start ‘talking to them’ and getting into who they are. If this goes well, I feel like I could be finally headed in the right direction.

I’ve also revisited an idea I’ve had for a long time of creating a book of short stories, poems, artwork, etc. I’d collect submissions from current of past booksellers, likely those I’ve worked with… or those people who exist on the periphery of the bookselling world. I just have to get through to those who find the idea dumb.

Lastly, while looking through my notes concerning the novel I’ll be working on in November I came across a poem I had written in 2008. It needed a little work, so I’ve polished it a bit. Enjoy!Continue Reading

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I love music. There is just so much wonderful stuff out there, and I’m rarely aware of what is new because I’m off on tangents, discovering artists from several years ago. Here’s what I’m listening to this month:

Páll Óskar Hjálmtýsson, Nik & Jay, Spektrum, Scissor Sisters, Fagget Fairys, Electric Six, The Knife, Levi Kreis, Matthew Duffy, Neko Case, They Might Be Giants, Thomas Holm, Nick Cave, Sheena Easton, One eskimO, Sakis Rouvas, Kylie Minogue, Radiohead, Kent, Ari Gold, Muse, Dolores O’Riordan, Jacques Brel, Pomplamoose, Martha Wainwright, Garfunkel & Oates, Rasmus Seebach, Adam Lambert, Jay Brannan

And some videos/songs to match to a few of the names:Continue Reading

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I love shopping at Asian markets. Along with my usual haul of coconut milk, curry sauces, and agave, I like to pick up a few items I’ve never used before… and in some cases haven’t heard of before. On my most recent trip to my favorite market, I picked up a can of mangosteen, a bottle of rose water, and a jar of ube (purple yam). I intended to use all three to make cupcakes for my birthday, but it didn’t happen. I finally got around to it when my friends Kevin & Kerith came for a visit while my mom was in town.

I was familiar with ube. I’d purchased ube flavored snack cakes at the grocery store, I’d poked at the refrigerated and bright purple ube rolls in various international markets, but I’d never used it. I was drawn to the intense purple color of the pureed yam in its jar, and had hoped that the color would show up in a cake. I’m not sure which recipe I used, but it was an applesauce cake recipe. Instead of applesauce, I used equal parts ube and coconut milk. After baking, I filled the cupcakes with an ube and cream cheese filling & topped with coconut frosting. I had initially attempted to make the frosting with too much coconut milk, resulting in a very pretty, but gooey cupcake (the one without purple sprinkles).

These cakes did not take on any color, and I’ve since read that ube will offer a very pale color, as it did to the delicious filling. When using ube, it seems customary to add food coloring to intensify the color. I prefer to not add color to things and these were amazingly tasty without being purple. They had a subtle ube flavor with coconut tones that were nice without overpowering the cake. I had to keep myself from eating them all up before our company had arrived!

I felt like the ube cupcake was a great success. My next trial will be with either mangosteen, which I intend to use as a straight substitute for applesauce (after pureeing) or rose water and rose hips, but I haven’t really figured out how to work rose water into a recipe that uses so little water.

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I received help with whatever I’d done to my site to make it disappear. It did take me a while to ask for help, but I’m back to it now.

My mom stayed at my house for a month, to close out the summer with me in Anchorage, her first trip to Alaska. It was nice to around another person who likes to create. Regardless of what it was, we were all about making something new. We took a class on using natural dyes; we created a nature journal to preserve the many pressed flowers she collected while she was here; we collaborated on a scrapbook of her trip, so she won’t have to do it later; and we experimented with new recipes and new foods. I’ll get some of our shenanigans listed here.

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August is more than halfway over. Here in Anchorage summer has already conceded defeat to this in-between drippy season that is a sort of pre-autumn. I love it, as I do most weather. My mom is like that too — perhaps it is from her that I’ve taken this attitude. It doesn’t matter what is going on outside; everything has its own merits and it is all worthy of awe. Mind you, I’m overjoyed that I no longer experience the many many months of humidly hot days that are Oklahoma summers. But even a few days of that should be taken in every once in a while.

My semi-subterranean home has once again become a refugee camp for anything small enough to find a way in and away from the cooling temperatures and the wet. I don’t mind sharing my home with these tiny animals. Mosquitoes are not welcome, and I’m afraid are dealt with harshly. Flies are relentlessly shooed and may also be dealt with if they don’t take my hints that they’ve overstayed their welcome (which is quite short anyway). Beyond that, I don’t give trouble to anything that gives me none.

I was chasing flies around the bathroom, swatting them in the general direction of the open window, hoping they’d move along, when I noticed that this year has not brought a single insect in so much as pairs. It is as if the insect & spider community is sending delegates and are only individually represented. For days there has been a seemingly dumbfounded ant scooting his too big body in and out of the spaces just under the cabinets, always at times that are inconvenient for me to capture and release him outside. As far back as I can remember into my childhood, I’ve wondered about these individuals, about the lives they’ve lead until now. I was initially worried that this was a queen looking for a spot to start a new colony (oh, please! not my little bathroom!), but I think it is just a wayward member of a colony from the flower bed just beyond my porch.

Chances are very great that any ant won’t live long anyway. My house is host to a variety of harvesters and spiders all ready to prey on the other refugees. Spiders are amazing. Even at the times I believe my home is free of all crawly things, I’ll see one appear from nowhere and scuttle off to an again unknown place. This is again one of those instances when the ‘live and let live’ rule applies for me. In my book spiders are good. In a basement environment, the lack of more insects is likely thanks to the arachnid guardians who have set up snares at the entrances. I thank them.

All of this makes it sound as if my home is crawling with critters. Just the thought of that gives me chills. It isn’t like that. Anything that dares leave the sanctuaries of the laundry room or bathroom quickly becomes a brief plaything for the kitties, and then a light snack. Even in those relatively safe places, the insects and spiders have to be fairly clever at hiding. Bothering me definitely includes making yourself too well known. If a garden beetles plops himself in the middle of the bathroom floor, he’ll be excused onto the porch where sadly I’ll leave him to his fate.

But really, I like knowing that the world is alive around me. While it makes me feel increasingly small, it also makes me feel more connected to the world somehow. And allowing benign ecosystems to form in darkest corners of my basement apartment makes me feel a little bit benevolent.

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I’ve become terribly obsessed with Indian cinema, specifically Hindi (Bollywood). I feel like I’ve nothing but watch Hindi movies and listen to their soundtracks over the past month. This is all thanks to a guy I work with who loaned me a couple to get me hooked. That was bad enough, but discovering that DVDs are easy to obtain for less than $3 really sealed it.

I had a very specific idea of what Hindi cinema would be. While the stereotypical depictions come from somewhere, largely the movies were not what I expected them to be. I was surprised to see the range, which makes me sound horribly ethnocentric. But I feel the same way about American movies that are outside the conventions of American movie-making.

I have been unsuccessful in getting a friend or family member interested too, but I’m still trying. It’d be a tad more fun watching with someone else. For now, Andre will do. At least we can discuss and share the films while at work.

Recommended Films: Mughal-E-Azam, Umrao Jaan (2006), Kuch Naa Kaho, Pyare Mohan, Mr. & Mrs. 55.

Not convinced? Here are some solid reasons for watching Bollywood films: actors- Arjun Rampal, Abhishek Bachchan, Tusshar Kapoor, Upen Patel, Vivek Oberoi, Sunil Shetty, Ashmit Patel, Amitabh Bachchan; actresses- Aishwarya Rai, Rekha, Mahima Chaudhary, Madhubala. Look them up and you’ll understand.

Here’s what I’m up to film-wise.

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I’ve really tried to get on board with digital layouts. However, I have some fundamental issues with them that prevent me from getting there.

For myself, crafting is about escaping. I may turn on some music or throw in a DVD for background noise, but then I get into my project and enjoy it because of what it is. I like the textures of the papers and seeing what papers will work where. I like trying something big and having it fail, then I take it all apart and start over having learned what I could do better. In the end, my fingers are frequently covered in paint, chalk, ink, or glue. There are tiny bits of paper that will need to be vacuumed up scattered around my chair. I need all of that. Digital scrapbooking would certainly be neat and clean, but I wouldn’t be pulling away from the computer and it wouldn’t be nearly messy enough.

As for digital layouts I see in the world, I tend to not care much for them either. They can be very beautiful and elaborate, which has a lot of appeal initially. I always seem to be drawn to them at first, but when I look closer they are missing a certain je ne sais quoi. When a person has spent time touching, selecting, gluing, repositioning, stressing and fixing it shows in the final product. You can see the love they felt, the emotion they intended. That is when scrapbooking elevates itself to art for me — when one leaves a bit of soul on the work they’ve done. Digital layouts lack that. The focus is on using all the little pretty things that are not scraps of something else, on the “metal” embellishments that add no depth, on feeling free to use techniques that don’t need to be cleaned up after. I understand what sounds nice about that, but leaving out your heart doesn’t make for better memories. And besides, why would everyone want to create a page that looks so much like everyone else’s page that it looks like nobody in particular created it. That is as irritating in traditional scrapbooking as it is in digital.

That said, I have seen digital scrapbooking that is excellent. It happens when the artist truly expresses who she or he is, when they’ve left a bit of individual style on the page. And when the focus is on the memory and not trying to impress everyone else, things will always feel that much more beautiful.

Judge for yourself. Scrapbook.com has a digital layout gallery.