Thursday, January 8, 2015

Moroccan Interiors

Moroccoan by Lisa Lovatt-Smith
2004
Weight: 2.6 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating


This is a beautiful book of gorgeous rooms, windows, furniture, gardens, and tiles.  Flipping through it puts me in a fantasy.  I guess I am living in that space of non-reality when I get home from work lately.  You would think so based on my last two posts anyway.  I think I am just tired, recovering from being sick, and loving/hating antibiotics and steroids.

I could relax on a nice warm rooftop looking across the city.  I could swim in a pool surrounded by lush greenery.   I could fall asleep on top of nice, clean, white sheets not covered in dog hair.  On that note, it may be bedtime.

Take the Cannoli

Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World by Sarah Vowell
2001
Weight:7.2 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating


Just finished this book and appreciated all the blasts from the past!  I enjoyed thinking about mixed tapes, people who remember Sinatra and when he died, a world before Bush and Obama.  It was also nice to daydream about being the kind of person who tries all sorts of things and travels all sorts of places writing essays.  I could be Goth for a day.  Could I then write about it and make someone care?  Maybe not but it is nice to dream...

Monday, January 5, 2015

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urbervilles  By Thomas Hardy
1998
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

 

I was one of the few students in my college-level English class that liked Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  That shocked me a little but what shocked me the most is that only two of us thought that Tess was raped in the book.  This story was incredibly sad and sometimes weighed so heavily on my mind that I thought my heart would break for Tess before I could get to the end of it, but people described her as annoying or deserving.  Boring or beyond their empathy.  I still find this uncanny.  I probably should have taken it as a sign of things to come.  Maybe if I had paid more attention I would not have been surprised to find I was surrounded by losers when I experienced my own rape.

Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting

Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting by Edgar A. Whitney, A.N.A, A.W.S
1974
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating

 

When I think about being a child at my grandparent's house there are a lot of things I think about.  One of those things is meals.  My grandmother would make something--spaghetti was a typical kid favorite--and my brother and I would drink milk out of tiny glasses with stars decorating the rims.  There was a high chair in the corner with a blonde doll holding a gift in her hands.  It was the same chair I had my first birthday and first cupcake in.  On the walls were my grandfather's watercolors.  He had painted trees, and I would often find myself asking him questions about them.  He explained to me that in watercolor you did not really get the opportunity to erase and that you had to pay attention to each stroke.  I was very impressed and when I got old enough to paint I promptly decided never to do watercolor.  I bought oil paints and, though I loved the look of it, I realized it would take days to dry and by then all sorts of animal hair and dust would get stuck in the paint.  My house was not oil paint conducive so I moved to acrylics.  I have held onto this book and others like it thinking I might try my hand at watercolor one day, but I realize now that I probably won't.  I will, however, still enjoy looking at my grandfather's paintings.

Flemish Expressionism

Flemish Expressionism
High Museum of Art, Atlanta--October 3 to November 28, 1980
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating


This book is having one last hurrah as I wake up my wife to show her individual, creepy paintings and unsettle her dreams.  The Flemish Expressionist were nothing to laugh at and more than likely you would not want to hang any of the paintings at the end of a dark hallway if you intended to walk down it.  Ever.

Be glad you are not married to me.

For those of you who wish you were:





The Disaster

All About Love by Bell Hooks
A Dogs Memories...Our Lives Together
Drawing the Head and Figure
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Transfer Printing by Guy Scott
Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
Weight: 3 lbs
Method of Disposal: Natural Disaster


My beautiful wife will not let me tell you the real story as to how all of these books came to be destroyed, but let me assure you it had nothing to do with snakes.  I am just on her laptop and have limited access to pictures.  I have just as much disdain for my destroyed books as I (albeit unnecessarily) have to that serpent right now.

Since I cannot tell you the real story, I will tell you this one.  There once was an expansive and magical library of books that was dusted daily and tended to by the most gorgeous of faeries.  The fairy's name was Lorelei, and she had just moved to a new settlement with magical unicorns and fireflies that were permanently stuck in the sky.  Everything was as it should be for months and months (despite having to work long hours at a job where she was deeply under appreciated) until a dark force came, without her knowledge, into her ethereal realm in the form of several spirits.  One by one the spirits took her books.  The ones that did not perish were still damaged and Lorelei angrily had to throw them out before their allotted time ( a time when she would record their existence and leave it on the world wide web).  She did this quickly and with much remorse, leaving behind her own form of disarray and despair (her office was left quite a mess).  She had no idea how to vanquish the spirits but reinforcements would be called in by that Ribbons girl that lived down the lane (in the same house).

To be continued...