wb: seeking

I had set up this summer to find ways to finish projects started long ago. Then I got two colds in the space of one month. (summer colds are a different kind of evil) I've ended up finding out things about myself, instead...and then working on ways to change them, live with them, grow from them. It is diff.i.cult. I'm not sure I'm getting anywhere and I know I get on myself too much.

Change happens slowly. And though I rarely use ours, I'm a product of the microwave generation. I like things to happen quickly and fairly easily. The road to self-improvement is neither. I'm getting there...I'm trying. That's what counts.

_{Photo Credit: Podbean}

by its cover:: the cheese monkeys

By Its Cover is independent book review column. Selections are mostly made based on the book's cover. I'm testing the old saying in my quest to find new favorite authors and books.



This one I totally picked due its cover...and because it had a uber-minor mention of Connecticut. Enjoy!

Title: The Cheese Monkeys
Author: Chip Kidd

I think this book marks the first time that upon completion my reaction couldn't be clearly placed on the love/hate spectrum. I didn't clutch it lovingly to my chest as I would have Jane Eyre. I didn't want the hours back that I'd spent reading it like I did when I finished The Little Town that Stood Still (I still contend that something was lost in translation with that one). It was not a feeling of pride for having finished as with Dickens. It wasn't passing neutrality as with chick lit. I paused, turned the tome in my hands and thought.

It's a beautiful book, in the physical sense. Kidd, it turns out, is a well-known graphic designer turned novelist. So this story probably has some autobiographic touches. I want a copy just to look at the cover art and the arrangement of the droll, expected, skipped-over bits of the book (acknowledgements printed along the covers edge, the image-based titling). Normally writers are concerned with carefully piecing their plot points. Kidd took an extra step to tweak the layout of the age-old novel. The risk was worth it.

As for content, the enigmatically named book (he never does fully explain cheese monkeys but that's not point) tell the tale of a nameless protagonist during his first year at a state university. He's studying art, to the discomfiting chagrin of his parents and the disillusion humor of himself. Kidd made me laugh by page 10. He kept me turning the pages, sneaking away to find out what odd assignment or social snafu would happen next. I yielded my emotions to his words, cringed and cracked up on cue. He won.

It shows the extremes of art (and in that way...of life), from hare-brained conceptualism to harsh thought-driven design. Another critic called The Cheese Monkeys a 'coming-of-age story'. I'm not sure it goes far enough to be that to me. The main character does come into the story a 'wide-eyed' youth and by the end is a little...well, experienced. But the book and its collection of characters and their lessons did make me think, they evoked emotion, horrified, thrilled and shocked me...the way art should.

zephyr- confession

I don't know what I'm doing.

I do know what I'm not doing. As of late, I haven't been crafting. I don't really mind except I have boxes, drawers, tins of supplies that are going untouched, unused. Do forgive me.

thisnext:: three by three seattle

I love this! I make to-do lists all the time on little scraps of paper. Sometimes I lose them. This nifty board can be carried alone, some enterprising DIY-er could add magnets or something to the back to let it be adhered to a wall or some such surface. And it saves paper.

>From Three by Three Seattle

As always, if you want to follow my picks between Tuesdays you can check them out here or subscribe.

flashback:: 'memba that?

Tia of Christopher and Tia does a series called 'Friday Flashbacks'. The subject of the post is something from her and/or her family's past. I've enjoyed reading her posts and thought about participating but wasn't sure what to write.

Then I listened to the Doomhouse podcast episode regarding earliest memories. That got me to thinking about mine.

I'm the oldest of three children. And aside from a memory snapshot of me sitting in a stroller with my mom and aunt in a Wendy's...my earliest memories have to do with my oldest younger brother, referred to here as Bro1.

Memory 1:
This is a hybrid memory, meaning I know part of it happened, but it's meshed with this picture...before the picture at the top of the post could have happened. I remember having a dream about my little brother, someone my mom said I could play with. I was about 2 at the time, and we were chasing each other in my dream. I didn't quite understand that he would be born a baby and have to grow up into a kid I could play with. I told my mom of my confusion when she showed me baby Bro1. In the dream I remember, we're wearing these outfits. There occurs the meshing. So either I really remember us chasing each other...or I've seen this picture so many times it's fused with that dream.

Memory 2:
This one I never told anyone until after hearing the podcast...so it's like 20 years old but I know it happened. I woke up from a nap one day, probably closer to the age I am in that photo, late 3yo/early 4yo.

I guess my mom had taken Bro1 downstairs already because I don't remember him being in the room. I wondered why it was like to be him. So I crawled into his crib/toddler bed. I could then see the room from where he would if he was in the crib. But I knew it wasn't the same...because I was still me. I would never really know what the world looked like to him. Yes, I was quite the existential thinker at 3.

And the whole 'do others really exist?' 'what goes on when I'm not there' conundrum has puzzled me my whole life. Only a few weeks ago, when I shared this memory with my mom for the first, did I found out that she's wondered the same sort of thing formost of her life as well. What was that saying about the apple and the tree?

So those are my two earliest memories. You can share yours in the comments section if you wish. You can also read other Friday Flashbacks on Tia's blog and/or listen to the Doomhouse podcast on their website.

Photo:Me and Bro1 circa...1989/1990?