rhetorics of plaid

the mini podcast series Articles of Interest is still sorta new, but maybe a bunch of you have heard it already.

I hope they do a season two sometime eventually.

until then, I might just listen and re-listen to this episode all about plaid. 

plaid!

they reference the Scottish Register of Tartans, which I remember learning about during that summer I spent hanging out with Dr. Salvo and assorted other professional writing students in Dundee.

the most memorable bit from this podcast analysis of plaid and tartans, for me, is the moment when the show's creator, Avery Trufelman, notes the deceptively simple yet deeply complex nature of tartan.

that's why I've always liked it. I know I once said that there was no real reason, but that complexity is at least a little bit of a reason. as much as reasons for being really into plaid make any sense. it's really cool and interesting to me that this flat and fairly two-dimensional thing-- fabric or print or what have you-- also has so much depth to it.

anyway, listen to this show. and all the others in the series. but especially this one. I learned some neat historical and rhetorical things about tartan.

a baker's dozen years ago

while searching for some old article by Susan Leigh Star, which I think I found and now need to re-read, I also came across the old archives of my very first online journalspace.

I decided to open the files for August 2004 and August 2005. August 2005 mostly contained mopey nonsense. August 2004 was more amusing, even if not less nonsensical.

here is the entry from exactly 13 years ago today, spun from the silly head of a twenty-year-old amelia.

2004-08-24 23:57:45 yipee and etcetera

SOCKS i folded all my socks into pairs on saturday. this will probably never happen again.

BOOKS i finished robert rankin's the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocolypse last night. brilliant. as brilliant as. as hilarious as. go read it, you'll see. i'm also halfway through Exodus. yes, the one in the old testament. yes, i'm probably going to fail to read the entire old testament. i'm trying anyway.

WORK two jobs. two jobs, and school starts next week.... i pray that i don't go insane. it's twelve forty a.m. already... why am i still awake?

WRITING untitled semi autobiographical novel coming along fairly well. the plaid identity getting somewhat intense, if i do say so myself. hopefully now that i've got internet in my very own bedroom, there'll be lots more opportunity to develop that epic. mathematecal allegory progressing slowly. for all this is only technically a rewrite, it's been a long and arduous one so far. starcustard. we're working on it. lazily. poems? hang the poems. I don't care about poems. scrapbook? technically not writing, but a project nonetheless. it's on a shelf. to do lists. i have too many of these.

OTHER STUFF there is a sign pasted onto the door of the apartment opposite mine, and it says, in very clear block letters, "I eat kittens" with a heart in red pen underneath. i looked at it and thought... hm... men in hats. anyway. i think i'll get some sleep now that it's nearly one in the morning.


thoughts and reflections:

it's a rare evening when I'm awake in the middle of the night like that, these days. hard to remember when that was normal.

since that day, I actually have folded all the socks I own, multiple times. but not always. what would past self think of such, I wonder?

I don't remember if I finished the whole old testament or not. I imagine that if I did, it took me quite a long time, and that I didn't read the thing in any particular order.

none of that writing I used to be doing is writing that I am still doing, though The Plaid Identity still has a dormant email thread to its name, somewhere. hmm. I have different writing now. but I still do some of it on the internet, which perhaps means something...

the Men in Hats comic seems to still exist. interesting.

while we're talking about looking backwards in time, have I mentioned that I made a little podcast? it's a LibriVox podcast, for the community, in celebration of LibriVox's 12th anniversary. you can listen to it if you like.

important discoveries

I have two pieces of very silly and largely irrelevant-to-everything news.

firstly:

one secret to a good writing day (like the one I met this past Saturday afternoon) is well-managed hair.

this little side french-braid, with the ends tucked in and off my neck, may have been magic. or maybe the magic came from spending all morning not-writing (breakfasting, shopping, yoga-ing). maybe it was both. either way, I found a very nice writing zone this weekend. I'm still not finished with all the projects, but they are coming along.

secondly:

remember these trousers?

I loved them so much that when they got too worn out to be trousers anymore, I salvaged them for a skirt.

the inordinately exciting news is that I came across a matching pair--near identical--at goodwill on Saturday. these are in brown, not grey, and unlike their predecessors, they will need hemming. once they are the proper length, I am going to love them.

{ also pictured: the corner of a new plaid skirt }

so far so endless

finals week has ended.

semi-frantic emails from my students about their grades have begun.

I am still in the middle of the last bits of grading. relax, students. there is pretty much nothing you can do about your grade at this point.

this is the pile of borrowed books I want to read in the next month or so. it's about 60/40 academic/non-academic, I think. the Gilbert is one I read about during the most recent tournament of books: The Signature of All Things. the Gibson is one I may have read already (his books have a dejà vu about them, more often than not, weirdly), but I wasn't sure. it was the only Gibson the library had on its shelf that day, so I brought it home just in case.

finals week is behind me now, but this academic treadmill has no end. life goes on and it is full of things. there are articles to write and proposals to draft and next semester to plan, and so many goals and ideals to make sense of. German to practice and songs to sing and sunrises to watch. some of all that is prescriptive--shoulds and expectations. some of it is deeper than that, and my little brain is anxious for reading and thinking and enjoying the work of it. most of it is a little bit of both. half-want, half-ought. that makes me pretty lucky, I guess. or congenial and submissive toward my chosen lot. or at least delusional enough to find (slash hallucinate?) a little bit of want into the efforts this context currently expects of me.

speaking of hybridly fun-required projects, this here is the very first draft of a game I developed for Dr. Blackmon's class this semester. it is roughly based on a very long, very random, very adventuresome story I started writing ten+ years ago (more info). there is an island. a mystical ocean. pie. yaks. sock-related conflict. the main character in the story wears lots of plaid. a game doesn't really have a main character, and while identity is a major game element, plaid doesn't really play into it as much... so I'm not really sure if it should keep the name The Plaid Identity, but so far no better name has suggested itself. my colleagues and classmates who have play-tested the draft versions agree that the name seems to suit the randomness of the game itself just fine.

Dr. Blackmon's class is all finished now, but I'm still fiddling with the game, its little pieces, and its design. since there is no main character, I'm experimenting with making the board wear plaid. bright orange plaid for zombie-river spaces, deep green plaid for yak-meadow spaces, brown plaid for pie spaces, sandy beach plaid for fulgurite spaces, and a small grey plaid for sock spaces. and then lots of blue for the ocean. I'm not sure how practical this design is at the moment--it needs testing. I hope to get my family and old friends to play it a few times with me when I'm home next week. I hope there will be time for it between the camping and the theatre and the dinner parties and maybe a little sewing/crafting stuff. 

oh and all that reading I have piled up. there will need to be time for that, too. 

the nostalgic value of paint and other things

my dad was telling me the other day that most of his tools come with stories, and those stories are part of what makes those tools his. he knows where and when he bought that drill. this is the anvil he scoured the entire western United States to find. he remembers the bits of wood he's carved with that knife. all the stories make his tools worth more than their little price tags would dictate.

recently I mentioned the somewhat caustic smell of chlorine and how it had been haunting my nostrils after all the water slides on Thursday. I then discovered that my conversational partner of the evening had once been a swimmer; he loved the smell of chlorine.

I am the same with the smell of sawdust and paint. those smells remind me of my dad, work, and fascinating projects. they are just smells, really. but nothing is just anything. our brains tie all our experiences together into tapestries and nets.

I've been reading Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son--disorientingly quirky it is--and there is a chunk of page 145 where one character (a lovely, homey Texan wife) tells another (a not-really-but-sort-of orphan from North Korea) all about the quilt on the bed he will be staying in. she reminisces about the history of each scrap of fabric: flour sacks printed with Bible scenes, scraps and black velvet from times of sadness, and lace from happier times. "It doesn't take money, and the blanket tells a story," she says.

this third kind of value-warping nostalgia is more specifically the kind I've been thinking about. fabric and all its stories (am I starting to sound like a cotton advertisement?). you could buy a new quilt from whatever department store, or you could spend years helping your mum piece one together. maybe there's some kind of equation that could match up the differing values of all that money, time, and effort... but I think your own quilt would always be more special to you.

this skirt was constructed (using a carefully measured and homemade pattern! are you proud, clever sister Kara?) out of two different pairs of old trousers. the plaid ones I brought home from a store three years ago. the darker grey became mine longer ago than that. both have been worn and patched. their holes had finally become indecent enough for me to give up wearing them... but I couldn't bring myself to toss them out for good.

so instead I unstitched and snipped and measured and cut and folded and pinned and came up with this. I love it. 

I can't really explain the value of plaid; I simply have always liked it. but the white paint--that comes from a story. four or so years ago I visited friend Shara and helped her repaint her parents' bedroom. one summer later I would move into that house for a while. those were good times. it's a small story, but there are cool people in it and a bunch of other adjacent memories. the house is still there. neither Shara nor I live there anymore, but there's a bit of paint from that upstairs bedroom that ties this skirt to that house. the story (small and silly, yes) lives on. 

or dysfunctional nihilism

this is a bunch of small thoughts I've been collecting for a while. please, forgive the datedness and borrowedness of some of them and the existential generality of the others.

there is no shortage of tragedy in the world. perhaps this is because there is no end to our human ability to read our circumstances as deeply dramatic, emotional, and meaningful narrative. there is no shortage of tragedy at all. sometimes the tiniest things can dissolve away all the good things in your head, until it's hard to focus on anything but how little control you have over the way your life goes.

is it more depressing to think about how little control you have over the way anyone else's life goes?

for months and months I've wanted to blog something about this rather artistic video appeal concerning 'the leading cause of death in the world,' apparently, because... well, I guess because it seems clever. a clever and pathetic appeal to writers and journalists. and this kind of art and rhetoric intrigues me for some reason.

yesterday the grip of my own small tragic mood was loosened when I got out of bed and started cleaning my closet. a small thing. unimportant except in light of the fact that I'll be moving around the corner in a week or so, and need to put things in boxes and suitcases in preparation. anything, any mindless chore to distract us from the howling nothingness, eh?

I am totally up for wearing plaid with stripes. who cares anyway?

but we do. we care. we care about the silly details of what we wear every day and we care about the plight of illiterate children in Africa and lots of things in between. and we aren't exactly helpless puppets in the hands of fate, are we? I don't think so. there are things we can do. but do we? John Green provided me with the phrase 'functional nihilism' in this as-usual-enlightening video. we all wear a nihilist hat from time to time. but it isn't the only hat we can wear. we can get out of bed and do things. make stuff happen. change the world. in fact we can't really help changing the world. there is no running away. your breath, your apathy, your words, your footsteps. it's all here being mixed in with everyone else's.

are there reasons behind all this trite and inescapable no-man-is-an-island stuff? maybe. are they at all effable reasons? maybe not.

and this brings me to Ms. Rachel Botsman and her presentation on the the case for collaborative consumption. I can't remember where or when I came across this, nor am I certain exactly how it ought to connect with the above quote from Einstein or the Solidarités International video. maybe you all can help me out with that part.

a global village. trust mechanics. and this swap-trading stuff is the kind of thing my lovely, clever sister would get into and make awesomeness happen with, if she got half a chance.

maybe I'll read Botsman's book sometime. maybe I'll write one myself sometime...

nothing is known of Saint Valentine

I've just been playing around with this little doodle, originally posted way back in July.

there are no love-related holidays in July, are there?

not that I can think of. there are tuesdays though. I love tuesdays.

love is an irrational thing, you know. I have no reason to love tuesdays, but I do anyway. even though they're not always the greatest. not always the most fun.

at least my irrational love of tuesdays is completely unconditional.

as is my love for ice cream (chocolate ice cream, of course).

and my love for plaid. goats. typography. sunrises.

unconditional, irrational love. today is all about celebrating that.

and, underneath all the sugary pink and candy-coated chocolate-ness, also about the real stuff, which can perhaps be just as irrational, but is nevertheless far more intense and profound and committed and transforming than a love of tuesdays (however genuine) ever could be. loving people is better. let's do more of that, shall we?

head to toe

new haircut.

new plaid trousers.

and to go along with these two plain and unassuming photographs I've just posted, I shall throw in two links:
this self-explanatory photo project is interesting and cute. I wonder how long it will last.
this random and somewhat less self-explanatory photo project is an interesting and sort of funny. I also wonder how long it will last.

that's all.

small tribute to forgotten anniversaries

november, six years ago, I began writing this story.

that's all I remembered, really. the story since then has grown and grown and grown, twisting and tying itself in knots.

for the past few months, off and on, I've been working on building it a new house. it needs more space. it needs to be free.

november, six years ago. but when in november? thismorning I was curious, so I tracked down one of the few surviving records, and I discovered that the date of the very first post was today. november 21, 2003. six years ago today!

the story must have known. it wanted me to bake it a cake and sing it a song.

I don't really have time today for baking, but here, in honor of this partly-sunny saturday of serendipity, is an excerpt from the beginning of The Plaid Identity. there will be more to come.

cravings

sometimes, things don't make sense.

like why I love plaid so much. the central picture in this collage I made a long time ago had hints of plaid all over in it. doesn't she look dramatic, all draped across that piece of furniture in the middle of a field? I think when I clipped that picture out of whatever old magazine it came from, that's when it all began.

or like why I feel so driven to write. I'm not always that great at it. sometimes the ideas are slow and torturous to put together. but the sizzle and texture from all the images and descriptions that fill my brain...how could I let that just go to waste in my dreams?

I couldn't.

and hopefully, the bits of nonsense and the moments of not-so-greatness will not go to waste either. it all has a place.

an affinity for amnesiacs

the longest work of fiction i have ever pulled out of my own head is (today) 106, 494 words long.

like several of my other writings this one began as a frivolous way to entertain a few friends, to keep my mind in a playful mood. i never thought it would get so long, but as it turns out, writing in first person this way means keeping secrets from yourself. secrets like the way it should end.

today i tried out my crazy mythical universe on a third-person narrative. i traded my female protagonist in for an eleven-year-old pirate. for the last few weeks i've been turning several plot ideas over and over in my head and finally, this morning, i came out with this short little thing, about 1/100th of the size of the piece it's based on.

unlike the original unfinished story, this spinoff had the luxury of being revised several times. i like it. it sheds a rather eerie light on several things i've been trying to think into The Plaid Identity. strange, what another perspective can do for a story.

oh. did you want a crack at those hundred thousand words?

hold on a second...

there:
The Plaid Identity
as of July 4, 2007

plaid subdue glinted zoology

i was surfing this morning in a sea of online sciencey magazines, and i discovered some pretty amazing demonstrations of programming coolness.

phylotaxis
a program displaying science news from all over the web in one lovely mesh of order and disorder.
wordcount
a ranking system for the most often used 86800 words in the English-speaking world, searchable by word and by rank. (the title of this entry is taken from my search of 'plaid')
understanding vorn
a program that scans and displays any image whose title starts with V, O, R, or N, updating every five minutes. (requires flash 6)

all three by jonathan j. harris, an artist.

it amazes me that such ideas have ways to manifest themselves.
now i really want to learn more scripting.